My son was screaming from the room inside – help me help me. I replied “I love you”. He screamed with double volume “instead of telling I love you can you help me”. I expressed “I thought you need emotional help, so I said I love you”. He finally said “okkkkkkkkkkkkkk can you help in removing the mattress, now I being specific?”
“Asking specific” is part of word intelligence, part of social intelligence, work with specific goal is part of self intelligence– normally most of the learning is kept in theory or left to be used during work time……….how about making these terms part of our life and see if we see any value in what we want to teach to our children?
During KAA at Belur, one child was working with observation. She shared “I am seeing “. I asked what all is observation ..she rattled “observation is about observing in lines, shape, texture, size…………..I asked “so how are you observing?” She said, I am seeing what all is on the wall? I again asked “how are you observing? She again said I am seeing… I asked “how can you apply the knowledge of observation to now in real life – observe lines, size……….?”
She said
I cannot touch the monuments, so how do I observe the texture? I do not have scale, so I cannot measure? I do not have geometrical instruments, how do I measure the angles? I do not……………so how do I…….so I cannot. So I am seeing……….ok I will change the observation, Now, I will not do observation, I will do something else………….
The child knows about dimensions, – feet, inches, meters and centimeters. The child knows about names of different textures. She knows the definition of what is observation. But she does not know how to relate to real life…………it was all about “what I cannot do and how I cannot do or how can I do only in one way? What value any work bring when it is done without thinking? What value it brings to do books after books on mathematics (age appropriate?) when all I learn is “how I cannot apply?”
I insisted to stay with observation and we began with concept of estimating and guessing the angles without instruments. We used hands, palms……………………introduced observation with dimensions and go beyond “seeing”. She resisted initially……….I continued…………she tried…….. and I left her.
My job was to work on – awareness of her beliefs, exposure and then leave. Its her job to decide what she wants to take from this exposure.