"We join those who believe that individuals learn best
as they seek solutions to problems
which have real and personal meaning
and importance to them.”
as they seek solutions to problems
which have real and personal meaning
and importance to them.”
- Childhood Education (2013)
(Republished from an article entitled UNIFYING EXPERIENCES written by Erla and Nelson Scull in 1949).
Unifying Experiences
An experience of unity brings people together. At InDiGO, we facilitate experiences of unity between people and communities. However, our work's primary focus is to create the conditions for unifying experiences to occur within. This self-awareness becomes the basis for building healthy relationships with others and our environment. Unifying experiences happen when a whole person engages from within because the present experience itself has meaning to them on multiple levels. A unifying experience is healing and transformative because it synthesizes and synergizes knowledge and experiences from the past into new pathways forward. A unifying experience engages the whole person in learning.
Erla and Nelson Scull wrote these words that resonate to this day in their 1949 article entitled "UNIFYING experiences," which Childhood Education republished in 2013. "We join those who believe that individuals learn best as they seek solutions to problems which have real and personal meaning and importance to them."[*] By supporting people as they pursue what they care about, we can work together to re-locate the motivation to learn to its proper place: within.
Unifying experiences occur when the innate desire to learn within all of us awakens. As Dr. Catherine L'Ecuyer writes in The Wonder Approach: Rescuing Children's Innate Desire to Learn, "More and more people are coming around to the view that the origin of [the innate desire to learn] is something intangible, immaterial. The Ancient Greeks believed that philosophy originated in wonder, the first manifestation of that intangible quality that moves human beings: the desire to know. Thousands of years later, one of the most renowned pedagogues of our time, Maria Montessori, emphasized the importance of the interest in a child's learning process, describing it in many different ways: the impulse of spiritual hunger, polarized attention, internal force. Over the past couple of decades, neuroscience has confirmed many of Montessori's premises, and the education world increasingly tends to call many paradigms of mechanistic learning into question."[*]
Erla and Nelson Scull wrote these words that resonate to this day in their 1949 article entitled "UNIFYING experiences," which Childhood Education republished in 2013. "We join those who believe that individuals learn best as they seek solutions to problems which have real and personal meaning and importance to them."[*] By supporting people as they pursue what they care about, we can work together to re-locate the motivation to learn to its proper place: within.
Unifying experiences occur when the innate desire to learn within all of us awakens. As Dr. Catherine L'Ecuyer writes in The Wonder Approach: Rescuing Children's Innate Desire to Learn, "More and more people are coming around to the view that the origin of [the innate desire to learn] is something intangible, immaterial. The Ancient Greeks believed that philosophy originated in wonder, the first manifestation of that intangible quality that moves human beings: the desire to know. Thousands of years later, one of the most renowned pedagogues of our time, Maria Montessori, emphasized the importance of the interest in a child's learning process, describing it in many different ways: the impulse of spiritual hunger, polarized attention, internal force. Over the past couple of decades, neuroscience has confirmed many of Montessori's premises, and the education world increasingly tends to call many paradigms of mechanistic learning into question."[*]
Natural Connections
A natural connection is more than just something in common between people as they share their interests and ideas. A natural connection can occur within ourselves as we have unifying experiences that ignite our motivation and focus. Natural connections also inherently exist between academic and artistic disciplines and concepts, yet all lead back to Nature if one follows the relationships naturally. To provide an example beginning with an academic concept like fractions: fractions are essential to music, music to sound, to vibration, to frequency, to energy, to engineering, to sustainability, to Nature. Click here to learn more about integrative lessons.
In almost all traditional educational settings, the focus on teaching "the unit" preempts situating that unit properly within the youth's minds and hearts. Unifying the child within the lesson means to locate their natural connection to the material. A much more doable feat if we, as adults, can perceive the natural connections at that particular intersection. This holistic and integrative view represents a subtle but powerful shift of our mindset: Academics are the Arts and SEL inherently. It is our separation and compartmentalization that is flawed. We guide youth and adults to access their unique doorways of discovery and permit themselves to pursue their unique path of personal meaning and relevance.
Like Matthew Fox defines as "Ancestral Wisdom Education" in his book The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human, at InDiGO, we rely on the power of Nature to teach us about ourselves and our connection to everything else. "Now that today's science is helping us to relearn the ancient principle of interconnectivity, we are continually made aware that we humans and all our human ancestors owe our existence to rocks and waters, to forests and soil, to plants and animals, to oxygen and carbon, to sun and moon, to tides and photosynthesis, to the solar system itself and to the supernovas and the galaxies and the atoms and the original fireball. All are kin. All are of the same stuff, the same kind, all are connected. And all are our ancestors."[*] (p. 67).
In almost all traditional educational settings, the focus on teaching "the unit" preempts situating that unit properly within the youth's minds and hearts. Unifying the child within the lesson means to locate their natural connection to the material. A much more doable feat if we, as adults, can perceive the natural connections at that particular intersection. This holistic and integrative view represents a subtle but powerful shift of our mindset: Academics are the Arts and SEL inherently. It is our separation and compartmentalization that is flawed. We guide youth and adults to access their unique doorways of discovery and permit themselves to pursue their unique path of personal meaning and relevance.
Like Matthew Fox defines as "Ancestral Wisdom Education" in his book The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human, at InDiGO, we rely on the power of Nature to teach us about ourselves and our connection to everything else. "Now that today's science is helping us to relearn the ancient principle of interconnectivity, we are continually made aware that we humans and all our human ancestors owe our existence to rocks and waters, to forests and soil, to plants and animals, to oxygen and carbon, to sun and moon, to tides and photosynthesis, to the solar system itself and to the supernovas and the galaxies and the atoms and the original fireball. All are kin. All are of the same stuff, the same kind, all are connected. And all are our ancestors."[*] (p. 67).
Integrative Systems
All the planet's subsystems connect at their intersections in an infinite fractal of life. Because of this principle of interconnectivity, InDiGO illuminates the integrative systems that keep us healthy and whole because they naturally connect directly to each of us. A holistic and integrative perspective helps provide an entry point for each individual, thereby creating the conditions for unifying experiences within. Our bodies are integrative systems. Each body system depends on the others to function. Let's follow this example to the stars. Human bodies are mostly water. Where does our water come from here in Baltimore? The faucet, the Baltimore water system, the Loch Raven Reservoir, the Gunpowder Falls River, the Prettyboy Reservoir, the groundwater and mountains that form the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, the elements of Hydrogen and Oxygen, to the stars that produced those elements.
Integrative systems are also at the nexus of nature and culture. How we think, feel, and talk about our place in the world impacts how we treat ourselves and each other. To fully understand the land we stand on, we must acknowledge its ancient, natural history and the past and present of the indigenous peoples to whom the land belonged before this country "settled" and colonized it. The how and why of a land acknowledgment is of the utmost importance. It must emerge from a genuine respect for the land itself, in the spirit of those to whom it belonged.[1] To heal our world, we all have to decolonize our minds, words, bodies, institutions, and interactions with each other and with Nature. Only once we normalize living in full recognition of our place within the integrative system of life will we live in perpetual awareness, sensitivity, respect, and acknowledgment of the land where we stand.
Integrative systems are also at the nexus of nature and culture. How we think, feel, and talk about our place in the world impacts how we treat ourselves and each other. To fully understand the land we stand on, we must acknowledge its ancient, natural history and the past and present of the indigenous peoples to whom the land belonged before this country "settled" and colonized it. The how and why of a land acknowledgment is of the utmost importance. It must emerge from a genuine respect for the land itself, in the spirit of those to whom it belonged.[1] To heal our world, we all have to decolonize our minds, words, bodies, institutions, and interactions with each other and with Nature. Only once we normalize living in full recognition of our place within the integrative system of life will we live in perpetual awareness, sensitivity, respect, and acknowledgment of the land where we stand.
[1] Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1–40.