so perhaps: body of knowledge from study of the n a t u r a l world

through observation & e x p e r i m e n t

so perhaps: humanity\human beingsin the n a t u r a l world

deserves an intense investigation/revolution/wake-up call.

has been too biased/blinded.. by a sample setof imposterous/negligentical/ginormously-small proportions.

we’re perpetuating..

ie:

Carol’s quote (previous slide) came from: http://schoolingtheworld.org/a-thousand-rivers/

Carol writes:This is when it occurred to me: people today do not even know what children are actually like. They only know what children are like in schools.

..what we take for granted as a “normal” learning environment is not at all normal to millions of people around the world.

Traits that would be valued in the larger American society –– energy, creativity, independence –– will get you into trouble in the classroom, and sadly, it turns out that some of our children just can’t follow us that far out on the bell curve. The human species is extremely malleable and variable, but not infinitely so, and what you see in individual children as our culture grows more and more extreme is that the underlying species nature re-emerges, sometimes disruptively. Like

people who try to keep wolves as pets, we find that some of our children start to chew through their leashes.

The fact that most literacy “researchers” and “experts,” not to mention school psychologists, don’t even realize that it is possible (learning to read w/o being taught) is something that should concern us all.

And yet we have created a multi-billion-dollar compulsory institution with its ancillary multi-billion dollar industries that all rest on the idea that children should reach this milestone at the same age.

And that if they can’t, there will be hell to pay.

In doing this you create a sub-class of children so bewildered, so anxious, whose natural processes of physical and neurological development and organization are so severely disrupted, that you literally have no way of knowing what they would have been like if you had not done this to them.

In doing this you create a sub-class of children so bewildered, so anxious, whose natural processes of physical and neurological development and organization are so severely

disrupted, that you literally have no way of knowing what they would have been like if you had not done this to them.

“Grade level standards,” please recall, do not exist in nature; they are not created scientifically, but by fiat.

Dyslexic children often have better imaginations than non-dyslexics, after all, but nobody labels the “normal” children as having an “imagination disability.”

So the IQ test, like other school-based tests, turns out to be not so much a measure of intelligence as a measure of modernization..

Human cognitive diversity exists for a reason; our differences are the genius – and the conscience – of our species. It’s no accident that indigenous holistic thinkers are the ones who have been consistently reminding us of our appropriate place in the ecological systems of life as our narrowly-focused technocratic society veers wildly between conservation and wholesale devastation of the planet. It’s no accident that dyslexic holistic thinkers are often our artists, our inventors, our dreamers, our rebels.

Any Yanomami father knows that you don’t have to force young children to learn, you just give them the tools they need and then let them play. Any Cree grandmother knows that if you see a child doing something incorrectly, you don’t shame her by overtly pointing it out, you just quietly, without fanfare, demonstrate the right way to do it. Any Odawa elder knows that a child will sometimes learn more from your silence than from your speech.

Talk to gifted scientists, writers, artists, entrepreneurs. You will find they learned like a Yanomami child learns, through keen observation, experimentation, immersion, freedom, participation, through real play and real work, through the kind of free activity where the distinction between work and play disappears.

Science is a tool of breathtaking power and beauty, but it is not a good parent; it must be balanced by something broader, deeper, older. Like wind and weather, like ecosystems and microorganisms, like snow crystals and evolution, human learning remains untamed, unpredictable, a blossoming fractal movement

so complex and so mysterious that none of us can measure or control it. But we are part of that fractal movement, and the ability to help our offspring learn and grow is in our DNA.

Science is a tool of breathtaking power and beauty, but it is not a good parent; it must be balanced by something broader, deeper, older. Like wind and weather, like ecosystems and microorganisms, like snow crystals and evolution, human learning remains untamed, unpredictable, a blossoming fractal movement so complex and so mysterious that none of us

can measure or control it. But we are part of that fractal movement, and the ability to help our offspring learn

and grow is i n o u r D N A.

- Carol Black

a thousand rivershttp://schoolingtheworld.org/a-thousand-rivers/

if we have any desire to make the world a better place.. perhaps we realize that most all our research/money/resources/time/energy… .. is (has been) based on the assumption that compulsory school/control is a given/necessity.

and so.. we have this belief in something not natural. we have this grounding in something not accurate.

ie: that what people are like now, (most having been affected by school in some way), is what people are like.

which makes it easier…

to not trust learning…

to not

trust people.

and that’s keeping us from finding/being a better way.

we don’t quite believe in human potential.. because we’re mostly seeing humans adjusted/intoxicated by a compulsory school system.

un n a t u r a l ness..because of this manufactured,

until we clear this up..most people will remain other people.

and if so.. if..

leaving our study/observation/experimentation.. erroneous at best.. no?leaving people with this ..

so why keep perpetuating this science of people ness.. once we know. that it’s fake. it’s not real

so why keep perpetuating this science of people ness.. once we know. that it’s fake. it’s not really us.

perhaps we work on this scientific dilemma/error..

this sample set of us.. first..

us

us

and our broken system is contaminating/toxicating

usand our broken system is contaminating/toxicating

can we trust that? can we trust us?perhaps we can’t not…

it begs we be brave enough to acknowledge the irrelevance of many tech’s.

perhaps ie: money, work, school, war, ..

in order to get at the depth/root of …

if we can’t/won’t/are-afraid to fix/do this first, perhaps we need to ask ourselves..

perhaps this is something we’ve not yet done.. collectively.

perhaps we’re primed for global systemic change..

one that’s not found in a scientific/peer-reviewed/pay-walled journal/map/guidebook/policy.. but one that’s found in us. already. in us.

perhaps we just do/be it. and along the way we ongoingly..