To link with the series of articles that we are publishing with proposals to change education, we will offer interviews to experts that will help us understand better the authentic learning needs of children. We start interviewing Isabel Fernández del Castillo.
Isabel Fernández del Castillo She is a training journalist and author of one of the most influential books on parenting issues that has been written in Spain, "The Birth Revolution."
He is currently developing the Magic Childhood project, which works on creative learning and the role of the cerebral hemispheres in children's intelligence. Our interview today will deal especially with these issues.
Why have you been interested in the cerebral hemispheres and their development in childhood?
I have the feeling of taking a lifetime studying "circular" thinking systems (traditional Chinese medicine, energy nutrition, permaculture ...) and how polarities (yin and yang) manifest in health, in nature, in each phenomenon. When I learned how the cerebral hemispheres work, it just fit perfectly. Everything I've learned from symbology with my sister Beatriz has also been very important in recent years.
The cerebral hemispheres and their functioning are concepts that every educator should understand, right?
We live a culture marked by the predominance of the rational and linear mind over the intuitive and holistic. The effects, well, you just have to look around. But I am especially concerned about children: unless we do an important job of filtering, today's culture invades their world and neutralizes their genius.
Knowing how the hemispheres work and their childhood development calendar offers a very useful reference point to know what children need in terms of environment, and how to manage the stimuli that invade the children's world.
Parents and educators need to know better how our brain, human learning and thinking really work, right?
I believe everyone. If we take a look at the current situation in the world, it becomes clear that being the most intelligent species has not prevented us from reaching a critical situation at all levels, because of the problems we have created. I think we should be more humble and ask ourselves if we are using that prodigious mind well. And it seems not.
Can you briefly explain the functioning of the two cerebral hemispheres? I say briefly because it is such an extensive and fascinating subject that I hope to read one day a book that you write about it.
The mind, like everything else in nature, has two polarities, which correspond to how the cerebral hemispheres work. There is a rational mind (left hemisphere) and an intuitive mind (right hemisphere). They are two opposite ways of perceiving and being in the world, of learning and facing situations.
What does each hemisphere do?
To summarize, one has the partial and detailed vision, while the other has the global vision and perceives the relationships between those details. The rational mind takes into account what it sees, while the intuitive takes into account many more things, access knowledge in a different way, in a direct way. One is verbal, the other is expressed by images.
Are both complementary and necessary?
Yes. The problem is that since Descartes raised human reason to the category of God, the intuitive mind has been relegated more and more to the shadow. One without the other leaves us lame. It's about looking for balance.
So far the first part of this interview with Isabel Fernández del Castillo on the functioning of the cerebral hemispheres in children's learning. Tomorrow we will deepen each one of them and how they complement each other both in our minds and in that of the children.
