curiosity & community
November 5, 2013 § 3 Comments
Over the years I have crafted opportunities for my children to engage with various environments, nurturing their inquisitive nature. Sometimes I nudge them outside their chosen interests and on other occasions I honor natural inclinations by facilitating opportunities that acknowledge facets of self. Time and again the lessons that linger are founded in curiosity and community.
Often times I look to their schools wondering at the tidy categorization of needs and labels that seem to pigeon-hole children into expectations and assumptions that narrow their paths academically. The academically advanced children who are privileged with rare opportunities but excluded from simpler engagements that foster compassion; the special needs children for whom we interpret behavior through polite, politically correct exceptions without acknowledging their roles as educators of character; the children who we extract for supplemental lessons but exclude from concepts that inspire growth; children of poverty or diversity whose presence most honestly models the world in which our children live in, marginalized by factors outside their control.
I want to see classrooms where children engage across social, emotional, and academic differentials to work together through challenging concepts. Ability molded in curiosity and modeled in community.
scribblechic 
LOL, you didn’t seem to need much of a rest. Poetry again 🙂 I’m particularly drawn to your dislike of labels. I, too, wish that people would be less inclined to fit everyone into neat taxonomies and, instead, try to see people as holistic beings.
On a related note the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders is now out in its fifth edition (often referred to as DSM-5). It was interesting to follow the intense debates that got it in the shape it is. I particularly liked the fact that the practitioners — most of them anyway — were willing to admit that the labels they have are guidelines to help treatment, not necessarily to pigeonhole people for life. In that vein you might enjoy this video by Dr. A. J. Francis, who talks about the over-diagnosis of mental illness. It’s obvious he feels that way too. http://ww3.tvo.org/video/177352/allen-j-frances-overdiagnosis-mental-illness
I am always interested in learning how others interpret and apply labels. There is no denying the value of identifying need to best facilitate support, but I would caution teachers and physicians, friends and family alike to be conscious of the multi-faceted individual behind sterile labels.
Amen to that.