IMAGINARIUM A Concept For Improving Early Learning

 

Assertion: The organ in our body that defines us is our brain. It is YOU, the source
of every thought you will have, the filter through which every idea you ever encounter must pass. It is the environment from which all of your ideas, hopes and dreams emanate. Your brain is your Imaginarium.

And how fortunate it is that the brain is the one organ in our body that we can have a direct influence upon. For good or ill, you will feed it, train it. In fact, you can't not feed it. It will learn, no matter what.  And what you, friends, family and society feed your brain will define the life you will live. At the very least, it will define the potential of that life.

Our brain is born ready-and-eager-to-learn. However, because our body takes so long to mature, we put off training (feeding) the brain for years. Mostly, it marks time, waiting for our body to catch up. Why do we wait so long to start training our most important organ? At root, it's probably because of habit, custom. Because... "We've always done it that way!"

In not taking better advantage of the early years, are we underutilizing the potential of the brain's most fertile period in life? The one time when everything is new, the slate is clean and the brain is so eager to learn?

 

An Assertion and an Observation

I believe the brain is not only born ready-to-learn but it is also capable of learning and solving problems while we sleep. How often have you awakened in the morning with a solution to what you had been thinking about the day before? 

During my years in the Theatre, I discovered that if I studied lines at night, and then slept-on-them, I was much further ahead in the learning process the next morning. And, when I was Producing or Directing a play I found that during the night my brain would, somehow, solve the problems I had gone to sleep thinking about.

Questions

If the brain is born ready-to-learn, why don't we start feeding it sooner?  And, If it continues its work while we sleep, why don't we explore ways to take better advantage of the one third of our life we spend sleeping?            

An Imaginarium Bed  

Imagine combining a child’s crib and a planetarium, creating a place where a child sleeps under-the-stars. Every night.

This bed might be in a tent, with a screen mounted overhead. When the child goes to bed a friend/host will appear on the screen and greet the child:

 “Hi Bobby. I sure hope you had a good day.”

In this soothing, conversational manner the host will then offer an age-specific lesson-for-the-day, the goal of which is to nourish curiosity and to impart basic educational tools. For the very young, this could include:

Learning the alphabet: 

Building Vocabulary: A word might be presented each night and the child asked to think about it and figure out what it means. The next night, the child would be reminded of the word and given its definition.

Mathematics:  In a similar fashion, an understanding of simple, basic mathematics will be imparted.  

Production values would be minimal, like mom or dad reading a bedtime story. Beyond imparting simple educational tools, the main goal of the lessons would be to encourage the child's curiosity about these, and other, subjects.  

The image on the screen would then change to a view of that night's moon and the host would explain why it looks the way it does. The screen would then change to a view of that night’s sky and the host would point out some of its particulars. Then, with appropriate classical music in the background, the child would be left to ponder the cosmos as he or she falls asleep.

 

“It is the structure of the universe that has taught this knowledge to man. That structure is an ever-existing exhibition of every principle upon which every part of mathematical science is founded.”

Thomas Paine

“The Age of Reason”

 

“Something in us recognizes the Cosmos as home. We are made of stellar ash. Our origin and evolution have been tied to distant cosmic events. The exploration of the Cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.”

Carl Sagan

“Cosmos”

 

Why Imaginarium?

There is something basic about sleeping under the stars, just looking up at the sky and pondering what you see. And it’s an experience fewer and fewer people have, today. If you live in a city you rarely, if ever, pay any attention to the night sky. And, even if you want to see it, light pollution is such that you can see very little of what’s there, anyway.

For most of human history the sky was all people had to ponder after the sun went down. Were they deprived or were they blessed? Consider what they were able to figure out with only the sky to teach them: that the earth is not flat, but round, that it revolves around the sun, and not the other way around, that it is one of a number of planets in the solar system, gravity, navigation, etc.

What are today’s kids losing, or not learning, by not pondering the night sky? What might future generations learn if a keen interest in, and understanding of, the cosmos were rekindled?

OBSERVATION

When not in their own comfort zone, many people, today, (especially young people) seem comfortable only when plugged-in to somewhere else. Distracted by cell phones, CDs, MP3s, etc., they are, for the most part, unaware of the potential of the moment-at-hand.  If this is true, might we be loosing the ability to recognize and respond, face to face, to the potential of the moment? Could this explain why so many, today, depend on the Internet to find friends, dates, wives, husbands?

 ASSERTION

 Nothing is more important than being your own best friend, comfortable with spending time in your own mind. One should always strive to be aware of what’s happening right now, for nothing beyond the moment at hand is guaranteed to us.

OBSERVATION

Kids, today, seem uncomfortable with just ‘being’. When faced with a moment where nothing seems to be happening, they automatically reach for a cell phone or some other device-of-distraction to fill the void.  

If a person needs to fill every silent moment with noise might they, also, find it difficult to spend time in their own mind, thinking, daydreaming, imagining? 

ASSERTION

Creativity depends on imagination and imagination is dependent on enjoying time spent with our own mind.

QUESTION

Could Imaginarium help? Not just by feeding our young brain with good and nourishing truths but, also, by training us, from a very early age, to enjoy the time we spend with ourselves?

What now?

A test to prove, or disprove, this Imaginarium Concept?

How might such a test work and what would success look like?

I believe that if we introduced a group of children to Imaginarium very early, weeks-old maybe, that before they reached the age of five, today's school age, they would:

1. Know the alphabet.

2. Have a vocabulary well beyond their years.
3. Be able to read.
4. Have an understanding of basic mathematics.
5. Understand the solar system and how it works.
6. Be comfortable with classical music.
7. Etc.

No matter how much the children learned during such a test, however, surely the most important lesson that could be learned is that learning can be easy and fun and natural; as if by osmosis.  

 

Dick Mueller

October 31, 2010