Our mainstream education paradigm is not perfect, and many, including me, would wish it were more creative, and focused on children’s individual talents. (This lack of creativity was discussed in a previous post though it is not our principal focus). However, despite all its faults, it generally works for the vast majority of us because of one major necessary assumption.
This necessary assumption is that when we are starting school, we can self-nurture enough to absorb the learning offered, and then respond age-appropriately.
Self-nurture is what we do as mature adults when we are disappointed or in some distress. Obviously the level of the distress will determine the amount of self-nurture that we will need to do.
I will describe it as the ability to park emotional distress until we can make sense of it – or find a trusted other to support us in our distress. Good-enough emotional well-being is dependent on our ability to do this.
When we are children, and in school, we are often disappointed! If we 1): cannot make sense (rationalise, or think through) our disappointment or 2): are not confident that we will go home to a sympathetic and empathic parent figure, the disappointment will turn quickly to distress and continuance of this, long-term, will invariably manifest in either invisibility (giving up) or constant attention seeking behaviour.
If we cannot self-nurture, and the constants (1 to 8) which I referred to half-way down this post have to be suspended so that the teacher attends to nurture, the mainstream education paradigm won’t work!
For example, in Junior Infants, Senior Infants etc. the number of constants are less than later years, so that the teacher can attend to the nurture needed at that time.
The teaching of such ages involves a lot of games, arts, crafts, singing, and playing as we get accustomed to the increasing prevalence of constants, (i.e. things we can’t change if and when we feel like it).
By Second Class Primary, and certainly by Third Class Primary, the constants are increasing to the extent that if we feel like doing something but can’t, we will have enough maturity (and adequate self-nurture ability) to delay gratification and endure something that we don’t like because we know that we will be rewarded (at this stage – mostly by teacher’s approval and parental praise) in the longer term.
But if we have not learned to self-nurture at this stage, then the need to be nurtured will remain a priority.
This is important because good enough learning depends greatly on our ability to delay gratification. A substantial amount of necessary cognitive behavioural learning will be delayed until our basic nurture need is met.
This means that a constant such as curriculum (that is fundamental to the success of the mainstream schooling system) will be continually interrupted because, as I stated above, our need is manifest in behaviour that will attract attention to our need.
Our need for attention most likely arises from ongoing emotional pain, but because this need is unconscious, we will be doubly frustrated because we cannot understand why we need what we need, and why we cannot learn along with our peers.