Integration

The secret of effective teaching—well, one of hundreds— is to meet the children precisely where they are without judgment. Then lead them one inch—or one foot or mile—further down their road toward their promise and possibility. If you come to a class, as I did today, with assumptions about what that grade level is capable of, what they should know and what they should be able to do, and discover that they’re not even close, what do you do? What any decent teacher should. Work with what they can do, watch them carefully, simplify the planned activity and scaffold it step-by-step with both the needed repetition and variation. Again, without a trace of disappointment that they can’t do what seems to you to be the simplest thing.

 

Because, of course, it’s not their fault. The adults in their life, both individually and collectively, have somehow failed them and while you have your theories as to what the culprit is, save them until after the class. Which is what I’m doing now. I can happily report that the 3^rd graders I worked with did get better at doing the partner-clap patterns I assumed would be easy for them, had a good time, heard my praise of their improvement and that’s the part of the greater problem that I can control. But the fact that the coordination required for a simple clapping pattern with a partner, alongside orientation in space doing a simple dance, sense of beat and rhythmic pattern, was so difficult for them is not a good sign. 

 

Most might think, “Come on! In the course of human development, who cares about that? “ But the fact is that harmony in the world begins with harmony in the body and brain.  Integrating the muscles, nerves, emotions, intellect within oneself is the beginning of connecting with the larger patterns needed for both survival and quality of life. Back in the first reign of purposeful ignorance and cruelty, there was a photo of 45 standing with other Presidents, all of whom had crossed their arms and joined hands, except for him, who was standing looking so bewildered. Crossing arms like that, crossing the midline in clapping plays, is the way the two halves of the brain integrate with each other and a necessary prerequisite for reading, critical thought and compassion. If a person can’t integrate their own body and brain, get the right and left in the body conversing with each other, then there’s no hope that they can get the right and left political parties conversing with each other. And we continue to suffer immensely from that. It’s not that far a stretch to consider that the integration the Civil Rights Movement strove for is hampered by the segregation within our own nervous systems. Difficult to integrate one without the other. 

 

I suspect that these kids had so much trouble with the kind of playground games kids have played forever is due to the unwise choice of abandoning them to machines that disconnect them from their own body and from fellow kids. We have so little idea of the damage they’re causing and what has been lost. I guess that’s why I bother to write posts like this. 

 

Not that the revival of children’s games and clapping plays is the sure-fire path to world peace. No illusions there. But I see how kids are less happy than they could be without them, less connected to themselves and others, possibly less intelligent without making those vital neural connections. So regardless of whether it makes a big splash in the world to come, they need this now, in this moment. That’s enough motivation to give them what they need in whatever class I teach and to educate parents to take those damn machines away. Or at least severely limit them. 

 

My next class about to arrive. Time for protest songs of the 60’s.