Editor of Life Learning magazine Editor of  Natural Life magazine Author of educational books Small/ Home Business writer Poet Speaker

Welcome to these regular musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings by Wendy Priesnitz.  Archives - July, 2004 The Power of Stories – July 23, 2004 Long before the beginning of formal education, the printing press and telecommunications, storytelling was the means for passing information and wisdom from generation to generation. Whether they described real events or incorporated parables (or both), stories were the main tool for teaching and learning. Whether told around campfires at family gatherings, on the battlefield or in a sacred place, stories introduced listeners to the world of fantasy as well as to the realities of life, and provided the means for creating a public memory of history. Stories remain a mainstay of informal, family- and community-based life and learning. Everyone’s life is made up of many stories. Sharing them is a way to connect with others on a more-than-superficial level, to pass on our experiences and to build community. As storyteller Marni Gillard says, when people are encouraged to honor their own uniqueness, they are more apt to honor each other. Storytelling is a great way to share our uniqueness while at the same time discovering our similarities. In her article for the September/October 2004 issue of Life Learning (which I finished laying out today) called Run Bus Car Broken, Gina Cassidy describes how storytelling is also an important step along the path toward joining what author Frank Smith calls “the literacy club”. As anyone who has listened to a small child breathlessly tell his or her own “run bus car broken” story knows, small moments in time can make great stories. And really, all moments are small ones. In his article World History, the ICC and the Eye of the Beholder (also coming in the fall issue), Nathanael Schildbach reminds us that the stories of history are about everyday life and are being created by us all, on an ongoing basis. Storytelling is something we all do all day, whether it’s to explain why grandma can no longer walk as quickly as she used to, to share an amusing incident from our day over the dinner table, to gossip around the water cooler at work, to sit down at the computer and write an entry in our daily “blog” or to play a video game as Pam Laricchia describes in her article Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Video Games for the September/October issue. Stories are one of the main ways we human beings turn isolated experiences and facts into an understanding how the world works. After all, real learning is not about knowing something, it’s about understanding it. And that’s what was happening all those evenings around those prehistoric campfires. Posted: 23/07/2004 4:11 PM  Learning in the Moment – July 18, 2004 This morning, while walking along the waterfront boardwalk near my home, I watched a toddler and his mother. The little boy was still unsteady on his feet, but determined to explore as far and as fast as he could, oblivious to the danger created by his proximity to the water’s edge. At one point, he tripped and fell forward onto his hands. And there he stayed, bum up in the air, his body forming a tent shape and his eyes firmly focused on the boards in front of him, his earlier destination already forgotten. He studied the rough wood intently, feeling its texture by rubbing one hand along it carefully, then moving his face even closer so he could smell the slight dampness. After a minute or so (his mother watching patiently), he sat down right there and began a more intense examination of the boards, trying to stick his finger between the cracks, picking at the wood to see if he could take a sample (possibly so he could taste it), experimenting with different visual angles. This, I thought, is what it’s like to be totally absorbed in the present, to be aware of your immediate surroundings in such a way as to learn everything you can from each and every moment. As adults, we would benefit from regaining some of that youthful authenticity...while doing everything in our power to preserve it in our children. Posted: 18/07/2004 10:28 AM  Education Can´t be Done to People – July 15, 2004 Perhaps the most basic assumption we make about education is that learning can and should be produced in us – and that we can produce it in others. This assumption leads to another one: that learning is the result of treatment by an institution called school (or homeschool). Perhaps because of their own schooled background,  most people assume that children do not want to learn and will not learn if left to their own devices. Even many people who reject traditional schooling in favor of homeschooling have institutionalized and standardized the educational process, on the assumption that children must be manipulated into learning by enthusiastic adults, judged and processed in a variety of ways, and diagnosed as having a problem if they don’t learn what the adults want them to. Unfortunately for children, this assumption is no more valid than the one that says wellness results from treatment by a hospital. One may get well in a hospital and there are some situations where a hospital stay may be the only way to get well. But there are also many examples where a hospital has hindered the healing process or where relatively well people have become ill in hospitals, either through mistreatment or by catching other people’s diseases. Most people would be healthier if they took responsibility for their own well-being, rather than rushing off to be treated by an institution every time they have a health problem. Similarly, people do learn in schools. However, schools are not the only – or for many people, the best – environment for learning. And that is because they focus on teaching rather than on learning. Posted: 15/07/2004 12:02 PM What We Learn in School – July 6, 2004 Was just re-reading something by author Joseph Chilton Pearce (Magical Child, Crack in the Cosmic Egg, etc.), who quoted a Carnegie Institute study from the 1960s, which found that only five percent of everything we learn in our lives is learned in school. The remaining 95 percent is the result of direct experience. And as adults, most people remember only three to five percent of that five percent that they supposedly learned in school! What a tragic waste of time and resources. Posted: 06/07/2004 10:54 AM Controlling Behavior, Not Thinking – July 5, 2004 A Life Learning reader commented to me today that, in his opinion, setting limits to a child´s behavior is not controlling in the authoritarian sense of the term, because parents have to nourish and protect...and control their own sanity. He says that he and his wife never tried to control their (now adult) children´s thinking, their feeling, their selves or their learning. But they controlled their behavior when necessary. However, I always found that precisely because my husband and I didn´t try to control our (now adult) daughters´ thinking, etc., we seldom needed to control their behavior. Sure, when they were young, they sometimes followed their curiosity into potentially dangerous situations, but we made sure that we were there to rescue if necessary; as they got older, they learned to balance danger and risk...again, I believe, because they were allowed that opportunity. As for my sanity and that of my husband – well, I think we are as sane as we ever were! We have a few gray hairs to show for the process, but nobody ever said parenting was easy. Posted: 05/07/2004 10:48 PM Return to current weblog Comments? Suggestions? Email Us copyright © Wendy Priesnitz 2004-2007

Topics & Passions: natural learning green politics simplicity environment parenting books writing ~ What I'm reading: The Rapture of Maturity - A Legacy of Lifelong Learning by Charles D. Hayes (2004, Autodidactic Press) Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver (2002, HarperCollins) Off Our Rockers and into Trouble - The Raging Grannies by Alison Acker and Betty Brightwell (2004, Touch Wood Editions)