.it is us who ignore the art of teaching. To some educators, there are basically three types of children: first, the ones who are not intelligent; second, the ones who learn on their own; last, the ones who are already intelligent. Therefore, from here on out, there appears the reasoning for what the great majority of such educators have been doing: purely accommodated and misinformed, many do not work; and no one seems to feel responsible for not changing the destiny of these children. They refuse to do so because they ignore the importance of the educator as the mediator between the child and the world to be observed and felt, a world to learn. The mediator is necessary.
S/he is the one who will practice intervention and help the child to perceive, interpret, anticipate, and modify reality. This occurs inclusive and clearly as early as the intermediation occurs between the baby and the world in which she's immersed. The baby learns because it is no us who teach and/or "train". We intermediate and she constructs her knowledge.
When a baby reads, she is showing us, in the simplicity of action and the complexity of fact, the proof that between her and the object there occurs the engendering of knowledge. Between her ability to search information with the body with help form the intermediator - there is the availability to be used in the "reading she does of the world", in the reading of systems of symbols and of what represents her thoughts. One asks: If the role of the intermediator in the baby's life is irrefutable proof of the intermediatorīs importance in learning, how important would the intermediator be to the learning of the older child? As important as we are able to make it! After all, nowadays we know that intelligence is learned; it is constructed and broadened in the child's field of mental action.
Intelligence can be expanded and we can change the destiny of our children if we act as the linking connection between them and the context. We cannot agree with the distinction made in the first paragraph exemplifying three types of children as far as intelligence goes. The idea that we result form connections made amongst ourselves is not new in the analysis of human evolution. Without these connections and intermediations we would not be considered human.
Simply put, we can say that we came to be and we are in the current biological state due to a necessary umbilical connection. This initial connection sustained and nourished us. Taking a large step, other connections appeared that could describe all types of relationships developed by society as a whole. These are the links which connect us and give us identity in a context. The combining connection between out perceptive dispositions and circumstances found in the environment in which we are immersed, there came the complex intertwining of the concrete with the abstract.
Under an educational point of view, all of this easily indicated evidence that learning in a child becomes difficult when there are no necessary connections promoted by the intermediary in practicing observation and construction of knowledge. We therefore conclude that the educator continues to be important in the educational process. As the child grows, she learns to experience temporal connections. The connections one sees in nature, in objects, and among humans are not just physical and spatial.
From one event to the next, she observes that events occur here and there. A brief notion of cause and effect begins to be visualized. The world becomes something comprehensible and she develops, beginning to practice anticipations. Within the child's mind, the possible starts to spring. It is possible to discuss the genetic connections also.
There is a biological manifestation of connections which explain survival of the species, where origin, destination, and context form which they were initially generated. Later, the functional connections are observable. Initially, the objects cannot be connected intrinsically; however, they come to be dependent on the functions they will have together - a function established from the necessary connections between them. It is almost a definition of creativity from the point the connections are made.
The connections are, in truth, a fundamental way of forming new units in which the functionality will determine and/or maintain the types that appear. We also see that the connections between mental schemes (e.g.: memory of facts) lead to structuring - also mental - which in turn lead to the construction and maintenance of knowledge. These mechanisms enable our perception of similarities.
Even to understand the world, man utilizes schemes of connections, which relate things that are similar to form cognitive connections that lead to their comprehension. This connection schemes should be interpreted metaphorically when speaking of objects and abstract concepts from the connections we observe occurring, for there are no physical connections of this nature that serve as evidence of a relationship between these and objects. Maybe one day science will show us such evidence. For now, though, we use analogies to understand what generated understanding. At least we started off from a simple acquisition: it is necessary to realize the connections, intermediations, and interferences between things, objects, and minds lead to a comprehensive life. These relations are what enabled comprehension of the elements which constitute life.
Returning to the opening characterization to this article, we see that our three types of children will not resist change nor the intrinsic motivation to live, based on the principle that to live is to know. Those who already are intelligent will influence the other children and the connections that will come from joint actions. Their fate is interaction. On the other hand, they will build their knowledge whether we society want it or not. Those who are not intelligent, interestingly enough, will testify that such characterization does not exist in humanity, based on the first connections established by them with the world. Even instinct is intelligent! If intelligence is learned, connections and intermediations originating from the life cycle in society will generate thinking beings constantly, being who construct schemes, maintain them trough connections, understanding them through interaction.
If at last those who learn on their own show that they were never any different from the "non-intelligent" or the "already intelligent" ones. All learn on their own. It is an intrinsic motion which consists of a disposition to construct knowledge. Movement is a part of life; it maintains it.
Biological memory and psychological memory are, in truth, the maintenance schemes of life itself as well as of that which is known of it. It is about time we see that educational methods are the specialization of the means invented to make of our intermediations in dealing with children what we have of utmost sophistication. Through this, we reach conclusions and elaborate hypothesis regarding the transformation in promoting mankind's evolution and maintenance of life and of knowledge within society. We cannot not use them. We cannot underestimate them.
Once proven that the child learns on her own, our commitment to human evolution grows; since, as intermediators, we must continue to further understand about the art of teaching. 2006 (c) Noone can keep us from learning. http://www.baby-can-read.com Visit our website for special promotions and a FREE EBOOK on babies and learning! .
By: Eliane Leao, PhD
