The Link #24 - Nurture, Knowledge, Education

What does it mean to nurture? The word itself means to nourish, to feed, to help grow, to care and to provide for. We call our earliest kinds of schools ‘nurseries’ on this account, just like a plant nursery, and the simile is very telling. It implies a certain amount of loving care and consideration, and a bond with nature, but it also implies regularity, conformity and mass production – elements of the analogy that we are probably not so keen to see emphasised. I don’t know why we are not so keen, for in maintaining an idealised view of what education should be and by ignoring the obvious facts of what it actually is, we help neither ourselves nor our colleagues or pupils. Schools are quite often the most violent of places – verbally, physically and intellectually violent, even from the youngest of years – and the issues of discipline and behaviour are perennial, daily problems. Therefore, even at a cursory glance – especially when one looks at state-regulated education – there is disparity between what is desired and what is produced. So what does it mean to nurture something? Does it mean the intention behind the nurturing or does it mean the end product, the result?

Why do we want to nurture anything at all? Why do we want to nurture attention or love or goodness or beauty or harmony? Do we ever ask ourselves this question? Probably we don’t ask it because we assume it is obvious. It’s been a foregone conclusion for centuries, apparently. It’s built into our way of thinking that these things are inherently valuable, that they are worthwhile aims. The entire education system is founded on them. Through learning, through improved literacy and numeracy, through understanding the basis of good citizenship, we shall become, albeit slowly and carefully, better, kinder and more intelligent people. That’s where our problem lies, in that foundation. For society – and from society, education – is built on the belief that there is such a thing as progress inwardly, in the heart of man. That’s what we mean by nurturing attention, love and kindness: we are talking about this tremendous desire to improve.

And that’s why it is such a big question. Because the moment one looks at it carefully, logically, seriously, it is quite clear that society does not progress inwardly. The heart of man is not becoming kinder. One has only to look around with half-open eyes to see the truth of it, whether one is living in the poverty of a remote rural community with its poor water and food, or crushed in the middle of an over-populated and over-priced city, or, even if one is lucky enough to have space and resources, hemmed about by all sorts of other threats and insecurities. The heart of man is as confused and lonely as it has ever been, and all the nurturing in the world is not going to change that.

Let’s not forget that we nurture plants for a purpose. We use them for food, for decoration, for profit. In that context, it makes sense to control and to influence the environment. However, it makes no sense to talk of nurturing a child unless one accepts that control will play a part in the process. It’s bound to happen. Why? First of all, because there’s a motive for doing it, a desired aim, and, secondly, because the one who is nurturing is also the nurtured, the controller is the con¬trolled. That takes us in a slightly different direction and may confuse the present issue; let’s leave that aside for the moment. I would like to suggest that there is a way out of this whole predicament. There’s a simple step that you and I can take, which doesn’t answer the question – because it’s a wrong question anyway – but which goes to the root of the problem.

The root of the problem isn’t how to nurture the child. It isn’t how to bring about love or a more compassionate society. Those things will take care of themselves. The root is simply to see the problem. I have described it a little and perhaps through that description something has been seen – or nothing has been seen. Either way, we have opened a door to it and now it’s up to us whether we go further or we stay where we are. Usually, we stay where we are. That’s the general pattern. We go a certain distance and say, “Yes, wonderful, I see all that so clearly now” – and silence descends. But if this matters to us – as educators, as parents, as human beings – we don’t remain silent, do we? Thought, after all, does not remain silent. Society does not remain silent. The problems of life do not remain silent. Yet we seem to make the assumption that once thought has been stilled we should not start it up again, as though intelligence is thoughtlessness. It is quite the contrary. Without activity, exploration, growth, talking, listening, learning – without all that going on naturally – intelligence will die.

The problem that we have been considering doesn’t exist in a vacuum. No problem exists in a vacuum. If it did, it wouldn’t be a problem. The social problems of education and employment, the emotional problems of fear and loneliness, the intellectual problems of thinking and acting – in a word, all the problems of living – are in essence one and the same: the problem of right relationship. It’s the only problem in life that we seriously have to face; and it seems to be the one we continually avoid.

We are very good at relating to many different things: to theories and ideas, to information, to beliefs and causes and aims, to interests and hobbies, to data, to timetables, to routines, to habits, to books and creeds, ambitions and achievements. But when it comes to our relationships with living creatures – with other human beings, with children, with animals, with nature – I’m not sure that we even know what real relationship is about. We don’t know how to relate to one another as living human beings. We don’t know how to talk, how to listen to one another. We don’t know how to co-operate in harmony. We don’t know how to learn and live in that state of learning.

We turn everything we read and hear into ideas and compare them with ideas we’ve heard before. Or we try to explain it all in familiar terms as acceptable or not. However, it’s not a question of accepting or rejecting but of looking, considering, testing and becoming clear about it for oneself. We can never know how to relate to another living being because knowledge can play no part in that relationship. The moment knowledge does play a part, our relationship is no longer with that person, with that child, with that bluebell, with that cat or dog or blackbird; we are back to a relationship with ourselves, with our own minds. So we don’t know how to relate to the other person, but we constantly pretend that we do. We don’t know how to listen, but we know what to listen for. We don’t know how to talk, but we know what to talk about. And because we don’t know how to learn, we are constantly redefining our notions of what learning is, of what education is, of what should and should not be taught, of what is and what is not important. It’s an absurd, drawn-out, painful, pointless game.

But instead of arguing about it, let’s find out if we can learn from the very beginning, from the very first step. Let’s start from the fact that we don’t know how to learn – and learn. Let’s start from the fact that we don’t know how to relate to one another – and learn to relate. That’s the whole simplicity and beauty of it. And that is the new dimension that we don’t go into. Why don’t we? Because we don’t know how! Yet from this very statement it is clear that we possess all the right credentials, we fulfil all the right criteria: we don’t know! Just look at it for a while. Play around with it. There really is a most amazing gift here.