Reflections After a Few Days with the Grandchildren

Whosoever has lost himself has found the universe and the inhabitants thereof. Whosoever is occupied with himself is wandering in the desert of heedlessness and regret. The "master-key" to self-mastery is self-forgetting. The road to the palace of life is through the path of renunciation. (‘Abdu’l-Baha, Star of the West, vol. 17, no. 2, p. 348

My wife and I had a great time spending a few days with the grandchildren, Elani and Aman.  The ones in the picture above.  They worked their usual magic, simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting their grandparents.  But what a circus ride they provide.  After recovering my strength and my normal heart rhythm I began thinking of how they live their day, and what it all means for “education.”

Small children, being not yet socialized and possessing no innate morality, only moral potential, are nothing but curiosity and questions. They are anarchic little bundles of energy with no set purpose, no goals, or final outcomes in their sights.  They move from activity to activity as the spirit or someone else moves them.  They live and learn, learn and live in an eternal present.  Society demands that they be turned into social beings.  But training of this sort seems to mean to prune and squash their great forces of spirit into an effective citizenry.  I know these conditioning actions must go on.  But I will miss them after the conditioning has done its work. 

For, they are powerfully creative.  They learn in great gulps and huge bites.  They ask inappropriate questions, make embarrassing faux pas’s that make their wide-eyed, dumbfounded parents blurt out: “Kids!”—as I did as a parent. (Grandparents seem a lot more tolerant and amused.)   Children are the models of how humans really learn, of how we must upset before we can reset.  And there is no more genuinely subversive activity against a status quo entrenched in its assumptions, against all cramped orthodoxies and tyrannies of mind, than a simple question.  And, yes, in adolescents much of this questioning is incoherent or badly articulated and thus carries the threat of violence, for without voice, with no one to hear their call, then rebellion and aggression, active or passive, is the only course of action left.  But this is also because it is so strongly felt; because conflict and competition, striving against someone or something, whatever its destructive ends, is always the better alternative to fending for oneself alone.  If it is the only choice, punishment is usually preferable to neglect.  To ask questions is the right of everyone.  Children know this in their tissues, not yet their minds.  I mean they know this because they don’t yet know any better, or, maybe I should say, know any worse. 

            Because of bad conditioning that averts eyes and minds from the essential questions, many older students have been deprived of the use of their inherent power of understanding.  They have little faith, poor vision, dammed up creativity, no reflection.  They have no opportunity to really question and find their answers.  There is always another math test to study for, another party to anxiously groom for.   

For people of any age, education is to discover their value as human beings.  It is emotionally driven at first by heightened and intense feelings of insecurity that generate the energies of risk.  In today’s education, however, as Gardner points out: “…neither teachers nor students are willing to undertake ‘risks for understanding’; instead, they content themselves with safer ‘correct-answer compromises.’  Under such compromises, both teachers and students consider the education to be a success if students are able to provide answers that have been sanctioned as correct.  Of course, in the long run, such a compromise is not a happy one, for genuine understandings cannot come about so long as one accepts ritualized, rote, or conventionalized performances.” (Gardner: The Unschooled Mind: 150)               

Piaget believed that “…to understand is to discover, or reconstruct by rediscovery.”  Understanding is a process of continual transformation, and, therefore, it has characteristics similar to the poetic invention.  It both unfolds from within and assimilates from without and transforms both in the process.  But, again, with the sacred we are in a different kind of learning environment. 

            We know that the sacred cannot be taught; only awakened.  It is already there, because kids know who God is.  They know who God is because He is with them, right at the inner surface of their intelligence.  Most adults have layers of conditioned sediment in the way.  There are two stories about children and God that I love.

First: a young couple bring home a new baby and introduce him to their four-year old, hoping that there will not be any great outbursts of jealousy.  Over the next few days, they notice the older child going into the baby’s room.  Finally, one day they stand outside the door and hear her say to her new brother: “Brother, please tell me about God, I’m starting to forget.” 

The other story is about the child leaning intently over the picture he is drawing.  His teacher asks him: “Johnny, what are you drawing?”  Johnny replied, matter-of-factly: “I am drawing a picture of God.”  His teacher, being an adult, said: “But no one knows what God looks like.”  Without turning his head, or stopping even for an instant to consider this pitiable creature’s perplexity, Johnny triumphantly announced: “They will when I get done.”  I bet God laughed and winked His approval.

            Spiritual education is to undertake the risk of building a new culture of learning.  I almost would call it a kid’s culture of learning, because such an environment is engaging the students in the process of their own learning and transformation and children do this automatically.  They explore, openly and with tenacity, the spiritual dimension, either to bring forth their higher spiritual aspect, or the spiritual aspect of the world.  The spirit being everywhere at once, either direction leads to a common center.

            Spiritual education says that the first and essential transmission is the gradual transfer from teacher to student not of knowledge, but of responsibility for learning, and that learning is built around the fundamental questions.  Some call it “learning how to learn”, but I believe there is more fundamental phrase than that.  In my mind, learning how to learn is a great step but only a step toward the real goal: educating how to educate. 

            All this is fine.  But it is also adult-speak.  And all the theory and big words are nothing compared to running into the schoolyard to see them one last time before you depart for home, having them spot you, squeal “Grandpa!” with surprise, bolt disobediently from the line entering school as the bell rings, and jump without any inhibition into your arms.  One of the top five moments of my life, no matter what else happens. 

What my grandchildren boisterously enabled me to recall is the sheer fun that life should be and that tremendous stores of energy are waiting to be used so that they can be replenished.  Social mistakes are made—taking a flying leap onto grandpa’s back while he is sitting on the floor being one of them—but they are correctable, especially if you laugh through the pain.  But “spiritual mistakes” is something of an oxymoron where children are concerned.  And they are looking for an answering joy, a little anarchy, a soothing stroke of the head as they fall asleep, an approving nod and a “great job!” exclamation, and heaps of love.  My grandchildren are lucky to have two parents who give them more than enough of those essential requirements.  We never lose those requirements.  They are at least as important as enough to eat.