A new life!

Becoming an adult is a big deal

Of the four ways of knowing participatory and perspectival knowing seem the most complex and hardest to develop, but this is where children start.  A baby participates deeply with its world, initially in identification with it, only gradually differentiating itself and developing its own perspective with unvarnished views of what is important and what not.

Procedural knowing begins to become important about the time that a child is ready to attend school but very much in the sense of how she should behave to have friends, to communicate with others by writing, singing, drawing, how she should behave to develop.  Propositional knowing is the last form of knowing to come into the foreground.

Unfortunately, the focus on propositional knowing is maintained through to adulthood.

‘growing up’ by sillysirry via Diviantart

From what I know now, this sequence of participatory, perspectival, procedural and, finally propositional knowing, should start again, probably in early teens, with the content of thought now at the level of abstraction (versus the concrete level for children).

This new iteration is for the child to make the transition to adulthood.

The trigger for this new iteration is the stimulation of participatory knowing at this new level.  The child beginning to realise (in both senses of the term – it dawns upon them, and it comes into being) where they fit in this new (adult) world, what they might become, what identity will be theirs.

Teachers who stimulate this participatory knowing are remembered for life by their students as they have, literally, changed someone’s life trajectory for the better.

Only about 5% of teachers seem to do this in any systematic way.  How can we make this life changing experience something that every child can undergo, and every teacher can offer?

Starting four weeks’ ago and finishing today I have been posing a question like this to think about over the coming summer break.

I will be taking a break until 18 January 2022.  Do have a good rest in the meantime and return refreshed in the New Year.

 John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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