Child reading opportunity

Child reading opportunity: THE CHILD NEEDS OPPORTUNITIES IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE

I continue to insist that children learn even when our act of teaching, that is, our educational practice has become obsolete or surpassed. And this practice always becomes obsolete. As a result, the school doesn’t achieve the expectations in its service and the children don’t enjoy going there.

Still, the children must be taught how to read, at least. They learn about the reality they see and experience, but don’t spontaneously learn to read and write what they say. They stay out of the realm of meanings. And grow up to be ignorant, illiterate; at the verge of great decisions and of understanding what happens around them.

The present school models, the teaching administration and the decisions on what to teach also do not keep up with the pace of events and facts of life outside the school and the demand for learning scientific and/or artistic facts is higher than ever, given the amount of children that live in the world and that are experiencing the schooling stage. This demand is a result of the overpopulation of the planet Earth that, consequently, generates a similar amount of problems to be faced. Another significant demand is the urgent resolution of new incoming problems that is required once a people’s ignorance does not help (in fact, on the contrary) at all the evolution of the being in society.

The accounts of illiteracy throughout the world are too high and we cannot live in an illiterate world anymore. In this case, holding back the costs leads to even more of them, since out-of-hand ignorance has significant negative effects in all civilizations. Poor, illiterate men are way below the thin line that separates human dignity from disgrace. And thus those that live in these conditions suffer and impede the progress of peace amongst the peoples and also individual delight. I stand over here, and you stand way over there, we cannot continue to be happy ignoring this “bigger picture”, thus accepting that on this earth there still exists imbalance due to lack of opportunity. We need to give men the condition to write what he/she speaks and also to understand what the other writes. Simple as this affirmation may sound, we still see, in most third-world countries, this devastating truth. It is necessary to teach men to understand the complex and globalizing world in which he/she is inserted.

We need to end ignorance. If man is capable of learning with out without a school, it becomes essential, at first, to discuss what to teach in order to diminish this outrageous scene and also what is the specific role that the school plays. In addition to this emerging account is one that shows that the schools are doing their job in a out-of-date fashion and we need to race against time.

In spite of the difficulty we face guaranteeing teaching and also of the tiny opportunity most have achieving the school setting, even so, children learn.

Learning is instinctive to the cognitive system, as breathing is to the survival of the organic system. This affirmation only goes to show that the school’s role becomes real easy in treating teaching its community. Then the first problem arises: the school is not keeping up, in its methods, with the job of teaching the contents it commits to teach, at the same pace that the facts take place outdoors. In other words, it has become uninteresting for the student.

We all learn something, somehow, anywhere, all the time. This starts from the first observations regarding the environment that children make, until the problem-solving responses shown in order to continue constructing their knowledge. And, where go all our efforts made so that, somehow, our children and/or students may learn everything they need to make life worthwhile? How to define our role as educators and/or parents?

In schools they teach the past; all that has been learned by the teacher, everything that has been put together by the educational community as what should be taught in that specific culture. Furthermore, they teach all that has resulted from intellectual and reflexive past practices through knowledge acquired by each and every one of us. So far, so good. It is known that culture is the faithful link that balances out the excess of creativity and what is extremely original with what already exists. Without this necessary equilibrium men would only create and would not maintain what had already established. It would be a new beginning at each dawn, total chaos. Culture equilibrates what is necessary to be maintained at a given moment, for a certain amount of time. It is the link between the new and what exists. Without culture to unite knowledge and peoples, creativity would not be fuel for development.

However, the problem is that the schools, when teaching what’s already known by the teacher, cannot and should not forget to capacitate children to reflect and to engage in creative practices, which on the other hand can also be taught. Children learn while creating. They learn creating using the content given, thus reflecting and memorizing it through acting upon it.

Let us take a peek outside the school environment and discuss how surpassed schools really are regarding their ability in tending to attend the children in their very needs, also regarding their abilities to learn in their own style. The school still believes that children are apt to read only at 6 years of age, and we know they can read starting from six months of age!

The school submits a group of children, of similar ages and with different cognitive developments, to a limited quantity of information, linked to inflexible models, which joins fragments of different subjects and themes, classifies models from different paradigms and sets times and dates for learning to take place. And, most importantly, presents to the children subjects that don’t belong in their context and interests. The children wait anxiously for the end of the lessons to go home to read, see and learn what truly motivates them. And they stick to the computer screen and ‘scan’ the world of information that is refreshed every minute.

In real life, children are learning in a diversified manner. They are exposed to all information necessary to the survival of the adult, none of which is part of their reality; and are also exposed to every type of aggression that can affect their childish imaginary world. But still, they remain aware, since this is a world of action! And the world spins too fast. And they can’t stop either! Aboard this Ferris wheel, they are exposed and see the facts through the TV, hear comments on catastrophes, excessive taxes imposed by the government, the countries’ internal and external debts, horrifying crimes, wars, corruption, exaggerated news on facts involving sex issues, abortion, other children in starvation around the world, crimes committed by religious practices, and crimes committed by politicians. Come to think of it, they mostly hear and see issues that they shouldn’t. They are violated in everything they see and hear. No one preserves them. This world isn’t like anything they see and do at school, where they learn a linear order of things and the facts come and go without calling out their attention. The knowledge is static. It is not required from them to participate and to modify reality much. They remain listening and reading printed papers. While outside the school they are learning randomly through the electronic highway, where a lifestyle is imposed that stimulates and influences them in their daily relationships, inside the school they are required to pay attention at a pace that already is torture for the internal and cognitive means that they use to build their worldly knowledge. The rhythm of their learning outside school, in real life, is highly frenetic, it doesn’t stop. In school, I’ve observed many times, the children catch themselves staring at the teacher, and make strong efforts to pay attention in an exhausting manner to whatever he/she is saying, look at each other, out the window, to the walls, and the lesson never ends.

While the teacher is trying to teach all he/she knows, the children are ‘scanning’ whatever they see. Looking at everything and thinking about nothing. And what they see is static. It’s not required (or even proposed) that they think, express themselves, analyze, or even create starting from what they see and/or hear. They find themselves feeling stuck to the place they are and thus do not take advantage and don’t enjoy anything from the lesson. The lesson is the teacher’s show and the children aren’t a part of it. Their mental realm rapidly runs off somewhere, other thoughts come to mind and they ‘run away’ from class. And the learning expected by the teacher doesn’t take place. They spend 4 and/or 5 torturing hours inside the classrooms, at school.

That is why we see so many parents taking the home-schooling path. And they are right.

We are wasting our talents with our mistaken conceited certainty that we have the capacity to administrate what to teach at schools. We are losing our talents by not stimulating today’s apprentices. Those that need methods adequate to the XXI Century. A race against time has begun, since our students/children are not the apprentices we once were. They are much, much more capable! Today’s children search for information in a holistic fashion. And it isn’t just in theory or rhetoric! It’s the truth! They see the whole picture without having to look at every detail. It isn’t the sum of the parts that equals the whole thing. It’s the whole thing that they see, not in detriment to the knowledge of the parts that gives meaning to what they see. Hard to follow? Well, let’s see. Compare the way that apprentices from the present decade differ from those from the 80s when facing a computer. Observe the way they look at the screen nowadays. And compare to what you remember from the past. They don’t search the screen from left to right, or right to left in order to see and uncover all elements involved in the figure. They gaze upon the whole screen and reason in a holistic manner. They consider everything at the same time. Thus the ability to solve problems at a pace that blows us away! This is only an example and it is determining! They ‘scan’ to see, live and understand. The brains tends to function looking at the whole picture and the schools still insist in showing them sectioned parts of reality.

The children have brains that see the whole, and today’s world needs complete men, composing parts of reality, more competent and complex beings. There is no more room for incompetence, for it cripples and discriminates. We need to urgently prepare ourselves to help this new being that is here. He/she is your son/daughter, my grandchild, our great-grandchildren and all our students. We need to prepare beings that will know how to resolve problems and that have the liberty to create, starting from school, and from our own homes. Let us interrupt this sinister influence that communication has on our children that learn what they shouldn’t whether we like it or not. The only thing we can do is to not underestimate the children’s capacity, help them at home and demand from the governments better schools.

What’s left for us to do in face of this obstacle imposed these intelligent, childish, developing beings that challenge us with their infinite learning abilities? What is the human being’s solution in order to deal with these children that think completely differently, these present-day children, miracles of all civilizations?

It is through them that we will prepare the humanity to come. Through them we shall preserve life on Earth and guarantee peace among all peoples. We must cultivate with them faith in the future on Earth. It is therefore necessary that we promote for them the opportunity to pursue the infinite urge that they feel to create, love and produce inside and outside the school. To manufacture the new: solutions for present problems, solutions to end war, illiteracy, starvation, and also the practice of love and good among men.

We need human beings with insight, wisdom, honesty (respect towards others), integrity, flexibility, creativity, intention, love towards life in general (other men, animals and nature), and faith in the future and in preserving life.

We cannot stop teaching logic (how long ago did logic stop being taught?), language and numbers. But in a way that the child is stimulated to create and build his/her contents based upon the content given, respecting his/her cognitive practices, abilities and individual talents.

The schools need to be equipped with high technology, with laboratories for learning through activities, with groups for musical practice and theatrical executions, with body-movement practices, kinesthetic activities, with activities that provide the possibility of executing actions that require interpersonal and intrapersonal decisions. We need to give the children the opportunity to participate in projects to exercise their leadership, so that they can learn to play roles, to reflect on world literature, as well as different cultures and also to reflect on the world outside the school itself. They must understand that they are only a few more creatures in this world, but that they can make an incredible difference through their participation in solving the world’s problems.

We must give the children the opportunity of insertion and survival in a complex, savage capitalist, and not-at-all naive society, in which the control of all economic activities require that they know and dominate the language of their country, aside from other languages of other cultures. We must aim their logic-mathematic preparations, aside from providing them with the opportunity to fulfill their special abilities, and answer their economic and financial questionings. We have to rescue them from the line-of-fire of those that become victims of the social system as it is today. They will have to know how to survive!!

It is necessary that, wherever there are children, there be an adult knowing that right there are the miracles of civilization that are apt to learn everything they see, hear, read and observe. These miracles that are biologically and cognitively ready to be attended and recognized in their very needs and talents.

Let us love our children. They are prospects of life that may be the best of which we could have imagined in present times. All we have to do is give them the opportunity to figure out their own paths.

2007 (c) Child reading opportunity

Eliane Leao