It is only after you have come to know the surface of things that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible.
Italo Calvino, in Mr. Palomar (1983)
This is what we, the modern literates have done with our senses. We have hardly ever used it and we go on complaining about the limitations of the senses. As human beings, living on this earth we only have senses to truly connect with the world, to establish communion.
Luckily, I was led to stop reading for a couple of years and this enabled me to use my senses more keenly. That is when I realized how literates have alienated themselves totally. This also gave me an insight into the cognitive paradigm of illiterate communities. This is where children also belong, before we force them out through schooling. Even though we are equipped by life to create knowledge of the real world using our SENSES we are taught to read books and store that information.
In fact, what is being discussed as the complexity school is the cognitive paradigm of the so-called illiterates. But as we are so dismissive about them, we have hardly ever tried to understand their cognitive process. They learn the WORLD, We, the literates are taught the WORD. They belong to the realm of unknown and we to the known, Unknown makes them humble whereas known makes us proud and confident.
I have done a thorough study of their cognitive system and have been able to de-code what and how children create knowledge. something that modernity has never thought of doing till now. We are trapped in the deficit syndrome where always see ourselves as superior and others need our help. This is what is making us see children as needing our help. But finally, our need to create intelligent machines is forcing us to concede that children are very intelligent and research is on to understand how they make sense of the world. But not to improve schools! but only to have intelligent machines!
we are still in the realm of language and mind and it is the mind that is still talking about ‘complexity. Without the senses in actual operation, no learning will ever take place. We can continue to create more and more myths about all kinds of grand ideas but all that will remain illusions.
To understand how children use senses, how the natural cognitive foundation is built and how ‘teaching’ destroys this and replaces it with linguistic foundation join the course Do-Nothing Parenting. More details at ekfoundation.in
