Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, Carl Jung states: “The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.” It is a profound error to rationalise away the significance of this imagination and to reduce intelligence to economic and intellectual survival. As we fix our sights upon targets, goals, and outcomes for our children, there is a calling to apply some imagination.
Being Hu-man
A series of Blog Posts by adolescent facilitator Jacob Horsey
Stages of Human Development
Humans develop. Not in a straight line. Not by adding food. Not by singing their praises when they do something right, nor by condemning their bad decisions when they do something “wrong”. Not by sending them to the “right” school, nor by censuring the “wrong” stuff. Not by building a pink tower as a 3-year-old, nor by learning about gnomes and floating continents. The process involves more than that. More than that. And it deserves attention; all of our attention- because frankly, we are all-human.
The word humanis made up of two syllables: “Hu” an ancient Arabic word for divinity, and “Man” which comes frommanas, or more specifically, mind or intelligence. Essentially, our ancestors recognised an aspect of humans that was outside the simple boxes of our limited intelligence. There was more to us. This more to ushas been explored with great vigour and determination throughout history by both scientist and philosopher, both objectively and subjectively. And rightly or wrongly we have discovered, or made conscious, many things we didn’t know about what it means to be hu-man.
A recurring realisation, and a perennially important one, is that humans develop. By stages. And not just outwardly – (although mothers often joke that all an adolescent boy needs is food and sleep). Humans develop, by stages, outwardly, and inwardly. This “more to us”, that we have sought restlessly throughout the ages, exists inside. The most controversial question almost never asked might be: “how are we going to support and facilitate this inner and outer growth of children, adolescents, adults – humans and oneself?” And, “how can we do it naturally”, with least resistance, with minimal coercion, without force, undue pain, and unnecessary suffering. What is the most practical and natural way to engender this life-process? The inevitable answer to this, is that there isn’t one way: that every individual human being needs to discover it for themselves, that parents will need to work it out individually for each and every child. There is an old saying: “there are as many paths to truth as there are human beings”. And so, it could be said that there are as many ways to parent as there are children, or more fairly there are as many paths to adulthood as there are children. Despite the great necessity to work it out oneself, what we do have, is the ability to share our experiences, to pass on our wisdom, to collaborate collectively and to draw upon the well-spring of knowledge that has been passed down from women and men since time immemorial. We have never had at our fingertips so much research and psychological and scientific information about ourselves, nor have we had such wide and accessible evidence regarding the great traditions, cultures, and religions of the ages. We have never been able to say with such authority and confidence, that there are clear universal human stages that need to be respected. And yet, at the same time, this wisdom has sunk from consciousness, and the economic engine that drives our nations, our families’ lives, our work places, and our children’s educational experiences has driven our well-being outward too, so that our attention has become ever more focused on results, outcomes, returns, profits and progress.
As the pressure rises, as we tear deeper into the heart of our planet looking for this inner and outer adjustment, and as we soar further into space searching for its limits, a great pathology has spread amongst our children, our teenagers, and ourselves. In our denial or ignorance of these universal stages of development there has been a vacuum of unfulfilled growth and meaningless pain and suffering that has fallen to the lot of the next generation. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), revealed in 2018 that the leading cause of death for people aged 15 to 44 was suicide, suicide being defined as an “external” cause of death. Mental health programs are being rolled out like red carpets for the next generation, and embedded in curricula, as if being mentally unwell is to be expected, while at the same time the Plimsoll line goes deeper. Research is showing that children and adolescents are suffering high levels of mental anguish from a young age, with a strong correlation to school and formal education. Research by David Whitebread showed that UK academic levels have dropped, and stress levels have grown with each decrease in the formal education starting age. Cortisol levels in a 3-year-old presented as a significant predictor for lower academic outcomes as an 11-year-old, not to mention vulnerability with mental health, anxiety, and depression. Conversely, later starting ages and longer periods of play had a significant relationship with better academic and mental health outcomes. Australia has borne similar results in the biggest longitudinal study into school starting ages and outcomes in the country.
What we are seeing is that despite the tireless work done towards serving and improving the lives of the next generation, it is to no avail unless it is done with some understanding of what is actually helpful for each stage of human development. There is no substitute for hu-mans; no method, no program, no institution, no organisation, no technological medium that can subvert the human needs, that can satisfy this inner life of the developing human. Teachers and adults return again and again to the age-old maxim- that we must “know” the child. Building positive relationships is always considered first and foremost in a classroom. It is the basis, the cornerstone, the foundation, the heart of education. But it is struggling, and children and adolescents that are sensitive to the fact that something is missing suffer the most. For it doesn’t matter how wonderful the relationship is between adult and child, if you try to feed a baby solids before they are ready, no amount of persistence or persuasion is going to produce positive results. Similarly, it is with early childhood, the primary years, and more clearly than ever with adolescence, wherein one study showed that only half of adolescents actually like school, one quarter had an outright aversion to it. Children cannot and will not adjust to something unless it is serving their inner development, and the child that is attuned to their inner development is the first to show the cracks of a system that has become de-humanised.
