Whats wrong ?
Whats wrong ?
This is the question that pervades coaching.
The coach must assume that “ something is wrong”.
The parent must assume that if “nothing is wrong” , then “ something is wrong” with the coach.
To avoid this situation the coach is on the hook for both, identifying the constitutive – linearly caused parts of the “wrongness”, and , like a Monsanto fertilizer, irradicating this ghastly “wrongness” forever. ( Please see take home progress report for details)
How did we get here ?
I submit that this “ wrongful” mindset finds its roots in a “wrongful” understanding of the human.
Who are we ? in one word ..
How many of the “I” words will be uttered in most peoples answers? …
“ individual”
“intelligent”
“information- processors”.
Modern , western culture unabashedly proclaims (modern) home sapien as all wise, “ I think therefore I am “ attendants to the norms - axioms - and absolutes in our head.
THIS is obviously wrong.
More things computers cant do .
Robots, you know those things that are supposed to take over the world. Do you see any around ?
Yeah didn’t think so , and guess what ? you wont see them around for a while , if ever. Now sure, their AI brethren will collapse the global economy again, their retrobate cousins will clean your pantry, but fully functioning human equivalents ? No maam.
Why ?
Humans are not a super- sparkly- special discontinuation of our 4 billion year lineage. We are hairless apes with a few interesting adaptations. One of which is our ability to think on the outside. Sure, our brain’s paper resume is great, but our neuronal flow is not that different from the great primates you’ll see fishing chestnuts out of their rear door .
So what do we do ?
We can control our movement; we can represent our thinking on the outside. We can live out our desires , needs, wants , emotions in coordinated gesture. We can dance- wink- make ourselves a cappuccino. We have embodied skills.
This is the fountainhead of “intelligence”, enacting one’s life in external formats. What turns the fountainhead into an erupting geyser, neigh, a tidal pool of infinite volume is material assets ( culture ) . Pens, paper, spreadsheets, phone, conference rooms, churches, stadiums , parks, coffee shops, podcasts- the never ending stream of external material culture is one gigantic canvas to paint out our thoughts .
We need to reverse our ideas that lowly animals exist on the outside ( behavioral patterns predetermined by drives) and that meta – modern godlike homo sapiens exist in the inside ( forming mental models and propositions as to the “truthyiness” of all action) .
It’s the opposite , we are homo ludens – “playful man” – homo faber - “ tooled man” – homo aestheticus “ - man as beholder of beauty” – homo narrans “ story telling man” . We are “already and always in a world “ ; we are a species with an incessant need to express- vividly portray our primordial attunement to social – ecological connections that ensconce our reality.
So whats wrong?
The child – the “ super computer” doesn’t need new – better firmware.
There is nothing wrong with the child. This child just ran down the stairs, grabbed a smoothie from mom – gave the dog a one handed pat – and threw dad the keys on the way out the door. They are, in every way imaginable- genius movers, genius adapters to the perturbations of life.
So to honor this reality let us consider what education that presumes nothing “is wrong” looks like :
The child ; the embodied – distributed – embedded, ritualist, emotional creature needs mediums of transportation. This fleshy, complex organism is a poetic, tribal node that NEEDS thinking devices that allow creation – exploration – UNDERSTANDING. We - they are the blind man, that lives life through the stick, a being that leaks out of their skinned boundary. “ Education” ie. a panoply of thinking tools becomes a cognitive ecosystem – a petri dish for emergent forms of movement and enterprise connected to the child’s “ forms of life” – the time – place – relevancy of their many overlapping life projects.
When this is the place we get to- when we honor and embrace the “ mind “ of the child as residing in the affective – social – material scaffold we provide, then, and only then do we get to a place where “nothing is wrong”.