Sometimes, I expect we all read statements purporting to be about conductive education with which we profoundly disagree. For me, one such appears in the English version of the very welcome introduction to the World Congress in 2013 (the link is to a pdf file download) which I am hoping to attend.
"[Conductive education's] objective is to enable physically and multi-disabled individuals to actively participate in society by means of intensive and systematic training and practice."
Let's just agree, for the sake of argument and for the moment, that the objective of education for all of us is that we "actively paricipate in society". I clearly recall teachers at the grammar school I attended in the 1950s and 60s having much the same aspiration for us pupils.
My problem with what is written here is that I baulk at the notion that there is a group of pupils, children if you wish, whose education or upbringing - the very processes of becoming active participants in society - is best defined or achieved "by means of intensive and systematic training and practice".
My problem is that I baulk at the notion that the distinctive feature of conductive education, the essence of what sets apart what we do from what others do whose objective is also that individuals become active particpants in society (a claim I suspect most teachers in mainsttream schools would make), is that we do so by "by means of intensive and systematic training and practice".
As if, in both instances, that is all there is to it. How intensive is "intensive"? How systematic is "systematic"? How much more "training", how much more "practice" is necessary should the conductor or child falter? Is that it, then, in a nutshell? Intensive, systematic training and practice?
When the videomaker asks me what is different, what is special, about conductive education, my answer should be that we are more "intensive and systematic" than any other form of pedagogy or upbringing?
Dr Hari wrote: "Conductive education enables individuals to build up a new quality of life and a new quality of intention to achieve higher levels of co-ordination and some increase in coherence and power .... For the everyday course of life this means that the individual is able to establish aims (intentions), to retain them, to monitor progress towards them, to resist failure and to overcome obstacles to their achievement."
Perhaps I just do not believe or accept that it is possible to "build up a new quality of life and a new quality of intention" through "intensive and systematic training and practice" alone. Alone? Then there is something else involved? For me, absolutely so. For me, anyone who thinks that what is distinctive, different, specific, about conductive education is that it achieves what it achieves through ""intensive and systematic training and practice", quite simply misses the point. Conductive education is so much more.
-----------------
See further "We Are Not Alone" by Ray Kohn for e-Conduction
