¶ Child As Laboratory (2)
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Index Entry
That child is very aware of gravity, to start off with. The child tries to stand up, and gravity brings it back down again-- very vehemently. And he learns this sliding out of bed, having gravity act as a brake while he’s horizontal and how gravity acts as an accelerator when he’s vertical. He wants to have some way to rest himself, but he can’t get back to the horizontal, so he has a feeling for that tension, something he can hold on to. So I find every child, then, is really a brilliantly designed laboratory, trying to find out what the reliable behaviors are in order to be able to employ them methodically. I would think-- in view of the fact that there really are fundamentals of structure, of tensions and compressions; there are fundamentals of mechanics-- that we ought to be able to really make available to the child exactly what it needs to get the very best information, in way where they won’t get hurt and where nobody will be tempted to say ‘Don’t.’
Q. - “Is this what you mean when you speak of circumstance-pruned individuals? Circumstances prune people. They narrow them, do they?”
