According to recent brain science research, an infant possesses several capabilities at birth. We human beings cannot choose the environment or capabilities we would like to be born with. Each human being is born with various capabilities so as to survive in any environment or adapt to living with any disability. According to another theory, it is more effective if these inborn capabilities are gradually curbed.
Till date, the general opinion of society at large, including the world of childcare, was that a child is like a blank canvass and childcare and education is similar to drawing various colours and lines on it. However, I am of the opinion that an infant is not a blank slate.
All living creatures have the ability to transmit their genes to their progeny. Various difficulties are encountered between the birth of a child and the time it produces offspring. However, mankind has survived because it has overcome these hurdles.
Further, according to recent research, human beings are said to be active living creatures by the time they are born. Hence, it is false to say that an infant is a passive creature who cannot do anything on its own or that it knows nothing, and that people have to do things for it. Among the capabilities that we are born with, we gradually lose those that are not necessary or other competing capabilities, while we continuously hone those capabilities that are necessary for us to survive. In this sense, we can say that childcare is also about helping a child to curb various capabilities smartly.
To be more precise, the role of a caregiver is not to draw lines on the blank canvass called a child but to assist the child in extracting the right colours to match its situation, and from the complex mix of colours and lines delete what is superfluous. The word ‘education’ in English is derived from ‘eduction’.
The approach of Mimamoru childcare is not to teach the child or give it something it cannot do, but to ‘educt’, bring out, and nurture the innate capabilities of the child. In my opinion, this is an important approach to achieve the proper shape of education.
「HOIKU」Heiji Fujimori
