Changing Public Education Overall
Understanding Those on the Autism Spectrum
Autism Spectrum Video Presentation:
“Gifted Differences, Not Disorders”
An Awareness Shift
This video regarding the brain orientation of those on the Autism Spectrum, a connective, often “enhanced,” brain difference, not a disorder, is an hour-long presentation I gave to students and teachers at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California in January of 2011. This has the core of the information given in my paper “Heart Centered Minds,” and any who live with, teach and/or care for any of these individuals will hear important information and many stories about this perceptual shift in understanding of those on the ADD-autism spectrum. Video: Learning Differences, Not Disorders.
As a preview and related to my current goal to Change Public Education:
One of the last participant questions near the end of this linked presentation above was: “How do we teach in a way that accommodates these students in our current system of education?” Rather than addressing, limited situational remedies in this talk, I shared some fundamental shift suggestions on designing lessons enabling these children’s deeper intuitive and connective knowing, and letting all children stay in their own deepest knowing longer with the use of, but less early primary emphasis on numbers, letters, facts and figures. These deeper intelligences need to contribute to how they, and we all, can function more successfully in our lives. I also speak about teaching resilience, which goes right along with intuitive learning. Some schools are now focusing on designing instruction so as to invite the intuitive learning abilities of students to be engaged.
Many more answers to important questions are presented in my subsequent writings, along with how the implications of this different approach can, and needs to, improve our whole educational system, as I have just indicated. All children are born with a more balanced use of the full brain until they are pulled out of balance by our primarily left-brain focusing educational approach. For several different educators’ views on this, including examples of some public schools which started to head in this direction, please see my paper: “Educating All From the Inside Out.”
And next and now, Changing Public Education:
My latest paper: “The Right to Learn in Public Education,” was written to help change the focus of public education so that teachers and students can interact with curriculum from inherent open, receptive and perceptive learning abilities, in order to discover and then linear thought-design the true solutions our world crucially needs. Both our connective knowledges and our defining linear abilities are needed, and we are equipped with both.
All this was used by teachers much more before the nation-wide mandated abidance to No Child Left Behind, which linearized, A-Z and 1 to 100, etc., all of education, from teaching goals, to the use of materials, the near required teaching style, and the regimented testing assessment of success and failures. Overall, this required approach left many students behind, and nearly all other students and teachers, stressed and fact and detail over-focused.
The linear intelligences we have for use of fact, figures, and so forth, ARE important, but as they are used to give shape to the inspired intelligences we have within that join us to others.
We have no time to waste as we see the division, despair and devastation which only using our thinking/rational intelligence for nearly two centuries has created, this happening faster and faster with the invention of computer/tech, evolved now to social media, etc. Without our intuitive and connective intelligences that draw on this larger realm of knowledge, a realm that also holds the deep values we share with all others, we will continue to create only greater separation and abuse of others and the earth, despite our good wishes to solve problems. Again, that happening IF we only use thinking and not our inspired connective knowledges in combination with our defining skills of thought. Making these changes, the greater solutions we find will be enlarged with the help of aligned technology.
In-Person Presentation:
Changing Education: Drawing on Intuitive Learning
Abilities in All Children in order to Save our World
Some schools have begun programs based on intuitive and more self-directed learning, which comes now when deepest inner knowing can discover the connective solutions we need.
I offer here the above first hour video presentation which can be shown to teachers regarding those oriented more to these inner intelligences, autism spectrum learners. That then would be followed by this second in-person presentation and workshop to discover, understand and experiment with intuitive curriculum creation, leading to the same naturally motivating intuitive drives to discover and problem solve in students. Many great educators have known that “knowledge grows best from near to far.” (words of Shraddhalu Ranade; see his and a sampling of others’ insights in “Educating All From the Inside Out.”) Two other papers as basis of these presentations are: “The Intuitive Inside Out of Autism”, and my newest paper, completed soon: “Changing Public Education.”
Conference Calls:
Questions, Answers and Group Sharing
Along with these in-person presentations, and depending on the need, I am offering weekly, bi-week, or monthly conference calls to join with parents, teachers, administrators (care givers, therapists, physicians in regard to the Autism Spectrum Learners), to discuss overall principles and specific situations for understanding individuals with “differences,” and for Changing Education, overall.
Questions and answers will lead to exploring the many possibilities which arise from this shift in understanding and approach, enabling us to learn and broaden from the shared experiences and questions from all. Our need to be informed, understanding, courageous and effective is essential in order to support all students and their families in our and other countries, by knowing and recognizing the inherent intuitive and inspired knowledges in all children, and in us all, needed now more than ever by our world.
Thank you,
Peggy Magilen
Heart Centered Minds
Pleasant Hill, CA 94523
email us
