Zen and the art of early engagement...

flickr CC image via woodleywonderworks

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything;

it is open to everything.  In the beginner's mind there are

many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.

Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi

I have been thinking about the way we introduce learning to kids at the beginning of the kindergarten to grade twelve spectrum. We are taught as preservice teachers to think of early learning kids as "tabula rasa," or blank slates. This is interesting considering that we are also taught during our preservice training that kids have learned an almost unbelievable amount in the first five years of life. We certainly don't seem to honor the widely accepted notion that kids have likely learned more before entering school than they will collectively for the rest of their lives. From the NYU Child Study Center...

During this time the brain undergoes its most dramatic growth, and children rapidly develop the cognitive capacity that enables them to become intellectually curious and creative thinkers.

It appears clear to me that we are very privileged as professionals to have such adept and capable subjects to work with right off the bat. Even if we accept that kids are born as blank slates... tabula rasa, I believe by the time they enter school, kids are chock full of knowledge, skills and attitudes enabling them to learn any number of things... each child is indeed tabula abundans; an abundant slate. Their "beginner minds" are primed and ready to learn. So how do we run with this and make it work for them?