Elements of a Curriculum on the Psychology of Living 4: The Horse, Carriage, Driver & Reins

Introduction to the series

How is it that children spend a thousand hours a school year in classrooms, but over the course of a dozen years come away with having learned so little about themselves -- practical knowledge about the psychology of being human.

The following series of blog entries explores the elements of a curriculum on the psychology of living, with the aim of providing children a toolkit for understanding themselves and their relations at a deep level.

There is nothing novel in these ideas; none belong to me. They are, I believe, generally accepted concepts from cognitive, social and clinical/counseling psychology, and deserve to be as much a part of the pedagogy of schooling as math facts and decoding skills.

I've shared these ideas with students and parents in recent years, typically in the context of a parent-student conference, or in response to unnecessary dramas associated with managing a classroom of two dozen or so diverse children.

The entries are not referenced, but the concepts can be found in an entry-level psychology text. The bibliography may be developed at a later date.

Imagine that we are studying life on Earth through a very large telescope from a distant world. What patterns might we observe in the lives of humans? What might we conclude about the nature and organization of their minds, their so-called psychology?

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We can be compared to a driver, sitting on a carriage, being carried along by a horse, connected to the driver through the reins.

For a 6th grade teacher, it's a very helpful image, being that I live with a classroom full of horses, the drivers of which often fall asleep, dropping their reins. An important aspect of teaching at this grade level, situated at the cusp between childhood and adolescence, is training the driver to carry his/her reins, and manage the horse. (This takes place through modeling. An interesting aspect of being a classroom teacher is being playful while keeping a hand on one's own reins.)

The parable of the horse, the carriage, and the driver provides a rich image of our lives as highly complex, interactive, psychological beings, with three brains, which are fully capable of operating independently, in response to conditioning and habit.

The nature of the driver and the reins, and the presence of a self (as in self-observation, self-management, self-regulation, self-responsibility), offers rich ideas to ponder, particularly in the laboratory of the classroom.

Is it important that children know about these ideas? How important are they? As important as cross multiplying? Who is charged with this mission?