This is what I want the youth group I’m working with on
Fridays to hear, internalize and believe. If this happens the way I hope it to
then the kids may take control of their own lives and make for a life long journey
of accomplishment and happiness!? Who
knows if this will happen? I’ll
certainly share with you what they say and what glimmers of adoption of the
ideas they may offer in the coming weeks and months.
The first message: From Jean Piaget, the Swiss/French
psychologist and philosopher who dedicated his life to development of children:
“Are we forming children who are
only capable of learning what is already known? Or should we try to develop
creative and innovative minds capable of discovery from the preschool age on
throughout life?”
Piaget (1896 – 1980) focused on education of children. He
developed his Theory of Cognitive Development in which the student was a moving
force in the learning process. Teachers formed dissonant ideas and challenged
students to discover the relevance of the ideas. Through this process kids
learned. The process was to be adapted throughout one’s life.
Piaget greatly believed that each child and generation of
children was the saving force within society moving cultures to new boundaries
on a continual basis. The opposite theory is stark: teaching by rote by one
generation of its own past knowledge stifles understanding, stymies growth of
knowledge and produces kids who can retrieve facts but not do anything creative
with them. Such a new generation is not self sustaining of their own culture
let alone able to create a new generation of thinkers and creators.
The second message is one I used in this blog a few days
ago. It comes from www.positiveoutlooksblog.com.
“Some people think that to be
strong is to never feel pain. In reality the strongest people are the ones who
feel it, understand it, and accept it.”
Understanding life happens as we experience it. The good,
bad and ugly occur all the time. No one is immune from the experiences unless
they live protected lives behind closed doors and walls. Although they may
survive through the efforts of others without feeling the good, bad and ugly,
they will not know what they are, what they mean, what they importune for the
future. In short they will be short-changed.
Pain instructs us. We learn from it. A hot stove burns the
flesh and causes pain. Lesson? Don’t touch the hot stove. Additional lesson?
Learn how to determine a stove is hot so we can avoid it. Same with love, hate,
poverty, illness, injury…the entire gamut of sensation and emotions found in
life. Each plays a role. How do we know what that role is if we do not
encounter it?
Yes. The strongest people are those who know pain, feel it,
understand it and are able to accept it. So bad is good; likewise good is bad.
Discernment teaches the person how to incorporate both in their life and gain
from it.
Both of these messages should help young people understand
both the world as it really is and what it can become with their help. They
have the power to do both. Just knowing that is empowering to the person! If
they grasp the entire lesson from these two messages they will be enabled to
change the world. Pretty heady stuff, eh?
Even though many youth avoid considering the existence of a
‘higher power’ or god figure, being enabled to take control of one’s own life
may give a sense of higher power. If that is true then maybe, just maybe the
kids will learn that “God always leads us to where we need to be,
not where we want to be.” (powerplugmotivationalquotes.com)
That represents a major developmental step, but a valuable
one. We can hope that they are able to eventually take that step on their own.
May 13, 2013
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