CHANGE FROM WITHIN

Montessori Toy

At the bottom of an email sent by Jeannie I read this quote from Dagmar Schiffmann, "The soul of the child should be filled with so much beauty and so much joy that he can draw on it for his entire life. Then he absolutely cannot fail." 

Jeannie operates Moultrie Montessori School in St Augustine where children have the opportunity to progress in their own ways at their own pace recognizing each is born with internal resources waiting to develop.

Jeannie wrote, “Montessori offers the best chance a child has to achieve his/her potential. That is because Montessori works from the inside out. It is a whole organization of the child physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually that allows the child to become his or her very best self.”

The big question facing us today is, "How can we can find ways to release the best self which is the true nature of each human?" How can we protect one another from forces which would deny "Liberty and Justice for All?"

I lived in Winston-Salem when riots broke after the murder of Martin Luther King and tutored once a week at a black school. We tutors questioned if we would be in danger if we went back into black neighborhoods, but we overcame our fears and visited the classrooms. Knowing that whites and blacks alike feared the violence that had irrupted, I asked the child I was tutoring how she had felt when she heard what was happening and saw fighting on TV. Her reply was that she was afraid of the "bad, white policemen." I could be a caring white presence for the child but I could not remove those memories of fear associated with whites which were stored in her brain.   

An article in the Atlantic demonstrates the link between the functioning of the brain and the problems in our society which have been so intractable. Tara García Mathewson in her article in the article "How Poverty Changes the Brain" in the The Atlantic, states "And the science is clear—when brain capacity is used up on these worries and fears, there simply isn’t as much bandwidth for other things." The gist of the article is that the symptoms which we associate with poverty can be traced to the trauma caused by the "constant stresses and dangers of poverty." It is a self-sustaining loop. Change can occur when attention is simultaneously given to the children, the families and the society.

But maybe the primary take away from the article is that when we are preoccupied with fears and worries we can't think straight. If we take away the things about which people are most afraid and worried we can get on the road to solving problems.

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How Poverty Changes the Brain

The Atlantic

Tara García Mathewson