thinking after Bud's latest post
esp the video...
as i commented to Bud..
huge on so many levels, the deepest of which probably won't be discussed much, won't be understood, or heard. because we aren't listening in spaces of permission. because we, most all of us, are in great need of detox, of spaces of permission, to be, and to breathe.
just letting my mind go here.. (fair warning, as per usual, for the many misunderstandings and inaccuracies i will myself spout, no doubt, yet unintentionally so):
1) on boredom:
Bud and Dean both commented on time for boredom. boredom is our friend, when it represents a space of permission, ie: when you’re bored it means your mind is free, no one is telling you what to do, your time is your own. however, when the dad said all his daughter has to do is get up and get on the bus... i'm wondering if many of us understand what that really means. what does getting on the bus represent in a kids' mind. ? i'm thinking - until we set kids free during the school day, they are exposed to a more intense and much more inhumane boredom than we've ever known. i hear Cristian in my head almost daily on this very thing. [full disclosure, just attended yet another teen funeral this last week.]
2) on connection:
we power kids down in school, we power them down at home. danah boyd has taught me the importance of taking stuff in as is, rather than demanding or assuming something different. so what does the power in power down even represent? if we listen, closely, if we watch.. kids are telling us that connection matters. they are screaming it in fact. the disrespect we assume, is in many cases quite amazingly bridled. when you strip a person down, as we have seen via detox, our souls crave connection. (more than school math. go figure.) yet our days are spent, are mandated, to be about things our souls don't crave. kids spending countless hours online, texting friends whenever they get a chance, that's a huge message, that's a brilliant message, ... are we listening? i'm thinking not, when we spend most of our govt funding for ed on banning connections and then ensuing classroom management and compulsory test topics, (and a slew of other health issues and remedial programs), because we are missing the souls of our children crying out for connection, and so forcing them into spaces of non-permission. Clay Shirky nails it in cognitive surplus. let's just go there, no? let's do what kids try to do every moment, engage in dialogue, with people. let's learn about things that matter from the things our kids can't not do.. connect.
from my observation, we don't need more people in the world that can rationalize a denominator, we need more people in the world that know how to listen, how to choose a mate, how to provide spaces of permission for their five year old, so that that soul gets to be the breathtakingly brilliant soul it's meant to be. it seems we spend so much of our days preparing for the future (most in ways inaccurately so) and during that prep, we’re missing today, we’re missing now. (ask Melia)
what if the lesson we might learn just from listening to today is all we need? what if it’s the solution we are looking for, what if listening deeply, noticing the unlikely, will not only make us all healthier, what if we all end up falling in love again, with curiosity (which can be said another way if it pleases your uneasy heart that’s been taught to worry about words/topics/coverage such as math, .. what if we all end up falling in love again, with mathematical thinking. another connection of nature, if let go, that can’t not happen.)
3) on communication or listening:
3 kids in the lab will be speaking at our tedxfrontrange in may. the ted is organized into 3 parts, the potential, the challenge, the promise. Peter is talking on the challenge. he’s going to share similar thoughts that Chimamanda shares in her ted: the danger of just one story. perhaps as we power down kids via bans or groundings or shooting their devices (such graphic images, such graphic words we use, it’s like they themselves are screaming at us, ie: power, a power in web connections that can unleash us; ground, a grounding in nature and the rhizomatic modeling of learning and life that is non-linear, which means you can jump in anywhere, no basics needed, and follow it everywhere, (Myron);) perhaps the web, like google did, is allowing a space for questions and/or conversations to happen. many of us are thinking, in an inappropriate space, but perhaps, in a safer space than: the privacy of just one head (can drive a person to the edge if they don’t feel they have a safe place where people are listening to them without an agenda); the privacy of a home (perhaps less child abuse when there are more of us seeing interactions that might otherwise be happening behind closed doors); the awareness of more than one story (what’s the story behind getting on the bus, behind the girl’s thinking on their housecleaner, behind the dad’s shooting the laptop.)
the problem with communication is the assumption that it has been accomplished.. Goerge Banard Shaw
