The Disembodied Mind

I’m taking a little time away to welcome our new baby to our family.  I hope you enjoy this post from last year!

I am a nerd.  (It’s OK.  While the term might have made me cringe in high school, I have since learned to embrace my nerdiness.)  I recently found myself on a short trip with some down time for a little reading, and as any good nerd would, I packed along one of my favorite textbooks from grad school.  (I know, I just confessed to having a favorite textbook.)

I have hung on to the fourth edition of William Crain’s book, Theories of Development for the past decade or so.  I had heard there was a new sixth edition out, and since I didn’t want to pay the new edition price, I decided to buy a used version of the fifth edition in case there was anything new.  (Nerd.)

The thing is, Jean Piaget and my old buddy Lev haven’t had anything new to say for a few decades.

However, as I flipped through my “new” fifth edition, comparing it to my old fourth edition, I stumbled upon a quote in the epilogue that I hadn’t noticed before.  The statement hit on my core beliefs about early childhood education.

It comes as Crain discusses the limitations that come along with the advances of technology.  He writes:

“The computer monitor presents only symbols — words, pictures, numbers and graphs.  The child is exposed to a great deal of information, but the child receives it on a purely secondhand, mental level.  What does it mean to learn biology strictly from words, pictures, and other symbols, without first having rich, personal experience with plant and animal life?  Or to learn principles of physics — principles such as velocity, force, and balance — without lots of experience throwing, hammering, seesawing, and climbing?  The child learns symbols, but without the personal, bodily, sensory experiences that make the symbols meaningful.  The danger is that the child who is learning a great deal for the first time at the computer terminal is learning at too cerebral a level.  The child is becoming a disembodied mind.”

I was so struck by that last phrase, “disembodied mind”.  It felt true, not just in application to computers, but in many approaches to education.  Too often the mistake is made, to view the vessel as a disembodied mind and to simply attempt to fill it with information.

In reality the mind is not only housed in a physical body, but its functions pertain to a whole child, whose developmental needs extend beyond the cognitive and academic and include the physical as well as the social, emotional, and creative aspects of a whole and healthy child.

And these varied components are interwoven in such a way that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  Recognizing the connection between the developmental  aspects of the whole child is much more effective than trying to teach and train one area in isolation.

When I asked Joye Newman, Director of Kids Moving Company, about her thoughts on Crain’s quote, she referred to a passage in the book she co-wrote with Carol Kranowitz called Growing an In-Sync Child:

“As we walk along the river one spring day, we see a six-year-old jump across a puddle and a 12-year-old balancing on a fallen tree trunk.  We know that these children are strengthening their bodies and brains — much more than many of their peers who are indoors staring at a video screen or being drilled with flash cards.  Such seemingly unremarkable experiences can, in fact, be the foundation for optimal physical, academic, social, and emotional growth.

As educators, we worry that we see so few children having these really important movement adventures.  On this beautiful day, as we walk, we talk about how jumping over a puddle improves math skills, how maneuvering a stroller prepares a child for handwriting, and how walking across a tree trunk enhances visual skills.  We agree that sensory and motor experiences are crucial for children’s development and learning.

Unfortunately, many parents and educators believe that the earlier a child learns to read and write, the better off he will be.  To that end, they provide video and computer programs, paper and pencil games, and other sedentary tasks, hoping to develop the child’s academic skills.  Parents and teachers may not understand that for the young child, a walk along the river is a much more developmentally and academically appropriate use of the child’s time.”

In a great irony, teachers and parents are discovering that their efforts to streamline childhood to “get ahead” are actually counterproductive to the way that young children truly learn.  The experiences and discoveries that may be viewed by some as superfluous, are actually the foundation for real, meaningful learning.  And without that foundation, superficial learning begins to crumble.

So slow down.  Give children the time and space to explore, to be active , and to play within the context of learning.  It is in embracing and nourishing the whole child that we create the connections necessary for the body and mind — as well as the heart and the soul — to truly thrive.

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