Earliest Education

When my daughter was an infant, I watched in fascination as she learned how to move her body and tried to make sense of the world. For instance, as she lay on her back, waving her arms and legs, kicking and cooing, she would catch a glimpse of her hand as it flew by her face. It moved too quickly for her to get a good look at it so she didn’t know what it was. But she would stop kicking and cooing momentarily to watch and see if it came back.

A little later she spent one afternoon between lunch and nap time in her high chair, dropping toys over the side. She would drop one and watch it fall, pick up another, drop it, and watch it fall. When all the toys were on the floor, I would pick them up and put them back whereupon she would repeat the sequence. There was a thoughtful deliberation in the way she did this and it finally dawned on me that it was in the nature of a scientific experiment. No matter how many toys she dropped, they always fell down to the floor. Not once all afternoon, did any of them fall up to the ceiling.

A little bit later she spent most of an afternoon standing on a dining room chair calling “Mama.” She had long been experimenting with her voice, repeating certain syllables that evidently were fun to say. Then she made a momentous discovery. If she said “ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma” nothing particular happened; but if she said “ma ma” and stopped there, I would pay attention to her. She tested her hypothesis and sure enough, every time she said “ma ma,” her female parent would come to see what she wanted.

I remember my younger son’s first joke. We had recently given him a piggy bank and he had a lot of fun putting coins in it. Then one day I announced that we were going to go visit my Aunt Peggy. His little brows came together for a moment of intense thought then he burst out laughing, “Peggy bank, Peggy bank! We see Peggy bank!” It wasn’t much of a joke but he has gone on to much funnier ones since then.

It is such a delight to watch our children learn these simple, yet indispensable lessons. If we exercise a little patience, we can enjoy vicariously once again the wonder of the world, the surprising beauty of the earth and sky, plants and animals. We can savor the first appreciation of humor and the gurgling joy of living once again through our children. The astonishing phenomenon of hiccups, the discovery of our own shadow, the highly interesting fact that when it rains in the front yard it also rains in the back yard.

I remember the first time I made the connection between a word and the thing it represented. I was in front of the new refrigerator in my grandmother’s kitchen and I was holding a little blue earthenware bowl in my hands. Suddenly, the word “bowl” popped into my mind. Bowl. Yes, this thing in my hands is a bowl. I repeated the word in my mind over and over. It was very exciting. Bowl.

From then on I thought about words. I thought mushrooms were mushroons because the “room” sound was already assigned to indoor living spaces. My winter coat had matching leggings, which we pronounced “leggin’s.” We had some friends named Lagan and I found it very confusing that wearing apparel and people had the same name. I knew what a floor was and it baffled me on being introduced to a woman named Flora that anyone would call a person a floor. I have had endless fun over the years in making the acquaintance of words by sight and sound and meaning.

Discoveries and learning experiences such as these are the educational foundation on which everything else is built. Children need time to themselves to experiment and to reflect. They need time with their parents for interaction, to test their conclusions, to articulate their ideas. They need time with their parents to discuss, to observe, to play, for it is in these times that children form their basic philosophy of life and their basic understanding of the world. If parents are not available for such times, their children will learn some of what they need to know from others, from relatives, friends, teachers, coaches, television, and movies. But they may not learn other vital lessons, such as the value of every person, how to form intimate bonds, how to be a good parent.

This is why mental health practioners delve into the patient’s childhood. So much of a person’s understanding of the world is formed in infancy and toddlerhood that he or she might not consciously know why he believes what he does. When we first realize that others’ understanding of the world differs from our own, it comes as a surprise. We took it for granted that reality was the same for everyone. In truth, reality is different for everyone because those early lessons are different for each of us.

A baby whose parent comes to him when he cries in the middle of the night will find the world a very different place from one who is left alone to cry it out. A toddler who goes to day care five days a week will experience a different world from one whose parent stays home with him. The world is very different for a toddler whose parent is home but too busy to pay attention to him than it is for a toddler whose parent is home and devotes some time to her at intervals during the day. A toddler who is parked in front of the TV for hours everyday in order to keep him amused and out of the parent’s way will perceive the world in much different ways than a toddler who is given toys to exercise mind and body and who is read to regularly.

Passivity is the enemy. Watching TV, going to the movies, playing video games, and listening to CDs are all passive activities. Depending on the subject matter, they can all be informative and they can certainly be entertaining. But we want our children to be active, not passive. We want them to be able to take action when necessary, to use their ingenuity to solve problems, to invent, to imagine, to give. In order to instill those abilities, we must nurture their active natures, beginning in earliest infancy. Let them know they have power by going to them when they cry for if you don’t your infant will believe that he is powerless and this will be a great hindrance unless and until he discovers for himself that he does have the power to effect change in his life.

Give your children building blocks, Lincoln logs, erector sets. If your daughter wants a house for her doll, encourage her to make one. Give her scraps of cloth, cardboard boxes, colored paper, scissors, and glue and prepare to be amazed at the house she constructs. How much more satisfying than to have a big plastic one that just sits there. Buy the children books, take them to the library, read to them. Show them how much of the world exists outside of their own little corner of it. Show them how other people live, let them discover the infinite variety of life.

Brokeback Books

It is very disappointing to check a book out of the library only to find that its spine is broken. It’s virtually impossible to read such a book; half of it flops dismally, leaving the other half out of balance. It’s hard to hold and no fun at all. The distressing thing about books with broken spines is knowing who the perpetrators are. Surprisingly, the culprits are not usually teenage vandals or even thoughtless adult readers, they are librarians.

Of all the people who ought to respect books, I would expect librarians to be at the top of the list. Quite probably, many of them are. But many of them are not. Librarians are the ones who devised the return chutes for convenience. Instead of taking the books inside and sliding them across a counter to a librarian to handle gently, we can push them through a slot and hear them tumble to the bottom of a big wooden box. Predictably, this is rather hard on the spines of the books.

However, even taking books into the library and handing them to a librarian to check in does not always have a better result. For instance, in the public library that I most often use, the big wooden box that receives books through a slot stands beside the counter where books are received by librarians. I usually ask for a receipt when I return books because if I don’t the library too often sends me a notice that one of the books I returned is overdue. That entails a long hassle while the staff waits for months to see if the book surfaces inside the library. If it doesn’t I am required to pay for the book. Hence the receipt.

Handing books to the librarian is unpleasant because he or she drops or tosses the books into the big wooden box. I can almost feel the spines snap. We try to teach our children to handle books carefully, to respect the fragility of these bundles of knowledge, fun, and wonder. Teachers instruct their students in the proper handling of new books: open the front cover, then the back cover, then open the book in the middle. This will help to protect the spine from cracking or breaking. Then the student goes to the library and finds that librarians routinely disrespect their charges, throwing them around carelessly. That sends a very bad message to the youngsters. How can we expect children to respect books when librarians don’t?

In researching the presidents for the book I’m writing - Presidential Education: Prelude to Power - I often order books from other libraries through my local one. For the early presidents, this means that many of the books are old and in varying stages of decrepitude. They sometimes arrive with notices that state they are about to be withdrawn from circulation due to their fragile condition and asking me to be especially careful in handling them. I remember one in particular was damaged so that the cover was only held on by a few threads. It carried a special plea for gentle handling. I gave it tender care, opening it only on a table to avoid straining those few threads. When I returned it to my local library, I pointed out to the librarian that the book was very fragile and asked her to note the plea for gentle handling. She checked it in, looked me right in the eye, and dropped it from a height of about three feet into the big wooden box.