The child is delivered to this world, a wondrous and magnificent being, infused with a capacity and potential that we scarcely comprehend – despite our advances in science and technology, and despite all our research on DNA, the human genome and in the study of epigenetics. As revolutionary as our scientific findings and discoveries may be, they reveal precious little of our true nature. In fact, they often generate more questions than they yield in answers; thus, the more we learn, the less we know. This adage certainly applies to the human experience, where we can observe, describe, and infer – yet we can barely muster the capacity to comprehend and to appreciate the duality of our nature as both physical and spiritual beings.
Life matters. Profoundly. Life – all life, is precious. Nowhere is this more evident than in the expression of the human child. Born to the world of supreme innocence, extreme vulnerability – and extraordinary potential, provision for our children is paramount to the welfare and endurance of humankind. Consequently, and for this reason, it is our responsibility and our duty to protect, to provide, and to care well for our young.
Thus, wrongs inflicted against children are among the most egregious of all human transgressions. They represent the ultimate betrayal of humanity, for they inflict a unique, spiritual trauma during the most crucial and formative period of development. Not only does this impair a child’s relationship with the world, it can undermine his capacity even to connect with it. It changes everything – how the child perceives himself, how he understands the world around him, how he believes he fits into that world (or not); indeed, it alters and it defines the way in which the child interacts with everyone and everything.
Spiritual trauma is not unlike the trauma of a broken bone – except for the important distinction that it is invisible to the eye, and thus discernable by others only through clues in behavior…and it may never heal. Swiftly, effortlessly – and securely absorbed into the child’s self-concept, spiritual trauma has a pernicious and corrosive effect. It has the capacity to inflict inexorable damage through erosion, and sometimes complete dissolution, of one’s sense of personal value or worth. This can easily encumber a child for life; when it does, he will spend his lifetime – all his life’s time – in trying to recover, to overcome; in trying to be okay, to be enough; in trying to be worthy, to be accepted; and in trying to feel deserving of love.
This is an affliction of humankind that is ubiquitous. And it so diminishes us.
Consider how prevalent the pattern is, and how many of us are consumed by the quest. Unschooled in the duality of our nature and unaware of our divine purpose, we live distracted and derailed from our true potential. We expend our energies with imprudence and haste, in the misguided belief that the measure of our worth lies in the approval of others, that their approval will somehow redeem us and make us whole. And for this, we strive relentlessly. Our striving is revealed in how we relate to and interact with others; in how we compensate or overcompensate or withdraw. It is revealed in the choices we make, and in how we live out our lives.
Some of us become “pleasers” – often in excess and to our own detriment – in effort to win the favor of others. When it is rewarded, this behavior is also, thereby, reinforced. Thus, we enter into an unspoken agreement with the world: we live, move and behave in ways that increase probability for the approval we so desperately seek. This is the definition of a feedback loop….and it begins early in life.
We can become heavily invested in this kind of exchange and unbelievably dependent upon it – and this is problematic: for any time our peace and happiness is dependent on the approval of others, we are compromised. We are compromised because we have chosen to allow the appetites of the world, rather than our own spiritual wisdom, to dictate the terms by which we live.
This is a problem indeed, and its consequences are profound. Yet in absurd contradiction, it is a problem we also tend to ignore – sometimes, even when the terms of the agreement have changed. Changes that are incremental or infrequent are easily rationalized and minimized – much like the problem itself. And of course, this helps to excuse the fact that we were willing to compromise ourselves in the first place, and to tolerate the internal dissonance that accompanied that compromise, in the second.
Why do we do this? We do it because we care more about being accepted by the world, than we care about the fact of our dissonance. Not only is this a “slippery slope”, but it is a toxic condition in which to live and detrimental to one’s psychological and spiritual wellbeing. Dissonance is the alarm that sounds when we fail to honor the spiritual self, when we fail to act in accordance with what we know, intuitively, to be in concert with the undeniable truth of God’s purpose for our life. To endure dissonance and to allow it to persist, is to disavow the spiritual wisdom with which we were endowed by our Creator. And to strive to become comfortable in our dissonance, is to engage in the highest form of self-deception and personal sabotage. It is a trap not easily escaped.
Those who carry trauma from childhood are particularly vulnerable to sliding into this trap, and yet a great many others of us also live this way. It may be that some simply have no conception that life could be different; yet just as surely, there are those of us who do – but who have chosen instead, to surrender to the life of compromise and dissonance we have constructed. For change, as we know, would require effort and resolve. And of course, the distractions of the world are as pervasive as they are ingratiating, in their occupation of the mind. They are ever poised to blunt any discontent that might inadvertently, on occasion, surface – and they are incredibly successful.
This is a circumstance that plays out each day, in our own lives and in the lives of those around us. Unaddressed and uncorrected, it erodes our spirituality and diminishes us – as individuals, as societies, and as nations of the world. We are left thus, to wander amidst “the lost” of the Earth, unaware of our spiritual endowment and oblivious of our spiritual wisdom, as our divine potential lies dormant, abandoned, and unfulfilled. Such is the legacy of a God-less society, a society borne of ignorance and perpetuated through the complacency of an educational system that denies Him.
Herein lies the risk of excising God from Education, where Education represents a nation’s “unspoken agreement with the world”. This is the state of affairs that now characterizes life in the West – a life lived by millions of Americans every day. We numb our dissonance with all manner of worldly distraction – something also present here, and in ample supply. By virtue of our example, we pass along this coping mechanism to our children. Their despair, however, is thinly veiled; it is manifested and evidenced in the multitude of social problems that plague us today.
Education is and will always be, the domain of hope for our children, for our nation, and for all the world. Nowhere is God’s presence more essential, nor His absence more pivotal, than in the education of our youth. We have far too much at stake: we must invest ourselves wisely and we must teach our children well. Our future depends on it.
Copyright © 2021 American Islamic Montessori Association. All Rights Reserved.
Dr. Jaime Dodd specializes in the research and application of Montessori theory and practice in early childhood educational settings. She is a member of the executive leadership team for a nonprofit, educational and research institution in St. Louis, Missouri where she has invested the greater part of her professional career. Dr. Dodd serves on the board of various St. Louis area non-profit entities, focused primarily on educational, humanitarian and/or healthcare concerns. Dr. Dodd’s passion is manifest in her work with the American Islamic Montessori Association (AIMA), a professional membership organization to advance Islamic Montessori Education (IME) as a bridge to foster understanding, promote education and expand peace across the U.S. and around the globe.