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( Editorial Note: though Henk is writing about ideas he has worked on at primary level, they apply to work with all age groups)

It is a well-known fact that children are more sensitive than adults. Children are more open to the world they live in and react more immediately and unconditionally than grown-ups do. In children the power of the heart frequently overrules the power of the brain. To use an image from the world of fairy tales: the child's soul has not yet been locked up in the turret room of the castle, which is an image for the hard-boned skull. Or in the words of the English poet William Wordsworth: the prison house has not yet been closed. The child's soul is still more or less free to flow out into the world without any hindrance. Without the filter of the intellect the child merges with the surrounding world. Only when a certain degree of self consciousness has been reached in the process of growing up does the child close himself up. A great deal of spontaneity has gone, a great deal of logical thinking has been acquired. It is a natural and necessary process. Primary teachers should be fully aware of it.

Roughly speaking we can say that this openness to the world, which gradually diminishes, lasts until the age of 12. The trick of being a good primary teacher lies in the ability of the teacher to be as open to the world as the child still is, to be as spontaneous and unconditional. As soon as the primary teacher gets locked up in his head, in the brain, he will not be able to establish good contact with the child. The more flexible and skilful the teacher, as to mobilising and applying either the powers of the heart or the powers of the head, which ever is necessary at a certain stage, the more successful he will be. The teacher can guide the child in metamorphosing the spontaneous, sometimes overflowing, life forces into the more becalmed powers of thinking.

Having said the above, it will be clear that as soon as the characterized bond between teacher and child has been established, the teaching process is likely to be highly successful. The teacher and the class will become a real unit. If we have been so lucky to have reached this stage, we will further notice that intuition and inspiration start to flow. We will be able to inspire our pupils and at the same time we draw some inspiration from them. We as teachers will get extremely sensitive to the unuttered questions of our pupils. This point is crucial when teaching in primary education and is the core of this text. We must be able to sense the mood in which our class is at the start of our lesson and accordingly decide how to present our subject matter. Often we have to make up our mind in just a second. The ensuing and immediate response of the class will show us whether we have been right or wrong. An example: I once had prepared a certain lesson for my class of six-year-olds when a boy handed over to me a new toy he had got for his birthday. At that particular moment I made the decision to build a lesson round this new toy and let go my initial preparations. More toys that turned out to be in the classroom were handed over and a lesson of thirty minutes was the result. The lesson was of course highly appreciated because it was initiated by one of the pupils. And the birthday boy, as a spin-off, was the centre of attention, which he really needed at that point.

A big help in training this sensitivity is the following exercise. Before the teacher goes to bed at the end of the day he may devote a couple of minutes to just thinking of his pupils. For a short moment every child appears in the mental picture the teachers tries to build up. He tries to imagine the face, the voice, the clothing, the colour of the hair etc. of the pupil. Then let it go and tries to call forth another child. When one repeats this exercise for a couple of days, or weeks, one will notice that the following morning one will remember, though vaguely, fragments of pupil-related dreams. These partly unconscious images help the teacher decide how to shape the following lesson. From my own experience with this process I can tell that these partly unconscious images tend to pop up in the conscious mind as soon as the teacher sees the child at the beginning of the lesson. It is a very refined, sophisticated process that is described here. It may not be a success in the beginning, it takes time and tenacity. But as soon as the teacher gets the hang of it, the convincing inspiring power will amaze him. It will provide him with exactly the right decisions during the lesson. It played a part in my example of the toy that was handed over to me by the boy.

From a methodological point of view it must be added that the teacher should not only work from the course book. The course book is, after all, prescriptive. In every lesson there should be ample space for the teacher to wedge in that particular material that has come about through the above described process. The course book gives structure, especially to the beginning teacher. But the more the teacher has built up experience, the more he can freely decide which subjects, activities, games etc. can be added or discussed in a particular lesson.

It is clear that the described meditative and, in the end, intuitive teaching process will have a bigger impact if the teacher is the class teacher that stays with his or her group all the time and not just a subject teacher that sees the class twice or three times a week. Nevertheless, the meditative attention that the subject teacher devotes to his pupils will work in the same positive way.

If we manage to bring our lessons to life while applying these initially unknown forces, we will notice that neither the teacher, nor the pupils will get bored or tired. Real life forces will be exchanged during the lessons. Supply and demand will be perfectly balanced. The real bond between teacher and pupil that arises will be experienced as pleasant and reassuring by all involved.

This hidden link between teacher and students as described here also works in adult education. However, it will be far more difficult because adults are not as open as children. Only when the teacher manages to break down the solid walls of the adult's turret room, and taken for granted that he himself is able to open up during the lessons, will he be able to establish this hidden contact that is the basis of all teaching.

Henk van Oort MA