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
