A Broken Cup

Recently, I've been taking the time to read the entire California Content Standards for Kindergarten through Third Grade.  My intention was to find creative ways to present this material to A. throughout the year.  I thought that she needed to keep up with her peers and feared that I would somehow be putting her at a disadvantage if she wasn't learning what the Joneses were learning.   

On September 12th, we hit the books pretty hard and, unfortunately, I was hit with more resistance from A. than I ever imagined possible.  She is a bright cookie and understands just about anything you put before her... but, quite suddenly it seemed, she wanted nothing to do with anything I gave her.  Of course, this was a huge red flag that we were doing something wrong... so we just s-t-o-p-p-e-d doing everything. 

We've taken a few days off for emptying our cup and I'm hoping that here, with a beginners mind, we'll discover something altogether new.  In fact, if I had to take the cup analogy even further, I would say that we've thrown the damn cup on the floor, stomped on it and shouted, "to life!"  Maybe here, amidst the broken [deconstructed] pieces, we can find a new perspective. 

Meanwhile, I've been plodding along at John Holt's classic, How Children Learn, and having quite a few light-bulb moments about my approach to our studies.  It seems that I've created a little version of public school at home again.  I'm so conditioned by my own education that I unconsciously fall back to this paradigm again and again!  Un-leanrning, it seems, is more difficult than learning!

Yesterday, I gathered all of the content standards together and set out to organize these several hundred pages into a three-hole binder.  Today I've discovered a better use for them and a better use of our time.  Instead of stressing about how to teach what the state of California has deemed necessary, I'm spending the next week paying attention to my girl and re-discovering what amuses her mind.  It was after all, a great mind, one who did not attend a factory-model school, who said this:

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” - Plato

Fairy Eyes, Beginner's Mind

It started on Sunday with a dear friend and an afternoon walk.  The girls wanted to wear fairy wings, so with their wands in the air, we set out in search of bits, bobs, and lost things to use for building a fairy garden.

The lot next door to our house is empty but for trees, rocks, and wild grasses.  To one set of eyes, a vacant lot is just empty space.  To another, it's a wonderland of secret treasures.  Having kids helps us keep our fairy eyes open... it's that ability to see things with a beginner's mind, with "an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconception," that creates opportunities for learning, growth, and self-awareness.  This is one of the guiding principals of our at-home education:  beginner's mind.

Shunryu Suzuki's book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, reflects a saying of his regarding the way to approach Zen practice: "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few."  I think this is the best way to approach just about everything.  When our ideas are already formed, there's no room for anything new... no room for anything magical or full of wonder.

In a wonderful lecture, Beginner's Mind, Abbess Zenkei Blanche Hartman defines beginner's mind as, "...the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgments and prejudices. Beginner's mind is just present to explore and observe and see "things as-it-is." I think of beginner's mind as the mind that faces life like a small child, full of curiosity and wonder and amazement. "I wonder what this is? I wonder what that is? I wonder what this means?" Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgment, just asking "what is it?"  

Our world is one where knowing things is held in the highest regard.  Our schools function to test and measure minds and our children are pushed to memorize and repeat facts.  But what about preserving their ability to see things as they are?  What about nurturing their ability to build on ideas of their own?  Isn't this just as valuable (or maybe even more valuable) than the ability to remember things?

I think a child's mind is more than a bowl to fill... more than a receptacle for the things our society deems important.  If we spend all of our days filling up their heads with ideas, then what happens to the ideas of their own?  Equally important to learning about the world from a teacher's or an adult's perspective is seeing the world from a child's eyes.  

We filled a basket with treasures and have been working on our fairy garden all week.  We're practicing wearing our fairy eyes and seeing things just as they are, without prior judgment.  

With practice, we begin to see other aspects of our lives with this mind.  We lose our prejudices and notice that the world is full of wonder and magic.  It's here, in this spacious awareness, that we become free.