Nurturing is the Foundation

Playlist- 2 videos (7.5 min & 14.5 min).

All adults responsible for children must nurture them, where the most basic form of nurturing is supporting them to satisfy their primary human needs. 

Does that statement about adult responsibility strike you as self-evident? 

It strikes me as such, but maybe I'm wierd because of my professional training in psychology and decades of experience taking care of other people's children. It also turns out that the foundation for effective and efficient learning is well-being which is a result of the satisfaction of the primary human needs for air, water, food, shelter, sleep, relatedness, autonomy, and competence.  Yet, educational policy-makers do not require systemic support for meeting the primary human needs of students and teachers. In a sense it is not their fault because these facts are not well known. However, that failure to provide systemic need support through educational policy creates the central problem in our school system today; pervasive disengagement due to the persistent undermining of effective learning and teaching due to the lack of systemic support for well-being. It is time for educational policy-makers to acknowledge those foundations.

I founded Schools of Conscience to build the nurturing capacity of K-12 schools.  Educational policy-makers need to acknowlege the proper role of primary human need support in learning.  Here is where you can find the first draft of the resolution, a poster about the resolution, and other materials about it. A forth coming book will present a revised resolution and give more context for why it is necessary.  If you are inspired to provide leadership on this issue within your learning community please visit our campaign guide page which explains how to conduct a campaign in support of the resolution.

My name is Don Berg, I am the founder of Schools of Conscience. I am an education geek and this site is where I hope to engage with other people who like to geek out on education, too. In the video above I tell my story of fauxchievment, how school taught me to go through the academic motions without mastering the material, and how we can stop fauxchievment from ruining the education of future students.