Last weekend the Guardian ran an article by George Monbiot. Here’s how to teach children in a world being shaped by AI. Known for his environmental work and nature writing/broadcasting, his reach crosses over into many areas of society one being childhood and education.
“Rigidity is lethal. Any aspect of an education system that locks pupils into fixed patterns of thought and action will enhance their vulnerability toward rapid and massive change…
….little has been done to equip students for a world whose conditions shift so fast”
George Monbiot
He went on to discuss the importance of what are called Meta skills in education. Meta skills are a range of personal aptitudes which include, but are not limited to, social intelligence, openness and creativity.
It was his mention of ‘fixed patterns’ that got my attention. We are living through times of fast and tumultuous change.
Fixed patterns are for wallpaper
My point is that there are many occasions for fixed patterns in life, but an observation of nature offers us incidences of how patterns change in living forms. How structures offer expansion and openness to serve the organism it is expressed within.
The morphology that is at play with flowers and plants shows us how structures can flux to accommodate changes in life cycles or the need to adapt. There is a creativity at work here.
For a long time now I have often asked myself what really am I offering in encouraging an approach of looking for shapes and patterns in nature with the young people around us? It’s not only for the reasons of getting the classroom outside in nature.
But it’s more than that, it is a desire to embed in a new generation of hearts and minds the fact that form can change with grace and ease and still serve the purpose of the organism it is embodying. An ability to see the multidimensionality of form.
A triangle is a triangle
When it’s in a maths book, a triangle is a triangle. And there are a myriad of ways to express it through the notations of algebra and angles.
Yet In nature the triangle is displayed in the versatility of the tulip form. We see it as archetypes of the triform and of the hexad. It moves from expressing three to six and back to three again. There is a an opportunity here for young minds to see the important relationship between three and six displayed so perfectly within the one structure and lifetime dance of the tulip.
Can we not impart an understanding that shapes and patterns need not be so rigid?. It seems to me after reading George Monbiot that this is an important lesson to learn.
Social number sequences.
Patterns in nature can be metaphors for great societal opportunities.
The much loved and discussed Fibonacci number sequence is the essential social interaction sequence. Each number has a specific relationship to the neighbour and to the whole. And that relationship offers the optimal opportunity for growth and space. It is not just the decimal or fraction that is often quoted and used in exam questions. This relationship is inherent in every part of the plant and points to the divine proportional relationship within the whole.
Each is a part of the whole. There is a lesson there for us all.
Flex the boundaries
Nature expresses forms of structure and shape as number archetypes, yet it doesn’t let itself be absolutely bound by it. It allows for a flexing of systems. Sometimes nature breaks its own rules, I love seeing this. Yet the specimen that does, still reaches a version of its full potential. It just intuited a different path.
Nature knows this, we just forgot.
So what I offer in inviting you to explore activities of The Smart Happy Project are the opening first steps to seeing these relations in nature. To hunt for shapes with your youngsters and nurture in them a desire to see beyond what is just presented to them in the classroom. To nurture minds that have a capacity to evoke expansion of the forms that are familiar to us. To interact with these patterns that allow fluid movement, vibrancy and creativity of life.
All of that is to be seen in the not-so-fixed patterns of nature.
with love, Lisa
