Elements of a Curriculum on the Psychology of Living 6: Learning to Become Small

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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Observation is everything.

To become quiet and observe. To separate from the chatter, the street noise, as it were, a consequence of our large, complex brains, spinning freely, like windmills.

I believe that for many students, being quiet, really quiet, might be perceived as an altered state, unfamiliar and uncomfortable, though I think that all could recall moments of quiet, of specific experiences of being quiet, or quieting.

We are living in a time of being plugged in, through ear buds. Listening may seem foreign, requiring an effort, work. We identify with the noise, a kind of hypnotism, mindlessness, calming, buffering.

Becoming quiet is the entry point to observation, and all forms of personal work, be it prayer, meditation, or reflection of any kind. Listening and observing is everything, the basic skill, both with respect to others and to ourselves, particularly to the sensation of the body.

While active listening is a core construct in practically all classrooms (it is one of four so-called community agreements at ISDakar), we might introduce students to the experience of being quiet as a part of our daily practice. We might open the school day by sitting quietly, with no other aim than to listen to the sounds in our milieu, to the sounds most distant, and the sounds most proximate, to the sounds emanating from outside ourselves, and the sounds emanating from within us. No reference to prayer, or meditation, no suggestion of any practice other than listening and being quiet -- a springboard to a discussion of what it means to be quiet, what it feels like, what it tastes like. The aim would not to create little gurus, but to acquaint children with the taste of being quiet, offering them a point of reference.

Our left hemisphere talks, incessantly, like talk radio, offering critiques, commentaries, and analyses. But the chatter is not us. The noise is the functioning of a very complex left hemisphere running of itself. It is not about being mentally ill; it's a consequence of our being human, and of inhabiting an exceptionally complex machine.

My students deserves to know this. It's at least as important as finding a common denominator.

We must teach our students to listen, by taste, as if it were an unfamiliar state, then practice it yearlong.