The Great Unknown

“Take me through your barricades / Push me through your city walls...” No Stranger, Small Black

We can see the world through our chosen lens or the one that we are given. “I wonder what will happen if I....” is choice. “Get down, you might hurt yourself” is given. It’s why as educators and parents we need to take great care with the words we use and take a moment to consider the subtle messages that we transmit to children every time we speak. Words are hugely powerful. Often as educators we focus on extending vocabulary and modelling speech or sentences, yet perhaps we overlook the invisibility of meaning and of interpretation.

We tell children to get down because we are worried and in doing so we project our fears on to them, teach them that risk is to be avoided and that adults are the ones who make decisions on behalf of children. There is a control-through-anxiety.

However, if we enable children and bite our lips, several important things happen to the lens through which they look: they see that they are capable of exploring for themselves, discovering the world and making sense of it through autonomy; they realise that the Adult World has faith in them to express their instinctive curiosity and the balance of power can shift from the adult - experiences can be more democratic, more acts of solidarity.

Most importantly perhaps, our lens transforms too - children reveal themselves as teachers. They teach the Adult World that fears are often illusory, that if we take courage and feel our own strength then we can overcome malevolence and anxiety, that if we have faith in ourselves then the possible can be explored, that risk, taking The Leap, however daunting, can lead to new self-perception and rebirth.

And I think that’s one of the greatest lessons that children can give the Adult World - that the world is there for the taking if we face our fears and throw ourselves into it, if we unmask ourselves and step in to the Great Unknown. It’s where life and the index of possibility await...