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This song, video and lesson plan explores the invaluable ways of living we learn from Mother Nature: biodiversity, conservation, recycling, sustainability.  It is designed for children ages 9-12 but younger children will also love to watch the video.

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Natural Education Principles

Choice is sacred. It is core to what makes us human. We can neither grant it nor take it away. What we perceive our choices to be however, and what we do with them depends on the depth and scope of our education!

In many ways life would be much simpler and the planet would be much better off if humans didn’t have this gift of choice. There’s the indigenous people’s proverb: “The frog does not drink up the pond in which it lives!” Only humans have the capability to destroy the ecology which supports them. Wouldn’t it be easier, clearer if this were not true?

But then, we would not be truly human - endowed with the elevated gifts of conscious reasoning, morality and choice!

So then, what is natural education?

Is it “returning to nature”, going “back to earth” as some say, reverting to a subsistence way of life, natural living, “getting off the cultural grid”…???

No. Not really. Not as a first principle. Not in the context of the 21^st century when most of seven billion people live in urban habitats.

The first principle in a “natural” human education has got to come from a deeper understanding of human life! For example, what makes us different from all the other mammals on this planet? Why do we have choice? What’s different about our brains? Why don’t we see elephants writing books, doing poetry slams, playing soccer, tweeting, face booking or flying space shuttles? By the same token, flip-side, why can’t an elephant pollute its habitat, ruin its health or go to war against the baboons?

Some philosophers and theologians have argued that humans are “above” nature or “separate” from nature. But let’s take a step back from that. (Besides, I’m sorry, they’re idiots if they don’t think we are part of the natural worlds! The ‘dominionist’ brand of thinking has a lot to answer for.)Taking a step back though, let’s find a starter, a premise that is useful and relevant NOW.

What are (some of) the principles of natural education?

Humans are born with the urge to learn, to compare, to feel, to discover, to create………!   How ‘bout we don’t shut that down for starters?!

Humans come into this world trusting their systems and faculties. But from early, early on, they learn otherwise. Infants can swim quite naturally!

Humans come equipped with the most extraordinary systems and faculties. Every single human being (not damaged in the womb or at birth) is naturally capable of unique virtuosity. But we are trained by osmosis and example to use only a fraction of our potential!

Humans are an integrated part of the world! We are not isolated. What we think, do and feel affects other lives, affects our environment and affects our possibility. Humans are NOT meant to experience such isolation. We are designed to learn by living interaction and connection!

Learning is a living, dynamic process, where the ‘student’ and the ‘subject’ engage in an interactive, connective relationship. Learning actually cannot happen in a static environment, ‘studying’ static facts or things with static expectations. In fact, “teaching to the test” is anathema to learning; it is just operant conditioning… and why again?!!

We are natural problem solvers! We may be good at breaking things, but we are also very good at fixing things too! It is what we bring to bear that is the challenge. Computer technology may look impressive when considering sheer volume and speed of information exchange. But compared to the versatility, elegance and finesse of the human mind and its technologies, computers are clunky, mechanical calculators.

The mind can heal the body using the body’s natural ‘pharmacology’, but we’d rather surrender our health to medical practitioners who don’t actually practice “medicine” anymore. Medical training now focuses on ‘meds’ rather than medicine, disease treatment rather than preventative health education (which would put the pharmaceutical industry out of business!).

Variety is the spirit of life! We know this! The planet certainly knows this. Think of the magnificent array and theater of life on earth. Children need to be exposed and experience variety and diversity. Mono-culture produces narrow minded, mono-chromatic, monotonous thinkers. Human life is a kaleidoscopic symphony within a panoply of possibility!

We humans know better. We know that bio-diversity is the key to a healthy eco-sphere. We know that life thrives best in symbiotic reciprocity! We know that the best conservation is using something according to its design. We know when NOT to manipulate something to our own selfish ends. We know better! We do.

Still, we have CHOICE.

In fact, choice is at the heart of natural education. But if our young companions do not realize what their choices are, we fail them as parents and educators. Our job in part, is to show what options exist, that there are other options, other ways, and to help young minds to connect to and create new options - based on natural, perennial principles and values such as - LOVE, HONOR, RESPECT and HUMANITY.

For starters….

PAZ

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Do we realize the stress associated with education is now systemic?

Do we then realize that stress shuts down higher learning capacity, reducing our attention and awareness to a narrow biological focus?

What’s the point? Really?

OK. So your child gets into a “good” college. Alright, but at what cost and what for?  Who’s ambition is this?

Do we realize much of our public education is dictated by bureaucratic minded administrators, businessmen and women, not actual educators?

If the goal is to produce viable employees within an increasingly irrelevant and dysfunctional global socio-economic model, then we are right on track.

The ambition for many is to become materially wealthy, rather than spiritually rich. The goal for many is to help themselves, rather than to give service to the greater human possibility.

But there are those who passionately believe otherwise.

We may wish for our children to be the innovators of tomorrow; the pioneers of new human pathways; the hope of the future. But how will that happen if the neurological, psychological, moral and physical integrity of these young lives are casualties of a misguided cultural achievement obsession?

Teachers and parents! Elevate education to its true and natural premise. Help empower the young lives in our care to become the bridging generation to a future that is open, unwritten…hopeful.

Re-humanize education.

PAZ

Quotes:

About the film Race to Nowhere

http://www.racetonowhere.com/

“A compelling film about the stress that kids today experience because of high-stakes testing. ” ~Diane Ravich, Former US Asst. Secretary of Education

“You’ll be inspired to make some changes, big and small, for the health of your kids.” ~Oprah.com

“A call to mobilize families, educators and policymakers to help disprove the notion that the educational system is ‘one-size-fits-all.’” ~Jewish Weekly

“A reminder of the human and societal costs of our current education system” ~Dr. Jim Taylor, education blogger, Psychology Today

The Water Cycle Kit is now available

Sprinkle young minds with the natural wonders of water!

Give children the gift of NOT taking for granted this extraordinary element and its phenomenal properties. After all, water is the foundation of physical life on earth!

Teaching the water cycle in 3D (to music!) is a brilliant introduction to the science of all living systems. One of the first things children realize when they have acted out the water cycle is that WATER IS ALWAYS IN MOTION, always changing state. It never stops!

The same is true for all living systems!!! There are no static systems.

Water also demonstrates natural connections and integration. Children love pondering the fact that the water in your lemonade may once upon a time have been in a cloud or a snowstorm, an iceberg or a coconut. Children love the thought that humans, plants and animals are also part of the hydrosphere!

All living systems are fluid, dynamic, interdependent and integrated! How do we ‘teach’ in a way that best reflects that???  That’s the premise of arts integrated education. If you want to teach the water cycle, be it! Turn your classroom into a living research theater!

The spring of knowledge will not be found in textbooks and worksheets. Knowledge springs from our connections to the natural worlds. Real science is a dynamic process. You can’t stop life to study it.

It begins in our own ‘headwaters’ as educators. Learning is simply NOT a static process.  Learning itself is a living, fluid process! Water has much to teach us.

The Water Cycle Kit with its four songs, accompanying video, audio, lyrics and lesson plan ideas is a wellspring of activities for your living learning toolkit!

Seven years ago we planted a young maple tree in our front garden. It was skinny and frail so we supported it with stakes and rope thinking it wouldn’t be able to resist the winter and spring winds otherwise. But a wise gardener friend told us to remove the stakes so the tree could stand on its own. She said having to resist and sway with the winds stimulates growth! The tree would thicken in girth and become more hardy and resilient.

Seven years later there is a robust and beautiful Silver Plume Maple growing in our front garden!

It is the same with us humans! Care doesn’t always translate to coddling! Sometimes making things easier handicaps a young child. We sometimes jump to the rescue prematurely - ameliorating conflict, frustration or contradiction before a young ‘sapling’ has gotten the benefit of struggling with it, working through it.

It’s one of the hardest things to do. This is not talking about ‘tough love’ or callous denial or not being a friend to your children. That’s totally the wrong signal, in spite of what the ‘experts’ say. This is talking of a rare kind of love that stems from our deepest humanity.

How will they grow compassion if we shield them from the suffering of other lives?

How will they grow deep self trust and confidence if we prevent them from testing it?

How will they grow honor in themselves if they don’t face the winds of truth, integrity and justice?

How will they grow from making mistakes if they fear punishment?

How will they grow respect, understanding and empathy if we ‘protect’ them from what is foreign (and unknown) to us?

How will they learn to self heal if they are taught to avoid pain with a pill?

How will they grow humanity in themselves if they’re not exposed to the rich difficulties, dilemmas and diversity of the greater human story?

How will they grow humility in themselves if we don’t allow them to fall?

How will they develop new ways of leadership if they are not deepened and humbled by the knocks that come with the territory?

How will they be driven to find the deeper questions if they are given the impression we adults have an answer already for everything?

We ‘protect’ our children by helping them to build inner strength and resilience by leaning into the ‘winds of resistance’. You, the parent or teacher, are not the ‘winds’, life is! The deeper love is not in facing them, but in facing the questions of life together, side by side, with them!

PAZ

Songs to Educate is a response to a need.

The need, simply stated, is for teachers (of any background) to be able to bring the arts back into the classroom. Stated better, it is to be able to integrate the arts in the academic curriculum!

It is easier than one might think. It doesn’t require going back to college. It doesn’t require a complete overhaul of the education system. It doesn’t require a lot of money. But it does require a willingness to change, to expand, to try new ways of learning, of teaching.

The Arts have been sidelined in schools in two ways: The second is lack of funding. The first, however, is much more fundamental. It is to do with how we ‘see’ the Arts. Music, Dance, Theater, Oratory, Poetry, Visual Arts, Storytelling and Film are generally NOT seen as an essential integrated part of education. No, the Arts in our education culture have become subjects themselves rather than a means of integrated learning. This distinction is SO important.

The difference between studying the Arts and using the Arts as part of your teaching toolkit is huge! It can change your life!

We want to help.

Arts Integrated Education means employing the ARTS (all of them, not just visual) as a means of learning! For everything you put on the wall or write on the blackboard (or whiteboard, poster board or whatever) you can demonstrate in 3D in the center of your classroom with your kids!

The ARTS are a means of expression. If you want to retain something, give it away! Express it to get it!

By singing and moving to a thoughtful song about Geography, Mathematics or the Human Body we develop springboards of introduction and inquiry that children REMEMBER! They remember because they are using MORE of themselves!

For every question there are multiple answers! How we go about ‘answering’ a question, solving a problem, investigating a subject is everything!

Process is everything!

By using the ARTS as part of your teaching toolkit, you are increasing the learning capacity of your students exponentially.

The first ART is in how we use ourselves - our most marvelous human equipment and faculties. Give your children a chance to ‘teach’ you how to teach them!

Technorati Tags: Arts Integrated Education, arts integrated learning

These songs are seeds. The hope is that they may fall on fertile ground. “Keep your head in the heart of the matter” is written especially for 4^th, 5^th and 6^th grade girls and boys (‘tweens), to encourage the self-trust, inner strength and self-respect to NOT get caught up in the endless empty distractions barraging them via social media and school culture.

It is to say - you can engage without being subject to the mediocrity, cynicism and pettiness that fuels so much of the human “chatter-sphere”.

It is to say - you don’t have to be part of it to be cool. In fact, being true to yourself and holding your ground, holding to your principles is about the coolest thing you can do! (And your peers will respect you for it!)

It is to say - leadership comes from the inside. What you say ‘yes’ to and what you say ‘no’ to begins on the inside, radiates from the inside.

Some of us have difficulty with confrontation. So….it’s OK to be oblique, to be indirect as long as you find your way to keep true to the mystery and wonder and unfolding story that is YOU! That’s where the arts come in!

Yes, the arts, the extraordinary human arts!

If you don’t agree with the way something is, CREATE something different, something better….beginning with you!  And on the way:

Keep your head in the heart of the matter!

~PAZ

A new song arose from the Kaleidoscope Summer Camp. It came in response to a need that appeared in the young teen participants as the week unfolded.

The need is a deep cry from the lives of young people to have real hope for the future.

When you ask young lives: What do you think about the future? What does the future mean to you? What are your hopes for the future? You get a range of responses…

The general lack of inspiration and imagination in response to these questions is concerning, even surprising. Since childhood I’ve always believed and held hope about the future. Even in the face of futility or dismay, forward looking inspiration consistently rebounds. But the uplift is conspicuously absent in the responses I’ve witnessed, even from adults.

It truly seems that young people have inherited a world where the balances between hope and despair have shifted. This perception is not without substantiation. Cynicism and complaint prevail in the grown up media. The dominant models for just about everything are crumbling into obsolescence.

But cynicism is abdication; and complaint is avoidance of self responsibility.

Examples of human leadership these are NOT!

The youth of the ‘western world’ by and large, have their basic needs covered. They are not starving. Water is clean and accessible. They do not live under the threat of ethnic, military or political tyranny. They enjoy a range of ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’ including a public education system that, for all its shortcomings, continues to be a model for the world. They mostly live in very decent circumstances compared to much of the world… And yet, they look to the future with a dismal lack of vision and optimism! To me, this is a tragedy.

So a new song was born with the help of a gang of 12 and 13 year olds. It is called “Sings Hope for the Future”. It’s a call and response song with first attempt verses such as:

A child’s first steps, a child’s first words

Sings hope for the future

A flower that springs from the rains in the desert

Sings hope for the future

The rays of the dawn sunrise

Sings hope for the future

Enemies sitting together at the same table

Sings hope for the future

Birds singing at the first light of dawn….

This is how it started. And then came the verses:

Tomorrow is not written, tomorrow is open

Sings hope for the future

Our lives are not written, our lives are open

Sings hope for the future!

Now the sparks were flying! Something in us all lit up in response to these words. It is a statement of defiance; not ungrateful nor insolent, but defiant, I dare say - spiritually defiant. It was as if these few young lives were speaking on behalf of all children:

Tomorrow is NOT written - it is open!  Our lives the same!

We don’t want the “future” you have created for us. It is NOT inevitable. It is NOT closed. It is NOT written! We want a different future; one that our children can also hope for. The world you have passed on to us is sadly lacking in hopeful application. Some of you have taught us to believe in the human potential. Well, here we are! We want to fulfill that potential!

Tomorrow is NOT written! Tomorrow is OPEN!

Sings hope for the future.

PAZ

We are often asked about our children, our boys, who are now young men emerging into the world. We are asked how it is they are such extraordinary human beings? How is it so? What did we do as parents?

If you met them you might ask the same. And yes! There is a response to the question, but it is more to do with what we DON’T DO as parents, what is NOT present in the family ecology, rather than what “we do”.

It comes down to respect and trust. What greater love can we give?

But in order to truly engender deep respect and trust, there is something that comes first, perhaps the greatest gift of all.

First of all, “your” child is NOT yours! They are not your possession. They are on their own journey here within your fertile, safe and promoting custodianship for a while. But they do not belong to you. They “belong” to the human proposition!

So as parents and educators our “job” is to provide safe, clean and clear opportunities for natural human development; for the young lives in our care to be best equipped to find their own way inside the greater human journey.

This is not easy to do because there is so much to resist, so many things that try to ‘claim’ a human life, to prevent us from keeping our lives open. However, born out this resistance is a profound love and respect for life, all life! Why would we not trust that?

We have all inherited a human legacy littered with manipulation, exploitation and possession of human life. But…we don’t have to participate in it.

Treat children as the extraordinary human potential they actually are! It begins, as always, by respecting the same in you!

Love is to value without possession.

PAZ

I remember this very well. I was 17-18 and being asked the same question: “What do you plan to do with your life?” I would respond one of two ways depending on whom or what was asking.

There were those who really just wanted to hear the standard response: I’m gonna be an engineer! Or I’m thinking of going into medicine or economics or law… But what I would say (and I thought about this quite a bit) was - “I want to become an anesthesiologist!”

I thought it was a cool word to say out loud.

“Really!?” they would ask.

“Yeah,” I would say, “People are really nice when they’re asleep!”

It was all tongue in cheek, but most adults would just kind of leave it there and move on to another subject….or room…

But to the ones who genuinely seemed to take an interest in life, in my life, I would say, “I really want to pursue a career in being human!”

Some would inevitably ask, “What do you think is the purpose of human life?”

My answer was always - “To find it! To find the purpose of human life and then go for it!”

Some…genuinely heard this.

Why not though? Why is it not a first principle thing in our journeys to become ‘career human beings’?

Yes, we need to each find a vocation that is fulfilling and meets our needs, but not at the expense of our greater service and endeavor which CAN BE to find out and pursue (without expectations or assumptions) WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN?

Now that would be my kind of college!  How about you?

PAZ

True experiential learning includes what we experience on the inside!

Everything we think, intend, feel and do INSTRUCTS our inner lives. It is inescapable. In fact, our internal balances and stability, our internal health and well-being determine so much more that happens ‘on the outside’ than is generally given credit. So much of the world’s center of gravity revolves around ‘happiness’ found in external things and activities.  But true happiness is simply not to be found there. A genuine sense of belonging, of purpose and deep contentedness begins on the inside. We know this!

We know this and yet, our educational bias is to all things observable outside us. We forget to put the observer in the picture! But how we ‘see’ the world, life, relationships, being human… depends on the ‘eyes’ we use. The better we know ourselves, the better we can know the world around us.

So…as educators (and the truth is we are all educators of ourselves by how we react and respond to life), the honor is to find and make the bridge between the external and internal worlds; to make it conscious.

It begins with an awareness and value for the rich and varied inner life of the human; asking not only -what do you see? But why is it so? And what does it cause inside you?

That’s where the true art of fostering multiple intelligences comes in. When children are encouraged this way and given tools to express themselves from inside out, they develop extraordinary insight, understanding and empathy. Emotional intelligence is but one part of this. There are many, many ‘intelligences’ natural to our design…forming a multi-dimensional and multi-leveled mosaic of human possibility.

We admire the courageous and intrepid explorers of our human history. But this is a journey requiring a great deal more courage. It is this frontier that truly awaits our participation and application within the context of our times NOW. Historical precedent will not help. This is new territory for us. We have never been here before.

It’s not about becoming self absorbed. It’s not about WHO you are but WHAT we are as human beings! What does it mean to be human? It is a question we all face together in the context of the 21^st century. And the breakthroughs we each make in ourselves give service to others thereby, by contagion.

It begins, of course, by slowing down enough to listen… inside.

~PAZ