Subtract To Add–the Preamble

A critical question for teaching children (or anyone) is how to simultaneously 1) keep teaching grounded in the child’s own experience and 2) move the child as far as possible, not letting immediate experience be the limit on how far he can go in his knowledge.

A brief comment on each of these conditions:

The fact that #1 is important is a very profound topic about which much can be profitably said, but let it suffice to observe that being able to say the right words (an “answer”) in response to other words (a “question”), is not knowledge (what to call this “kind of knowledge” is up for a talented coiner of phrases, but “rote” knowledge might be useful). True or real knowledge depends upon some experienced contact with reality. An quick and easy way to distinguish which kind of knowledge is possessed is whether or not someone can explain or say a particular “answer” in a variety of ways—in “other words”. If he can do this, then obviously more is possessed than mere words; rather some thing is possessed or grasped, and the knower is therefore able to use any words available in his vocabulary that may evoke that thing to the questioner.

About condition 2, I take it for granted that man is capax universi—man is “capable of the universe”, of the whole of reality. Aristotle says that man is all things potentially. Another way to put the point is that man’s mind is not inherently barred from grasping anything, provided he be able to access it. Of course, we aren’t able to know how man atoms are in the Sun, but this is not an in-principle problem, it is a practical problem, a practical limit to our knowledge, not a problem inherent in our minds. But even a more modest claim than capax universi–say merely that man can know far beyond his immediate experience–taken along with the principle that knowledge is good, results in point 2. We want as much knowledge as possible, and remaining limited to immediate experience would leave too cramped a dwelling for the soul of man.

So to sum up, we want to extend our knowledge (or our child’s) as far and wide as possible, without becoming unanchored from experience.

The answer to this quandary is a little thing called indirect, mediate, or derivative experience.

For example, I may not have ever experienced a Hippo, but I have experienced a Rhino, a pug dog, and a pig. With guidance from a person who has experienced a Hippo, and who knows the present limits/resources of my experience, I can take the greyness, size, and texture of a Rhino, along with the structural build and shape of a pug, along with the rotundity of a pig torso, and build a fairly accurate derivative experience of a Rhino. The task of the teacher in this scenario is to reach into my present experience, utilize the pieces/parts/raw materials that are there, and guide me in constructing a Rhino (within my mind) using those raw materials that lie within me (for I have nothing else to use) which I had previously acquired through my own experience.

I think this is a fairly common practice and is intuitive/instinctive/natural for most people when trying to convey a new thing to someone else. One could call this method or principle of teaching “Guided Re-arrangement” or something of the sort. This guided rearrangement allows a person to derive a “new” experience (and therefore grounded knowledge) from the elements of old experience.

A more powerful and profound principle for reaching into someone’s experience to extend his knowledge I am calling “Subtract to Add” and will explain it in the next post, though as a hint I have also used this principle in the present post.

The Education of Thomas Jefferson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR5EhQ2ijaQ&feature=related

This is part 1 of a 3-part (24 min total) lecture describing some facets of the education of Jefferson.  It sets a great benchmark for classical education. Not merely what to know, but the way the knowledge sought should function in life. Very good. If one strove for that vision not only with the classics, but also with the the Old and New Testaments, it’s hard to see how it could be beat.

Two take-away lines:

“Breaking bread with the dead”

“One didn’t graduate from an education in classical antiquity, one graduated into it, and stayed there.”

False Teeth–the secret key to the TRUE George Washington

Having recently read 10 Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child by Anthony Esolen, and having read a good portion of “Hero Tales of American History” by some guy and Teddy Roosevelt (including the sections on George Washington–read it here) I was attuned to notice the following in our paper.

There is an exhibit at the Minnesota History Center entitled “Discover the Real George Washington” and the article covering it prominently featured the only complete set of George Washington’s dentures in existence. In fact, almost nothing but the teeth was discussed in the article. Why so? The articles explains:

The historians wanted to include the teeth in the exhibit because they offer a connection to the man behind the history.

When you see how uncomfortable the dentures were, “it’s very easy to relate to him on a human level,” Cadou said. “And relating to someone on that level provides insights into them that studying his accomplishments can’t.”

It is INSIGHT we are after, of course! And uncomfortable dentures are the ticket. I wish they would also include the small section of door that was dented when Washington stubbed his toe on it. Then there would be a real connection!  I have stubbed my toe too! Oh the intimacy I feel with George Washington! We have both stubbed our toes! He is just like me! I know what it is like to be him! “History” has truly come alive for me today!

Don’t tell me about Washington’s so-called “accomplishments”–what are they to me? How can I relate to them? Have I been in a war? Have I president? No. Then don’t bother me with such trivialities. What  unites mankind–what constitutes the universal “human level”–is such things as bodily discomfort and hygiene.

Sarcasm aside, it is a deeply false understanding of the “human level” that appears to me to underly this whole approach to “history”. First, there is an inability to draw out universal situations from particular situations. Certainly I will never face invading British forces, but may I face some challenge, possibly with the help of an unorganized and immature force, against an organized and seasoned superior force? Maybe. How do I stand up to Washington given the commonality of those situations? Probably very poorly. He is not a man just like I am, he was a great man.

A second reason for this misunderstanding of the “human level” might be that someone has lived such a superficial life, they really have nothing in their experience common with Washington aside from such trivialities as toe stubbing. If you live your life in front of a TV, you don’t have much in common with Washington. So maybe it would make you feel temporarily better to ignore his “accomplishments” (like almost singlehandedly achieving victory for the American revolution) and focus on his “human level” aka bare bodily existence–for at least one can have THAT in common with him. And you can pat yourself on the back for being nearly a twin of George Washington himself. Of course it would make you “feel better” truly if you saw yourself in light of Washington in his true humanity, felt ashamed at your self-elected moral retardation, repented, and strove to emulate Washington or others. But that doesn’t “feel good” according to many.

So maybe the point can be put simply by distinguishing two completely different meanings of “human level”–one means mere bodily existence, which all have in common and makes me no different than Jesus. This eliminates all moral accomplishment, virtue, strength of character, and anything worth thinking about, and simultaneously reinforces and justifies me in my current state. The other means at the deepest level, at the level of what matters most in which there are vast differences between those who share bodily life in common. This level reveals differences, requires insight to see the human commonalities of historically diverse situation so as to bridge the span of time. There is nothing new under the sun says King Solomon, yet it takes some insight to see that, and to appreciate someone’s facing of situations difficult to understand and unlikely to ever face oneself. It takes even more insight to learn from their dealing with that situation in order to deal with one’s own situation better, etc.

In sum, is the “human level” the surface of life, or the fundamentals of life?

I am going to the exhibit because I am sure there will be something of value there (if only to see his teeth! –not to smirk at and say ha ha that must have been uncomfortable, but to say wow those teeth have been worn by such a man), and also for my own curiosity of how it is set up and how kids there behave.

Appendix

Ok I just skimmed the article again after writing the above and realize I hadn’t yet come to full grips with how stupid stupid stupid the article and whole approach are. Consider the following

The dentures are more than just a novelty.

Ok, thank you. Please tell me there is some serious historical understanding to be gained from the dentures besides the fact that Washington might have been uncomfortable while wearing them. Please let this line indicate a turn away from trivialities and into the deeper things that unites mankind across time and circumstance.

With them and other personal items, including Washington’s glasses and clothing, historians were able to use computer programs to create what they believe to be spot-on full-size recreations of him.

You do not fail to disappoint. Not only do we now know he had uncomfortable teeth, we know exactly the shape of his jaw, and the protrusion of his nose. Now we are truly getting somewhere. After all, to understand George Washington is to see a waxen facsimile of his body (made with the aid of computers, to boot!). The full “human level” of Washington is now on display in Minneapolis, no need to look elsewhere.

To Tube or Not To Tube

As I watched a cartoon version of the three little pigs on youtube this evening, I reflected on the important question of children and TV.  My current stab at the question is the following.  The world is real, and TV is “real” only insofar as in some way it points you to the world or heightens your experience of appreciating and understanding to the world.  If you watch a good movie and say “yeah life is really like that” or “the certainly is what things would be like if X was the case (X being something either possible, like a meteor coming to smash Earth, or something impossible, like our world without a God), then that is all I mean by illumining your experience of the world.  A movie is a mere fiction in and of itself, even a documentary.  It is a represenation, a picture of something more real than it.

My operative premise for what follows is that God is “more present” in the real world than in the “fictional world” of human creation.  So if I want my child to be close to God, and experience God most directly (though indirectly through creation) as possible, then I want to bring the child close to reality.  I want my child to know and feel that the really real world is the one outside the window, not the one behind the TV glass.

So my deduction to teach this ordering of the levels of reality: only let TV be experienced when a more real experience of the same thing as seen on TV is readily available, so as to allow the child to experience the relative unreality of TV by comparison.  Example, watch a TV show about how to hit a baseball, then go outside and play with a real ball.  I think it will be very clear the more fun experience with a baseball is with the real one and not the TV one.  Another, watch a show about river ecology, then go to a river and walk around and see the things the TV spoke about and showed.  The TV will be seen as the shallow and boring thing it is when compared with these more real experiences.  Another, watch a movie about biking, then go outside to learn to bike on a real bike.  Another, watch TV about the Egyptians, and go to a museum and see their artifacts (or better, go to Egypt!).

Now the other way to experience TV is as the relatively more real thing.  This I think might bad because it will associate really-realness with TV.  So if you read a book about the three little pigs, and then watch a cartoon about it on TV, that experience of the cartoon will be much more real than the book experience.  The cartoon pigs are moving, talking, singing, dancing, etc.  This is much more real than the pictures or mere words in a book.  So if they have the experience of the three little pigs in a book way and a TV way, then TV will get credit for and be associated with “more real” or “real-er”.  And this is bad, and can be hard to shake off if it grows into a habit.

So in sum, never let TV be “more real” or “most real”.  Have it always be the “less real” but only showing on TV what can be compared with and experienced in the real world. Now, if you knew three accomodating pigs and a cooperative wolf, and the resources to stage a real enactment of the story of the three little pigs, then by all means show the cartoon, and then the real life enactment.  But alas this would be difficult.

Still, are there any drawbacks to TV period?  Some things I tend to think are best experienced as completely unprepared-for blasts of experience.  I would not show a child pictures or video of the Grand Canyon, since I think the experience of it first-hand would be diminished by seeing it beforehand in a lesser form.  But other things I do not think would not have this effect.  Another way to go would be to experience the real thing first, then watch TV about it, then go look at it again.  Then the TV can be seen as a tool for education, for helping us see things we didn’t notice before.  In this way not only is it not supplanting our experience of the real world, it is aiding it, which is as any educational tool should be.

What about long movies and so forth?  I have fond memories of the Disney classics and such things, but I currently think I will wait until I am convinced the child won’t be bewitched by the mezmerizing powers of TV.  Until they are so interested in the real world that they will enjoy a movie, but it won’t be that big of a deal, and they get kind of antsy by the end of it.  Maybe that will be obvious.

Testing Boundaries

I have heard about little kids begin to “Test Boundaries” and it often seems to me to be assumed this is a result of sinful tendencies towards disobedience.  But there is another side to the story, it seems to me, that I recently thought of as I watched a little kid doing something that his parents have repeatedly told him not to do and which he has been spanked for doing.

Imagine from the kid’s point of view, here are balls, blocks, ropes, various toys, food, random things on the ground etc.  Any of them he fancies he can go and touch and interact with.  Yet slowly he starts to realize some things are different.  Some things he is told “no” when we touches them.  Then he gets spanks for touching them.  Yes this is painful, but how interesting!  These things are very different from other things.  But then again sometimes he can touch them with no effect.  Sometimes his parents give it to him, other times they say “no” and spank him.  What is this thing?!?!  It is not just the object itself, for it is not always a NO object.  There is something else going on.

To a kid I imagine some vague glimmer of the idea of an invisible forcefield surrounding certain objects.  No you, an adult, if all of a sudden you opened the cupboard and when you tried to reach your hand in and as you passed the plane of the closed cupboard door if you got a zap and voices rang out from the house, you would be amazed!  Yes it might hurt a little, but wow, and invisible forcefield, what an interesting object!  I cant see it, yet when I get close to it, there are shocking effects.  This mirrors the first experience of electricity, yes it shocks, but it is amazing.  We touch electric fences even though we know it will hurt, but we still touch out of curiosity about such a new kind of reality.

So with the child, when he begins to understand no, knows it will result in pain, nevertheless is probably drawn to the uniqueness of this reality–the invisible forcefield of the parent’s will, which they place where they will and inform the child when he is about to transgress.  So far before the child becomes aware of some moral concern, he has the very understandable fascination with such a fascinating reality.  So this “testing boundaries” is not only a euphemism for rebellion and seeing if the parents will crack under the strain, it is a legitimate experimental procedure carried out by the child in scientific fashion–probing and prodding this thing to see what it will do. 

They do just as I would do if I poked out my finger into the air and got a sharp sting from some invisible reality.  I would keep doing it until the pain overcame the curiosity.  But I would still want to know why and what it was, even if it was too painful to keep experimenting.  This explanation will come later for the child, once they can understand the reason for the prohibition.  Once they understand this, then the testing is no longer amoral–it is testing the parents in the evil sense.  But before this stage, testing boundaries seems to me to be a sign of healthy curiosity rather than a sign of a rebellious spirit.  They are beginning to become familiar with the moral world of invisible yet very important realities that are to guide decision and action. 

As to how this practically would affect disciplinary strategies, I do not know.  It might be that the pain needs to be upped so that the balance of curiosity is quickly outweighed by pain.  But maybe this should only be done for select things that are especially dangerous, and let less important things remain an outlet for their curiosity and with less severe punishment for transgression.  Not sure.  Maybe this invisible, moral reality would actually be better taught and learned if any transgression was always met with quick severe effect.  Games or such things may be another way to let them become familiar with invisible realities but not in a moral context–like tag or something has the invisible reality of being “it.”

The Burdensome Constraint of Our Old Enemy: Intellect

More insight from Helen Keller (She was blind and deaf from 19 months of age).

It is difficult to imagine a more decisive refutation of those who think “intellect” and “reason” are constrictive and narrow, and that by their growth one is forced into a flat, barren, colorless, cold, robotic world than the personal experience of Helen Keller recorded in the following words.  Emotions and feelings do not free us, but rather enslave us until, by the light of intellect and reason, our will awakens and these rational powers harness these lower powers and enable us to see and live in a wide world, rather than to simply bounce and react in a haphazard chaos.

 

Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will nor intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I had a mind which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction, desire. These two facts led those about me to suppose that I willed and thought. I can remember all this, not because I knew that it was so, but because I have tactual memory. It enables me to remember that I never contracted my forehead in the act of thinking. I never viewed anything beforehand or chose it. I also recall tactually the fact that never in a start of the body or a heart-beat did I feel that I loved or cared for anything. My inner life, then, was a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without wonder or joy or faith.

I remember, also through touch, that I had a power of association. I felt tactual jars like the stamp of a foot, the opening of a window or its closing, the slam of a door. After repeatedly smelling rain and feeling the discomfort of wetness, I acted like those about me: I ran to shut the window. But that was not thought in any sense. It was the same kind of association that makes anmals take shelter from the rain. From the same instinct of aping others, I folded the clothes that came from the laundry, and put mine away, fed the turkeys, sewed bead-eyes on my doll’s face, and did many other things of which I have the tactual remembrance. When I wanted anything I liked,—icecream, for instance, of which I was very fond,—I had a delicious taste on my tongue (which, by the way, I never have now), and in my hand I felt the turning of the freezer. I made the sign, and my mother knew I wanted ice-cream. I “thought” and desired in my fingers. If I had made a man, I should certainly have put the brain and soul in his fingertips. From reminiscences like these I conclude that it is the opening of the two faculties, freedom of will, or choice, and rationality, or the power of thinking from one thing to another, which makes it possible to come into being first as a child, afterward as a man.

 Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another. So I was not conscious of any change or process going on in my brain when my teacher began to instruct me. I merely felt keen delight in obtaining more easily what I wanted by means of the finger motions she taught me. I thought only of objects, and only objects I wanted. It was the turning of the freezer on a larger scale. When I learned the meaning of “I” and “me” and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me. Thus it was not the sense of touch that brought me knowledge. It was the awakening of my soul that  first rendered my senses their value, their cognizance of objects, names, qualities, and properties. Thought made me conscious of love, joy, and all the emotions. I was eager to know, then to understand, afterward to reflect on what I knew and understood, and the blind impetus, which had before driven me hither and thither at the dictates of my sensations, vanished forever.

Seeing versus Seeing

The poets have taught us how full of wonders is the night; and the night of blindness has its wonders, too. The only lightless dark is the night of ignorance and insensibility. We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond our senses.

It is more difficult to teach ignorance to think than to teach an intelligent blind man to see the grandeur of Niagara. I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in wood, sea, or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. What a witless masquerade is this seeing! It were better far to sail forever in the night of blindness, with sense and feeling and mind, than to be thus content with the mere act of seeing. They have the sunset, the morning skies, the purple of distant hills, yet their souls voyage through this enchanted world with a barren stare.

 –Helen Keller

Knowledge Parable

There was once a little girl who loved learning about colors. She learned that red and yellow made orange, blue and red made purple, and the result of combining these combinations, etc. She also learned the perfect combinations to represent pink-edged sunsetted clouds and sparkling afternoon streams. Artists would even consult her for advice. But there was one odd thing: she was blind.

Did she know what she was talking about? 

What is the relationship between right answers and “true” knowledge?

The Maturing Relationship With Wisdom

Proverbs Chap 2:

¹My son, if you will receive my words
And treasure my commandments within you,
²Make your ear attentive to wisdom,
Incline your heart to understanding;
³For if you cry for discernment,
Lift your voice for understanding;
⁴If you seek her as silver
And search for her as for hidden treasures;
⁵Then you will discern the fear of the LORD
And discover the knowledge of God.

Observe closely:

1. Receive, treasure–>
2. Make your ear attentive, incline your heart–>
3. Cry, lift your voice–>
4. Seek, search as for hidden treasure

Muddled thinking and lack of close observation will often consider things to be synonyms which are actually not.   I heard someone speak on proverbs 2 who seemed to do this, and failed to perceive what is a clear progression in this passage.

Progression

Note that the first verse presumes someone is present and actively speaking wisdom to one.  One’s response to this should be to receive–a passive activity–and then treasure or store up the wisdom spoken.

Next, one should be perceptive to wisdom overheard nearby, and one should turn one’s ear to closely listen to wisdom that isn’t directly spoon fed.  Incline your heart to wisdom so you will be ready to hear it when it happens to come your way.   These are more active in that wisdom is in some sense sought, yet it is still partly passive.

Next, cry out, life your voice: “Where is wisdom!? Come to me please!!”  This is much more active, yet still is asking for it to be given.

Finally, seek as for silver, search as for hidden treasure–it’s out there; go get it!  Don’t simply passively recieve, don’t just incline the ear when it happens to be nearby, don’t sit there even strongly asking for it: go get it!  It’s hidden as treasure waiting to be dug out.

Mixing this theme with a little bit of Proverbs 25:2 (one of my favorites) creates quite the concoction: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”  Could it be that God has buried little treasures all around with the purpose of us searching them out?  A providential easter-egg hunt yet instead of M&M’s they contain that which is more valuable than rubies (8:11)?  The corresponding goal of parenting then being to teach children how to hunt well?  Interesting possibility.  Rote obedience doesn’t seem to fit in very well with this.

Lessons Learned

Firstly, is this a common Christian message?  Is this what we are taught?–”Stop sitting with your mouth open you baby bird, go dig and get your own delicious worm!”  I don’t think I have ever heard that.  Merely receiving and treasuring—passivity—seems to be the highest standard to which we are typically called, yet proverbs presents this as only the beginning–the starting point for the child.

Secondly, this seems to be an excellent framework/structure for child-rearing.  It explains what parents should be striving for–not a child who forever will simply listen and obey, but one who is a “self-feeder” (see the rest of chapter 2).  It is the children who are trained to do nothing but simply receive and obey that will not handle life as the parents hope; when these children are out of the home, they will follow their training well—that is, they will passively receive from whoever is speaking to them.  The only difference is that who they are receiving from is no longer their parents but the world and accordingly their obedience will be to the world.  This structure of Prov 2 therefore seems to be right at the heart of understanding the ideal transition from dependence to independence with respect to wisdom, that is, in living well.  Creating and being nice little obedience sheep is not the calling for parents or children.

What is a big deal?

The beginning of my junior year in college featured a fun little freshman that my roommates and I made fun of/tried to bringunder our wing.  We brought him to church and incorporated him in a Bible study, and he would often come to our room seemingly as a sort of refuge.  After a few months, though, he seemed to be withdrawing from us and becoming a part of a different group on our dorm floor–the partiers!  (understood with its typical connotation).  He stopped coming to church and Bible study, and I think I remember us having somewhat pointed conversations with him or remarkingto him about where he was heading, with no receptivity on his part.   And then after a few weeks or so, I forget the exact circumstances, he purposely left his Bible in our room.  I don’t remember if it was his own from home, or if we had given it to him or what, or with what ceremony or secrecy he left it there.  But I remember thinking at the time “whoa”.  Now to some this act would be seen as just a silly freshman action.  A little pout.  But I think such an understanding is superficial and shows a spiritual dullness.  This act was the most defiant rejection of God he could think of or was capable of.  It was the last drop of God in his world, and he intentionally took that drop–there mere presence of this drop, even if he didn’t ever pay attention to it (read it), was annoying and nagging him–so he took it and kicked it out of his life. 

I often remember this event when observing the actions of young children and some adults’ failure to appreciate the gravity of the children’s actions.  Actions need to be judged relative to the person.  There are many actions of children that, relative to their capability, are what for adults would be first degree murder.  A pure, unchecked, raging hatred resulting in taking a sibling’s crayon needs to be appreciated not in light of the worth of a crayon but in light of the “range” of action that child knows; the evil he knows how to attain all the way up to the good he knows how to attain.  Taking a crayon is nothing.  But the rage in his heart may be at the very furthest reaches of the rage he is capable of.  Bringing this range idea into one’s own life, what would be the corresponding action of the child’s unchecked rage, or rebellion, or flippancy, or vanity?

It is a common experience of parents to feel the need to restrain from laughing at the cuteness of what is an intrinsically evil action of a child, for fear of the child seeing laughter at their evil act, but this common intuition can be strengthened or clarified by this “range” idea, I think.  “What is the worst this child is capable, and how does this action line up with that?” (and opposite with the good) is what one should discipline and praise based on.

The idea of a child committing for them what would be the equivalent of murder for us is a scary thought, and one which shows the natural depravity of man needing training, discipline, and correction.  Outward actions should be read intelligently for what they point to in the inner conditions of heart, which is the real focus of parenting efforts.  How different would parenting be if we viewed a child as a little being capable of murder slander rebellion and treachery?  Understood in the right sense, obviously, it could definitely highlight in a very healthy and sobering way the gravity of parenting, and show the starting point of the parents raw material and how far it is from the desired finished result.

Don’t ya think?