Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Approaching a Curriculum for The Dangerous Child

The dangerous child is a child who is self-motivated, and resistant to outside coercion. He is in many ways the opposite of the modern psychological neotenate -- the lifelong incompetent adolescent -- which schools are currently spitting out into the public ways by the gross.

Dangerous children enter into their education quite early in life, and never truly exit the process. It should be clear to all educated people that children need to learn multiple languages at a relatively young age, to encourage a more powerful brain development. It should also be clear that besides being exposed to music, children should receive some type of musical training at a fairly early age. And it is also highly probable that children could benefit from early childhood foundational training in mathematics.

All three of those crucial early childhood educational topics could be easily incorporated into a normal playful upbringing, without the need for expensive private teachers or institutional enrollment.

The human mind is instinctively primed for language, music, and probably mathematics. The developmental windows for those areas open up relatively early in life -- although each child is different and should be approached as an individual when planning and unfolding his curricula.

The younger the child, the more crucial the aspect of play. Play is incorporated in Montessori education, in Waldorf education, and in most other forms of effective alternative curricula of early childhood. But the sheer vast breadth of play has hardly been explored in this regard.

The foundations of music, maths, and multi-lingual language learning cause changes in brain development which permit a higher level of learning at an earlier age, than would otherwise be the case. The more skillfully the training can be enmeshed in play, the earlier the foundation building can take place in an intentional manner. But the play must be real, and not "pretend play." Children can generally tell the difference through non-verbal cues. Don't be a parental putz. Let your inner playful child emerge, it will help both you and your child.

Besides music, language, and maths, there are a number of other foundational beginnings which need to be laid, if one is to take advantage of the opening of the critical developmental windows in the child's brain. But these other areas are less well known to modern neuroscience or early education, and should be discussed discreetly, between responsible and qualified practitioners and serious parents and prospective parents.

As in the Garcia curriculum, the dangerous child will be trained in areas practical, philosophical, artistic, and technological. As in the Robinson curriculum, by the time the child is 16, he will be well prepared for advanced college-level work in a number of areas -- particularly math, science, and engineering.

But in addition, by the time a dangerous child reaches the age of 16 to 18, he will be able to financially support himself in the world at least 3 different ways. He will already have a significant nest egg saved, and will have several ideas for lucrative enterprises reasonably well planned. And that will be just the beginning of whole-life education which by then will be almost entirely within the hands of the dangerous child himself.

Ridiculous!, you may say. And judging by the potential of virtually every childhood curriculum you have been exposed to, you would be absolutely correct. But for those with the fortitude to work their way through the materials to be provided in future entries to this series, it is likely that you will begin to see how the threads can come together.

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