Community Learning Development Resource 100 – 04
NATURE AND NURTURE
SUMMARY
‘’ At birth we all have the capacity to learn, somehow during our childhood experience many of us seem to lose that capacity. The first thing we should consider when we are seeking to support and enable non-confident people to build their capacity to change their lives, is that we may need to encourage them to rediscover their learning soul.’’
It is suggested that we are all created equal and there is evidence that when we are first born we all have the potential to learn throughout our lives and that generally that potential is much the same for all of us as human beings. This resource (100 – 06) offers a simple activity encouraging us as workers to explore the influence of our own life experiences on our ability to learn and develop.
What has influenced our individual development as learners?
Our nature – what we enter the world with as new-born human beings.
Our nurturing – what has influenced our development after our birth.
- Why do individual adults seem to display a widely varying capacity and potential to learn and function?
- What, in their nurturing since birth, has caused and contributed to the differences between individuals?
Working in the community we have heard from workers about how people and their potential and readiness to learn:
‘’Everyone has a talent inside them, it is just a question of them finding it’’.
‘It’s not that they can’t learn, it’s just not part of the culture’’.
‘’The first thing that we have to do, is to undo all the damage done by their experience of statutory education and training and to give them back their desire to learn’’.
‘’When babies are born, the first two years don’t matter, there’s not much you can do with them, and then they’ll go to playschool to learn’’.
TWO QUESTIONS FOR INDIVIDUALS/SMALL GROUPS:
1.What have been the influences in your life experience, which have enabled and encouraged you to learn?
2.What have been the life experiences and influences that have negatively affected your ability to learn?
Sharing and discussing:
- Can we identify some common positive nurturing influences?
- Can we identify some common negative nurturing influences?
- How important is it to understand the nurturing influences in the lives of the people we are trying to work with?
- How feasible is it to ask them about positive or negative nurturing experiences?
- What positive nurturing factors now exist in the neighbourhood or community in which you are working?
- What negative nurturing factors now exist in the neighbourhood or community in which you are working?
- How might you improve the nurturing/learning environment?