2022 (#142) : Malaguzzi , Vivian Paley , William Blake , Genesis , Derrida , Mark , John , Meister Eckhart , Emerson , Heidegger

We need to define the role of the adult, not as a
transmitter but as a creator of relationships —
relationships not only between people but also
between things, between thoughts, with the environment.

• Malaguzzi

I became a kindergarten teacher. In my
haste to supply the children with my own bits and pieces of neatly labeled reality, the appearance of a correct answer gave me the surest feeling that I was teaching. Curriculum guides replaced the lists of questions, but I still wanted most of all to keep things moving with a minimum of distraction. It did not occur to me that
the distractions might be the sounds of children thinking.

• Vivian Paley

Wonder siezd all in Eternity! to behold the Divine Vision. open
The Center into an Expanse, & the Center rolled out into an Expanse

• William Blake

 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good.

• Bereshit 1:27

He asked a question or made a casual observation, then repeated each child’s comment and hung onto it until a link was made to someone else’s idea. Together they were constructing a paper
chain of magical imaginings mixed with some solid facts, and Bill was providing the glue.

• Vivian Paley

As a Mighty Temple; delivering Form out of confusion.
Jordan sprang beneath its threshold bubbling from beneath
Its pillars: Euphrates ran under its arches: white sails
And silver oars reflect on its pillars, & sound on its ecchoing

• William Blake

a mist went up from the earth which watered the entire surface of the ground.

• Bereshit 2:6

He was truly
curious. He had few expectations of what five-year-olds might say or think, and he listened to their responses with the anticipation one brings to the theater when a mystery is being revealed. Bill was interested not in what he knew to be an answer, but only in how the children intuitively approached a problem. He would whisper to me after each session, “Incredible! Their notions of cause and effect are incredible!” And I, their teacher, who thought I knew the children so well, was often equally astonished.

• Vivian Paley

The Habitation of the Spectres of the Dead & the Place
Of Redemption & of awaking again into Eternity

• Wiliam Blake

Repetition and first time, but also repetition and last time, since the Singularity of any first time, makes of it also a last time. Each time it is the event itself, a first time is a last time.

• Derrida

I practiced his open-ended questions, the kind that seek no specific answers but rather build a chain of ideas without the need for closure. It was not easy. I felt myself always waiting for the right answer — my answer. The children knew I was waiting and watched my face for clues. Clearly, it was not enough simply to copy someone else’s teaching manner; real change comes about only through the painful
recognition of one’s own vulnerability.

• Vivian Paley

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.

• Mark 1:34

Many Wheels & as many lovely Daughters sit weeping
Yet the intoxicating delight that they take in their work
Obliterates every other evil

• William Blake

Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

• John 4:14

The tape recorder, with its unrelenting fidelity, captured the unheard or unfinished murmur, the misunderstood and mystifying context, the disembodied voices asking for clarification and comfort. It also captured the impatience in my voice as children struggled for attention, approval, and justice. The tape recordings created for me an overwhelming need to know more about the process of teaching and learning and about my own classroom as a unique society to be studied.

• Vivian Paley

And others Create the wooly Lamb & the downy Fowl

• William Blake

The will of the Lord in this is for us to understand His great mercy.

• Meister Eckhart

The act of teaching became a daily search for the child’s point of view accompanied by the sometimes unwelcome disclosure of my hidden attitudes. The search was what mattered — only later did someone tell me it was research — and it provided an open-ended script from which to observe, interpret, and integrate the living drama of the classroom.

• Vivian Paley

I gave thee Sheep-walks upon the Spanish Mountains Jerusalem
I gave thee Priams City and the Isles of Grecia lovely!

• William Blake

 ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.

• John 6:29

Behold: in the Visions of Elohim Jehovah, behold Joseph & Mary
And be comforted O Jerusalem in the Visions of Jehovah Elohim
She looked & saw Joseph the Carpenter in Nazareth & Mary
His espoused Wife.

• William Blake

 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

When thought’s courage stems from

the bidding of Being, then

destiny’s language thrives.

As soon as we have the thing before

our eyes, and in our hearts an ear

for the word, thinking prospers.

We never come to thoughts. They come

to us.

• Heidegger

2022 (#141) : Malaguzzi , I Ching , William Blake , Mathew , 2 Samuel , John , Luke , Kaushitaki Upanishad , Derrida

The child’s intelligence is still today something in which we have to believe: we have to believe that the child is a bearer and constructor of his own intelligence. If we are ready to accept this, then we will modify many of our relations with [him], many of our languages, and school will also in some way adapt to a child who is a constant provider of tests, requests and intelligent research. I would also say that this work and this passion for searching, in some way clearly mobilises everything: the whole person, the whole child.

• Malaguzzi

Events cannot continue in stillness without moving. Thus, after Keeping Still, Developing Gradually follows.

The structure of the gua is Wood above , Mountain below. It denotes a tree that is growing gradually upward above ground, its roots develop deep underneath the earth.

The progress of upward and downward growth are in positive proportion.

• I Ching

We have to understand that they are moving
and working with many ideas, but their most important task is to build relationships with friends. They
are trying to understand what friendship is. Children
grow in many directions together, but a child is
always in search of relationships. Children get to
know each other through all their senses. Touching
the hair of another child is very important. Smell is
important. This is a way children are able to understand the identity of themselves and the identity of
others.

• Malaguzzi

 after a period of keeping still there is opportunity to advance. In advancing, one should move gradually.

When swans fly, they follow one another in order. They come and go according to the seasons.

Eventually it flies high in the sky , and its feathers that fall can bring a touch of the sacred to others.

• I Ching

In Great Eternity, every particular Form gives forth or Emanates
Its own peculiar Light, & the Form is the Divine Vision
And the Light is his Garment This is Jerusalem in every Man
A Tent & Tabernacle of Mutual Forgiveness Male & Female Clothings.

• William Blake

This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: ‘Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’

• Mathew 21:5

Superior, none we know: inferior none: all equal share
Divine Benevolence & joy, for the Eternal Man
Walketh among us, calling us his Brothers & his Friends

• William Blake

Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on on the wings of the wind.

• 2 Samuel 22:9

Loud! loud! the Mountains lifted up their voices, loud the Forests
Rivers thunderd against their banks

• William Blake

David longed for water and said, “Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethelehem!”

• 2 Samuel 23:15

Let the Human Organs be kept in their perfect Integrity
At will Contracting into Worms, or Expanding into Gods

• William Blake

 If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

• John

Contract or Expand Space at will: or if we raise ourselves
Upon the chariots of the morning. Contracting or Expanding Time!
Every one knows, we are One Family! One Man blessed for ever

• William Blake

I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth , comes, he will guide you into all truth.

• John

The Infinite alone resides in Definite & Determinate Identity
Establishment of Truth depends on destruction of Falshood continually
On Circumcision: not on Virginity

• William Blake

 Forgive and you will be forgiven.

• Luke 6:37

Supreme good fortune. Success.

• I Ching

the breath of life is the consciousness of life and the consciousness of life is the breath of life

• Kaushitaki Upanishad

they do not ask the question; they stage it or overflow this stage in the direction of that element of the scene which exceeds representation.

• Derrida

2022 (#140) : Malaguzzi , Montessori , Heidegger , Psalms , Derrida , Zohar , Mark , Holderlin , Genesis , Emerson , Sri Ramana Maharshi , John Ashbery , Proverbs

The quality and quantity of relationships among you
as adults and educators also reflects your image of
the child.

• Malaguzzi

We must
free childhood from repression that weighs upon it

• Montessori

Overactivity on the part of the adult is a risk factor. The adult does too much because he cares about the child; but this creates a passive role for the child in her own learning.

• Malaguzzi

 Teaching is more difficult than learning because
what teaching calls for is this: to let learn. The real teacher,
in fact, lets nothing else be learned than-learning.

• Heidegger

From Adonai comes הַצָּלָה

Tehillim/Psalms

Language is determined starting from the word and the privilege of naming.

• Derrida

the Forehead of the Ancient of Ancients is revealed

• Idra Rabba , Zohar

the infinitely small point of meaning which the languages barely brush … What can an infinitely small point of meaning be? What is the measure to evaluate it? The metaphor itself is at once the question and the answer.

• Derrida

¹² At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness,

• Mark 1:9

fearless over
The chasm walk the sons of the Alps
On bridges lightly built.
Therefore, since round about
Are heaped the summits of Time
And the most loved live near, growing faint
On mountains most separate,
Give us innocent water,
0pinions give us, with minds most faithful
To cross over and to return.

• Holderlin

and the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water.

• Bereshit 1:2

At once they left their nets and followed him.

• Mark 1:18

Without writing, un-writing, the unwritten switches over to a question of reading on a board or tablet which you perhaps are. You are a board or a door; we will see much later how a word can address itself, indeed confide itself to a door, count on a door open to the other.

• Derrida

²² The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law

Mark 1:22

By the same fire, vital, consecrating, celestial, which burns until it shall dissolve all things into the waves and surges of an ocean light, we see and know each other and what spirit each is of.

• Emerson

That light will be there before the drama begins, during the performance and also after the performance is over. Similarly, the light within, that is, the Self (God/Atman), gives light to the ego, the intellect, the memory and the mind without itself being subject to processes of growth and decay.

• Sri Ramana Maharshi

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The evidence of the visual henceforth replaced
By the great shadow of trees falling over life.

A child’s devotion
To this normal, shapeless entity….

Forgotten as the words fly briskly across, each time
Bringing down meaning as snow from a low sky, or rabbits flushed from a wood.

• John Ashbery

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,
and the one who is wise saves lives.

• Proverbs/Mashal

2022 (#139) : Vivian Paley , Malaguzzi , Emerson , John , Derrida , Nietzsche , Proverbs , Mathew , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , John Ashbery

any piece of action observed in play can be used to
promote the first story that is dictated.
“Timmy, that puppy you pretended to
be in the doll corner has an interesting
story for us to act out. If you tell me
what happens to the puppy, I’ll write it
down, and later we’ll act it out.” Now
after one such experience, Timmy and
everyone in the class understands
what the activity is. The teacher posts
a sign-up list for storytelling volunteers. The idea of theater has been
connected to play. And so, the ideas
come across easily. It’s the children’s
own theater. It’s for and of themselves.
And the children recognize this.

• Vivian Paley

We must move beyond just looking at the child to become better observers, able to penetrate
into the child to understand each child’s resources and potential and present state of mind. We need to compare these with our own in order to work well together.

• Malaguzzi

With my
assistants and student teachers, after
every school day, our first question
might be “How did we achieve intimacy today? What role did the teacher
play?” And each one offered his or her
own notion.

• Vivian Paley

It is necessary to give an immediate response to a
child. Children need to know that we are their
friends, that they can depend on us for the things they
desire, that we can support them in the things that
they have, but also in the things that they dream
about, that they desire.

• Malaguzzi

Once you begin to depend on
storytelling and story acting, you start
looking at your classroom as theater.
The children are constantly imagining
characters and plots and, when they
have a chance, with each other, acting
out little stories. You can look at the
children and yourself as actors. “Well,
this hasn’t worked. We’d better think
of a better way to pretend this story.”
What seems to be a chaotic scene,
one we might call bad play, is simply
a scene that lacks closure for one or
more characters.

• Vivian Paley

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

¹⁶ Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given

• John

and this openness opens the unity, renders it possible, and forbids it totality. Its openess allows receiving and giving.

• Derrida

³⁴ For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God^[i] gives the Spirit without limit.

• John 3:34

O my soul, I gave you new names and colorful toys; I called you “destiny” and “circumference of circumferences” and “umbilical cord of time” and “azure bell.”

O my soul I gave your soil all wisdom to drink, all the new wines and also all the immemorially old strong wines of wisdom.

O my soul, I poured every sun out on you, and every night and every silence and every longing: then you grew up like a vine.

O my soul, overrich and heavy you now stand there, like a vine with swelling udders and crowded brown gold-grapes

• Nietzsche/Zarathustra

The Lord formed me from the beginning, before he created any-
thing else. …I was there when he set the clouds above, when he
established springs deep in the earth. …And when he marked off the
earth’s foundations, I was the architect at his side. I was his constant
delight, rejoicing always in his presence.

• Mashal/Proverbs 8:22

According to your faith let it be done to you”

• Mathew 9:29

To divide and particularise is in the mind’s very nature. There is no harm in dividing. But separation goes against fact. Things and people are different, but they are not separate. Nature is one, reality is one. There are opposites, but no opposition.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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and the right way,
It turns out, is the one that goes straight through the house
And out the back. By so many systems
As we are involved in, by just so many
Are we set free on an ocean of language that comes to be
Part of us, as though we would ever get away .
The sky is very bright and very wide, and the waves talk to us,
Preparing dreams we’ll have to live with and us

• John Ashbery

2022 (#138) : Malaguzzi , Montessori , Bettelheim , Derrida , Jung , Emerson , Psalm , Luke

School is not at all like billiards. When you play
billiards you push the ball with a certain force and it
hits the table and bounces off; there’s a definite way
the ball will go, depending on force and direction.
Children are not at all like this, predictable. But
sometimes schools function as if they were; these are
schools with no joy.

• Malaguzzi

The solution is found in the child, whom we can call
the instrument of the adaptability of humanity. The child
whom we saw born without any special movement, not
only acquires all the human faculties, but also adapts the
being that it constructs to the conditions in his environ-
ment. And this takes place because of the special
psychic form of the child, for the child’s psychic form is
different from that of the adult.

• Montessori

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

In a fairy tale, internal processes are externalized and become comprehensible as represented by the figures of the story and its events. This is the reason why in traditional Hindu medicine a fairy tale giving form to his particular problem was offered to a psychically disoriented person, for his meditation. It was expected that through contemplating the story the disturbed person would be led to visualize both the nature of the impasse in living from which he suffered, and the possibility of its resolution. From what a particular tale implied about man’s despair, hopes, and methods of overcoming tribulations, the patient could
discover not only a way out of his distress but also a way to find himself, as the hero of the story did.

• Bettelheim

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

This special development in man’s idea of spirit rests on the
recognition that its invisible presence is a psychic phenomenon, i.e., one’s
own spirit, and that this consists not only of uprushes of life but of formal
products too. Among the first, the most prominent are the images and
shadowy presentations that occupy our inner field of vision.

• Jung

The trace is the differance which opens appearance
and signification. Articulating the living upon the nonliving
in general, origin of all repetition, origin of ideality …

• Derrida

Fairy stories do not pretend to describe the world as it is, nor do they advise what one ought to do. If they did, the Hindu patient would be induced to follow an imposed pattern of behavior—which is not just bad therapy, but the opposite of therapy. The fairy tale is therapeutic because the patient finds his own solutions, through contemplating what the story seems to imply about him and his inner conflicts at this moment in his life. The content of the chosen tale usually has
nothing to do with the patient’s external life, but much to do with his inner problems, which seem incomprehensible and hence unsolvable. The fairy tale clearly does not refer to the outer world, although it may begin realistically enough and have everyday features woven into it. The unrealistic nature of these tales (which narrow-minded rationalists object to) is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner processes taking place in an individual.

• Bettelheim

the only mode of obtaining an answer to these questions of the senses is to forego all low curiosity and, accepting the tide of being which floats us into the secret of nature , work and live,  work and live, and all unawares the advancing soul has built and forged for itself a new condition, and the question and the answer are one.  

• Emerson

5 Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him. 6 Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. 7 My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. 8 Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.

• Tehillim/Psalm 62:5-8

 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!

• Luke

… when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours. Nothing can pass there, or make you one of the circle, but the casting aside your trappings and dealing man to man in naked truth, plain confession, and omniscient affirmation.

• Emerson

2022 (#137) : Montessori , Malaguzzi , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Bettelheim , Derrida , Tao Te Ching , Mark , 1 Samuel , Mathew , John , Emerson , Jung

In traditional education the teacher reasons in a way
which in itself may seem logical enough. It runs like
this : “In order to educate I must be good and perfect
(this means that I must disguise myself as a kind of
Father Christmas who offers gifts to the children). I
know what should be done and what should not be done.
It is, therefore, sufficient that the children imitate me and
obey me.” Obedience is the secret basis of teaching.

The task of the teacher then becomes easy and
exalting ! He says : ” In front of me there is an empty
being or a being full of naughtiness 1 shall now trans-
form him creating him almost to my image and likeness/*
He repeats to himself the words of the Bible : ” and
God created man to His own image and likeness.”

The adult, of course, is unconscious of thus putting
himself in God’s place. He forgets above all the other
part of the biblical story where it is told how the devil
became such precisely on account of his pride urging him
to take the place of God. 

• Montessori

What we want to do is
activate within children the desire and will and great
pleasure that comes from being the authors of their
own learning.

• Malaguzzi

Of course, you are. As an ‘I am’ you are the river, flowing between the banks of the body. But you are also the source and the ocean and the clouds in the sky. Wherever there is life and consciousness, you are. Smaller than the smallest, bigger than the biggest, you are, while all else appears.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

This book has been written to help adults, and most especially those with
children in their care, to become more fully aware of the importance of such tales. As has already been pointed out, innumerable interpretations besides those suggested in the text that follows may be pertinent; fairy tales, like all true works of art, possess a multifarious richness and depth that far transcend what even the most thorough discursive examination can extract from them. What is said in this book should be viewed as illustrative and suggestive merely. If the reader is stimulated to go beyond the surface in his own way, he will extract ever more varied personal meaning from these stories, which will then also become more
meaningful to the children he may tell them to.

• Bettelheim

 Nothing is more serious than a translation. I rather wished to mark the fact that every translator is in a position to speak about
translation, in a place which is more than any not second or secondary. For if the structure of the original is marked by the requirement to be translated, it is that in laying down the law the original begins by indebting itself as well with regard to the
translator. The original is the first debtor, the first petitioner; it begins by lacking and by pleading for translation.

• Derrida

Fairy tales, unlike any other form of literature, direct the child to discover his identity and calling, and they also suggest what experiences are needed to develop his character further. Fairy tales intimate that a rewarding, good life is within one’s reach despite adversity—but only if one does not shy away from the hazardous struggles without which one can never achieve true identity. These stories promise that if a child dares to engage in this fearsome and taxing search, benevolent powers will come to his aid, and he will succeed.

• Bettelheim

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

She who is centered in the Tao can go where she wishes, without danger. She perceives the universal harmony, even amid great pain, because she has found peace in her heart.

• Tao Te Ching

Through most of man’s history, a child’s intellectual life, apart from
immediate experiences within the family, depended on mythical and religious stories and on fairy tales. This traditional literature fed the child’s imagination and stimulated his fantasizing. Simultaneously, since these stories answered the child’s most important questions, they were a major agent of his socialization. Myths and closely related religious legends offered material from which children formed their concepts of the world’s origin and purpose, and of the social ideals a child could pattern himself after.

• Bettelheim

The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat.

• Mark 8:14

Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread , or whatever you can find.

• I Samuel 21:3

About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.

• Mathew 20:3

Abigail lost no time.

• 1 Samuel 25:18

Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

• John

As it is present in all persons, so it is in every period of life. it is adult already in the infant man

• Emerson

it is something that corresponds, an inner experience, an assimilation of Christ into the psychic matrix, a new realization of the divine Son, no longer in theriomorphic form, but expressed in a conceptual or ‘philosophic’ symbol.

• Jung

 the “play” of a certain excess in relation to any
mechanical movement, oriented process, path traced in advance, or teleological
program, would be the very condition of the step [pas] , or even
of the experience of pathbreaking, route (via rupta), march [marche] , decision,
event: the coming of the other, in sum, of writing and desire.

• Derrida

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

2022 (#136) : Vivian Paley , Malaguzzi , Bettelheim , Emerson , Derrida , Tao Te Ching , John , Proverbs , Luke , 1 Samuel , Jung , John Ashbery

In play, children begin with their own set of premises and learn to follow
through, step-by-step, scene by scene in the complex process of creating
a logical and literary dramatic project of their own. In each episode, one
can intuit a child’s individual approach to the principles underlying fairness, friendship, fear, storytelling, and personal history. In each episode one can study the development of a community of learners in a hands-on, face-to-face, authentic manner.

• Vivian Paley

We need to know how to recognize a new presence,
how to wait for the child. This is something that is
learned, it’s not automatic. We often have to do it
against our own rush to work in our own way. We’ll
discover that our presence, which has to be visible
and warm, makes it possible for us to try to get inside
the child and what that child is doing. And this may
seem to be passive, but it is really a very strong
activity on our part.

• Malaguzzi

Where do educators begin our practice of becoming anecdotists and
storytellers? The opportunities are many: in our schools of education, in
our faculty rooms, at our parent-teacher conferences, and above all, in the classroom with our children and fellow teachers

• Vivian Paley

As we cannot know at what age a particular fairy tale will be most important to a particular child, we cannot ourselves decide which of the many tales he should be told at any given time or why. This only the child can determine and reveal by the strength of feeling with which he reacts to what a tale evokes in his conscious and unconscious mind.

• Bettelheim

the action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and they unconsciously seek for it in each other. We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

• Emerson

far from knowing first what ‘life’ or ‘family’ mean whenever we use these familiar values to talk about language and translation; it is rather starting from the notion of a language and its ‘sur-vival” in translation that we could have access to the notion of what life and family mean.

• Derrida

Finally there will come the time when the child has gained
all he can from the preferred story, or the problems which made him respond to it have been replaced by others which find better expression in some other tale. He may then temporarily lose interest in this story and enjoy some other one much more. In the telling of fairy stories it is always best to follow the child’s lead.

• Bettelheim

starting from the spirit or history and not from ‘organic corporeality’ alone. There is life at the moment when ‘sur-vival’ (spirit, history, works) exceeds biological life and death.

• Derrida

Can you cleanse your inner vision

until you see nothing but the light?

• TAO TE CHING

Fairytale motifs are not neurotic symptoms, something one is better off
understanding rationally so that one can rid oneself of them. Such motifs are experienced as wondrous because the child feels understood and appreciated deep down in his feelings, hopes, and anxieties, without these all having to be dragged up and investigated in the harsh light of a rationality that is still beyond him. Fairy tales enrich the child’s life and give it an enchanted quality just because he does not quite know how the stories have worked their wonder on him.

• Bettelheim

 I do nothing on My own, but speak exactly what the Father has taught Me.

• John 8:28

Those who are kind benefit themselves

• Mashal/Proverbs 11:17

the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

• Luke 3:38

So David hid in the field, and when the New Moon festival came, the king sat down to eat.

• I Samuel 20:24

we must perforce consider first the myths of the Near and Middle East that underlie Christianity … the motive force that produces these configurations cannot be distinguished from the transconscious factor known as instinct.

• Jung

That is what deconstruction is made of: not the mixture but the tension between memory, fidelity, the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break. The condition of this performative success, which is never guaranteed, is the alliance of these to newness.

• Derrida

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.

• Mashal/Proverbs

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What did I ever do
To want to wander over into something else, an explanation
Of how I behaved, for instance, when knowing can have this
Sublime rind of excitement. like the shore of a lake in the desert
Blazing with the sunset? So that if it pleases all my constructions
To collapse, I shall at least have had the satisfaction, and known
that it need not be permanent in order to stay alive,
Beaming, confounding with the spell of its good manners.

• John Ashbery

2022 (#135) : Vivian Paley , Malaguzzi , Bettelheim , Proverbs , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Mark , Tao Te Ching , Derrida , John , Sri Ramana Maharshi , Meister Eckhart , I Ching

Listening to children play, we become reporters and anecdotists, passing
along our accounts and searching for meaning in what we see and hear. The search itself, which includes the children in our pool of curious researchers, becomes the academic tool of the children’s intuitive activity. 

• Vivian Paley

We have to understand that they are moving
and working with many ideas, but their most important task is to build relationships with friends. They are trying to understand what friendship is. Children grow in many directions together, but a child is
always in search of relationships,

• Malaguzzi

Play gives us the opportunity to seek its own meaning in a way that no other subject can, because in play the subjects are always seeking to know what they are inventing (though of course they are unaware of their design). Fantasy play is a curriculum filled with the potential for rich language and social experiences bound together by the structure of story.

• Vivan Paley

Fairy tales are unique, not only as a form of literature, but as works of art
which are fully comprehensible to the child, as no other form of art is. As with all great art, the fairy tale’s deepest meaning will be different for each person, and different for the same person at various moments in his life. The child will extract different meaning from the same fairy tale, depending on his interests and needs of the moment. When given the chance, he will return to the same tale when he is ready to enlarge on old meanings, or replace them with new ones.

• Bettelheim

In their hearts humans plan their course,
but the Lord establishes their steps.

• Proverbs/Mashal 15:9

‘Nothing is me,’ is the first step. ‘Everything is me’ is the next. Both hang on the idea: ‘there is a world’. When this too is given up, you remain what you are — the non-dual Self. You are it here and now

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Fairy tales have great psychological meaning for children of all ages, both girls and boys, irrespective of the age and sex of the story’s hero. Rich personal meaning is gained from fairy stories because they facilitate changes in identification as the child deals with different problems, one at a time.

• Bettelheim

For whoever does the ratzon Hashem, this one is my brother and my sister and mother.

• Markos 3:35

You cannot be alive for you are life itself. It is the person you imagine yourself to be that suffers,not you. Dissolve it in awareness. It is merely a bundle of memories and habits. From the awareness of the unreal to the awareness of your real nature there is a chasm which you will easily cross, once you have mastered the art of pure awareness.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

As we cannot know at what age a particular fairy tale will be most important to a particular child, we cannot ourselves decide which of the many tales he should be told at any given time or why. This only the child can determine and reveal by the strength of feeling with which he reacts to what a tale evokes in his conscious and unconscious mind. Naturally a parent will begin by telling or reading to his child a tale the parent himself or herself cared for as a child, or cares for now. If the child does not take to the story, this means that its motifs or themes have failed to evoke a meaningful response at this moment in his life. Then it is best to tell him another fairy tale the next evening. Soon he will indicate that a certain story has become important to him by his immediate response to it, or by his asking to be told this story over and over again. If all
goes well, the child’s enthusiasm for this story will be contagious, and the story will become important to the parent too, if for no other reason than that it means so much to the child. Finally there will come the time when the child has gained all he can from the preferred story, or the problems which made him respond to it have been replaced by others which find better expression in some other tale.
He may then temporarily lose interest in this story and enjoy some other one much more. In the telling of fairy stories it is always best to follow the child’s lead.

• Bettelheim

it gives birth to infinite worlds.
It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.

• Tao Te Ching

The very condition of a deconstruction may be at work in the work, within the system to be deconstructed. It may already be located there, already at work. Not at the center, but in an eccentric center, in a corner whose eccentricity assures the solid concentration of the system, participating in the construction of what it, at the same time, threatens to deconstruct. One might then be inclined to reach this conclusion: deconstruction is not an operation that supervenes afterwards, from the outside, one fine day. It is always already at work in the work.

• Derrida

For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God[i] gives the Spirit without limit. 35 The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.

• John 3:35

Everything, whether you call it illusion (Maya) or Divine Play (Lila) or Energy (Shakti) must be within the Self/Atman and not apart from it.

• Sri Ramana Maharshi

Let the children come to me, don’t stop them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

• Mark 10:14

The peace, freedom and blessedness of all souls consist in their abiding in God’s will. Towards this union with God for which it is created the soul strives perpetually.

• Meister Eckhart

‘Sh’ma Yisra’el, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad [Hear, O Isra’el, the Lord our God, the Lord is one], ³⁰ and you are to love Adonai your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your understanding and with all your strength.’^[d]

• Mark 12:29

Water flowing out from a mountain becomes a spring, pure and transparent, symbolizing the pureness of a child’s innocent mind. After the spring flows out of the mountain, it accumulates sediment over time … after Beginning, Childhood follows.
–
On the first divination, I give light.

• I Ching

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A great many Western fairy tales have religious content; but most of
these stories are neglected today and unknown to the larger public just because,
for many, these religious themes no longer arouse universally and personally
meaningful associations. The neglect of “Our Lady’s Child,” one of the most
beautiful stories of the Brothers Grimm, illustrates this. It begins exactly like
“Hansel and Gretel”: “Hard by a great forest dwelt a woodcutter with his wife.”
As in “Hansel and Gretel,” the couple are so poor that they can no longer feed
themselves and their three-year-old daughter. Moved by their distress, the Virgin
Mary appears to them and offers to take care of the little girl, whom she takes
with her to heaven. The girl lives a wonderful life there until she reaches the age
of fourteen. At this time, much as in the very different tale of “Bluebeard,” the
Virgin entrusts the girl with the keys to thirteen doors, twelve of which she may
open, but not the thirteenth. The girl cannot resist this temptation; she lies about
it, and in consequence has to return to earth, mute. She undergoes severe ordeals
and is about to be burned at the stake. At this moment, as she desires only to
confess her misdeed, she regains her voice to do so, and is granted by the Virgin
“happiness for her whole life.” The lesson of the story is: a voice used to tell lies
leads us only to perdition; better we should be deprived of it, as is the heroine of
the story. But a voice used to repent, to admit our failures and state the truth,
redeems us.

• Bettelheim

2022 (#134) : Montessori , Malaguzzi , Jerome Bruner , John Dewey , Bettelheim , Proverbs , Bhagavad Gita , John , Derrida , Luke , Tao Te Ching , Mathew , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

To stimulate life,–leaving it then free to develop, to unfold,–herein lies the first task of the educator —

• Montessori

What we want to do is
activate within children the desire and will and great
pleasure that comes from being the authors of their
own learning.

• Malaguzzi

We must not teach present fact, but to open up questions.

• Jerome Bruner

We have
seen that a community or social group sustains itself
through continuous self-renewal, and that this renewal
takes place by means of the educational growth of the
immature members of the group. By various agencies,
unintentional and designed, a society transforms uninitiated and seemingly alien beings into robust trustees of
its own resources and ideals. Education is thus a fostering, a nurturing, a cultivating, process. All of these words
mean that it implies attention to the conditions of growth.

• John Dewey

Only by going out into the world can the fairytale hero (child) find himself
there; and as he does, he will also find the other with whom he will be able to
live happily ever after; that is, without ever again having to experience
separation anxiety. The fairy tale is future-oriented and guides the child—in
terms he can understand in both his conscious and his unconscious mind—to
relinquish his infantile dependency wishes and achieve a more satisfying
independent existence.

• Bettelheim

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

The Lord formed me from the beginning, before he created any-
thing else. …I was there when he set the clouds above, when he
established springs deep in the earth. …And when he marked off the
earth’s foundations, I was the architect at his side. I was his constant
delight, rejoicing always in his presence. 

• Proverbs/Mashal

The fairytale hero proceeds for a time in isolation, as the modern child often
feels isolated. The hero is helped by being in touch with primitive things—a tree,
an animal, nature—as the child feels more in touch with those things than most
adults do. The fate of these heroes convinces the child that, like them, he may
feel outcast and abandoned in the world, groping in the dark, but, like them, in
the course of his life he will be guided step by step, and given help when it is
needed. Today, even more than in past times, the child needs the reassurance
offered by the image of the isolated man who nevertheless is capable of
achieving meaningful and rewarding relations with the world around him.

• Bettelheim

by the grace of God finds the joy of God

• Bhagavad Gita 2:55

I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 

• John

Without either showing or hiding herself. This is what took place.

• Derrida

the kingdom of God is within you.

• Luke

it gives birth to infinite worlds.
It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.

• Tao Te Ching

Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.

• Mathew

the opaque occlusion of … consciousness … is lifted, and the constel-lations of the archetypes
, the collective unconscious, rise above the horizon of experience. But then, as the numinous contents are inte-grated, the self itself becomes transparent in its formless form.

• Eric Neumann

Overactivity on the part of the adult is a risk factor. The adult does too much because he cares about the child; but this creates a passive role for the child in her own learning.

• Malaguzzi

What I say to you, I say to everyone: “Watch!”

• Mark

We must move beyond just looking at
the child to become better observers, able to penetrate into the child to understand each child’s resources
and potential and present state of mind. We need to
compare these with our own in order to work well
together.

• Malaguzzi

Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.

• Tao Te Ching

Everybody wants to be active, but where do his actions originate? There is no central point each action begets another, meaninglessly and painfully, in endless succession. The alternation of work and pause is not there. First find the immutable centre where all movement takes birth. Just like a wheel turns round an axle, so must you be always at the axle in the centre and not whirling at the periphery.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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It is not that the evildoer is punished at the story’s end which
makes immersing oneself in fairy stories an experience in moral education,
although this is part of it. In fairy tales, as in life, punishment or fear of it is only
a limited deterrent to crime. The conviction that crime does not pay is a much
more effective deterrent, and that is why in fairy tales the bad person always
loses out. It is not the fact that virtue wins out at the end which promotes
morality, but that the hero is most attractive to the child, who identifies with the
hero in all his struggles. Because of this identification the child imagines that he
suffers with the hero his trials and tribulations, and triumphs with him as virtue
is victorious. The child makes such identifications all on his own, and the inner
and outer struggles of the hero imprint morality on him.

The figures in fairy tales are not ambivalent—not good and bad at the same
time, as we all are in reality. But since polarization dominates the child’s mind,
it also dominates fairy tales. A person is either good or bad, nothing in between.
One brother is stupid, the other is clever. One sister is virtuous and industrious,
the others are vile and lazy. One is beautiful, the others are ugly. One parent is
all good, the other evil. The juxtaposition of opposite characters is not for the
purpose of stressing right behavior, as would be true for cautionary tales. (There
are some amoral fairy tales where goodness or badness, beauty or ugliness play
no role at all.) Presenting the polarities of character permits the child to
comprehend easily the difference between the two, which he could not do as
readily were the figures drawn more true to life, with all the complexities that
characterize real people. Ambiguities must wait until a relatively firm
personality has been established on the basis of positive identifications. Then the
child has a basis for understanding that there are great differences between
people, and that therefore one has to make choices about who one wants to be.
This basic decision, on which all later personality development will build, is
facilitated by the polarizations of the fairy tale.

Furthermore, a child’s choices are based, not so much on right versus wrong,
as on who arouses his sympathy and who his antipathy. The more simple and
straightforward a good character, the easier it is for a child to identify with it and
to reject the bad other. The child identifies with the good hero not because of his
goodness, but because the hero’s condition makes a deep positive appeal to him.
The question for the child is not “Do I want to be good?” but “Who do I want to
be like?” The child decides this on the basis of projecting himself
wholeheartedly into one character. If this fairytale figure is a very good person,
then the child decides that he wants to be good, too.

Amoral fairy tales show no polarization or juxtaposition of good and bad
persons; that is because these amoral stories serve an entirely different purpose.
Such tales or type figures as “Puss in Boots,” who arranges for the hero’s
success through trickery, and Jack, who steals the giant’s treasure, build
character not by promoting choices between good and bad, but by giving the
child the hope that even the meekest can succeed in life. After all, what’s the use
of choosing to become a good person when one feels so insignificant that he
fears he will never amount to anything? Morality is not the issue in these tales,
but rather, assurance that one can succeed. Whether one meets life with a belief
in the possibility of mastering its difficulties or with the expectation of defeat is
also a very important existential problem.

• Bettelheim

2022 (#133) : Lella Gandini , Malaguzzi , Bettelheim , Emerson , Proverbs , Mathew , Heidegger , Bhagavad Gita , Derrida , Sri Atmananda , Ephesians

When children begin to play in groups or start to spend part of their day in a center, a preschool, or, later, a primary school, there is a repertoire of rhymes that is always refreshed and reinvented to tease or to accompany play. There are counting rhymes, jump-rope rhymes, and many others that accompany movement or facilitate selection in group games. These are part of play and often have the function of initiation within a group. They often absorb contemporary events and characters that strike the children’s imagination and are transmitted through the secret channels of children’s communication.

• Lella Gandini

All of this pushes us to produce a higher level of
observation. We must move beyond just looking at
the child to become better observers, able to penetrate into the child to understand each child’s resources
and potential and present state of mind. We need to
compare these with our own in order to work well
together.

• Malaguzzi

In order to master the psychological problems of growing up—overcoming narcissistic disappointments, oedipal dilemmas, sibling rivalries; becoming able to relinquish childhood dependencies; gaining a feeling of selfhood and of self- worth, and a sense of moral obligation —a child needs to understand what is going on within his conscious self so that he can also cope with that which goes on in his unconscious. He can achieve this understanding, and with it the ability to cope, not through rational comprehension of the nature and content of his unconscious, but by becoming familiar with it through spinning out daydreams
—ruminating, rearranging, and fantasizing about suitable story elements in response to unconscious pressures. By doing this, the child fits unconscious content into conscious fantasies, which then enable him to deal with that content. It is here that fairy tales have unequaled value, because they offer new dimensions to the child’s imagination which would be impossible for him to discover as truly on his own. Even more important, the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child by which he can structure his daydreams and with them give better direction to his life.

• Bettelheim

By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is overpowered, and maugre our efforts or our imperfections, your genius will speak from you, and mine from me.That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our head.

• Emerson

Then you will understand righteousness, justice,
fairness and every good path.
10 For wisdom will enter your heart,

• Proverbs/Mashal

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

• Mathew 4:4

Man speaks in that he responds to language. This responding is hearing. It hears because it listens to the command of stillness.

• Heidegger

One who sees inaction in action, and action in inaction, is wise among men, and he is in the transcendental position, although engaged in all sorts of activities.

• Bhagavd Gita

Such difference without presence appears, or rather baffles the process of appearing, by disclosing any orderly time at the center of the present. The present is no longer a mother-form around which are gathered and differentiated the future (present) and the past (present). What is marked in this hymen between the future (desire) and the present (fulfillment), between the past (remembrance) and the present (perpetration), between the capacity and the act, etc., is only a series of temporal differences without any central present, without a present of which the past and future would be but modifications. Can we then go on speaking about time, tenses, and temporal differences? …

• Derrida

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---

Conceding that God created this universe, you have to admit that God existed even
before creation. Man, with his created sense organs and mind, is capable of visualizing only the objects of creation, gross or subtle. So, in order to visualize God as he
existed all alone, even before creation, we have to utilize some faculty which is
present in us all and which transcends creation. This can be nothing other than the
changeless ‘I’-principle or Consciousness.
Reaching that, one is divested of all sense of duality. Even the conception of God
does not arise there; and everything appears – if it ever does – as Consciousness
alone. It follows therefore that the God that was there before creation was nothing
other than the real ‘I’-principle.

• Sri Atmananda

“Wake up, sleeper,
    rise from the dead,
    and Christ will shine on you.”

• Ephesians 5:14