All of this is a great forest. Inside the forest is the child. The forest is beautiful, fascinating, green, and full of hopes; there are no paths. Although it isn’t easy, we have to make our own paths, as teachers and children and families, in the forest. Sometimes we find ourselves together within the forest, sometimes we may get lost from each other, sometimes we’ll greet each other from far away across the forest; but it’s living together in this forest that is important. And this living together is not easy.
We have to find each other in the forest and begin to discuss what the education of the child actually means. The important aspect is not just to promote the education of the child but the health and happiness of the child as well.
(Malaguzzi)
A happy heart makes the face cheerful,
(Proverbs)
The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
(Tao Te Ching)
Art reminds us of states of animal vigor; it is on the one hand an excess and overflow
of blooming physicality into the world of images and desires; on the other, an
excitation of the animal functions through the images and desires of intensified life; –
an enhancement of the feeling of life, a stimulant to it.
(Nietzsche)
There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and is only relative. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object, whereas the awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object.
(Ramana Maharshi)
Wisdom has built her house;
she has set up[a] its seven pillars.
2 She has prepared her meat and mixed her wine;
she has also set her table.
(Proverbs)
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The name is the mother of the ten thousand things.
(Tao Te Ching)
“We teach a subject not to produce little libraries on that subject, but rather to get a student to think … for himself, to consider matters as a historian does, to take part in the process of knowledge–getting. Knowing is a process, not a product. (Bruner)
You, the Self, being the root of all being, consciousness and joy, impart your reality to whatever you perceive. This imparting of reality takes place invariably in the now, at no other time, because past and future are only in the mind. ‘Being’ applies to the now only.
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
Light in a messenger’s eyes brings joy to the heart,
and good news gives health to the bones.
(Proverbs)
Transmit conventional ideas but encourage students to make the leap to the imaginable. (Bruner)
And it is without beginning, or end, without content and without edge. There is only content without edge — without boundary or frame — and there is only edge without content. (Derrida)
“I Am—the one who speaks with you.” (John 4:26)
Hasn’t the sky? Returned from moving the other
Authority recently dropped, wrested as much of
That severe sunshine as you need now on the way
You go.
(John Ashbery)
From the mouth of the righteous comes the fruit of wisdom
(Proverbs)
We have to let children be with children. Children
learn a lot from other children, and adults learn
from children being with children. Children love to
learn among themselves, and they learn things that
it would never be possible to learn from interactions
with an adult. The interaction between children is a
very fertile and a very rich relationship. If it is left to
ferment without adult interference and without that
excessive assistance that we sometimes give, then
it’s more advantageous to the child.
(Malaguzzi)
The Light of consciousness comes to him through infinite powers of perception, and yet he is above all these powers. (Bhagavad Gita)
The Master gives himself up
to whatever the moment brings.
(Tao Te Ching)
When pride comes, then comes disgrace,
but with humility comes wisdom.
(Proverbs)
Hold on to the sense ‘I am’ to the exclusion of everything else. When this mind becomes completely silent, it shines with a new light and vibrates with new knowledge. It all comes spontaneously; you need only to hold on to the ‘I Am’.
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink”. (John 4:7)
Have I awakened? Or is this sleep again? Another form of sleep? There is no profile in the massed days ahead. They are impersonal as mountains whose tops are hidden in cloud. The middle of the journey, before the sands are reversed: a place of ideal quiet. (John Ashbery)
Those who are kind benefit themselves
(Proverbs)
In this wisdom a man goes beyond what is well done and what is not well done. Go thou therefore to wisdom : Yoga is wisdom in work.
(Bhagavad Gita 2:50)
I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white with harvest.
(John 4:35)
Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest person who in his integrity worships God becomes God; yet forever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable. It inspires awe and astonishment. How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence. It is the doubling of the heart itself, nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of growth to a new infinity on every side. It inspires in man an infallible trust. He has not the conviction, but the sight, that the best is true, and may in that thought easily dismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, and adjourn to the sure revelation of time the solution of his private riddles. He is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart of being.
(Emerson)
The Lilly of the valley, breathing in the humble grass
(William Blake)
The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,
and the one who is wise saves lives.
(Proverbs)
… water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:14)
‘The Everlasting is shapeless, birthless, breathless, mindless, above everything, outside everything, inside everything.
(Mundaka Upanishad)
17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.[a][b] 21 Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. 24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days. (Genesis 7:17-24)
“This visitation of Yahweh is so radically surprising and over-taking that he who receives does not even receive it himself, in his name. His identity is as if fractured. He receives without being ready to welcome since he is no longer the same between the moment at which God initiates the visit and the moment at which, visiting to him, he speaks to him. This is indeed hospitality par excellence in which the visitor radically overwhelms the self of the ‘visited’ and the chez-soi of the host. For as you know these visitations and announcements will begin with changes of names, heteronomous changes, unilaterally decided by God …
(Derrida)
From the fruit of their lips people are filled with good things,
and the work of their hands brings them reward.
(Proverbs)
The ceremony of the pharmakos is thus played out on the boundary line
between inside and outside, which it has as its function ceaselessly to trace
and retrace. The origin of difference and division, (Derrida)
All will come as you go on. Take the first step first. All blessings come from within. Turn within. ‘l am’ you know. Be with it all the time you can spare, until you revert to it spontaneously. There is no simpler and easier way.
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
Wisdom has built her house;
she has set up[a] its seven pillars.
2 She has prepared her meat and mixed her wine;
she has also set her table.
3 She has sent out her servants, and she calls
from the highest point of the city,
4 “Let all who are simple come to my house!”
To those who have no sense she says,
5 “Come, eat my food
and drink the wine I have mixed.
6 Leave your simple ways and you will live;
walk in the way of insight.” (Proverbs)
It calls upon the reader as witness in the way one might address oneself to a confessor or to some transferential addressee, some would say to an analyst, assuming that the reader is not always an analyst. Freud,then, has the premonition (Ich ahne) that something exceeds the analysis. The interpretation, the analytic deciphering, the Deutung of a certain fragment did not go far enough: a hidden meaning (verborgenne Sinn) exceeds the analysis.
(Derrida)
There are two ways of achieving surrender. One is looking into the source of the ‘I’ and merging into that source. The other is feeling ‘I am helpless myself, God alone is all powerful and except throwing myself completely on Him, there is no other means of safety for me’, and thus gradually developing the conviction that God alone. exists and the ego does not count. Both methods lead to the same goal. Complete surrender is another name for jnana or liberation.
(Sri Ramana Maharshi)
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)
Know the male, yet keep to the female: receive the world in your arms.
(Tao Te Ching)
Anxiety weighs down the heart,
but a kind word cheers it up.
(Proverbs)
ask the tender
cloud
(William Blake)
The fictitious world of subject, substance, “reason,” etc., is
needed-: there is in us a power to order, simplify, falsify, artificially
distinguish. “Truth” is the will to be master over the
multiplicity of sensations:-to classify phenomena into definite
categories. In this we start from a belief in the “in-itself” of things
(we take phenomena as real). (Nietzsche)
Get wisdom, get understanding;
do not forget my words or turn away from them.
6 Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you;
love her, and she will watch over you.
7 The beginning of wisdom is this: Get[a] wisdom.
Though it cost all you have,[b] get understanding.
8 Cherish her, and she will exalt you;
embrace her, and she will honor you.
9 She will give you a garland to grace your head
and present you with a glorious crown.
(Proverbs)
By thy grace I remember my Light, and now gone is my delusion. My doubts are no more, my faith is firm; and now I can say ‘Thy will be done’.
(Bhagavad Gita)
When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two. The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself to be something: ‘I am this, I am that’, continues, but only as a part of the objective world. Its identification with the witness snaps. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
in these communications the power to see is not separated from the will to do, but the insight proceeds from obedience. and the obedience proceeds from a joyful perception, every moment when a man feels invaded by it is memorable.
(Emerson)
From the fruit of their lips people enjoy good things
(Proverbs)
What is the relation between light and lucidity, between the essence of language and the fall to the bottom of the abyss? (Derrida)
The truth is that every man himself is a piece of fate; when he thinks he is stirring against fate in the way described, fate is being realized here, too; the struggle is imaginary, but so is resignation to fate — all these imaginary ideas are included in fate… In you the whole future of the human world is predetermined. (Nietzsche)
A heart at peace gives life to the body
(Proverbs)
No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
Gracious words are a honeycomb,
sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
(Proverbs)
Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give you. (John 6:27)
It is the illusion of time that makes you talk of causality. When the past and the future are seen in the timeless now, as parts of a common pattern, the idea of cause-effect loses its validity and creative freedom takes its place.
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
Let us take the chance, then, after so many glosses, of an ingenuous reading. Let us try to see what happens. But is this not right away impossible? … The point is right away to go beyond, in one fell swoop, the first glance and thus to see there where this glance is blind, to open. one’s eyes wide there where one does not see what one sees. One must see, at first sight, what does not let itself be seen. And this is invisibility itself For what first sight misses is the invisible. The flaw, the error of first sight is to see, and not to notice the invisible. (Derrida)
What the child doesn’t want is an observation from
the adult who isn’t really there, who is distracted.
The child wants to know that she is observed, carefully, with full attention. The child wants to be
observed in action. She wants the teacher to see the
process of her work, rather than the product. The
teacher asks the child to take a bucket of water from
one place to the other. It’s not important to the child
that the teacher only sees him arrive with the bucket
of water at the end. What is important to the child is
that the teacher sees the child while the child is
working, while the child is putting out the effort to
accomplish the task — the processes are important,
how much the child is putting into the effort, how
heroic the child is doing this work. What children
want is to be observed while engaged, they do not
want the focus of the observation to be on the final
product. When we as adults are able to see the
children in the process, it’s as if we are opening a
window and getting a fresh view of things.
(Malaguzzi)
Who everywhere is free from all ties
(Bhagavad Gita)
From this we can realize that a well-prepared teacher
(in the usual sense) is the worst teacher for the child.
The greatest effort in our method is that of trying to free
the teacher from the prejudices he or she may possess
and the greatest success is the teacher who can best free
herself or himself from them. The measure of how well
they succeed is seen in how far they are still cloaked by
prejudice. So if education of a great number is envisaged
and there is a scarcity of teachers, what can we say but :
” Thank God ! ” It is one of the best conditions.
(Montessori)
For everything there are innumerable causal factors. But the source of all that is, is the Infinite Possibility, the Supreme Reality, which is in you and which throws its power and light and love on every experience. But, this source is not a cause and no cause is a source. Because of that, I say everything is uncaused. You may try to trace how a thing happens, but you cannot find out why a thing is as it is. A thing is as it is, because the universe is as it is.
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
It is assumed here that the task of reality-acceptance is
never completed, that no human being is free from the
strain of relating inner and outer reality, and that relief
from this strain is provided by an intermediate area of
experience (cf. Riviere, 1936) which is not challenged
(arts, religion, etc.). This intermediate area is in direct
continuity with the play area of the small child who is
‘lost’ in play. (Winnicott)
Witness openly responds. Response comes from nowhere. Mind then penetrates. Penetrate the One, and all tasks are done. (Sun Bu-er)
What is unexpected on one level may be certain to happen, when seen from a higher level After all, we are within the limits of the mind. In reality nothing happens, there is no past nor future; all appears and nothing is. (Emerson)
When pride comes, then comes disgrace,
but with humility comes wisdom.
(Proverbs)
The scene of the mystery play is a deep place like the crater of a volcano. My deep interior is a volcano. (Jung)
In human beings, with their astonishing narrative gift, one of the principal forms of peacekeeping is the human gift for presentating, dramatizing, and explicating the mitigating circumstances surrounding conflict-threatening breaches in the ordinariness of life. The object of the narrative is not to reconcile, not to legitimize, not to even excuse, but to rather explicate…To be in a viable culture is to be bound in a set of connecting stories, connecting even though the stories may not represent a consensus.
(Bruner)
The proverbs of Shlomo (Solomon) the son of David,
king of Isra’el,
2 are for learning about wisdom and discipline;
for understanding words expressing deep insight;
3 for gaining an intelligently disciplined life,
doing what is right, just and fair;
4 for endowing with caution those who don’t think
and the young person with knowledge and discretion.
5 Someone who is already wise
will hear and learn still more;
someone who already understands
will gain the ability to counsel well;
6 he will understand proverbs, obscure expressions,
the sayings and riddles of the wise.(Proverbs 1:1-6)
in his or her culture and discipline, whatever it may be, in particular philosophy, medicine, psychiatry, and more precisely here, because we are speaking of memory and of archive, the history of texts and of discourses, political history, legal history, the history of ideas or of culture, the history of religion and religion itself …
(Derrida)
Those who are kind benefit themselves,
but the cruel bring ruin on themselves.
(Proverbs)
. . . but make ready for this readiness of holding oneself open for the arrival, or for the absence, of a god. Even the experience of this absence is not nothing, but a liberation of man from what in Being and Time I call “fallenness” upon beings.29 Making [ourselves] ready for the aforementioned readiness involves reflecting on what in our own day. . .is.
(Heidegger)
The path of the righteous is like the morning sun,
shining ever brighter till the full light of day.
(Proverbs)
The environment you construct around you and the
children also reflects this image you have about the
child. There’s a difference between the environment
that you are able to build based on a preconceived
image of the child and the environment that you can
build that is based on the child you see in front of you
— the relationship you build with the child, the
games you play. An environment that grows out of
your relationship with the child is unique and fluid.
The quality and quantity of relationships among you
as adults and educators also reflects your image of
the child. Children are very sensitive and can see and
sense very quickly the spirit of what is going on
among the adults in their world. They understand
whether the adults are working together in a truly
collaborative way or if they are separated in some
way from each other, living their experience as if it
were private with little interaction. (Malaguzzi)
Origin of the experience of space and time, this writing of difference,
this fabric of the trace, permits the difference between space and time to be
articulated, to appear as such, in the unity of an experience (of a same”
lived out of a “same” body proper [corps propre ). This articulation therefore
permits a graphic (“visual” or tactile,” spatial”) chain to be adapted,
on occasion in a linear fashion, to a spoken (“phonic,” “temporal”) chain.
It is from the primary possibility of this articulation that one must begin.
Difference is articulation
(Derrida)
My son, pay attention to what I say;
turn your ear to my words.
21 Do not let them out of your sight,
keep them within your heart;
22 for they are life to those who find them
and health to one’s whole body.
23 Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.
(Proverbs)
There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond us all, beyond the heavens, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in our heart. (Chandogya Upanishad)
The more teachers are convinced that intellectual and expressive activities have both multiplying and unifying possibilities, the more creativity favors friendly exchanges with imagination and fantasy. (Malaguzzi)
Spacing as writing is the becoming-absent and the becoming-unconscious
of the subject. By the movement of its drift/derivation [derive] the
emancipation of the sign constitutes in return the desire of presence. That
becoming-or that drift/derivation-does not befall the subject which
would choose it or would passively let itself be drawn along by it. As the
subject’s relationship with its own death, this becoming is the constitution
of subjectivity. On all levels of life’s organization, that is to say, of the
economy of death. All graphemes are of a testamentary essence.31 And the
original absence of the subject of writing is also the absence of the thing
or the referent
(Derrida)
In their hearts humans plan their course,
but the Lord establishes their steps.
(Proverbs)
The root of situational constraints upon a child lies in a central fact
of consciousness characteristic of early childhood: the union of motives
and perception. At this age perception is generally not an independent
but rather an integrated feature of a motor reaction. Every perception is
a stimulus to activity. Since a situation is communicated psychologically
through perception, and since perception is not separated from motivational
and motor activity, it is understandable that with her consciousness
so structured, the child is constrained by the situation in which she
finds herself.
But in play, things lose their determining force. The child sees one
thing but acts differently in relation to what he sees. Thus, a condition
is reached in which the child begins to act independently of what he
sees. Certain brain-damaged patients lose the ability to act independently
of what they see. In considering such patients one can appreciate
that the freedom of action adults and more mature children enjoy is not
acquired in a Hash but has to go through a long process of development.
(Vygotsky)
In the first place, a phoenix motif. Once again, the destruction
of life is only an appearance: it is the destruction of the appearance of life. One buries or burns what is already dead so that life, the living feminine, will be reborn and regenerated from these ashes. The vitalist theme degeneration/regeneration is active and central throughout the argument. This revitalization, as we have already seen, must first of all pass by way of the tongue, that is, by way of the exercise of the tongue or language, the treatment of its body, the mouth and the ear …
(Derrida)
We can never think of the child in the abstract. When
we think about a child, when we pull out a child to
look at, that child is already tightly connected and
linked to a certain reality of the world — she has
relationships and experiences. We cannot separate
this child from a particular reality. She brings these
experiences, feelings, and relationships into school
with her.(Malaguzzi)
The configurative unity of these significations-the power of speech, the
creation of being and life, the sun (which is also, as we shall see, the eye),
rhe self-concealment-is conjugated in what could be called the history of
the egg or the egg of history. The world came out of an egg. (Derrida)
‘His phases return to their source, his senses to their gods, his personal self and all his actions to the impersonal imperishable Self.
(Mundaka Upanishad Book 3)
When you begin working with children in the
morning, you must, as adults, pose questions about
the children, such as: “When are these children really
going to begin socializing?” And at the same time
the children will pose questions to the adults: “When
are the adults really going to begin socializing?” This
is a dialogue that needs to be continual between the
adults and the children. The adults ask questions
from the world of adults to the children. The
children will ask questions to the adults. The expectations that the children have of the adults and the
adults have of the children are important. We must
spend some time talking about these expectations.
(Malaguzzi)
That which returns is the constant affirmation, the “yes, yes” on which I insisted yesterday. That which signs here is in the form of a return, which is to say it
has the form of something that cannot be simple. It is a selective return without negativity, or which reduces negativity through affirmation, through alliance or marriage (hymen), that is, through an affirmation that is also binding on the other or that enters into a pact with itself as other.
(Derrida)
A gentle answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger. (Proverbs)
For progress occurs through re-inventing
These words from a dim recollection of them,
In violating that space in such a way as
To leave it intact. Yet we do after all
Belong here, and have moved a considerable
Distance; our passing is a facade.
But our understanding of it is justified.
(John Ashbery)
“This visitation of Yahweh is so radically surprising and over-taking that he who receives does not even receive it himself, in his name. His identity is as if fractured. He receives without being ready to welcome since he is no longer the same between the moment at which God initiates the visit and the moment at which, visiting to him, he speaks to him. This is indeed hospitality par excellence in which the visitor radically overwhelms the self of the ‘visited’ and the chez-soi of the host. For as you know these visitations and announcements will begin with changes of names, heteronomous changes, unilaterally decided by God …
(Derrida)
The hallmarks of spirit are, firstly, the principle of spontaneous
movement and activity; secondly, the spontaneous capacity to produce
images independently of sense perception; and thirdly, the autonomous
and sovereign manipulation of these images. This spiritual entity
approaches primitive man from outside; but with increasing development it
gets lodged in man’s consciousness and becomes a subordinate function,
thus apparently forfeiting its original character of autonomy. That
character is now retained only in the most conservative views, namely in
the religions. The descent of spirit into the sphere of human consciousness
is expressed in the myth of the divine νοūς caught in the embrace of ϕúσις.
(Jung)
The quality and quantity of relationships among you
as adults and educators also reflects your image of
the child. Children are very sensitive and can see and
sense very quickly the spirit of what is going on
among the adults in their world. They understand
whether the adults are working together in a truly
collaborative way or if they are separated in some
way from each other, living their experience as if it
were private with little interaction. (Malaguzzi)
He is designated sometimes as the
bird-sun born from the primal egg, sometimes as the originary bird, carrier
of the first egg. (Derrida)
This process, continuing over the ages, is probably an unavoidable
necessity, and the religions would find themselves in a very forlorn
situation if they believed in the attempt to hold up evolution. Their task, if
they are well advised, is not to impede the ineluctable march of events, but
to guide it in such a way that it can proceed without fatal injury to the soul.
(Jung)
The boy did not immediately give an abnormal impression and he quickly
entered into a squiggle game with me. (In this squiggle
game I make some kind of an impulsive line-drawing and
invite the child whom I am interviewing to turn it into
something, and then he makes a squiggle for me to turn
into something in my turn.) (Winnicott)
Commit to the Lord whatever you do,
and he will establish your plans. (Proverbs)
The transcendent spirit became the
supranatural and transmundane cosmic principle of order and as such was
given the name of “God,” or at least it became an attribute of the One
Substance (as in Spinoza) or one Person of the Godhead (as in
Christianity). (Jung)
No doubt the god Thoth had several faces, belonged to several eras, lived
in several homes. (Derrida)
The most significant moment in the course of intellectual development,
which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical
and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity,
two previously completely independent lines of development, converge.
Although children’s use of tools during their preverbal period is comparable
to that of apes, as soon as speech and the use of signs are
incorporated into any action, the action becomes transformed and organized
along entirely new lines. The specifically human use of tools is
thus realized, going beyond the more limited use of tools possible among
the higher animals. (Vygotsky)
The new feeling of power is the state of mysticism; and the clearest, boldest rationalism is only a help and means toward it.–Philosophy expresses extraordinarily elevated states of soul. (Nietzsche)
Of course, many things that happen in school can be
seen ahead and planned beforehand. But many
things that happen cannot be known ahead of time.
Something will start to grow inside the child and
suddenly what is happening in the school will move
in that direction. Sometimes what happens starts
inside the adults. School can never be always
predictable. We need to be open to what takes place
and able to change our plans and go with what
might grow at that very moment both inside the
child and inside ourselves. (Malaguzzi)
We may say that we become ourselves through others and that this rule applies not only to the personality as a whole, but also to the history of every individual function.
(Vygotsky)
The religions should therefore constantly recall to us the origin and
original character of the spirit, lest man should forget what he is drawing
into himself and with what he is filling his consciousness. He himself did
not create the spirit, rather the spirit makes him creative, always spurring
him on, giving him lucky ideas, staying power, “enthusiasm” and
“inspiration.” (Jung)
To those who have not realized the Self, as well as to those who have, the word ‘I’ refers to the body, but with this difference, that for those who have not realized, the ‘I’ is confined to the body whereas for those who have realized the Self within the body the ‘I’ shines as the limitless Self.
(Sri Ramana Maharshi)
The blessing of the Lord brings wealth,
without painful toil for it. (Proverbs)
the primordial phenomenon of the spirit takes
possession of him, and, while appearing to be the willing object of human
intentions, it binds his freedom, just as the physical world does, with a
thousand chains and becomes an obsessive idée-force. (Jung)
The play drive first appears as infants try to adapt the physical world to their needs.
At a few months, a baby transforms every object that can be grasped into one that
can be sucked. By the time children become preschoolers, they begin to create
playful associations between objects—which is what a four-year-old does, say,
when holding up a potato chip and exclaiming, “Look Mummy, a butter)y!” For
school-age children, play soon becomes more about making and breaking rules—
in a game of hide-and-seek, the lead child decides on the physical limits and time
frame of the game, then all the other players attempt to outwit the leader
(Elkind)
The soothing tongue is a tree of life,
but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.
(Proverbs)
There is such a thing as hearing without searching; as taking without inquiring as to who might be giving; and thought flashes forth like lightning, imposed as a necessity, under a definitive form: I have never had to choose. With such raptures, our too weary souls ease themselves, sometimes in a torrent of tears; mechanically we begin, and we speed up or slow down without realizing it; in such ecstasies we’re ravished from ourselves, and hundreds of delicate feelings crisscross, penetrating us down to our toes; in this abyss of felicity, horror and extreme suffering never appear as contraries of, but as results of, the glimmerings of such happiness, and as a hue that would necessarily suffuse the bottom of this ocean of light . . .(Nietzsche)
The child walks with his eyes
as well as his legs, and it is the interesting things in the
environment that carry him along. He walks and sees a
lamb eating, he is interested and sits down by it, watch-
ing ; then he gets up and goes further, he sees a flower
sits down by it and sniffs at it ; then he sees a tree,
walks up to it and round and round it four or five times
and then sits down and looks at it. In this way he
covers miles ; they are walks full of resting periods and
at the same time full of interesting information, and if
there is something difficult like a boulder in the way, that
is the height of his happiness. Water is another great
attraction. Sometimes he will sit down and say :
” Water “, happily and all you can see is a tiny stream
falling drop by drop. (Montessori)
Each one of us needs to be able to play with the
things that are coming out of the world of children.
Each one of us needs to have curiosity, and we need
to be able to try something new based on the ideas
that we collect from the children as they go along.
Life has to be somewhat agitated and upset, a bit
restless, somewhat unknown. As life flows with the
thoughts of the children, we need to be open, we
need to change our ideas; we need to be comfortable
with the restless nature of life. (Malaguzzi)
“Then I put the ring in her nose and the bracelets on her arms, 48 and I bowed down and worshiped the Lord. I praised the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who had led me on the right road to get the granddaughter of my master’s brother for his son. 49 Now if you will show kindness and faithfulness to my
master, tell me; and if not, tell me, so I may know which way to turn.” (Genesis)
Do what you feel like doing. Don’t bully yourself. Violence will make you hard and rigid. Do not fight with what you take to be obstacles on your way. Just be interested in them, watch them, observe, enquire. Let anything happen — good or bad. But don’t let yourself be submerged by what happens.
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
All of this changes the role of the teacher, a role that
becomes much more difficult and complex. It also
makes the world of the teacher more beautiful,
something to become involved in. (Malaguzzi)
A friend loves at all times,
and a brother is born for a time of adversity.
(Proverbs)
You need not eliminate the wrong ‘I’. How can ‘I’ eliminate itself? All that you need do is to find out its origin and abide there. Your efforts can extend only thus far. Then the beyond will take care of itself. You are helpless there. No effort can reach it.(Sri Ramana Maharshi)
A cheerful heart is good medicine,
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
(Proverbs)
“He believes that he cannot escape from his good. The things that are really for thee gravitate for thee. You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need not. If you do not find him, will you not acquiesce that it is best you should not find him? for there is a power which, as it is in you, is in him also, and could therefore very well bring you together, if it were for the best. (Emerson)
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools[c] despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs)
The ability to enjoy relationships and work together
is very important. Children need to enjoy being in
school, they need to love their school and the interactions that take place there. Their expectations of
these interactions is critical. (Malaguzzi)
These examples of cycles of activity have no outer
purpose in themselves, but the child is carrying out
exercises giving fine co-ordination of his own movements^
And what has he done thereby ? He has prepared
himself to imitate certain things. There must be an
object in these exercises, but the object is not the real aim ;
they obey an inner urge. When he has prepared himself,
he can imitate, and the environment affords inspiration,
The dusting of the floor or the making of bread he sees
being done, serve him as an inspiration to do likewise.
(Montessori)
The one who has knowledge uses words with restraint,
and whoever has understanding is even-tempered.
(Proverbs)
You are preparing with eagerness to go and render a service to which your talent and your taste invite you, the love of men and the hope of fame. Has it not occurred to you that you have no right to go unless you are equally willing to be prevented from going? O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world which though oughtest to hear will vibrate on thine ear! Every proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will but the great and tender heart in thee craveth shall lock thee in its embrace. And this because the heart in thee is the heart in all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men as water of the globe is all one sea and, truly seen, its tide is one. (Emerson)
Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction
and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.
They are a garland to grace your head
and a chain to adorn your neck.
(Proverbs)
We may say that we become ourselves through others and that this rule applies not only to the personality as a whole, but also to the history of every individual function. (Vygotsky)
It is also important for the teachers to enjoy being
with the other teachers, to enjoy seeing the children
stretch their capacities and use their intelligences, to
enjoy interactions with the children. Both parts are
essential. (Malaguzzi)
The wind blows (breathes) where it wills; and though you hear its sound, yet you neither know where it comes from nor where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
_
God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
–
The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where the wind comes from or where it’s going. That’s the way it is with everyone born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)
“Then I put the ring in her nose and the bracelets on her arms, 48 and I bowed down and worshiped the Lord. I praised the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who had led me on the right road to get the granddaughter of my master’s brother for his son. 49 Now if you will show kindness and faithfulness to my
master, tell me; and if not, tell me, so I may know which way to turn.” (Genesis)
Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people…, and then within the child. This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher [mental] functions originate as actual relations between human individuals.
(Vygotsky)
It is not simply a matter of just waiting until something occurs to man within 300 years, but rather to think forward without prophetic claims into the coming time in terms of the fundamental thrust of our present age that has hardly been thought through [at all]. Thinking is not inactivity, but is itself by its very nature an engagement that stands in dialogue with the epochal moment of the world. It seems to me that the distinction between theory and practice comes from metaphysics, and the conception of a transmission between these two blocks the way to insight into what I understand by thinking.
(Heidegger)
It is amazing what observations and also conversations with children can
tell us educators about the complexity and beauty of their theories. Teachers
in Reggio Emilia are also well aware of what is important for children to learn
in terms of language development and numeracy, for example. Therefore,
on the basis of what the children do and say, the teachers can offer them the
possibilities to explore further and learn more. For example, in one school,
the children realized that there was a small table that they liked very much
and used for many projects and constructions, and at a certain moment
they asked their teacher for another one like it. The teacher called in a carpenter, but asked him not to measure the old one but to ask the children
to take the measurements. This developed into a long project in which the
children invented and experimented with various ways to measure the old
table. They ignored the tape measure that was in the school, trying instead
to use their bodies and various objects, settling for a while on a shoe. They
created measuring tapes with random numbers, but then realized they all
had different lengths. Finally, they came up with a way of measuring that
Play and the Hundred Languages of Children 7
the carpenter could use. If the teacher had suggested right away that the
children use the tape measure, they would have lost all that they learned in
this group research.(Gandini)
The divine child approached me out of the terrible ambiguity,
the hateful-beautiful, the evil-good, the laughable-serious, the
sick-healthy, the inhuman-human and the ungodly-godly. (Jung)
. . no matter how it happened, each time “the hero” strode across the stage,
something new was attained, a terrible reverse of laughter, a profound emotion for many in their thought: “Yes, life is worth living! Yes, I’m worthy of life!”-Life, you and me, all of us just as we are, we became interesting to ourselves. We cannot deny that in the long run laughter, reason, and nature ended up becoming masters of each of the great masters of teleology: Brief-tenured tragedy finally has always returned to the eternal comedy of existence. And the sea “with its countless smiles”–to speak with Aeschylus–with its waves, will finally cover the greatest of our tragedies. . .
(Nietzsche)
For your ways are in full view of the Lord,
and he examines all your paths.
(Proverbs)
Both children and adults need to feel active and
important — to be rewarded by their own efforts,
their own intelligences, their own activity and
energy. When a child feels these things are valued,
they become a fountain of strength for him. He feels
the joy of working with adults who value his work
and this is one of the bases for learning. (Malaguzzi)
“The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works,[c][d]
before his deeds of old;
23 I was formed long ages ago,
at the very beginning, when the world came to be.
24 When there were no watery depths, I was given birth,
when there were no springs overflowing with water;
25 before the mountains were settled in place,
before the hills, I was given birth,
26 before he made the world or its fields
or any of the dust of the earth.
27 I was there when he set the heavens in place,
when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,
28 when he established the clouds above
and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,
29 when he gave the sea its boundary
so the waters would not overstep his command,
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.
30 Then I was constantly[e] at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,
31 rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in mankind.
(Proverbs)
Lords! inspiration of sacrifice! May our ears hear the good. May our eyes see the good. May we serve Him with the whole strength of our body. May we, all our life, carry out His will.
Peace, peace, and peace be everywhere.
(Mandookya Upanishad)
When the release takes place, whatever is born in the mind explodes like a volcanic eruption or spills out like lightning. Zen calls this ‘return to self’ . . . ( D.T. Suzuki).
There are many things that are part of a child’s life
just as they are part of an adult’s life. The desire to
do something for someone, for instance. Every adult
has a need to feel that we are seen/observed by
others. (Observing others is also important.) This is
just as true for children as for adults. Therefore, it’s
possible to observe, to receive a lot of pleasure and
satisfaction from observing in many different ways.
(Malaguzzi)
The lot is cast into the lap,
but its every decision is from the Lord.
(Proverbs)
When those children of six years had the globe and
were talking about it, a child of three and a half came in
and said : ” Let me see ! Is this the world ? ” ” Yes ‘\
said the older ones, a little surprised, and the child of
three and a half said : ” Now I understand, because I
have an uncle who has gone three times round the world.
How was it round ? How did he go > Now I under-
stand/* At the same time he realized this was only a
model for he knew the world was immense ; he had
taken it from the conversation round him. (Montessori)
I live–if I choose to see things this way–among a curious race that sees earth, its chance events and the vast interconnectedness of animals, mammals, and insects not so much in relation to themselves–or the necessities limiting them–but in relation to the unlimited, lost, and unintelligible aspect of the skies.
(Nietzsche)
Better a dry crust with peace and quiet
than a house full of feasting, with strife.
(Proverbs)
The root of situational constraints upon a child lies in a central fact
of consciousness characteristic of early childhood: the union of motives
and perception. At this age perception is generally not an independent
but rather an integrated feature of a motor reaction. Every perception is
a stimulus to activity. Since a situation is communicated psychologically
through perception, and since perception is not separated from motivational
and motor activity, it is understandable that with her consciousness
so structured, the child is constrained by the situation in which she
finds herself.
But in play, things lose their determining force. The child sees one
thing but acts differently in relation to what he sees. Thus, a condition
is reached in which the child begins to act independently of what he
sees. Certain brain-damaged patients lose the ability to act independently
of what they see. In considering such patients one can appreciate
that the freedom of action adults and more mature children enjoy is not
acquired in a Hash but has to go through a long process of development.
(Vygotsky)
Lords! inspiration of sacrifice! May our ears hear the good. May our eyes see the good. May we serve Him with the whole strength of our body. May we, all our life, carry out His will.
Peace, peace, and peace be everywhere.
(Mandookya Upanishad)
It’s a constant value for the children to know that the
adult is there, attentive and helpful, a guide for the
child. Perhaps this way of working with the child
will build a different understanding of our role than
we have had before. Clarifying the meaning of our
presence and our being with children is something
that is vital for the child. When the child sees that the
adult is there, totally involved with the child, the
child doesn’t forget. This is something that’s right for
us and it’s right for the children. (Malaguzzi)
The half-meant, half-perceived
Motions of fronds out of idle depths that are
Summer. And expansion into little draughts.
The reply wakens easily, darting from
Untruth to willed moment, scarcely called into being
Before it swells, the way a waterfall
Drums at different levels. Each moment
Of utterance is the true one; likewise none are true,
Only is the bounding from air to air, a serpentine
Gesture which hides the truth behind a congruent
Message, the way air hides the sky …
(John Ashbery)
‘As rivers lose name and shape in the sea, wise men lose name and shape in God, glittering beyond all distance.
(Mundaka Upanishad Book 3)
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight
(Proverbs)
Pure pleasure and pure reality are ideal limits, which is as much as to say fictions. The one is as destructive and mortal as the other. Between the two the differant detour therefore forms the very actuality of the process, of the “psychic” process as a “living” process. Such an “actuality,” then, is never present or given. It “is” that which in the gift is never presently giving or given. There is — it gives, differance … The detour thereby “would be” the common, which is as much as to say the differant, root of the two principles, the root uprooted from itself, necessarily impure, and structurally given over to compromise, to the speculative transaction. The three terms — two principals plus or minus differance — are but one, the same divided, since the second (reality) principle and differance are only the “effects” of the modifiable pleasure principle. (Derrida)
If we’re at all superstitious, it’s hard not to have the feeling of being only an incarnation, a megaphone or medium, for higher powers. The idea of revelation–if by that you understand a sudden appearance of something making you see and hear it with sharpness and inexpressible precision, overwhelming everything within you, overcoming you in your innermost being–this idea of revelation corresponds to a specific fact. There is such a thing as hearing without searching; as taking without inquiring as to who might be giving; and thought flashes forth like lightning, imposed as a necessity, under a definitive form: I have never had to choose. With such raptures, our too weary souls ease themselves, sometimes in a torrent of tears; mechanically we begin, and we speed up or slow down without realizing it; in such ecstasies we’re ravished from ourselves, and hundreds of delicate feelings crisscross, penetrating us down to our toes; in this abyss of felicity, horror and extreme suffering never appear as contraries of, but as results of, the glimmerings of such happiness, and as a hue that would necessarily suffuse the bottom of this ocean of light . . .(Nietzsche)
There are many things that are part of a child’s life
just as they are part of an adult’s life. The desire to
do something for someone, for instance. Every adult
has a need to feel that we are seen/observed by
others. (Observing others is also important.) This is
just as true for children as for adults. Therefore, it’s
possible to observe, to receive a lot of pleasure and
satisfaction from observing in many different ways.When the child is observed, the child is happy — it’s
almost an honor that he is observed by an adult. On
the other hand, a good teacher who knows how to
observe feels good about himself because that person
knows that he is able to take something from the
situation, transform it, and understand it in a new
way. (Malaguzzi)
He who sees God without seeing the Self sees only a mental image. They say that he who sees the Self sees God. He who, having completely lost the ego, sees the Self, has found God, because the Self does not exist apart from God.
(Sri Ramana Maharshi)
My son, do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight,
preserve sound judgment and discretion;
22 they will be life for you,
an ornament to grace your neck.
23 Then you will go on your way in safety,
and your foot will not stumble.
24 When you lie down, you will not be afraid;
when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.
25 Have no fear of sudden disaster
or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked,
26 for the Lord will be at your side
and will keep your foot from being snared.
(Proverbs)
Be ready for action, and have your lamps burning.
(Luke 12:35)
Forgetting and gift would therefore be each in the condition of the
other. This already puts us on the path to be followed. Not a particular
path leading here or there, but on the path, on the Weg or Bewegen
(path, to move along a path, to cut a path), which, leading nowhere,
marks the step that Heidegger does not distinguish from thought.
The thought on whose path we are, the thought as path or as movement
along a path is precisely what is related to that forgetting that
Heidegger does not name as a psychological or psychoanalytic category
but as the condition of Being and of the truth of Being. (Derrida)
A generous person will prosper;
whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.
(Proverbs)
When it was established that the tension-charge formula was valid for all involuntary functions of living substance, one was prompted to ask whether it was also applicable to processes in non-living matter.
(Wilhelm Reich)
“If only you had seen all I had to do.” The child
wants this observation. We all want this. This means
that when you learn to observe the child, when you
have assimilated all that it means to observe the
child, you learn many things that are not in books —
educational or psychological. And when you have
done this you will learn to have more diffidence and
more distrust of rapid assessments, tests, judgments.
The child wants to be observed, but she doesn’t want
to be judged. Even when we do judge, things escape
us, we do not see things, so we are not able to evaluate in a wide way. This system of observing children
carries you into many different feelings and thoughts,
into a kind of teaching full of uncertainty and doubt,
and it takes wisdom and a great deal of knowledge
on the part of the teachers to be able to work within
this situation of uncertainty. (Malaguzzi)
A gentle answer turns away wrath, (Proverbs)
The child is endowed with an unknown power and
this unknown power guides us towards a more luminous
future. Education can no longer be the giving of know-
ledge only ; it must take a different path. The con-
sideration of personality, the development of human
potentialities must become the centre of education. When
to begin such education ? (Montessori)
Observing in this way offers tremendous benefits. It
requires a shift in the role of the teacher from an
emphasis of teaching to an emphasis on learning,
teachers learning about themselves as teachers as
well as teachers learning about children. This is a self-learning that takes place for the teacher and it
enables the teacher to see things that are taking place
in children that teachers were not able to see before.
(Malaguzzi)
Tbe assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary;
perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects,
whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought
and our consciousuess in general? A kind of aristocracy of “cells”
in which dominion resides? To be sure, an aristocracy of equals,
used to ruling jointly and understanding how to command? (Nietzsche)
Observation, very general and wide-spread, has
shown that small children are endowed with a special
psychic nature. This shows us a new way of imparting
education ! A different form which concerns humanity
itself and which has never been taken into consideration.
The real constructive energy, alive and dynamic, of
children, remained unknown for thousands of years. (Montessori)
Throughout his own work, Lacan, in turn, modifies Heidegger’s motif of language as the house of being. Language is not man’s creation and instrument, it is man who “dwells” in language: “psychoanalysis should be the science of language inhabited by the subject.”Lacan’s “paranoiac” twist, his additional Freudian turn of the screw, comes from his characterization of this house as a torture-house: “in the light of the Freudian experience, man is a subject caught in and tortured by language.”6 Not only does man dwell in the “prison-house of language,” (the title of Fredric Jameson’s early book on structuralism), he dwells in a torture-house of language. The entire psychopathology deployed by Freud, from conversion-symptoms inscribed into the body, up to total psychotic breakdowns, are scars of this permanent torture, so many signs of an original and irremediable gap between subject and language, so many signs that man cannot ever be at home in his own home … in order to get the truth to speak, it is not enough to suspend the subject’s active intervention and let language itself speak—as Elfriede Jelinek put it with extraordinary clarity: “language should be tortured to tell the truth.” It should be twisted, denaturalized, extended, condensed, cut and reunited, made to work against itself. Language as the “big Other” is not an agent of wisdom to whose message we should attune ourselves, but a place of cruel indifference and stupidity. The most elementary form of torturing one’s language is called poetry—imagine what a complex form like the sonnet does to language: it forces the free flow of speech into a Procrustean bed of a fixed shape of rhythm and rhyme. So what about Heidegger’s procedure of listening to the soundless word of language itself, of bringing out the truth that already dwells in it? No wonder late Heidegger’s thinking is poetic.
(Zizek)
Exodus :
21 Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb.
27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there near the water.
18 When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.
6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
26 And all the women who were willing and had the skill spun the goat hair.
Then he made poles of acacia wood and overlaid them with gold.
19 They made two gold rings and attached them to the other two corners of the breastpiece on the inside edge next to the ephod.
15 Anoint them just as you anointed their father, so they may serve me as priests. Their anointing will be to a priesthood that will continue throughout their generations.
15 “‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. (Leviticus)
The first help might be the readying of this readiness. It is not through man that the world can be what it is and how it is — but also not without man. In my view, this goes together with the fact that what I call “Being” (that long traditional, highly ambiguous, now worn-out word) has need of man in order that its revelation, its appearance as truth, and its [various] forms may come to pass. The essence of technicity I see in what I call “pos-ure” (Ge-Sull), an often ridiculed and perhaps awkward expression.28 To say that pos-ure holds sway means that man is posed, enjoined and challenged by a power that becomes manifest in the essence of technicity — a power that man himself does not control. Thought asks no more than this: that it help us achieve this insight. Philosophy is at an end. (Heidegger)
Throughout his own work, Lacan, in turn, modifies Heidegger’s motif of language as the house of being. Language is not man’s creation and instrument, it is man who “dwells” in language: “psychoanalysis should be the science of language inhabited by the subject.”5Lacan’s “paranoiac” twist, his additional Freudian turn of the screw, comes from his characterization of this house as a torture-house: “in the light of the Freudian experience, man is a subject caught in and tortured by language.”6 Not only does man dwell in the “prison-house of language,” (the title of Fredric Jameson’s early book on structuralism), he dwells in a torture-house of language. The entire psychopathology deployed by Freud, from conversion-symptoms inscribed into the body, up to total psychotic breakdowns, are scars of this permanent torture, so many signs of an original and irremediable gap between subject and language, so many signs that man cannot ever be at home in his own home … in order to get the truth to speak, it is not enough to suspend the subject’s active intervention and let language itself speak—as Elfriede Jelinek put it with extraordinary clarity: “language should be tortured to tell the truth.” It should be twisted, denaturalized, extended, condensed, cut and reunited, made to work against itself. Language as the “big Other” is not an agent of wisdom to whose message we should attune ourselves, but a place of cruel indifference and stupidity. The most elementary form of torturing one’s language is called poetry—imagine what a complex form like the sonnet does to language: it forces the free flow of speech into a Procrustean bed of a fixed shape of rhythm and rhyme. So what about Heidegger’s procedure of listening to the soundless word of language itself, of bringing out the truth that already dwells in it? No wonder late Heidegger’s thinking is poetic.
(Zizek)
mark forshee 