[Maillist] Article from Guest Writer

[Connie and Ray Morley]

I have enclosed an article from Amukta Mahapatra, an educator from  
India interested in alternatives in education and serving as an  
advisor for the development of graduate training classes in  
alternative education. Amukta provides a perspective on the importance  
of the connection between the hand and mind and reminds us of the  
importance of getting students involved in action activities to impart  
learning. She has asked to share her writing with you.

A child needs to interact with the world around to build intellectual  
capacity, and personality. The first of a two-part article.


The child is born with a potential but how much is realised depends on  
the experiences offered to her by society.





The ‘done it’ smile: Motor and psychological energies have to go  
together.


With learning through activity being currently discussed within the  
education community; with almost all the government elementary schools  
in Tamil Nadu following what has been named the Activity Based  
Learning (ABL) programme; and with the National Curriculum Framework  
brought out by NCERT (National Council for Education Research and  
Training) focusing on constructivism as a base for pedagogy in the  
classroom, it is time to explore what these actually mean in the  
context of the child and its learning.

What is clear, intuitively, to most educators and parents is that  
every movement is not an activity; that all activities do not  
necessarily lead to learning; and not every kind of ‘learning’  
contributes to the construction of the child’s cognitive and affective  
world. So when does a movement become an activity that leads to  
learning that helps to build the child’s personality? Let us explore.

Need for interaction

Why can’t a child do what he is told and be quiet? Why can’t a kitten  
be still for a while without moving and meowing? Why do children keep  
‘fidgeting’ all the time? Why do children need to do an activity for  
them to truly learn? Why can’t they sit behind the desk through the  
day as is the practice even in most of the so-called best schools of  
today? Why do we need all kinds of activities for children to acquire  
concepts?

In the last 100 years or so, educationists, psychologists, behaviour  
scientists have discovered (what was intrinsically understood by many  
tribal and agrarian societies) that we actually learn only when we  
act, when we engage with something, when we interact. This is the  
reason why serious attempts are made to make even for computer and TV  
programmes as interactive as possible. The learner needs to act,  
interact and thereby construct his own backpack of learning. For  
learning to happen, the child cannot merely listen, receive, repeat  
and copy what is said or readThe child may, in the process, pick up  
information, acquire some knowledge and find out some things for  
himself. But acquire concepts that are his or her own? Unlikely that  
this would happen as a normal practice in a school, as the recent  
study, the results of which were published in India Today showed. The  
report indicated that, in reproduction skills, the private schools did  
do better but in correlating, conceptual understanding or application,  
there was not much of a difference between the government and the  
private schools. Basic principles and ideas were not part of the  
child’s mental construct.

Learning for any child or adult implies that there is assimilation  
that leads to some change. The child, by interacting with the world  
around her, builds her intellectual capacities, her emotional and  
social persona and her personality. The child is born with a potential  
but how much is realised depends on the experiences offered to her by  
society, the most critical elements of it being the family and the  
school. If one asks a child to sit quietly for five hours a day,  
during the most crucial years of his life, he will surely be a  
diminished, diminutive dwarf, not actualising his full potential.

The value of movement is not merely to learn, to acquire knowledge but  
it is the basis for the child to construct his or her personhood.  
Movement takes place not only when a child does something external but  
also when s/he sees or thinks or reasons or understands. Don’t we nod,  
make gestures, change facial expressions, speak when we share, learn  
or discover something? Did Archimedes continue having a bath calmly  
when he made a discovery? Can one be still, when elated? Cannot a  
person who has completed a task successfully be immediately  
identified? This idea of linking movement and action to learning is a  
key to unlock the secret of the child’s development. If the child has  
to be given a means to develop, it has to be offered in such a way  
that the child can and must move. It is not enough for the child to  
see and hear. Movement cannot be replaced by anything else at the same  
level of intensity. If a person is deprived of one of the senses,  
another sense may take over and become the dominant one. For example  
for a blind person, the sense of hearing or touch may become more  
heightened. But for movement there is no other substitute.

Creative movement

Even so, all forms of movement may not be considered to be  
educational. Just jumping around, however beneficial it may be for the  
child who spends many hours within the four walls of the home or  
school that has become the man-made environment of today, does not  
make it a learning activity, leave alone a developmental one. The  
value of movement for education depends on the purpose behind it. Any  
movement, to be considered educational should help to build the  
personality, give the child new powers or strengthen existing ones,  
but not leave the child where he was earlier. This does not imply that  
every time a child moves there has to be a serious purpose behind it.  
You may have seen a one or two-year-old child, who, even with a piece  
of thread, how absorbed they can get and when they are done, their  
expression or smile. A movement that unites the motor and  
psychological forces of the child, a “synthetic”, creative movement  
focuses the intelligence on the purpose behind the movement and not on  
the movement itself. For this synthesised movement to be effective  
there needs to be an effort — a “stretching of the mind” — not too  
difficult that it makes the objective out of reach and not too easy  
either.

It is important that the motor and the psychological energies go  
together. But often in schools we see children put in situations where  
‘thought without movement’ (class work) is offered and then ‘movement  
without thought’ (a break, PT) are given as a compensation. This, Dr  
Montessori said is like “hopping on one foot and then on the other”,  
which creates an artificial dichotomy. And more so, we can’t go too  
far, can we? Why not use both legs and walk naturally and continue for  
longer periods? Then there would be no fatigue from an assumed mind- 
tiring class or a rest required from a mindless exercise session.  
Games, sports, eurhythmics, dance would be better options, where there  
is analysis within, along with a corresponding external activity. But  
one cannot live by these alone.

For movement and thought to be synchronised for the young child; for  
the head, heart and hand to work together; these experiences need to  
be built into the daily practice and life at home or school. They  
cannot be special classes taken once or twice a week, or even daily,  
after a full day of doing things disjointedly.

Movement needs to be also chosen by the learner, to make it a part of  
her personality. When a child does activities according to her  
volition and not because somebody (however many good intentions they  
may have) has instructed her to do so, then her whole ego is active  
and the personality functions as a unit. Her actions will follow the  
rhythm of her own life. This can then be considered as an activity, a  
task, a work, where all the faculties of the child act in unison,  
enabling another layer to be drawn into the personality.

The writer is the Director of SchoolScape-Centre for Educators.



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