Building a shared foundation for shared belief

The way the hands bridge between the arts, science and religion is directly associated with the way we learn as was described by Diesterweg (an associate of Friedrich Froebel) and was described by Otto Salomon in the Theory of Educational Sloyd.

We start with interest of the child

We build from the known to the unknown

From the easy to the more difficult

From the simple to the complex

and from the concrete to the abstract.

Fundamental science begins early, as you can’t whittle a stick without observing the effects of the knife. If the blade is digging too deep, you “hypothesize” and alter the angle or reverse the stick to compensate for the direction of the grain. Religion is dangerous because we are constantly asked to accept on “faith” that which is proposed by others, often for the purpose of manipulating us, rather than being trusted to build upon shared experience. 

Everything in life from the most simple things, offers the challenge of observation and interpretation. Both religion and science are perceived as theoretical abstractions, when people, even from the youngest child, have the capacity to observe and reflect, but are cut short from building a cosmology of understanding within their own lives.

Personal and international tragedies mounted in the name of religion, cut short the building of those cosmologies within individuals. What’s happening in Gaza and Israel is an example.

I had an interesting experience in high school. We’d taken a standardized test in Biology and after grading, the teacher asked me to stand up so he could acknowledge me for having scored in the 99th percentile. No other student in the class had even come close. What I chose not to tell him was that none of the questions on the test were in any way related to anything he’d taught in class. Nor were the questions related to anything I’d studied on my own. What happened was that my having some experience in the real world, I think, gave me a foundation for discernment in separating the truth, from stuff made up to resemble the truth.

Instead of trusting children to make observations based on experience and the use of their senses, we begin indoctrination at a very early age, insisting that children believe what they are told that comes second or third hand from others. You will note the difference between first and second “hand” as the word hand is a direct reference to the acquisition of knowledge. In German there are two forms of knowledge, kentniss, which refers to knowledge gained directly, and wissenschaft which refers to knowledge being gained 2nd or third  hand.

Of course, we can’t possibly learn everything from experience, as there’s a lot to know, but a basic structure of knowing that comes in the manner described by Diesterweg offers a foundation for discernment of truth. From the known to the unknown, from the easy to the more difficult, from the simple to the complex and from the concrete to the abstract offers a view of the construction of what Jerome Bruner called scaffolding… an internal construction of understanding, built through the senses in response to observation and the encouragement to reflect. We all have hands, and common use of them begins to build a structure of shared understanding that actually has the power to remake the world in which we live. That’s probably not why the Kaiser outlawed Froebel’s Kindergarten in 1851, as he would not have been capable of understanding that.

Make, fix and create...