There are, various kinds of smarts, not just the books, and yet, the adults in the population only seemed to, focus on the test results, the grades, and overlooking ALL other just as important aspects of children’s development! Translated…
As I’d entered into the elementary schools to give my lectures of sexual assaults, I’d often asked the kids, “Who thinks s/he is amazing?”
This question, seemed to be unrelated to sexual assaults, but, it actually has everything to do with it. The sexual assault prevention kids were introduced to in school normally teaches them to protect themselves, but, as I’d taken that question further and asked, “Why would you need to protect yourselves?”, the kids would often become dumbfounded, or reply, with uncertainty, “Uh, because, the bad guys are, evil?”
all the ways that a child can BE smart, based off of Gardner’s theory, chart from online…
I’d told them, “No, it’s because you’re, precious, every child is unique, so you’re worthy of love, nobody can replace you in this world, and nobody should harm you in any way, and should respect you.” I believe, that the key is not to just learn to protect ourselves, but to love ourselves too.
The kids’ reactions to my words would vary with the different grade levels. The lower grades usually hollered out in glee and complied with my words, while the middle and higher grade levels were all, shaking their heads. If I’d gone a step further and did a mini-survey, ask them, “Who here thinks s/he is wonderful?”, there would be, this almost identical response from all the schools: the lower grade level students all raised their hands together, with the middle grade levels’ number of students reduced by half, and, in the higher grade levels, almost NOBODY raised her/his hands.
Maybe, this, isn’t at all that surprising, as the children are getting older, the adults around them started, teaching the children to negate themselves unintentionally. I’d often half joked, “Aren’t the adults weird? When you were still babies, no matter what you did, you’d gotten praised, like as you’d learned to crawl, or walk, or gotten potty trained. But after you reach into your elementary years, the adults seemed to always be yelling at you, don’t they? For the lousy grades on exams, eating too slow, moving slowly, talking with other classmates while classes are in session, they seemed to, yell at you, for almost, NO reasons at all, every single day. But, do the adults remember to, praise the children? No, to the point, that you the children are, misled to believe, in just how awful you are!”
Sometimes, the kids understood what I was talking about, but as I’d hoped that “the teachers can praise the students more, and the kids need to remember their own good qualities”, a lot of the students were, shaking their heads left to right. Once, a student who was on the first row, who couldn’t sit still, to the point, of rolling around on the floors, with one look, I’d known that he was a child with A.D.H.D. who must’ve gotten punished a lot by his teacher, he’d told me, “that was because we still hadn’t learned, just how awful we all are, like me, I’m a person, with NO good qualities.”
I’d stopped to look at him, he was, wearing this oversized t-shirt and shorts down to his knees, and from what I observed, I’d known, that he loved sports. I’d boldly speculated, “You must be a part of the sports team, aren’t you? I got that from the way you were dressed.” the boy became stunned, I’d continued, “You’d dressed up so professionally, that must mean, how much you loved sports, you are, a basketball player, aren’t you?”, the child smiled radiantly at me, said, “I am on the basketball AND the track team.” I’d told him, “And you still say, that you have, NO good qualities?”
not my photograph…
During that class, that originally active, and squiggly boy, became more focused than everybody else, and he’d passionately answered every single question I had for the class.
The adults are often too stressed out on, “How can we teach the children?”, but more importantly, what we needed to focus on is, “How are the adults treating the children” instead.
So, this still just showed, how easily misunderstood kids can become by the stupid adults around them, their teachers, their parents, their counselors, blah, blah, blah, and it’s because these god DAMN adults’ not wanting to understand the drive behind the children’s acting up, that’s caused them to act up even more often, like how this lecturer had, effectively, brought out the good quality of this child who probably didn’t do well in the academics, but he’d excelled in sports, just look at how many different sports this kid’s involved in! There are, MULTIPLE intelligences, as theorized by H. Gardner, remember???
Life, the Obstacle Course 