¡Déjalos ser y serán aprendices!

He discrepado obstinadamente de la idea de que los niños necesitan motivación externa (ser recompensados, castigados o empujados) para poder estudiar y aprender. En cambio, creo que deberíamos seguir su ejemplo y orientar nuestros esfuerzos educativos en la dirección de los intereses de los niños. Esto –y no estrategias que provoquen ansiedad– facilitaría el aprendizaje.

El difunto autor y educador estadounidense John Holt dijo: “… la ansiedad que sienten los niños al ser evaluados constantemente, su miedo al fracaso, al castigo y a la desgracia, reduce gravemente su capacidad tanto de percibir como de recordar, y los aleja del material que se está estudiando en estrategias para engañar a los profesores haciéndoles creer que saben lo que en realidad no saben”.

Observa a los jóvenes mientras, por ejemplo, están inmersos en sus videojuegos.

O míralos aprender sobre sus cantantes o ídolos deportivos favoritos. Los niños desarrollan por sí solos los conocimientos y habilidades necesarios para competir entre sí, sin la “motivación” de ningún adulto.

Lamentablemente, el mercado manipula la necesidad de socializar, encajar en un grupo y desarrollar las habilidades necesarias para satisfacer sus necesidades psicológicas de admiración y respeto que tenemos todos.

La educación debería reconocer que nos mueve una necesidad natural de aprender, especialmente sobre las cosas que nos importan, porque es una cuestión de supervivencia.

Más aún hoy en día.

Supervivencia del más apto

La noción de Darwin de que sólo sobreviven los más aptos se puede aplicar a todo lo que hacen los humanos. Los bebés aprenden a sentarse, rodar, levantarse, hablar y caminar sin que nadie les indique que deben hacerlo. Los procesos, características y comportamientos que se desarrollan durante la niñez pueden explicarse por una combinación de fuerzas biológicas (naturaleza) y condiciones ambientales (crianza).

Un código genético heredado determina el fenotipo (apariencia física), mientras que la familia, los factores socioculturales, la nutrición y la actividad física influyen en el desarrollo.

La naturaleza nos dota de ciertos talentos y habilidades que facilitan aprendizajes específicos, y el sistema educativo debería ofrecer a todos la oportunidad de desarrollar esos dones.

Nuestro desempeño y creatividad mejorarían enormemente si pudiéramos sentirnos cómodos y seguros haciendo lo que estamos haciendo.

La humanidad se está volviendo cada vez más intensivo en conocimiento

Estoy de acuerdo con la apreciación del fallecido gurú de la gestión, Peter Drucker, quien dijo: “De ahora en adelante, la clave es el conocimiento. El mundo se está volviendo intensivo no tanto en mano de obra, material y energía, sino en conocimiento.”

Pero eso lo sabes instintivamente. Instas a tu hijo a obtener un diploma de escuela secundaria y luego a esperar entrar a la universidad confiando en que encontrará mejores oportunidades laborales si obtiene una educación.

También sabes que cuando buscas trabajo, para cualquier empleador, tu valor personal dependerá de tu experiencia y formación, en otras palabras, de tus conocimientos.

Pero dirigir los currículos de las escuelas a triunfar en las pruebas que empujan a los estudiantes a devorar y memorizar contenidos, porque la admisión a la universidad depende de los puntajes del SAT y el promedio de calificaciones (GPA), no ayuda.

¿Son los educadores conscientes del nivel de ansiedad que crean estas pruebas? ¿De la posible relación entre exámenes, miedo al fracaso y aversión a la escuela?

Un niño es por naturaleza un explorador

Los bebés primero exploran el mundo poniéndose cosas a su alcance en la boca. Luego se alejan gateando y continúan explorando: agarran objetos del suelo, los prueban, los golpean, los arrojan tratando de entender qué son, qué función tienen.

Los bebés aprenden a sentarse y a pararse mediante un proceso repetitivo de prueba y error. Probar comportamientos que les den –con suerte– lo que quieren marca sus interacciones con las personas.

Creo que tenemos la culpa de estropear la tendencia natural del niño a explorar el entorno y aprender de él.

Los abrazamos

Con pocas excepciones, los que comenzaron como emocionantes por qués del niño de tres años pasan de ser lindos a ser una molestia (porque estamos ocupados en “asuntos más importantes”) y pronto nos cansamos de responder al interminable flujo de preguntas. Los abrazamos, tal vez.

Luego vamos y los distraemos con dibujos animados (para que no nos interrumpan) que comienzan a modular su comportamiento (porque estamos ocupados haciendo “cosas más importantes”). Y cuando por fin van a la escuela, básicamente los atamos a la silla y les exigimos atención concentrada.

Si demuestran intereses particulares, se les considera una distracción para el grupo. Olvidamos que todos los caminos conducen a Roma.

La curiosidad podría generar oportunidades de aprendizaje

Me he imaginado una escuela donde la maestra del jardín de infantes sería lo suficientemente inteligente e intuitiva como para permitir que el niño corra detrás de la colorida mariposa que se extravió en el aula.

La profesora podría utilizar la mariposa como un bonito pretexto para explicar formas y colores, proporciones, aerodinámica, gravedad y simetría (entre otros principios básicos de matemáticas y física) de una forma natural y comprensible. Y podría pedir a los niños que hicieran un dibujo del insecto para que aprendieran a expresar y representar el mundo en el que viven.

Pero lamentablemente nuestro sistema escolar empuja al maestro no solo a cumplir con las normas del colegio, sino a ofrecer resultados cuantitativamente mesurables, sin importar si el niño desarrolló o no habilidades de otro tipo.

Spiritual seeking or fashionable Secret

By Silvia Casabianca

You complain: “Life is difficult, unfair and lonely. My efforts are seldom acknowledged or rewarded. I don’t have the family, job, house, car or friends that I deserve. Not only life is not as it should be, but I cannot change the world to my convenience. Or, can I?” But then came The Secret (the movie, the CD, the book).

“Oh, you certainly can, because you create the world you live in with your thoughts, your words and your actions,” the masters say. “Just learn the principles of the ‘Law of Attraction’ and all you desire will be manifested. If it doesn’t work, just review if you are using the principles properly: find out what you’re doing wrong.”

“This is The Secret to everything – the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted,” read the promise delivered on The Secret’s first official web page. A misnomer by now, The Secret carries a message that caught the attention of the world in a way that perhaps none of the former publications on spirituality, religion or how to become rich in three seconds have.

So, if you crave an abundant, a worry-free life, and you haven’t seen the movie or bought the book, what are you waiting for? Besides, it’s not the only book on the topic. You can get Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires, by Esther Hicks or The Master Key System, by Charles F. Haanel, to name a few.

In the past 50 years or so, the Americas, from Alaska to La Patagonia, have been flooded with information on spiritual, religious and metaphysical matters. Most of the material presumably comes from the East or from esoteric knowledge that was previously withheld from the public. This knowledge has been marketed through books, CDs, DVDs, movies, social media and charismatic speakers. Shall we hypothesize that spirituality provides more answers than science? Even though science has dug deeper and deeper and to the level of the most minuscule particles life is made of, it would seem that the answers it provides do not suffice. In our quest for meaning, it’s not the amazing biomarkers helping doctors in early detection of cancer, the trip to Mars, or the development of fiber optics, and artificial intelligence, but the feeling that God is reachable what brings hope to people whose lives have been stricken by disease or scarcity.

Back in 2001, the economist Paul Zane Pilzer reported that Americans were spending $200 billion annually on wellness, from fitness clubs to vitamins. Well, in 2022, the industry surpassed the $450 billion mark.

Although wellness and nutritional products have reached a plateau and have faced the threat of limitations brought about by regulation of supplements and vitamins by the FDA, the industry continues to hold the promise of getting to the trillion-dollar mark soon. However, a glance at the incredible success of such movies as What the Bleep do We Know, Conversations with God, How to Know God, and The Secret, is enough to see that spirituality as merchandise nipped at the wellness industry’s heels.

What are these products really selling? Hope? Magic? A power drawn from realizing that one’s life is totally on one’s own hands? The common ingredient is faith. Recently, a Reiki patient reminded me of Friedrich Nietzsche’s definition of faith: “Not wanting to know what is true.”

Indeed, and beware! You can use superficial knowledge of the laws of the universe, or a poorly-understood spiritual principle as a tool to deny your reality. Therein lies the danger of the trivialization of metaphysics, the commercialization of the sacred and the cheapening of spirituality.

How could anyone learn the principles that gurus have mastered in a lifetime of dedication and meditation by watching a movie, listening to a tape or attending a weekend seminar? No Buddhas or Einsteins are born in a snap. Why is the marketing of promises to make over our lives so successful? Is people’s wishful thinking replacing effort and creativity in resolving financial needs, or are we all truly looking for a spiritual life and a re-encounter with a re-defined God that exists within? Is this perhaps a unique rebellion, turning off the current paradigm, whereby only a few deserve abundance and good health?

In Where Are We Going? (ReVision magazine, spring, 2001), Mariana Caplan discussed contemporary spirituality trends: “When mystical experiences become our obsession, and we run from workshop to teacher to fancy esoteric tradition looking for the next high, we have taken a great detour from the needs of our culture – a culture that is obsessed with boldness but devalues subtlety; that is infatuated with excess but scorns simplicity; that honors selfishness while mumbling about service.”

In the times of Coronavirus: What we need to learn

What do we need to learn from this coronavirus pandemic?

Mom and daughter visiting through the window in the times of Covid-19
Lori Spencer visits her mom Judie Shape, 81, who Spencer says has tested positive for coronavirus, at Life Care Center of Kirkland, the Seattle-area nursing home at the epicenter of one of the biggest coronavirus outbreaks in the United States, in Kirkland, Washington, U.S. March 11, 2020. REUTERS/Jason Redmond – RC2HKF9TE1XS

In my former post about the Coronavirus pandemic, I opened up about the different reactions I had when it became evident we could not escape the impact of the Covid-19. When pandemics happen, we experience the exact same reactions we have when experiencing losses or when we have been victims of a catastrophe. We go through the stages of grief:

Denial versions:

  • It’s a hoax or a false alarm.
  • I’m safe, this is happening far away. I won’t be affected
  • I’m healthy, no virus will make me sick
  • This is only affecting “Other” people.

Anger versions:

  • I found who’s guilty – I assign blame on others
  • I spread conspiracy theories
  • I just feel irritable at the whole situation and the limitations it brought to me

Negotiation versions

  • If I pray (meditate, practice yoga or Qigong) I’ll be okay
  • I’ll eat better to improve my immune system
  • I’ll change my lifestyle to be healthier and protected from the virus
  • I understand we’re part of the problem, we need to do something, we need to change the world

Depression

  • I should not have…
  • I regret…
  • Isolation hits hard, I see how much I need my…
  • I sleep all the time, have no drive for anything, what’s the point anyhow.

Acceptance

  • This is what it is
  • I take responsibility for my part
  • I learn from this experience and make some changes
  • I prepare myself for what’s coming

It’s really sad that what is required of us is to “keep social distance” precisely in times in which we have disconnected so much from each other. I see a slight change in the quality of the messages I receive from friends and acquaintances. An increased, personal, concern for one another. But if individualism is one of the main features of these times, the pandemic can make it worse. We might become more suspicious of others than ever.

Ideally, we can use this pandemic to reflect on the quality of our lives and the relationships we have. Maybe we can stop competing, trying to be the one with the most brilliant idea to see how to build new ideas and solutions conjointly. Maybe now we will see how everything is so interconnected that it’s difficult to function as a society without the contribution of each individual. Maybe we’ll start valuing each individual’s contribution. Maybe…

May you be well

The power of meditation

Osho understood freedom and the illusion of freedom very well.

“The freedom from something is not true freedom.
The freedom to do anything you want to do is also not the freedom I am talking about.
My vision of freedom is to be yourself.”

One of my favorite gurus is Osho… a controversial figure. He dared speak his truth. He blurted blistering opinions on almost anything from the medical establishment, to corporations, to schooling, to meditation. He was a witness to the fusing of two worlds, the West and the East, a merging he deemed necessary because he didn’t think the split characterizing the world would help us go forward.

We often call the Western societies, “the free world,” but this is just a sweet chimera. Half of the world has been and continues to be under more or less obvious oppressive regimes. This has been going on for centuries. And the West… well, just look at the media reports on NSA surveillance, the New York Times’ report unveiling the AT&T deal with the US Drug Enforcement Administration, to which it has provided with 26 years of phone call records. Privacy has gone through the drain. And without privacy, can we really talk of freedom?

In Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic, a compilation of nearly 5,000 hours of Osho’s recorded talks, we learn not only about his life but also about the importance he gave to meditation.

Meditation, he said, is the only thing that can give us freedom. It will free us of the mind.

Psychoanalysis and psychosynthesis, he said, work on the mind and make us more conscious of the mind. Instead, meditation makes us observe the mind and to the extent we stop identifying with it, we transcend. Transcendence IS freedom.

Osho encourages dynamic meditation and practicing it alone…if you feel comfortable with it. The group, according to Osho is for people who have grown uncomfortable with their egos. They can “dissolve” into the group and forget about their egos for a while.

Meditation has been transformative for me. It does change the way we experience the world.

About me

Dr. Silvia Casabianca, MA

What could you do with what you have learned in your lifetime except sharing it with others or use it to support others? Blogging seems a logical alternative in this digital era.

I wish to share some of the most important personal discoveries I’ve made as an adolescent first, then as a medical doctor, a psychotherapist, and a Reiki practitioner.

For decades, I’ve been researching and teaching about new avenues to promote wellness and awareness. I live the life I teach about, I share my word through writing and lectures.

Awareness is key not only to physical and mental health but to saving the planet. I believe in conscious evolution: as our consciousness evolves, we are progressively in charge of our destiny.

The human species, for the first time in recorded history, is in a privileged position of controlling its destination, based on the available knowledge of the current challenges we face. According to the Evolutionary Manifesto: “A completely new phase in the evolution of life on Earth has begun. It will change everything. In this new phase, evolution will be driven intentionally, by humanity.”

Science, technology, and spirituality (understood as the awareness of our interconnectedness) provide the tools for this conscious change.

I hope readers will be teased by the ideas presented here and will wish to interact with me. Welcome to my blog. I look forward to your comments.

Silvia Casabianca