CONDUCTIVE WORLD

VISIT ANDRÁS PETŐ

2012-02-02T16:08:00.003Z

I do hope that some still do

His ashes reside in a funerary wall just inside the main gate of Farkasréti Temető (Wolf's Meadow Cemetery) in Buda, at

614-es jelű fülkék ("A")

Hie is at the far right of the wall, half-way up, numbered A/1138:

PROF

DR. PETŐ ANDRÁS

1893 – 1967

At one time there seemed always a flower in the little vase on the small ledge before his stone. There was no flower there the last time that I visited.

1138: Pető András (orvos, gyógypedagógus, főiskolai tanár, tanszékvezető; a konduktív mozgásterápia kidolgozója, az Országos Mozgásterápiai Intézet, majd a Mozgássérültek Nevelőképző és Nevelőintézete igazgatója; író, költő) 1893-1967

http://epa.oszk.hu/00000/00003/00030/adattar.html

CONDUCTIVE EDUCATION TAKING ROOT?

2012-01-31T10:34:00.000Z

Need for formal impact assessment

Writing on Facebook the other day (25 January) I realised that I had been drawn into discussing a question that had not occurred to me before: how to assess the impact of Conductive Education.

I was pleased that this had happened. I realised that I have not previously seen explicit, public mention of Conductive Education's 'impact assessment' (though this is not to say that informal, implicit and/or behind-doors assessments are not being made). Further, I realised immediately that I had stepped tight out of my depth.

Wot no impact assessments for CE?

Were I working in the 'real worlds' of commerce, public administration, the military etc. – even academe – then I would have to know about such a things and. Where Conductive Education is in regular real-world contact, achieving an explict impact assessment is surely a matter of continuing concern for those running CE systems for provision, training and anything else. This would be certainly the case if looking for funding from Her Majesty's Government and the European Union and, I suspect from all a sorts of other bodies too, public and charitable, around the world.

A quick look on Google for “impact assessment” has found me over ten million hits. Search for “impact assessment” AND “conductive education” and some five-hundred break surface. I do not have time to read through all these but a quick skim suggests that the two topics are ships that have passed in the night without actually connecting. Maybe I missed it but I saw no actual, completed impact assessment for CE mentioned there.

Please, please, please correct me if I missed some.

I could be so wrong,and maybe Conductive Education's impact has been well assessed – and, if it is not, then perhaps plans are already well afoot for formal investigations aimed to produce the sort of 'evidence' so important to justify funding and survival in today's managed world.

Criteria?

Meanwhile, for my own satisfaction, how might one measure CE's impact? I doubt that the criteria that occur to myself would have much general appeal in the world of resource-management but here, in no proposed order of importance, are a few personal ones from off the top of the head.

How prevalent is successful conversion of 'CE' experiences (pedagogy, upbringing; programs, schooling) into sustained conductive lifestyles (I am endebted to conductor Susie Mallett for emphasising this dimension)?
How much are the goals and methods of Conductive Education appreciated (both senses) by workers in special education, rehab etc. – or even known?
Ditto for families and disabled people – and their organisations?
Ditto for the media, decision-makers, politicians, and the popular consciousness as a whole?
How extensive is awareness and enthusiasm for CE amongst potential users ('is there a demonstrable demand')?
How far do the founding and maintenance of centres/programs depend upon closely involved individuals, their immediate associates and families (rather that upon corporate and/or understandings and goals)?
What is its institutional permanence (I have always been struck by how short a life-span David Dvorak's survey found for so many US centers – is this changing over the years)?
What is the long-term satisfaction of all the hope, expense and effort (what after-taste does CE leave in the mouth)?
What are the effects of CE upon take-up/demand for other services, parental 'shopping around' for alternative programs...?

All the above should be quantifiable by means of concrete indices and no doubt others could be suggested.

Roots

It is so easy to proclain that 'Conductive Education' has been set up in this country or that, by this organisation or the other, and interesting to read the continuing stories of individual solutions to the problem of providing or accessing conductive services. And nothing is more gratifying that to learn of the success and gratification that might be the fruit of all the effort involved.

But for all this how far has Conductive Education put down roots, deeply and strongly enough to withstand the test of time — and especially the test of hard times?

I think that this is the question of impact-assessment raised by other means.

WORLD CE CONGRESS

2012-01-24T14:40:00.000Z

German pioneer's 'long overdue' recognition

I am ashamed to say that I have only just found this year-old German report –

Wer behindert wen?
Karin Weber mit dem Honorary Conductor Award geehrt
Den leitenden Fragestellungen wer eigentlich wen behindert, wer wem hilft bzw. vor allem wie geholfen wird und mit welchen Vor- und Nachteilen, damit setzt sich Professorin Dr. Karin Weber (Fakultät II) seit drei Jahrzehnten wissenschaftlich auseinander. Dabei ging und geht es ihr immer um strukturelle, institutionelle und inhaltliche Fragen, vor allem aber um Qualität und Effektivität der Förderung und Rehabilitation von Menschen mit Behinderungen. Im Rahmen des 7th World Congress on Conductive Education in Hongkong wurde Karin Weber im Dezember 2010 mit dem Honorary Conductor Award für ihr langjähriges wissenschaftliches Wirken auf diesem Gebiet international gewürdigt.
Das komplexe und integrative System Konduktiver (zusammenführender) Förderung (engl. „Conductive Education”) für Menschen mit zerebralen Beeinträchtigungen, hervorgerufen z.B. durch Sauerstoffmangel bei der Geburt, durch neurodegenerative Erkrankungen wie Multiple Sklerose, Parkinson Syndrom, nach Apoplex oder Schädel-HirnTraumata nach Unfällen, unterscheidet sich von dem bei uns üblichen additiven Förder- und Rehabilitationssystem. D.h. während bei uns üblicherweise therapeutische, bildende und fördernde sowie pﬂegerische Bereiche voneinander getrennt Einﬂuss auf Betroffene nehmen, sind im Rahmen konduktiver Förderung diese Bereiche zusammengeführt und werden nicht von unterschiedlichen Fachleuten betreut oder behandelt sondern von einer Bezugsperson, die in allen drei Bereichen qualiﬁziert ist.
Als Karin Weber vor 25 Jahren auf dieses außergewöhnliche Fördersystem stieß, wurde ihre wissenschaftliche Neugier nicht nur geweckt, sondern geradezu aufgerüttelt. Mit einem breit angelegten Pilotprojekt wurde ein klinischer Modellversuch ab 1990 vom Bundesminister für Arbeit und Sozialordnung in Auftrag gegeben. Es folgten ab Mitte der 90er Jahre weitere Forschungsprojekte in Köln sowie in München. Große wissenschaftliche Verdienste sind vor allem die theoretische Begründung und Reformierung des Mitte der 40er Jahre in Ungarn entstandenen komplexen Fördersystems, die von ihr herausgegebene siebenbändige Buchreihe zum Thema, zahlreiche Publikationen und Vorträge, die Mitbegründung der Europäischen Assoziation, die Evaluation eines EU-ComeniusProjektes mit dem Ziel einen europäischen BA-Studiengang zu begründen. Daneben rief sie den Verein für Konduktive Förderung ins Leben, der später zur Gründung des Instituts ScoRe (Siegener complexe Rehabilitation), führte. Die von ihr und ihren Mitarbeitern begründete Theorie der Konduktiven Förderung, ihre Publikationen, Vorträge und ihr fachlicher Rat werden weltweit anerkannt und geschätzt.
Dafür erhielt sie auf Vorschlag der Internationalen Petö Association (IPA) vom Conductors College Budapest – wie in der Laudatio hervorgehoben „längst überfällig“– im Rahmen der Eröffnungsfeiern für den 7th World Congress on Conductive Education in Hongkong im Dezember den Honorary Conductor Award für ihr langjähriges wissenschaftliches Wirken.

What further undiscovered reports of this event remain tucked away out there in Cyberspace?

Reference

– (2011) Querschnitt: Zeitung der Universität Siegen, nr.1, p.10

http://www.uni-siegen.de/presse/publikationen/querschnitt/querschnitt/zeitung_querschnitt_neu_web.pdf

TWADDLE

2012-01-20T10:46:00.000Z

The triumph of Newspeak

Two items from yesterday's public discourse around 'special educational needs' in England.

From Full Fact, a body aiming to 'promote accuracy in public debate' –

...two thirds of juveniles found guilty of offences during the riots [in August] were classified as SEN, which is some way above the national rate of 21 per cent.

http://fullfact.org/factchecks/young_rioters_special_educational_needs-3248

From a Press Release by the Department of Education –

...multi-disciplinary support to the Special Educational Needs Green Paper Pathfinder Programme...which aims to improve the lives of some of the most deserving members of society...

http://www.cisionwire.com/mott-macdonald/r/mott-macdonald-appointed-as-support-team-to-special-educational-needs-green-paper-pathfinders,c9208501

So what percentage of' 'rioters' are some of the most deserving in society, or what percentage of the most deserving might riot?

And where in any of this is hint of recognition that words and expressions that have no material meaning are no basis for statistical analysis ('Rubbish in, rubbish out') and for policies to structure social provisions?

WHAT PRICE PLAGIARISM?

2012-01-19T18:44:00.003Z

Is such bespoke fraud really legal?

What a sad trade

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Easy-peasy

Best possible advice

Don't even think of it!

Not for the first time of mentioning...

http://www.conductive-world.info/search?q=plagiarism

And if you missed the allusion to presidents

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-18/hungarian-university-to-probe-presidential-plagiarism-allegation.html

http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/hungarian-president-didn-t-plagiarise-thesis_752154.html

http://hvg.hu/itthon/20120119_schmitt_pal_egerben_video

How can one expect vulnerable groups, like politicians, presidents and foreign ministers, to behave honourably when even ordinary citizens are openly circulated offers like this?

IF CONDUCTORS ARE AN UNAFFORDABLE LUXURY

2012-01-19T01:00:00.001Z

CE may have to be down to parents

Which probably means mothers in most cases

As part of a short discussion thread on Facebook yesterday, Nonye Nweke writes from Nigeria –

You know, what a conductor is asking for a week is more than the annual minimum wage in my country. I am finding it hard to convince sponsors to invest such money on "this type" of children... as they call our special children. Is there hope for our children here to benefit from CE? I just wonder.

http://www.facebook.com/conductive.world/posts/328304090536758

By one of those happy coincidences, the self-same day Patti Herbst writes from Chicago, to inform of the following day event for mothers of disabled children:

http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1103899376956-42/Healthy+Mom+Healthy+Family+Conference+2012.pdf

I think immediately of course of Ákos Károly and Magda Ákos and their long-forgotten grand plan to spread Conductive Education across Germany, with very few conductors and a lot of mothers. Their slogan? A quotation from Goethe's Faust:

Doch gibt’s ein Mittel… Die Mütter sind es!

(There is a way… the mothers!)

Their little book, also apparently long forgotten in both its English and German editions, demonstrates how this might be achieved at the level of the family, in a way that is likely generalisable to a variety of contexts in similar societies – and possibly in many others too.

The answer to Nyomi's question is that the benefits of Conductive Education will never be equably available through the direct agency of conductors working with groups and individuals to all who might benefit around the world. That is a servicethat that only the already privileged will ever be able to afford.

In other words, an effective global future for András Pető's heritage might lie less with conductors, or even conductive pedagogy, and more with upbringing. I struggled, not terribly successfully with this question in Hong Kong a year or so ago:

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2905541

Useful progress, however, will come only from practice.

ODD TECHNICAL PROBLEM ON THIS BLOG

2012-01-16T09:28:00.000Z

Irritatinginterruption of dialogue

Google Alerts has sentout a worldwide notification, as it does, that a new reader's Commenthas been published on Conductive World.

Unfortunately, thisComment does not show on Conductive World itself! It beats mewhat has gone wrong and I can find no way to fix it.

So here is Google'sAlert anyway –

Steven hasleft a new comment on your post "ADULTLITERATURE":

Dr.Sutton,
Iapologize if my initial comments elicited a negative response fromyou, I didn't mean to have any sort of negative connotation to thepost (at least, that's what I'm gathering from the word"curmudgeonly").
Apologiesif I was in error regarding the paediatricians visit, and notresearchers. It is a shame that the PAI did what it did to appear asa solution to motor disability, I still wonder how things wouldchange if the BMJ article from years past was more positive...
Butthe more I think about it, as you suggested, if that visit really wasjust a drop in the pond, then things may just remain thesame.
Regardingto the "hard evidence" I was talking about, here's the linkof the article I hadread.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-15644449
It'snot as "hard" as I remembered it, but I think this isdefinitely a potential step in the right direction for research in CE(or at least CE's future). Neuroplasticity, I believe, has becomeincreasingly accepted in the scientific community, and the moreresearch done on it, in relation to diseases CE works with, thebetter.
Aboutthe cards comment: I remember Mel saying that, when Michael J. Foxrevealed he had Parkinson's, the disease became huge. Celebrities dohave power over the public, after all. While the fervor surroundingParkinson's has slowed down (which things do with the public eye, ofcourse), PD has become ingrained in the public mind.
Mystatements forthwith will undoubtedly be read as crude, I know theyare. I don't like it myself, but...
IfCE had its own "celebrity" of some sort, then I think CEcould also become ingrained with the public consciousness as PT andOT are for rehabilitation (I know we're not quite rehab, but whatother example can I use?). I do not wish anyone to have to suffer anysort of debilitating disease of any kind, much less take on thepublic stage as a patron of CE, but this sort of action might be whatis needed. Word of mouth can be strong and has been of huge benefit,but I think CE must pursue all avenues to grow.
Steven
Postedby Steven to CONDUCTIVEWORLD atSunday, 15 January 2012 15:29:00 GMT

I shall also add thisto its relevant place in the thread following of the originalposting:

http://www.conductive-world.info/2012/01/adult-literature.html

I can but hope thatthere are not others. Please let me know if there are.

Apologies to Steven forthe delay in posting his thoughtful response, and to anyone elseinconvenienced. I shall respond to this one as soon as I can.

And please don't callme 'Dr.' I get curmudgeonly about that too!

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS

2012-01-15T19:20:00.000Z

Wherebest to post them?

When CONDUCTIVE WORLDJOBS and CONDUCTIVE WORLD MARKET were first set up on Facebook theidea was that they should serve distinct functions:

CONDUCTIVEWORLD JOBShas been created in response to the growing demand for a ConductiveEducation jobs service. Advertisement on this site is FREE

CONDUCTIVEWORLD MARKET hasbeen created to facilitate the exchange of services and products,between individuals and institutions, gratis or for payment, withinthe world of Conductive Education

In other words, thefirst was established to advertise people (not just conductors, otherpeople work in CE too), the second to advertise goods or products.

In the event there havebeen relatively few adverts for products most of the jobs advertisedhave been for conductors. Further, both sites have served as publicspaces where visitors can meet their friends and comment on what theysee displayed there. I know too that quite a few visitors just lurkquietly, watching what is going on and seeing who is up to what, withwhom and where...

Increasingly,advertisers have been advertising jobs for conductors in the Marketinstead of, or as well as, in the Job Centre.

Let itbe

Ah well, it is a casbahout there and, if that's what the punters want, that's what theyshall have. For the moment both resources will remain open in theirpresent form, separate but overlapping in how they are used, and weshall see what evolves. Given what has happened so far it seemsfruitless to think of creating a facility for classified ads!

After a slow period towards the end of 2011 there is now the annual New Year's burst of activity in the jobsmarket that enables the world of Conductive Education in its presentform. Along the way this shows something of the wide range ofsettings in which conductors work.

And very soon the new intake offresh, newly trained conductors will be coming on line to join the throng.

To advertise for what youwould like, or what you have to offer, visit either or both of thefollowing:

CONDUCTIVE WORLD JOBS
http://www.facebook.com/pages/CONDUCTIVE-WORLD-JOBS/376055890606
CONDUCTIVE WORLD MARKET
http://www.facebook.com/groups/239531054002/?ref=ts

ADULT LITERATURE

2012-01-04T21:04:00.000Z

Don't hold your breath...

The British Medical Journal has published an Editorial attacking the pharmaceutical and science community for the long-existing habit of only selectively publishing the results of clinical trials. Its Editor-in-Chief Fiona Godlee was on the radio this morning, along with neuro-scientist Colin Blakemore, complaining that a false picture is being put forward by medical science, and other forms of science, by restricting publication to 'successful' and 'interesting' studies (1).

Of course, they had to admit, researchers are not likely to press for publication of studies that show no effect, and journal-editors do not want to publish stuff that is boring.

It could just be that a solution is at last in sight to this long-standing and pervasive problem, as data storage is become ever-easier – and cheaper. So all findings could soon be potentially stashed away, to be examined, re-combined, re-analysed by others, now or in the future, permitting a potentially more complete and rounded understanding of reality than possible with the current cherry-picking of results for public presentation.

And Conductive Education?

All the above is just another outing for one of those hoary old mega-problems within the scientific endeavor, like fraud, that is taken out now and again, dusted off, tutted over, then shoved back discretely under the carpet, while scientists get on with the pressing practicalities of their lives (like finding where further fundable research might be needed). Given the nature of most research around Conductive Education, comparative-outcome evaluations research, and its general finding, then the problem as stated this morning hardly applies! So we are alright, then?

No, despite its almost total lack of formal methods of investigation and communication, the world is Conduction is every bit as bad. I personally am happy to stand up to be counted as supporting – indeed advocating – wider and wider informal communication of what CE is experienced as doing and achieving (2). But the same qualification has to apply: whatever the short-term personal and/or institutional advantages to those who do this, in the longer term Conductive Education surely suffers from being recorded and disseminated wholly in terms of good-news stories.

I do not need telling that everything that happens in the name of Conductive Education (and in the names of conductive pedagogy and conductive upbringing too) might not result all the time and everywhere in hoped-for outcomes. Some interventions will be wholly for the good. Some may be, well, neutral in what they achieve, and some may prove downright harmful.

If we do not record and report and discuss the whole range of outcomes, then (a) we are dishonest and (b) we severely limit – perhaps altogether curtail – our ability to come to judgments, hypotheses etc about what might be going wrong, and how better to do things in the future.

What interesting proposals for conferences and congress, what fascinating press reports: 'Emotion distress and financial hardship associated with attendance at CE summer school', 'Lack of persisting benefits following 'interval Conductive Education', 'Local mother thinks benefits of CE over-hyped and overpriced', 'School staff find training course unconvincing', 'Major practical problems of incorporating basic conductive concepts into a 'multidisciplinary team', 'Conductive Education: if it wasn't so sad it would be funny'...

What lively discussions and perhaps even some heart-searching might ensue. Maybe even some action and progress.

Towards an adult literature

Would that CE were mature enough to generate a truly adult literature. On can see immediate pressures against this, including reluctance to attract unpleasantness both from within and without the movement, and particularly ways that any such 'bad news' might be seen as impacting upon income, personal and institutional.

So I expect that things in Conductive Education will continue much as the same. After all, in the big, ugly world of medical-science research the bold hopes for information reform through publication of boring or even negative trial-outcomes have yet to get round Big Pharma, until when they will largely remain at the level of pipe dreams.

Notes

(1) Broadcast available on line for a few days:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9671000/9671074.stm

(2) Most recently: A. Sutton, Researching Conductive Education, past, present and future, in Last Year in Hong Kong, Birmingham Conductive Education Press, December 2011, pp. 7-
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2826466

SPIRIT OF CE

2011-12-25T19:18:00.000Z

At Christmas...

There are still many, many around the world who think that Co0nductive Education is 'closed' over the great Christmas shut-down. For many who work within the sector this is undoubtedly true, and some have have been already 'off' for a week or so, with at least a week more to go before they are 'back'. And for many of those their clients, this may be similarly the case too.

But at the heart of Conductive Education, and the conductive movement, stand the truly conductive families and conductive individuals, for whom Christmas Day, any public holidays, or indeed any eventuality or any activity whatsoever, is as conductive as all others. Now lives lived like that would offer an excellent index of the real spread and impact of Conductive Education.

As for all the rest, I can only wish with Wizzard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3j-BCdEwXU

Autres pays, autres choses

Let us not be culturally insensitive. CE in the 'West;' might be institutionally paralysed by Christmas, The 'East' is not. A two-day CE mega-conference begins in Guangzhou the day after tomorrow, organised by the China Disabled Persons' Federation, followed by a four-day programme of visits.

The conference is called 'Yangtze Children with cerebral palsy, rehabilitation and disability-prevention. Summary results of the Conductive Education technique'.

There will be at least thirty organisations represented there from the Mainland, plus three from Hong Kong, with over 350 participants in all. That's quite a bash.

Western participation

Conductor Éva Szabó from the Pető Institute will be presenting, as will Rony Schenker from Tsad Kadima. I do not know yet Éva's topic but Rony will be speaking for an hour to the title 'A step forward to inclusion – an applicable model for the inclusion of children with cerebral palsy into the general education system, community and society'.

Conductor Susie Mallett has had a book published in Mandarin and Sahk is presenting all delegates with a free copy in their conference packs:

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2011/12/conduction-in-china.html

And SAHK is displaying copies of my own just-publishwd Last Year in Hong Kong, so I am there in spirit, sort of:

http://www.e-conduction.org/CEP/?page_id=36

I do not know what other windows to the West will be open there.

I do hope that some report(s) of what happen there might soon be available to out outsiders. Meanwhile, a quick glimpse into China, from last year:

http://www.e-conduction.org/view_item.php?id=69

A little more information for the moment

Organizer China Disabled Persons' Federation

Title of the event 长江脑瘫儿童康复与残疾预防项目

成果总结研讨会暨引导式教育技术交流活动

Sponsor Cheung Kong New Milestone Plan

长江新里程计划

Project on Rehabilitation for Children with Cerebral Palsy

脑瘫儿童康复项目

http://www.cjxlc.cn/inews/NewsContent.jsp?selectsubid=309

SOME HOPE

2011-12-22T12:57:00.000Z

A parallel story

History

The Hope Centre for Cognitive Education was founded in 1993 by British parents of children with special needs who received help from Professor Reuven Feuerstein at his Institute in Jerusalem. Their primary aim was to create a centre of excellence in the UK, using his unique methods to enable children with learning difficulties to reach their full potential.

In the early 1990’s, BBC television screened “the Transformers”, a documentary about an educational psychologist called Professor Reuven Feuerstein, whose revolutionary teaching methodology transforms the lives of children with learning disabilities. The professor over the last 50 years, has pioneered his unique, innovative approach to cognitive education.

As a result of the BBC programme, many British parents took their children to his Institute for the Enhancement of Learning Potential (ICELP). They weren’t quite sure what to expect, and at first were slightly dubious of what they saw as the Professor’s unrealistic claims of what their children might achieve.

They changed their minds as they watched their children make dramatic progress – often in a space of weeks – where there had previously been at best slow or patchy change. In addition, as parents they were taught, often for the first time, how to become active participants in their child’s learning.

After managing to raise minimal start-up funds, these parents set about building the organisation that exists today. Established as a charity in 1993, Hope’s aim was to set up a centre in the UK, a centre of excellence, which would use Professor Feuerstein’s methodology to benefit children with special needs.

We moved to our current permanent premises in 2001. We are working to full capacity and have a waiting list, both for places at the centre and for assessments. In order to enable us to see more children, and to build on the exciting work that has begun over the last few years, we will continue to seek further funding from statutory authorities and we will continue our own programme of fund-raising, through a variety of initiatives, including sponsorship and major events.

http://www.hope-centre.org.uk/

Such a shame that it did not become more of a conjoint story. It could have:

http://www.tsadkadima.org.il/_Uploads/dbsAttachedFiles/race2008feuerstein1(2).pdf

IT'S PROPER WINTER NOW

2011-12-21T18:38:00.000Z

What’s the weather been like this last month?

A month ago Conductive World mistakenly posted an announcement of the first day of winter:

http://www.conductive-world.info/2011/11/winter.html

The error was in the formal date for the start of the new season, and due apology was made:

http://www.conductive-world.info/2011/11/winter_22.html

The point had not been so much to mark the turn of the season, however, but to record the growing chill in the economic climate. As for my formal error, I wrote:

I do not think that this makes any substantive difference to the argument of what I blogged this morning. I wonder whether things will read differently on the real first day on winter, in a month's time.

Well, the month’s up. Meteorologically, in our part of Europe anyway, the weather has brought a surprisingly protracted warm spell, then a short, sharp cold snap, and now it is mild again. On the economic front, though, the climate has just got steadily gloomier and gloomier, chiller and chiller.

The high point, for us Brits anyway, was not joining something along with the rest of Europe – something of which I suspect I have no greater understanding than have most 0f my fellow citizens, including likely our ‘leaders’. Whether this turn of events will prove for good or ill we migfht all might be able better to judge after the event, perhaps. What event? I have no idea – nor does anyone else.

So, not much change there, then.

Today, I hear that the European Central Bank is making nearly half a billion Euros available for Eurobanks to borrow – and they have rushed to avail themselves of the facility. They desperately need the money, I am told, so that they can afford to borrow from each other. Without this, they would go bust.

I do not understand any of this this either, or its likely outcome. As with everything else, I doubt that the people actually in charge of it all really do either. The phrase ‘end in tears’ comes to mind…

Forgive me for doubting that any of this will be to my ultimate benefit.

Or yours.

It looks like being a very long, hard economic winter…

ONE OF MARIA’S LITTLE JOKES

2011-12-20T12:13:00.000Z

As out of date now as all those old ones...

Kádár, Ceaucescu and Hungarian oranges

In the mid eighties, Mária Hári liked telling this one. In her fractured English it sounded something like this –

In Germany, everything that is not permish is forbidden.
In England everything that is not forbidden is permish.
In Hungary, everything is forbidden, but it is permish.

(In retrospect, I wonder whether in her head she was actually saying permisch.)

I was reminded of this yesterday when browsing through the seasonally overflowing ‘humour’ section in a local Waterstone’s bookshop, where I lit by chance upon the following, from the Anglo-Irish jurist Robert Megarry –

Whereas in England all is permitted that is not expressly prohibited, it has been said that in Germany all is prohibited unless expressly permitted and in France all is permitted that is expressly prohibited….

Not specifically one of those Communist-era jokes after all then, as Google quickly confirms!

Then and now

There was a time when such broad generalisations might truly have reflected certain social truths in British and European societies with respect to the individual rights of citizens, at least with respect to the lives of their middle classes.

It was this understanding of our rights that emboldened and permisched us to go ahead and initiate conductive services in the nineteen-eighties, and establish conductor-training at degree level in the nineteen-nineties. Continental contemporaries could not understand how we g coouild do it, in either case, since there were no regulations to allow what we were trying to do. The answer of cours was simple. There was nothing to say that we could not.

The erosion of simple liberal freedoms was already then under way, however, on all sorts of fronts, amounting by the early twentieth century to a veritable landslide of centralism and bureaucratic regulation, burying all sorts in its path. It is always easy to blame such on ‘Europe’ or ‘Brussels’, and doubtless there is some truth in this. Things would not, however, have come their present pass, had the whole stifling process not fitted in with a chronic, pervasive streak of authoritarianism and illiberalism amongst the British ‘progressive’ classes, flourishing under Blairism but book-ended by regimes before and after.

I still try to live my life, however, as though my world were still much as I grew up to expect. It gets harder and harder to do so, though, and I do wonder whether we could get away today with what we did in the eighties. Put it differently, whether the windows of opportunity open to us then, are not now screwed firmly shut.

Ah, Europe!

By the way, Robert Megarry had added (for some reason missed out of Steven Gauge's excellent little compilation) –

In the European Common Market no-one knows what is permitted and it all costs more.

Is that still so now? I have no idea.

References

Gauge, S. (2011) Political Wit, Chichester, Summersdale

Megarry, R. (1972) Law and lawyers in a permissive society (lecture), 22 March

CEP IS BACK

2011-12-15T13:30:00.000Z

And news of WC8

CEP’s latest book, ‘Last year in Hong Kong’, can again be viewed and ordered on line:

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2826466

Note the new URL

Act quickly to get yours before Christmas!

Previous item

http://www.conductive-world.info/2011/12/last-year-in-hong-kong.html

WC8 Ahoy!

The Eighth World Congress already hoves over the horizon:

http://www.phoenix-kf.de/pdf/foerderzentrum/wcce_2013_flyer_english.pdf

More on this anon.

Found on the back of a rather old envelope

2011-12-14T13:16:00.000Z

Some thoughts on ‘dyslexia’, from 1997

I found the following fragment, hand-written on the back of a tattered A4 envelope. I had been intended as the start of a book review that was not in fact taken further. The date of the postmark on the envelope is too faint to read but inside was my subscription issue of 16mm Today for February 1997. I think that the book in question might have been Martin Turner’s Psychological Assessment of Dyslexia that was published in February of that year.

I had drafted an opening sentence –

A rare bird indeed, a British monograph on psycho-diagnostic, an apparently authoritative tome on one of the most contentious issues in assessment for special education.

Then I had jotted down

‘Science’ – the first recourse of the reductionist psychologist

and

Whiff of political paranoia

I suspect that I gave up reading further because, in Popeye’s words, I could ‘stands no more’ and it would have taken more than a can of spinach to keep me on task.

My notes drifted off task, into ‘dyslexia’ as a whole –

A child ‘cannot learn’ – or to be more honestly descriptive – a child doesn’t learn. What is the problem? First and foremost it is to discover what has to be done to ensure that learning does takes place. To achieve this the prime means of investigation has to be through pedagogy. It cannot be achieved through ‘psychology’ – at least not through school/educational psychology as she is still so often spoke, through psychometric measurement of what the child already knows and can do, and does not. Pedagogy, however – real pedagogy, that is – will set to and test out in practice what can be done to restart and ensure a cycle of success and learning. And this within wholehearted commitment to the fact that pedagogy involves motivation, affect, values, human social interaction, goals and intentions. It cannot be explained by simple ‘cognitive’ factors within learners.

Nobody can deny that there are very real problems in acquiring reading, writing and number, experienced by children who cannot be brushed aside as simply dull – but what are these? Does this book, by answering ‘dyslexic’, contribute to a solution of the problem or, by biologising a whole host of possible systemic explanations, interventions and outcomes, serve ultimately to obscure it – to constitute therefore a problem in its own right?

I suspect, by the way that the notes were written on a train. Here is the final fragment that I found –

Reading this book is like a visit to a preserved railway. It offers a nostalgic walk down memory lane to those who remember when fleets of shabby blue cardboard briefcases from the NFER, workaday Binets and WISCs, ferried generations of failing or awkward children to the nation’s ESN schools. Except like on the preserved rail line this ancient technology has now been bulled up with shining new standardisations and acronyms. Its old bread-and-butter function of shunting off the failing children of the poor is giving way to a new, more glamorous role within our pedagogically leisured education service, in the service of transporting less successful children of the more well-to-do to quite different realms of provision.

At the close of 2011 this tattered envelope has resurfaced, and ‘dyslexia’ – along with all sorts of other brain-based, anti-pedagogic nonsense – is now deeply embedded within our educational system and within wider society. Together they can be evoked to explain almost everything! If books such as whatever prompted these words some fourteen years ago have contributed to this sad reactionary Zeitgeist, then their authors bear a terrible responsibility. I trust – no, I hope – that future, more enlightened generations will hold them to account.

UNFORTUNATE GLITCH

2011-12-14T11:20:00.000Z

Brief hold-up in book publication

An unforeseen circumstance has slightly delayed publication of CEP's latest book Last Year in Hong Kong.

Apologies to all those around the world who have clicked across to view and order this book, and been disappointed. It will be available again very shortly and we shall send out notifications as soon as it is.

We do not anticipate the same situation to arise again.

LAST YEAR IN HONG KONG

2011-12-13T16:10:00.000Z

Four presentations, Hong Kong, December 2010

Available at last. £8.00 (or your local equivalent), plus post and package from US: my four presentations to the 7th World Congress on Conductive Education.

Click on the link below to flip through the first few the pages of this book:

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2806207

Order your copies on line from the same site.

This is a slender volume (52 pages). CEP's next production, a collection of writings by and on András Pető, will be considerably larger.

Sutton, not Elegant

I have only just learned that there is another book of the same title. I hope that there will not be too much confusion:

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Year-Hong-Kong-Story/dp/0688148905

A holistic view of Mano's needs

2011-12-12T12:13:00.002Z

Dominique Fagnart's testimony

From Belgium, Dominique Fagnart writes –

Conductive Education (or conductive pedagogy) is a method of special education for cerebral palsy, created in the 1940s by the Hungarian paediatrician András Pető.

It is a comprehensive approach, from a positive wager on the abilities of those with cerebral palsy, in which through a series of games and exercise, disabled people are led to develop their achievements in the company of a conductor, the defining characteristic of whom is to be a versatile educator, trained for four years in psychology, physiotherapy, speech therapy, public education, to think up global exercises as opposed to usual care that is more fragmented.

Developed in Budapest in what is now the world's largest centre for children with cerebral palsy, it has spread around the world with the opening up of Eastern Europe. Since then it has been widely established in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. It is now practised in 170 facilities around the world. In the French-speaking world pilot centres exist in Belgium and Paris.

I have long been convinced that Conductive Education provides children with disabilities the keys to self and to self-esteem. Originally founded and described for children with motor disabilities, the philosophy of this approach can to my mind be extended and used in many other situations of disability.

When Mano joined Centre la Famille two and a half years ago, I knew that he would find a nurturing environment, taking into account all his capabilities as well as his difficulties, and be respectful of those around him and their and expectations.

Whatever their disability, children must be educated to interact with their peers, communicate with them, find their place in society, learn to see, confront and solve everyday problems – and they are legion – in the best way.

That is the price of finding their find their place in society and being as independent as possible.

When Mano says to me ‘I want to do it on my own’, be this wanting to climb into his car seat, or into his new bed – then let him proceed by trial and error, telling me what he does and seeking the help of the environment, and I tell myself that he has integrated the principles of Conductive Education to arrive at making a further step towards independence by seeking to adapt to new situations.

How does he get there? He mobilises all its resources; he uses his motor capacities by seeking the necessary points of support , by availing himself of his environment (stool, walker), by verbalising what he does. Speaking ‘out loud’ to help anticipate and plan his actions. Language helps connect him (what he thinks, what he will have to do) and his body. He likes to try to solve problems and I know that this always encouraged at school and in the family. The programme offered him at school is structured and makes connections between learning movement, language and cognition. He learns in situ, which gives his learning meaning.

Conductive Education mobilises many brain networks: not only the motor circuits but equally circuits of attention, emotion, communication, memory, learning, vision – it aims to make connections between them. It is a holistic approach.

Mano is an adorable little fellow, determined, joyful, generous and tender. He amazes us every day, and not just when he improvises at the piano and plays four-handed with his grandfather.

But his current difficulties do not just affect motor aspects. Other functions, are also very often affected as a result of brain damage: fine-motor skills and organization of movement (dyspraxia), difficulty to analyse and understand what he sees (central visual disturbances), difficulties in speak ‘on demand’ (for example, to answer a question: he expresses himself best spontaneously), concentration and memory.

The children's learning should always start from the concrete (if not, he does not see the sense in it), to be repeated, transposed and integrated into every moment of daily life. Conductive Education offers him this framework and allows it to grow. Learning is slower but once it is acquired, it is well established.

Any other type of education, taking account only only one of his difficulties on its own (as unfortunately our special education does, all too frequently), or even more commonly does not try to make connections between the motor aspects, learning and communication, is doomed to fail.

It is a holistic view that he needs. It is thanks to this that he has been able to progress so well and will continue to do so.

Dominique Fagnart, neuropaediatrician and Mano's grandmother

http://www.parentsetpedagogieconductive.be/2011/12/un-regard-holistique-sur-les-besoins-de.html

With apologies for lack of time and therefore quick-and-dirty translation. I shall try to comment on Dr Fagnart 's posting tomorrow.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

2011-12-06T14:23:00.001Z

Children, charity, homelessness

One of the things that András Pető did, allegedly, to eke himself a living when he was in straits in Austria, was to write essays and other course work.

I have received a press release. It comes from All Answers, an essay-writing service based in Nottingham, England. Also on Nottingham is a ‘school for parents’ cast out by the national charity Scope and soon to become homeless unless it finds £50,000.

The essayists are appealing to help towards this immediate ash injection.

The essay-writing trade goes back a long way, long long before András Pető found himself short in pre-war Vienna. Given immanent general austerity, I wonder what it pays. I see that the company offers bespoke dissertations too. A possible way to escape fuel poverty this winter!

If only there were a market! Whowasnts essays on CE?

Buying in

Has anyone out there (in any country) ever used such a service within the Conductive Education sector? I should love to see the sort of stuff that people get for their money?

No suggestion of plagiarism of course.

But seriously folks, if there were ever a need for reasonable and non-misleading copy, Conductive Education demonstrates it wall to wall. I wish that I had sixpence for every error that I read on the websites of CE centres and centers!

Never mind the students, maybe these institutions ought to be buying themselves some help!

(Not from me, please)

Reference

All Answers (2011) Festive fundraising for local children’s charity ticks all the boxes (press release, no specific date), Nottingham, UK Essays

http://www.ukessays.com/press-releases/pr-festive-fundraising-for-school-for-parents-charity.php

An anniversary

2011-12-05T11:55:00.000Z

A heavy night tonight

Not celebratory and wholly coincidental! A year ago I was in Hong Kong, at the 7th Conductive Education World Congress. And this morning I received the proofs of the little book that I have written as a result.

So tonight, I shall try to index this in one single sitting (the only way to index!). Even though the text runs to under fifty pages, that is still a heavy night! It will be for me anyway.

After this, it is just a matter of inserting the Index pages, having one last anguished look-through for all my errors that I am sure will have slipped through, and then it is ready to be launched.

The next big CE conference, by the way, will be in Shanghai, starting on 26 December.

In the meantime, here are the contents of this newest publication from Conductive Education Press:

Contents
Foreword
Preface
1. Researching CE: past and future
2. Possibilities and implications of feldsherism in Conductive Education
3. Historical, social and political issues
4. Conductive Education in the twenty-first century

Watch out for availability.

Reference

Sutton, A. (2011) Last year in Hong Kong: Four presentations to the 7th World Congress on Conductive Education, Hong Kong, December 2010 (with a Forward by Ivan Y. W. Su), Birmingham, Conductive Education Press

Seven lean kine*

2011-12-01T10:57:00.000Z

If we are lucky

Yesterday Britain learned that – touch wood and if everything goes well – the country will be economically back on even keel within seven years (not five as in the Government’s previous optimistic prediction). Seven years are a long time for the world economy not to be effected by further ‘events’. This will be a hard, white-knuckle time.

I could not help be reminded of an old, familiar story –

1 And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.
2 And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured kine and fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow.
3 And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favoured and leanfleshed; and stood by the [other] kine upon the brink of the river.
4 And the ill favoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven well favoured and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.
5 And he slept and dreamed the second time: and, behold, seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good.
6 And, behold, seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind sprung up after them.
7 And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and, behold, [it was] a dream.
8 And it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled; and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof: and Pharaoh told them his dream; but [there was] none that could interpret them unto Pharaoh.
9 Then spake the chief butler unto Pharaoh, saying, I do remember my faults this day:
10 Pharaoh was wroth with his servants, and put me in ward in the captain of the guard's house, [both] me and the chief baker:
11 And we dreamed a dream in one night, I and he; we dreamed each man according to the interpretation of his dream.
12 And [there was] there with us a young man, an Hebrew, servant to the captain of the guard; and we told him, and he interpreted to us our dreams; to each man according to his dream he did interpret.
13 And it came to pass, as he interpreted to us, so it was; me he restored unto mine office, and him he hanged.
14 Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon: and he shaved [himself], and changed his raiment, and came in unto Pharaoh.
15 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and [there is] none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of thee, [that] thou canst understand a dream to interpret it.
16 And Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, [It is] not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.
17 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, In my dream, behold, I stood upon the bank of the river:
18 And, behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, fatfleshed and well favoured; and they fed in a meadow:
19 And, behold, seven other kine came up after them, poor and very ill favoured and leanfleshed, such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt for badness:
20 And the lean and the ill favoured kine did eat up the first seven fat kine:
21 And when they had eaten them up, it could not be known that they had eaten them; but they [were] still ill favoured, as at the beginning. So I awoke.
22 And I saw in my dream, and, behold, seven ears came up in one stalk, full and good:
23 And, behold, seven ears, withered, thin, [and] blasted with the east wind, sprung up after them:
24 And the thin ears devoured the seven good ears: and I told [this] unto the magicians; but [there was] none that could declare [it] to me.
25 And Joseph said unto Pharaoh, The dream of Pharaoh [is] one: God hath shewed Pharaoh what he [is] about to do.
26 The seven good kine [are] seven years; and the seven good ears [are] seven years: the dream [is] one.
27 And the seven thin and ill favoured kine that came up after them [are] seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine.
28 This [is] the thing which I have spoken unto Pharaoh: What God [is] about to do he sheweth unto Pharaoh.
29 Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt:
30 And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the famine shall consume the land;
31 And the plenty shall not be known in the land by reason of that famine following; for it [shall be] very grievous.
32 And for that the dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice; [it is] because the thing [is] established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass.
33 Now therefore let Pharaoh look out a man discreet and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt.
34 Let Pharaoh do [this], and let him appoint officers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years.
35 And let them gather all the food of those good years that come, and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities.
36 And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish not through the famine.
37 And the thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of all his servants.
38 And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find [such a one] as this [is], a man in whom the Spirit of God [is]?
39 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God hath shewed thee all this, [there is] none so discreet and wise as thou [art]:
40 Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled: only in the throne will I be greater than thou.
41 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt.
42 And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck;
43 And he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had; and they cried before him, Bow the knee: and he made him [ruler] over all the land of Egypt.
44 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I [am] Pharaoh, and without thee shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.
45 And Pharaoh called Joseph's name Zaphnathpaaneah; and he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On. And Joseph went out over [all] the land of Egypt.
46 And Joseph [was] thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh, and went throughout all the land of Egypt.
47 And in the seven plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls.
48 And he gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities: the food of the field, which [was] round about every city, laid he up in the same.
49 And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for [it was] without number.
50 And unto Joseph were born two sons before the years of famine came, which Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On bare unto him.
51 And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God, [said he], hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father's house.
52 And the name of the second called he Ephraim: For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.
53 And the seven years of plenteousness, that was in the land of Egypt, were ended.
54 And the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said: and the dearth was in all lands; but in all the land of Egypt there was bread.
55 And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread: and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, Go unto Joseph; what he saith to you, do.
56 And the famine was over all the face of the earth: And Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians; and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt.
57 And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy [corn]; because that the famine was [so] sore in all lands.

Genesis, Chapter 41

I have been surprised to see that no one else seems to have been reminded of it. No one who writes for the British media anyway – perhaps editors consider it an allusion outside readers’ repertoire. When I was a lad it was one of those tales that it was impossible to avoid. I never figured out what I was supposed to make of it all but I doubt that the existence of economic cycles was to the forefront of tellers’ minds. Perhaps it was the virtue of fiscal prudence. That is the only sense that I could make of it anyway.

Perhaps come Sunday this will get further mention to those who put themselves in the way of such things, though possibly retold in less sublime language.

______________

* kine: cows, cattle

STUART

2011-11-29T15:30:00.001Z

A LIFE BACKWARDS

I have only just read this book by Alexander Masters. Not ‘enjoyable’ as such but very nicely written and very readable for those who can bear it.

It offers a vivid peep at the hideous underbelly of our human services, including along the way a glimpse at ‘special educational needs’ (Stuart has a mild form of muscular dystrophy, FSH).

With a life misspent puzzling over systemic developmental sequelae I found this book exceedingly frustrating, but then it was not written for me!

I still wholeheartedly recommend it, of you have the stomach, and perhaps especially if you do not.

Masters, A. (2005) Stuart: a life backwards, London, Fourth Estate

http://alexandermasters.net/stuart.html

There has been a film too, I gather:

http://alexandermasters.net/stuart-the-film.html

Mária Hári

2011-11-25T11:49:00.003Z

A pedagogue of principle

In May 1983, as a contribution to the International Year of the Disabled , the government of the Republic of San Marino organised a congress. Mária Hári attended, accompanied by conductor Éva Puski. The report of the conference was published in a small booklet with parallel Italian and French texts. Here’s a snippet, from page 54 (there’s a lot more) –

‘Conduire’ ne signifie pas travailler à la place de l’enfant, il ne faut pas faire faire.

L’enfant n’est pas un malade passive, mais c’est une personne qui peut s’épanouir, peut apprendre par une méthode active.

Le conducteur est là pour aider l’enfant a terminer ce qu’il a commence et pour qu’il commence il faut render active, lui donner l’interêt, lui montrer la vie, lui demontrer qu’il a du succès, qu’il peut faire.

‘Condurre' non vuol dire dare al posto del bambino; bisogna fa fare.

Il bambino non e un malato, che è passive, ma è una persona che può svilupparsi, può imparare con un metode attivo.

Il conduttore e lì solamente per aiutare a finire ciò che il bambino ha cominciato e per cominciare bisogna farlo attivo, bisogna motivarlo, fargli vedere la vita, dimostrargli che ha successo, che può fare.

In English, something like this –

'To conduct' does not to do the work instead of the child, one should not make it happen.

The child is not a passive patient, but someone who can thrive, can learn through an active method.

The conductor is there to help children finish what they have started, and in order to begin children have to be made active, given interest, shown life, demonstrated that they do have success, that that they can do.

A pedagogic principle

To help, not to interfere. To teach the will to succeed for oneself -- rather than teaching dependency and helplessness. Not primarily a matter of ‘skills’. Certainly not to ‘support’! And above all, nothing to do with wooden furniture and those other all-too-familiar ‘principles of Conductive Education’. A stern way-of-life principle, straight from András Pető personally.

Reference

Canevaro, A., Cavallieri, G. (1983) Gli handicaps e l’integrazione quotidiana: le competenze di tutti e le tecniche di alcuni, Bologna, Edizione Dehoniane

* Nothing to do with AP’s rules for living or MH’s pedagogic principles, but I could not resist putting into English this little bit from Andrea Canevaro’s Preface to this book (page 5) –

The International Year of the Disabled has coincided with the global economic recession and has started a double reevaluation:

reevaluation of intentions and policies in favour of the handicapped and the services that enable them access, social and cultural ; and
reevaluation of the practices and the very concept of integration that have been, perhaps unconsciously, linked to a movement of economic growth (augmentation of production, of accumulated profits and wealth) that is not certain for the future.

Integration is to live reality, seek connections and overcome obstacles, visible and invisible.

Perhaps there exists a concept of integration that is incorrect, as a proposition and result of the society of well-being, almost as a result of ‘luxury’, that could not co-exist with urban poverty, recession and eventual zero growth…

That was in 1983….

WINTER?

2011-11-22T12:57:00.002Z

Oh no it's not

I received an email this morning, from which I (mis)understood that today is the first day of winter. Seized by a thought, I made a blog posting on this:

http://www.conductive-world.info/2011/11/winter.html

Of course, as any fule kno, in 2011 winter begins on 22 December.

So, another month of Autumn to enjoy!

I do not think that this makes any substantive difference to the argument of what I blogged this morning.

I wonder whether things will read differently on the real first day on winter, in a month's time.

WINTER

2011-11-22T10:39:00.000Z

Not just the weather

I am told that today is formally the first day of winter (in the Northern Hemisphere). Here is Middle England the world outside the window looks just as it did yesterday, chill and drear, with nature continuing its annual, anticipated decline, bur formal communication and acknowledgement are now possible that quantitative change has brought about qualitative – as it does.

I refer of course to the weather. After all, I am English.

Can spring be far behind?

Of course not. In formal terms, spring will be upon us in precisely three months to the day, though as ever its arrival will seen so slow and gradual.

And metaphorically?

Have the myriad changes in our human world over the last few years cumulated enough yet to constitute a ‘winter’?

If I look out of my metaphorical window things continue to look dull and drear, like they did yesterday and the day before yesterday, and probably will tomorrow. Is it yet possible to say with agreement that these changes are coalescing to create a new state of being, a new era? Oh, for the wisdom of hindsight,of history, to be free to refer to some arbitrary, defining division and say: ‘We live now in the age of…’, and deal with its implications accordingly.

Can metaphorical spring be far behind?

It cannot work that way, for human affairs are a not simply of nature but of economic, social, cultural, historical forces and – so as not to sound too deterministic about things – individual, psychological forces too. There is no annual rhythm, indeed no inevitable cyclical rhythm of any other kind, not even boom and bust (or from where we presently stand, bust and boom). If winter is upon us, there is no necessary spring to follow – in three months’ time or indeed ever.

Though for individuals, groups, movements, whole societies, there will always be tide in the affairs of man…

As ever, where is Conductive Education in this?

If this indeed be winter, there is no inevitable cycle to take us back to how things were before, no spring marked by reproduction and rebirth of how things used to be in some receding, fondly remembered summer.

But there will be opportunities to be seized, and there will be those, right or wrong, who will seize the day and create something new *.

Whether what arises from this turns out to be better or different, or worse, from what we have now is another matter.

We live in such interesting times…

____________________
*  Shakespeare put it rather better
    Julius Caesar
    Act 4, sc. 3, ll. 215 ff

LES ESSEX

2011-11-17T17:04:00.000Z

1940-2011

After an earlier career in Uganda, lecturing in social work, Leslie moved to Birmingham to continue his work away from Idi Amin – where in time he fell victim to early onsetting Parkinson’s disease.

In the early 1980s the ‘Birmingham Group’ (Philippa Cottam, Ronni Nanton, Andrew Sutton and Jayne Tichener) was making the first thorough-going investigation into Conductive Education from outside Hungary. Ronni’s presence ensured that Parkinson’s disease and services for adults were integral considerations from the outset.

A pivotal time

The commitment of Mary Baker, then the Director of the Parkinson’s Disease Society nationally, was central to the Group’s intention to commence adult work – and Les, a young local academic with Parkinson’s, articulate and mentally and physically determined, was a vital link in the case being constructed. Ronni led a fact-finding expedition to Budapest (yes, believe it, a visit to Budapest in the mid-eighties really was ‘an expedition’) and Leslie's participation in this ensured that the user’s voice would be part of the Society’s deliberations on this important matter… and believe this too, that was pretty radical stuff in the disability charities of those days.

Not just a voice, though:as soon as he arrived at what was then still the State Institute, Les had thrown himself into the work of a group, language notwithstanding. This would be CE reported upon ‘from the inside’ – yet still, when he returned to the UK, his written report would phrased as a cool, academic appraisal, written by the Leslie who he always was.

Leslie's activities contributed to the support of the Parkinson’s Disease Society, both moral and financial, when the Foundation for Conductive Education was created in 1986, thus ensuring that CE in the UK should never be viewed solely in terms of childhood or cerebral palsy. Leslie was a founder-member of the first Parkinson’s group when it commenced in Birmingham in 1990 and maintained his participation for the remainder of his life, for some of which time he served as the Society’s representative on the Foundation’s Board of Trustees.

In later years Leslie suffered ill health and became very frail, though still outliving most of his Parkinsonian contemporaries. Family referred to his as a ’phoenix’ for the way in which he would come back from the seeming edge, again and again. Hard to see perhaps in his later years that he had played badminton for the English Universities – but the spirit was still there.

An apocryphal tale?

A tale from Budapest in the mid eighties was that Leslie responded so well and rapidly to Conductive Education that he took himself straight off on a walk. Outside the Hotel Budapest his re-found mobility led him too quickly off the kerb, and a careless Lada went over his toe.

True of not? The incidental, corroborative detail (‘Hotel Budapest’, Lada’) are the marks of an urban legend, but the story rings true to the Leslie whom I knew and remember. True or not, I recounted it enough in those early days. It was certainly 'him'.

It was true for me today, at Leslie’s funeral. He is remembered as a lovely, decent man.

England: light in the darkness, cracks in the wall?

2011-11-10T13:20:00.000Z

Is there to be room once more for genuinely free schooling?

BERA – the British Educational Research Association – is (gleefully?) circulating the following report –

Ofsted’s opinion of Summerhill School: from pariah to paragon

Release: 27 October 2011

A. S. Neill’s famous Summerhill School, the world’s first ‘child democracy’, has received thebest HMI/OfSTED report in its 90-year history. After decades of criticism and controversy atthe hands of the Inspectors, the School has now been found ‘outstanding’ in 8 aspects of itsprovision and practice and ‘good’ in all others. Inspectors were particularly impressed by itscontinuing excellence in relation to pupils ‘spiritual, moral, social and cultural development’(SMSCD). ‘Welfare, health and safety of pupils’ was also outstanding, as were all 5 aspectsof boarding provision, welfare and outcomes’.

The contrast with Summerhill’s 1999 Inspection is total. Then, HMI condemned its philosophy, aims and outcomes, finding its freedoms to be an ‘abdication’ of adultresponsibility. The adjective the Inspection most often directed at its pupils was ‘foul-mouthed’. The finding that it offered neither ‘suitable’ nor ‘efficient’ education meant thatthe school faced closure. The School had to raise a Tribunal case to prevent that outcome.

The Tribunal vindicated the School, and the Ministry withdrew in haste from the case afterthree days. These events were vividly portrayed in an award-winning BBC drama in 2008.The parties to the TribunalAgreement accepted that future inspections of the School wouldbe accompanied by an ‘expert’ nominated by the School. In turn the Ministry demanded asimilar ‘expert’. So now the Inspectors were to be inspected, and the inspector of the inspectors likewise. Thus the possible tragedy of closure became something of a farce ofsurveillance (hyperveillance?) – but a necessary and useful safeguard for the School.

Since then, things have looked up. The 2007 Inspection deemed the school ‘satisfactory’,while assessing SMSCD features ‘outstanding’. Why have things turned round sodramatically? Two explanations are possible. In audit logic, a ‘failing’ school has beentransformed. Or, from a research perspective, a ‘failing’ OfSTED has finally acknowledgedthe virtues of the school, including uncoerced learning, democratic governance led by thepupils, and freedom in relation to learning and assessment.

Professor Ian Stronach, Liverpool John Moores University), the school’s ‘expert’ since 1999,argues that the school A.S. Neill wrote about more than fifty years ago, and the school heresearched in 1999, 2007 and 2011, is ‘essentially the same place, though the inspectorial surfaces are much more expertly polished.’ He added, ‘OfSTED deserve credit, at last, for an‘outstanding’ Inspection process and outcome in 2011’. Let’s hope this marks the end ofInspectorial persecution, here and elsewhere.

Ian Stronach

Professor of Educational Research, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L17 6BD

(email: i.stronach@ljmu.ac.uk)

Free at last?

I personally have never held much truck with the philosophy or methods of A. S. Neil but there is a higher-order principle at work here: LIBERTY.

At most Summerhill's success is qualified freedom: freedom under bureaucratic licence. That falls rather short of liberty but should offer hope and precedent to other would-be free educationalists in England, such as Paces in Sheffield. There is still a long, long way to go to get to the open situation in which the first attempt was made to establish CE schooling in the United Kingdom in the mid-eighties.

I received BERA's note yesterday. By coincidence, the same day I received from Inteconnections update the campaign EYE-Open, against Her Majesty's Government's repressive and counterproductive 'educational' policies in the early years of life:

http://openeyecampaign.wordpress.com/2011/08/

Again, I have little sympathy for much of these campaigners' views on child development – but. my respect for liberty overrides this.

Are there cracks here for Conductive Education to slide through, and force further open?

András Pető at Harvard

2011-11-09T13:21:00.004Z

Well, at least a considerable documentary record

Use it!

Gábor Pintér writes –

The Moreno collection is in the Medical Faculty of Harvard University (Francis Countway Library of Medicine, 10 Shattock Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115), which I visited in 1993 with a personal recommendation from Zerka Moreno [Jacob Marino’s widow]. The collection comprises a total of 2002 (11) thick files, each containing a huge amount of material (100 or more documents in a single file): articles, letters, films, periodicals, personal and family documents, material relating to contacts abroad – a multitude of documents, hand-written by Moreno and others, typed, and printed. I was able to look through only a few of the two thousand files. Three files (Nos 1148-1150) contain material relating to Hungary – letters and documents from Hárdy, Noszlopi, Völgyesi and others.

But the name that occurs most frequently is that of Pető, later that of Mária Hári. There was continuous correspondence with Pető from the first exchanges of letters right up to the time of Pető’s death. It was startling to see Pető’s handwriting on the open yellow postcard bearing an old 20 fillér stamp (the one with the articulated tram), with his Budapest address as the sender’s address, and to be confronted in Boston with the Hungarian-language notification of his death. In their correspondence I was able to discover the deep and intensive emotional threads of friendship on both sides. In addition, due to the political checks on letters going to America, Pető’s writing style was noticeably full of implication and avoided being specific. Pető gave lengthy accounts of his work and the new discipline of conduction, and sent copies of his articles. He likes to look back on the years they spent together in Vienna, and openly said how fond he had become of Moreno and family *. Moreno was pleased that Pető’s ‘brilliant method’ had also proved a success in England. He tried to establish contacts for Pető with movement therapy institutes in America. Later he expressed anxiety about Pető’s deteriorating health. After their visit to Budapest, he wrote:

Dear András, words cannot express my deep gratitude to you and your good friends in Budapest. Please pass on my warmest personal greetings to Mária Hári and the girl who looked after Johnathan. I hope your professional programme is on the right track. I now have a better understanding of your problem.

Immediately after Pető’s death he wrote in a letter:

He was one of my best friends, an unforgettable man!

A nice little PhD there for someone. At the very least, a manageable personal study and a magazine or journal article to help drag CE into more serious (and relevant?) academic consideration…

We live in hope.

Contexualising their friendship

Other than this brief encounter in 1963, their actual personal friendship had occurred in the years before the Great War. Chapter 2, ‘The university years’, of René Marineau’s biography of Marino provides the only second-person account of András Pető’s life from all his years up till after 1945.

Fascinating reading it is too.

References and footnote

Marineau, M. (1989) Jacob Levy Moreno, 1889-1974: father of psychodrama, sociometry, and group psychotherapy, London, Royledge

Pintér, G. (2003) András Pető and Jacob Levi Moreno. Conductive Education Occasional Papers, no.10. Budapest: International Pető Institute, pp. 1-12

* Moreno went to Budapest in 1963, at Pető’s invitation… accompanied by his wife Zerka and their young son Johnathan. Moreno gave a lecture at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, organised by the Institute of Sociology.

(ibid.)

TIMEO DANAOS

2011-11-01T16:15:00.000Z

I fear the Greeks

So should we all. The foundering life-raft being patched together by the European ‘leaders’ to keep our economies afloat for a little bit longer, presumably in the hope that something will turn up, anything, was in a sorry enough state yesterday with the Chinese not surprisingly declining the pleasure of helping pay for it. And now at last somebody has got round to asking the Greeks what they think of it all – and their answer could well be the last straw for the present world economic order and its hoped for salvation.

Where might that leave us all? For the moment, most people are doing and planning whatever they were expecting to be doing or planning anyway – except that ‘most people’ covers an ever-shrinking proportion of our populations.

How robust are your plans for 2012?

I say, I say, I say...

What’s a Greek urn?

I don’t know... Do tell me, what's a Greek urn?

What's a Greek urn? About ten drachmas an hour?

Boom, boom!

Who’s laughing?

Teaching, upbringing and the will

2011-10-31T12:01:00.000Z

Swami Vivekanada

On a cold, wet, windy day in 2007 I made the difficult journey to Tividale, a wilderness lying somewhere between Dudley and Sandwell, to visit Europe’s largest Hindu temple, a trip that I shall never forget. I really ought to go back there in blazing-hot high summer, to see whether the experience appears any the less disorientingly paradoxical.

There was a small, temporary display in the entrance foyer, on Swami Vivekanada. One of the display documents caught my eye and I jotted down something that the Swami had said on the purpose of education. I present this here, as I have paraphrased it into more modern English –

The end of all learning, all teaching, should be to create human beings. The end, the aim of all teaching is to develop human beings. Teaching, through which the energy and the expression of the will are brought under control and become fruitful, is called education.

I have no particular reason to think that any echoes of the teachings of Swami Vivekanada’s (died in 1902) resounded down and across to András Pető. I did, however, find his words satisfactorily evocative and, being displayed in otherwise so alien a context, strangely reassuring about there being universal principles within in all good pedagogy and upbringing, whatever an author’s particular philosophical base. To put it differently, it is not Conductive Education that is the odd one out…

Or maybe this is but an illusion, created through the process of my own paraphrase!

Notes

Swami Vivekanada.’s published work is extensive. Most deplorably I have neither time nor inclination to hunt out the context of the passage quoted here, and I recognise the possibility that the overall philosophy of which this is a part might prove rather less attractive to me.

Conductive World’s computer problems remain resolved but I have jury-rigged my old HP Pavilion tower and via memory sticks and a nearby Internet café, achieved a bit more online access pending more fundamental solution:

http://www.conductive-world.info/2011/10/note-to-regular-readers.html

Along the way I have found loads of ‘old stuff’ in the Pavilion’s memory and on the sticks – including a mountain of materials towards a further book on Mária Hária’s pedagogy, displaced from the forefront of attention Mária Hária when I began blogging. Look out for some of its eventually coming on line.

As for Tividale and that Swami…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tividale_Tirupathy_Balaji_Temple.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swami_Vivekananda

A note to regular readers

2011-10-28T13:16:00.001+01:00

A bit of a glitch

Conductive World’s little old computer looks like it has been finally flogged to death. There merely remains to find somebody to extract all its data from it, and to buy a new one.

All of this will take time... and money. Not much of either around.

In the meantime, contact with the world outside will be maintained via Blackberry and an Internet cafe, neither satisfactory. Emails can still be received and answered via conductive.world@gmail.com.

A quiet time?

The world of Conductive Education, at least as is indexed by what is appearing in Cyberspace, has gone eerily quiet. Just one of those temporary things, or reflecting a more terrible hush inspired by the Eurocrash and everyone’s awareness of the shakiness of the temporary solution to this? We shall see.

In the meantime. Conductive World will still find just about enough on-line time to slip the occasional item that emerges on to its Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/conductive.world

Longer-term projects

Two imminent events from Conductive Education Press:

publish the ‘Hong Kong book’ (in a week or so)
bring to press the awaited ‘Pető book’ (before Christmas, we hope)

These should not be affected by the current glitch.

Nor should a long-term programme of putting archive documents on line, plus one final obligation to discharge over the Hong Kong congress.

The may just even be the occasional posting on this blog. Keep an eye out.

CE research

2011-10-19T09:39:00.002+01:00

An overview

Memorandum to the Norwegians

This overview was commissioned by the Norwegian national CE organisation, the Norsk Forum for Konduktiv Pedagogikk, at behest of and with funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Health. The brief was simple a simple one:

To produce a detailed memorandum on CE-related research

The Norsk Forum subsequently granted permission for this Memorandum to be published on the Internet, for the benefit of all.

Preparation of this Memorandum was proposed towards the end of 2006 and it was prepared and written over the last week of January. 2007.It was expected that three working days’ equivalent would suffice for this task: in the event it required nearer six.

The Memorandum was published on line as a knol, in October 2007 but proper formatting proved a problem. It has now been reformatted and is available on line and in full, in the Conductive Depository:

http://www.e-conduction.org/depository/NorwegianresearchreviewSutton2007.pdf

The entire Memorandum runs to over 12,000 words, including appendices. There are around ninety references to follow up, should you wish to read further and form your own opinions and conclusions.

This survey of the field had to be ‘quick and dirty’ rather than offering a formal and deeply considered academic document and should be read as no more that a preliminary overview of the field.

This Memorandum is therefore to be regarded as only a ‘scoping report’.

There has been nothing of substance published in the three years since October 2008, though time will doubtless come to update this review.

The field of 'Conductive Education research'

There is far more written material around research into Conductive Education than is generally thought (certainly far, far more than one would think from looking at the limited references cited by most articles on the topic). The conductive ‘literature’ remains generally unstructured and most of those who research in this field fail to identify what might be already there.

It has also to be acknowledged that much of what has been written is of at best middling quality. Some is outright poor. Judgement on this is left to readers of this survey who follow up specific references. Most of the research work cited here was carried out in a flurry of activity over the years between the late eighties and the early ‘noughties’. Research activity in this area is now generally on the wane. Most research has been reported in the English language, though this survey also makes reference to materials written in Norwegian, Swedish, German and French. While this survey does not claim to be wholly exhaustive it does seem likely that no studies of significance have been missed.

Summative statement

It is often said about research into Conductive Education, ‘Research has shown…’ The present state of academic knowledge favours the contrary view, ‘Research has failed to show…’

As research reports often conclude. ‘More research is needed’. But please, not more of the same.

Reference

Sutton, A. (2007) CE-related research: a memorandum to the Norsk Forum for Konduktiv Pedagogikk, January

Hardly sitting on a goldmine

2011-10-18T23:18:00.000+01:00

Any old iron? *

For anyone who has a webpage or blog, here is a possibly interesting diversion:

http://biznut.co.uk/

I do not know what this is based upon, or how valid what it does, but according to its calculations, Conductive World can be valued at £2,382.10.

http://biznut.co.uk/www.conductive-world.info

Now that I know the estimated value of my product then, if onlyI could estimate the number of hours that I have allowed myslf to sink into this, I could also calculate the cash value of my labour. Not a lot, I guess.

Emma Chissit ? (Aus.)

What is your center's site worth, or your blog? Just type in its URL to find out, and then make of it as you wish!

Somebody enterprising could now survey property values across the virtual CE world, and produce yet another local variant of the game of Monopoly. Probably no fortune to be made there either (especially considwering the potentially significant loss from the inevitable legal action the makers of Monopoly for passing-off).

I note, by the way, that blogs are relatively well priced in comparison with static sites. What can such calculations be based upon? Might there be important underlying facts here?

I also wondered how much my Facebook presence might be worth in comparison, so I typed in:

http://www.facebook.com/conductive.world

Unfortunately, I find, the system does not work for individual Facebook pages, returning instead an estimate for Facebook as a whole: £3.55 billion'

I doubt that either site, mine or Mark Zuckerberg's, would easily find buyers, for rather different reasons.
_____________________
* British music hall song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2nA77k_YGg

Men and angels

2011-10-18T10:59:00.002+01:00

Sounding brass and tinkling cymbals

Some recent correspondence on an unrelated matter reminds me that I gave a Keynote Address to the Fourth World CE Congress, in East London in 2001.

My presentation, 'Conductive Education: sink or swim?' is available in full on the Internet, by courtesy of Columbia Teachers College, New York.

Its argument opened –

The initial ‘explosion’ of interest in Conductive Education, in 1986, led to a centrifugal process, outwards from a single source, the mother house of the Peto Institute. We are now, however, in a quite different phase. When the actual transition occurred only future historians will be able to tell but the ‘shape’ of the world conductive community is now very different from what was once a wheel radiating from a single hub. Instead there has developed a network of centres, associations and individuals whose work and direction are characterised by intense local adaptation and development to meet the structural and economic constraints – and opportunities – of new social contexts.

Once local processes are under way a new factor emerges: the work gains personal and institutional momentum. It takes paths that may represent the only way forward in a particular context, and to do so it becomes involved in financial, personal and public commitments that it must maintain or die. Once committed there may be no turning back.

In conclusion, I remarked upon an important mechanism that was already twelve years ago permitting the term 'Conductive Education' to embrace and legitimate an ever-wider range of beliefs and practices, and offered a lifeline, something firm to hold, a potential criterion –

Short-term peace of mind, easy coexistence, make for short-term comfort but, as the years pass and the church becomes broader and broader, we are in danger of losing our identity, of dissolving our essence into a widening pool of activities which, however well-meaning in themselves and whatever their benefits in their own right, hardly advance the central cause of Conductive Education.

What should we say to people who sincerely believe that they provide Conductive Education when they have little or no pedagogy and, worse still, no conduction? I shall misquote the Bible (I Corinthians, xiii, 1)

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not conduction, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

To be truly ourselves we have to define conduction, in clear, material terms, and when we have done so we shall have no choice, indeed we shall have the duty, to say what is not.

Reference

Sutton, A. (2001) Conductive Education: sink or swim? Presentation to the concluding plenary session of the IV. World Congress of Conductive Education Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, 12-14 September 2001

http://cms.tc.columbia.edu/i/a/914_petocongresspresentation.pdf

Much water has flowed under the bridge since then... and over.

On Hári

2011-10-13T22:30:00.005+01:00

...and Pető

Emma McDowell writes --

Hello, Andrew

Having read theamusing anecdote about the theatre visit, and also Susie’swonderings, Mária Hári rises up from the grave before my mind’seyes, as I knew her. I have often describedmy various kinds of encounters with her – and yes, I had heardabout the briefcases or shopping bags too, and many other anecdotes –but not about their going to see the play Anna Frank’s Diarywith Pető, so thank you, Peter Popper.

Iassume you know that for a time in the fifties you had to showyourself as a true 'proletarian' by NOT dressing up for thetheatre. If you did it was 'decadent' and to be seen as'decadent' was a dangerous thing. We take it for granted that youngwomen just learn how to dress etc. In Hungary in the post-war yearswhen Hári was young because of poverty and anti-bourgeois ideology,this wasn’t necessarily so.

Having saidthat, she was a 'late developer' and even looked glamorous (well, as far as she needed to be) on some pressphotographs; I believe that she even changed her glasses to somethingless unbecoming.

And She COULDproduce a warm, lovely smile.

As for Pető,he fits perfectly the image of the Professor in the autocraticclinic' system of Hungary of the time, with the female staff (notall!) swooning before the power-image that he managed to maintainwithin the Institute Thank goodness for that! Not because of thegrotesque hero-worshipping that prevailed within a closed system, butbecause that way he could produce the tangible results that he hadbelieved were possible, and what he later called conductiveeducation.

Best wishes

Emma

Important – VERY important

2011-10-13T09:30:00.000+01:00

That'swhat it's all about

FromBelgium, parent Fabien Gillardblogs–

Afew days ago I was at my stepfather 's birthday party.Surrounded by his friends and family, he was celebrating his 65years. And when time came for speeches, his wife of 25 years (mymother) took the floor.The content of her speech has no place herebut her conclusion has resonated deeply inside me. 'We know thatwell-being is not the end of the road, it istheroad'.

Andthere you have it, one sentence and it said everything, everythingmade sense.

Ihave to admit that I have almost always seen Mano's developments interms of his acquiring maximum independence. And I have told myselfthat it is this independence that lies at the end of the road, that this is its objectiveand its reason for being.Thinkingin this way, however, I condemn myself to be always disappointed andworried by the road still to travel. I condemn myself to seeing onlyobstacles and difficulties ahead, I condemn myself to sadness thatthe objective has not been attained.

TodayI realised that this view is wrong. I understand now that the 'road' is not to be compared (and then contrasted) with any kind offinal objective; I understand that the road, and the very notion of'being on the road' are actually to be tied to the status quo, tostop. Thesuccess and effectiveness of an individual project based onConductive Education are not to be evaluated in relation to achievingan ultimate objective (for example, the child's independence). Thesuccess and effectiveness of such projects are not to be evaluatedby the number of things not yet done in relation to an initial situation.

Bychanging my viewpoint, I have lifted an immense weight from my heart.I no longer say that Mano is still far short of the objective that Ihave set him; I say to myself that he is already a long way from fromthe situation at the time of his initial accident. Hisroad no longer strikes me as strewn with obstacles that areincredibly hard (and potentially impossible to overcome), but one ofimportant victories already gained. Ino longer ask myself (less often, anyway) where his steps are leading but rather joyfully to contemplate the steps alrady run. Andin this context, the sense is everywhere. Each step is a victory, ajoy, an advance, a success.

Toput it all this simply: the sense is not to arrive at the end of theroad, but to move forward, each at one's own pace, on this one here.

https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/132fb9ba47e27bec

'Important.VERY important' – but to whom?

For anyone who seeking to understand András Pető and his Heilung
For all those contemplating conductive upbringing for their child and their family
For anybody seeking to understand Conductive Education
For all those who try to explain it
And for all those concerned with 'research'.

Háriana 6 – Obituaries

2011-10-12T17:56:00.000+01:00

I marked it my way

In theBritish weekly magazine Nursery World, on18 October 2001, ashort news item –

Inbrief... Maria Hari, director

MariaHari, director of the Peto Institute, which developed conductiveeducation, died at home in Budapest, Hungary, on 6 October.Conductive education for those suffering motor disorders fromcerebral palsy, dyspraxia, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis,head injuries or strokes, was developed by Andras Peto in Hungaryafter the Second World War. Miss Hari was chiefly responsible fordeveloping the specialist profession of 'conductor'. Andrew Sutton,director of the London-based Foundation for Conductive Education,said, 'Ten years ago, disabled children and adults travelled to thePeto Institute in Budapest from across the UK. Many will grieve herpassing but in years to come, as conductive education becomes morewidely available here, many more will have cause to celebrate whatshe helped to build.'

http://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/717668/briefMaria-Hari-director/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH

Ijust about recall having taken a phone-call from the reporter fromNurseryWorld.I wondered whether there might be more but by 2001 the popularConductive Education furorewas well over and there were none.

Mária'spassing did, however, merit formal acknowledgement in the seriouspress. Two obituaries were published, one in the weekly Educationsection of the liberal Guardiannewspaper,the other in the establishment medical trade paper, the BritishMedical Journal.

Ihas written both, trying to attune each to what I supposed of theirrespective readerships. (BMJ'sfollow its tradition of giving the cause of death).The BMJwanted a picture and we were able to provide one of the nicestphotographic images that there is of her, in her prime.

Bothof course remain on line.

Maria Hari

AdvancingPeto's ideas on conductive education
for disabled children

Asdirector of the Peto Institute in Budapest, Dr Maria Hari, who hasdied aged 78 of cancer, became the worldwide symbol of conductiveeducation for adults and children with motor disorders, and theirfamilies. Her life of singular dedication and determination requiredextraordinary adaptability, from a childhood under fascism, throughStalinism and goulash socialism, and on into free market capitalism.

Atits heart, conductive education manifests the well-known principlesthat people learn best if committed to their own goals and haveconfidence in their power to change - best of all if they are taughtby people who understand this process.

Conductiveeducation adopted these principles for people disabled byneurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease, multiplesclerosis, stroke and cerebral palsy. Why, it asks, should one assumethat brain damage precludes anyone from learning? Appropriateteaching and learning are together the ultimate rehabilitationalapproach, offering education in its widest sense because learners areled to achieve their own goals.

In1945, following the Soviet liberation of Budapest, the physicianAndras Peto translated these principles into a practice whichdeveloped swiftly into the basis of what we now call conductiveeducation, beginning with virtually no resources and reliant uponvolunteers to help him. One was the young medical student Maria Hari.

Shehad been born into a well-to-do, though emotionally distant, family;a sister had a mild disability and spent her life in an institution.Hari herself received a privileged education. Small and spry, shedeveloped an enthusiasm for what she later described in English as"making the gymnastic". A chance encounter with JanosBalogh, the eminent sports doctor, drew her enthusiasm to usingmovement therapeutically.

Ifshe wished to do motor therapy, however, Hari first had to train as adoctor, something that could not be done until the second world warwas over. By now poverty-stricken, she enrolled at Budapest MedicalUniversity, worked as a nurse to support her studies, and fell underthe spell of Peto, spending more and more time with what was thencalled conductive motor therapy.

Shequalified as a doctor in 1952, hoping to specialise as arheumatologist. By now, however, Peto's work had been recognised bythe Hungarian authorities, which built him the state institute formotor disorders. Peto needed Hari, and she stayed for the rest of herlife.

Duringthe 1950s, Peto redefined his conductive therapy as conductivepedagogy. As his health failed in the 1960s, Hari became increasinglyinvolved in the training course that a modernising Hungary required.Like Peto, she followed the honourable tradition ofphysician-turned-educator and, after his death in 1967, becamedirector in his stead.

Hungarywas a most paradoxical people's democracy. A strong nationaltradition of education, plus a socialist welfare system, allowed Harito expand Peto's state institute and refine its training programme,though never at the rate that she would have liked. Despite theisolation of working behind the Iron Curtain, she read widely,corresponded and even managed to make a few presentations in westernEurope, including two in the UK.

LikePeto before her, Hari played off party against government, and - asHungary slowly opened up - foreign interest against internalopposition. In the mid-1980s, she began discussions with a small UKgroup, whose interest was supported by the British embassy.

Asa result, in 1986, there appeared on BBC television astill-remembered documentary, Standing Up For Joe; the creation of anew charity, the Foundation for Conductive Education; a huge influxof families from the UK and other capitalist countries; unprecedentedpolitical support in Hungary - and international attention for Hari.

Suddenly,she found herself a star. Her modest mien, self-taught English andconfidence suited the English-speaking media - and Britishpoliticians - and caught the imagination of those who wantedconductive education. To her horror, Hari became an icon.

Thesewere confusing times for her and her institute (by now renamed thePeto Institute), soon compounded by the fall of the Iron Curtain. Theinstitute was privatised, but a worldwide appeal failed to attractthe funds for an international institute. Staff started leaving towork abroad, and the centre of gravity of conductive education movedaway from its mother house.

WhenHari retired in 1995, she continued lecturing and reassessing therole of conductive education. "Perhaps I was too rigid,"she said towards the end of her life, "not enough flexible."She had kept Peto's system alive into a world beyond hiscomprehension, but she recognised that educational inclusion, newattitudes to disability, the confirmation of brain science andchanging economies meant that it was time to innovate and build uponthe past.

Hercontribution was especially recognised in the UK. In 1988, she wasawarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Birmingham and, in1994, was appointed honorary professor of education at the Universityof Keele. She was awarded the OBE in 1990. But to thousands offamilies around the world, she was simply a small, determined womanwho gave them hope for a better life.

MariaJozefa Hari, physician and educator, born September 26 1923; diedOctober 6 2001.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2001/oct/24/guardianobituaries.schools

MáriaJozefa Hári

Formerdirector of the PetőInstitute, Budapest, Hungary (b 1923, qBudapest 1952), died on 6 October 2001 from spinalcancer. Mária Háribrought new hope to disabled people around the world throughconductive education. In the late 1980s, following the BBC televisiondocumentaryStanding up for Joe – the account of a young couple whotravel from England to Budapest in the hope of getting their severelydisabled child, Joe, admitted to the Pető Institute—she opened the doors of the institute to foreignchildren and their families. Even though Hungary then lay behind the Iron Curtain, more than a thousand British families and many morefrom other countries made the journey to Budapest to find conductiveeducation.

Conductiveeducation was developed by Hungarian doctor András Pető after the second world war as a way of seeking to rehabilitatechildren and adults with motor disorders, such as cerebral palsy,dyspraxia, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, hed injuries, andstroke. Pető claimed that people with motor disabilities could be treated throughnormal ways of practising and learning instead of through specialtherapies. Mária Hári worked as a volunteer with Petőfrom 1945 while she was still a medical student. She stayed with himfollowing qualification, playing a major role in formalising hisapproach.

In1967 she succeeded Pető as director of his institute and completedthe transformation of conductive education from a therapy to aneducational system. When conductive education became the subject ofinternational interest in the mid 1980s she adapted readily to therole of diplomat and served as trustee for the Foundation forConductive Education in the United Kingdom.

Britishpeople will remember her as a little woman at once self effacing andcompletely in control. They will remember the firm, confidentassertion that a disabled child or adult could indeed learn, followedby immediate practical demonstration that this was indeed so. She hadan amazing ability to communicate in self-taught English and askittish sense of humour.

Pető's institute occupied her whole adult life, leaving her virtually notime for private interests or existence. She retired in 1994 butcontinued lecturing there until this summer, still working on Pető's private papers throughout her final illness.

MáriaHári grew up under fascism, qualified as a doctor under socialism,and steered the institute right through into capitalism. She nevermarried and leaves no surviving relatives. But there are now nearlytwo hundred places around the world where conductors practise theircraft.

http://www.bmj.com/content/323/7318/938.full.pdf

GillMaguire collected and bound together a considerable collection ofpress reports following Mária'sdeath

References

Sutton,A. (2001) Maria Hari: advancingPeto's ideas on conductive education for disabled children, TheGuardian,24 October

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2001/oct/24/guardianobituaries.schools

Sutton,A. (2001)MáriaJozefa Hári, BritishMedical Journal,vol. 323, 20 October

http://www.bmj.com/content/323/7318/938.full.pdf

Hariána 6 – Disciples, awake

2011-10-12T12:29:00.001+01:00

Providethe means to touch others

Mária Hári's life touched the lives of many others.

Shewas also herself a little touched (in British English the word'touched' can mean a little mad). And those whose lives she touchedoften became a little mad too. Parents, conductors, others, might allhave at times despaired at some of the things that she did or said,and have cause to fear her sometimes arbitrary decisions and actions,but it is rare to find any who do not nevertheless maintain a strongstreak of affection and loyalty for her, sometimes very strongindeed.

Iwas lucky, I had privileged access, but I was not unique in this. Iknow that the early Brits in Budapest, particularly those there sayover the three years from 1985 to 1988, after which the whole thingbegan to get out of hand, came away with something for life. She wasno demigod (as neither was her predecessor), but one can still meetparents from that era who held her in awe, who figuratively speakingreverered her when she was alive, and who are still fervently loyal.I know that there are many more Hungarians who feel the same(slightly differently perhaps, and maybe even more powerfully) andwho too remain fervently loyal.

Thisis not a peculiarly British or Hungarian phenomenon.

Ferventfollowers, but not on the whole what I refer to here as 'disciples'.

Whatdo disciples do?

Intellectualmovements have often had their near-mythic originators, thevfonset origio of the basic ideas, and perhaps also of theinstitutions that would continue them. In the case of ConductiveEducation this was András Pető. Such a Great Instigator would characteristically work with a close,perhaps slightly juniorcolleague, in this instance Mária Hári. Think of Piaget andInhelder, Marx and Engels, Vygotskii and Luriya and Leont'ev (two ofthem in this latter case).

Suchjunior associates are characteristically considerable persons intheir own right, and may go to the take the lead of their field whenthe instigator has died.

Beyondthis, though, no tidy pattern is apparent. The next generation mightin turn generate a host of further considerable personalities andintellects, witness the broad band of Soviet psychologists, educatorsand defectologists who spread, elaborateddeveloped and enhancedthe Vygotskian tradition, or the whole thing might fraction andsplinter, even within the life-time of the instigator – think ofpsychoanalysis! No matter, along the way, disciples will preach,debate, argue, polemicise, between each other as much as with'outsiders' to their particular movement. They will teach, recruitand attract new blood, mentor and advise, and thereby in turngenerate their own disciples, and inevitably their own schools ofthought. The ideas of the instigator, however lonely these might haveseemed in their day, will be joined and reinforced by the extensivewritings of thier disciples, and the disciples of their disciples.Intellectually the movement will spread, and live.

Charateristically,movements will also split, withness the different kinds ofMontessorians, or Vygotskians, or Behaviourists, or whatever, oftenat loggerheads one with the other – but is that not the nature ofthe history of ideas? To think that an idea or a movement can holdtogether, unchanged and uncontested, from one country or from onegeneration to the next, is so naive and unworldly as no reasonableperson would ever hold to it...

Whatabout Conductive Education?

Letus be honest, very little 'discipling' has happened in ConductiveEducation and, worse, not many people seem particularly bothered thatit has not – and may never happen. It it not so muchthat Conductive Education is a quiet backwater, a still pool uponwhich people and their institutions, with no great loyalties orintellectual bonds to drive them forward, drift ever further apartfrom each other.

AndrásPető had a good, faithful disciple in Mária Hári. He drove andcontrolled her, she did his every whim while he lived and laterdevoted her life to maintaining the order that she felt he would havewished. But he had driven nearly everyone else away from actuallyworking with him, because of his difficult personality and oftendreadful behaviour. On top of all the other burdens thatMária tookup, she did try to build a corpus of writing, but the field requiredfar more, quantitatively and qualitatively than she could provide. Ithas needed more disciples, and ultimately it has suffered from itslack of critical and constructive dissent. Karóly Ákos might havebeen one inherited from AndrásPető, but Mária broke connection, and his tradition has mostwastefully withered. There may have been others but, if so, who werethey and where are they now?

(EsterCotton? The tradition that she created has most certainly flourished,but Mária regarded her as not so much a fellow disciple of AndrásPető's as a heretic)

AMárian tradition?

Loyal,inspired and creative workers in the groups are one thing.It is agreat loss that their story will perhaps never be told. Some of them,I know, have inspired the same degree of respect and awe as hasMária Hári, for the sheer brilliance and quality of theirconductive practice. And at one level, could there be anything moreimportant for the sake of those most directly involved, those whohave benefited from their work, or to the glory of the system?

Atone level there can only one answer to this. They are avital, invaluable part of Mária's heritage –butwhat will happen in the future?

Nevermind the economic crisis and its possible effects upon Conductive Education's institutional bases around the world (and that includesin Hungary too). Where is the conscious intellectual core aroundwhich the conductive movement can cohere or – just as importantly –from which splinters can consciously break away to create fresh, newcoherent entities? Where is the living, dynamic movement that a newgeneration of disciples can go forth, preach and proselytise. Whereindeed? To stretch out the religious analogy justa little futher,disciples have to be apostles too.

InOctober 2004 I gave a short presentation in Budapest to a MemorialDay organised by Moira * at the Budapest Technical University, to markthe third annivesary of her death. The title of my presentation was'Mária Hári, from whom we have still much to learn' (HáriMária, akitől még mindig tanulunk). That still seems auseful message for the world of Conductive Education.

KatalinBíró worked closely with Mária Hári for years. She is thesort of disciple that Mária's work and ideas deserve and demand iftheir benefits are to live on beyond the direct experience of thosewho were actually there. This is the sort of next-stage analysis thatone would expect of what I have called here a 'disciple'. :

KatalinBíró

Fundamentalsof conductive upbringing

http://www.e-conduction.org/depository/BiroJun06.pdf

Theremay well have been other attempts to analyse and synthesise Mária Hári'scontribution, from various hands. But where are they? And if thereare none, and none arise... in ten years years' time, what will therebe to show and learn from Mária Hári's long, hard struggle, otherthan can still be provided by the ever dimmer memories of thediminishing band of those whose lives she touched.

___________________________________________

* http://www.moira-cec.hu/en/dr_hari_en.html.

Myown contribution to this meeting was later published in commemorativebooklets, in Hugarian translation (byGabriella FödinéNémeth)andin its original English:

–(2005)Hári Mária(1923-2001), Budapest, MPANNI, pp. 59-65

–(2007)MáriaHári and her Conductive Education,Budapest, MPANNI, pp. 60-66

Háriana 5 – Speaking out

2011-10-10T11:01:00.002+01:00

Whatis and what is not CE?

As early,low-key interest in Conductive Education grew outside Hungary MáriaHári's public utterances about what she regarded as damagingmisunderstandings were what she called 'diplomatic', that is to sayso bland or ambiguous as to meaningless. In that that early time shetried hard to explain her work and I suspect that she was not whollyaware of how she was being misunderstood, or what was being done inthe name of Conductive Education. Then she realised.

Presentedbelow are some extracts of what she said at a public meeting. Theyare taken from a transcript taken by an unknown hand and latertranslated into English from its original French.This comes muchcloser to how I found her expressing herself herself on such mattersprivately. – angry, indignant, insistent in the defense of herlife's work, and on the absolute necessity for proper training –against those many who persistently failed to grasp its pedagogicessence, pushing instead mechanistic alternatives under the samename.

The yearwas 1981 and she was at a conference in Belgium, billed as 'Studydays on the Pető method', indeed she was the conference's'President of Honor' The morning of the first day was taken up withpresentations on the Bobath method, French 'therapeutic education',the Vojta method and the neuropaediatric approach. It was onlyfollowing this that she would be able to speak, knowing that thesecond day of the conference would be devoted to 'various experiencesof integrated education... influenced by the Pető method – fromPoland, Japan, Holland, Belgium and England.'

I presume that,as President of Honour, she was seated in a prominent position,bemused and angry at what was being presented under the name of thesystem to which she had devoted her life, and impotent to do anythingabout it. Come the afternoon and she had her scheduled opportunityto speak.

Sheappears to have abandoned most of what she originally intended tosay, and much of the film that she had brought to show. Instead shefocused upon the fundamental point that Conductive Education is nota bundle of methods easily picked upon short courses but an adaptive,dynamic pedagogic system requiring extensive and careful professionaltraining. The unknown scribe underlined certain passages, presumablyto mark emphasis.The capitalisation, I guess, indicated VERYSTRONG EMPHASIS INDEED.

Máriabegan coolly enough –

I wassurprised when I read Conductive Education emphasised in theprogramme... Excuse me for beginning this lecture by opposing myselfto the title of the symposium 'The Pető method'. First, as one seesin the programme, other things will be spoken about; secondly,Conductive Education is much more that a method.The system ofeducation is open to many methods, it is the structure, theorganisation of the work, the 'conduction' in the teaching that areits principles – and its result, social integration, is itsfundamental characteristic.

Therefollowed some descriptive outcome statistics of nearly eight-thousand children up to Christmas 1980 – a rather different set offigures, incidentally, from those usually quoted – from whichspringboard she launched herself energetically into the the subjectof training –

A methodcan be learned during a course but thesystem of Conductive Education cannot be applied other than byconductorswho have received a training in Conductive Education of four years,Thequality of the results of Conductive Education is conditional uponthe quality of the conductors' training...

So youmust understand that whatis called Conductive Educationor the Pető method at this symposium! iscertainly not it!

Showingless film gave time for more 'questions and answers'. Inter aliashe responded –

ConductiveEducation is not straight functionalism. The goal of the conductor isnot reduced to the execution of functions. If one wished to executethe functions directly that would be a failure (like with you) becauseone cannot exercise something that does not exist...

ConductiveEducation is as complex as education itself... the angle of attack isnot the musculature, nor the reflex mechanism, nor some part of thenervous system that we know remarkably well but not well enough. Theangle of attack is the personality, the morale...

Verbalaccompaniment of what we make ourselves do is not simply what Luriyahas described, it is much more... This is he essential point, thatone learns to wish in order to have success...

CONCLUSIONOF THIS SYMPOSIUM is that if one wishes to have the results that wehave, it is necessary to learn conduction.

I have norecord of what indeed the meeting concluded, though I suspect thathe speakers from Poland, Japan, Holland, Belgium and England went onto present what they had brought to present anyway, and that theaudience for the most part heard what it had come to hear and wantedto hear, for 'tis ever thus.

Certainly,the meeting's formal published report (Motricité Cerebrale,1981/2, pp. 92-94) made no mention of Mária's urgent message, or her proposal of what oughtto be the 'only conclusion'!

The abovequotations are extracted from pages 65-72 of the book Mária Hárion conductive pedagogy.

References

– (1981) Journées d’études sur la méthode Petö, Motricitécérébrale, 1981/2, pp.92-94

Maguire,G., Sutton, A. (eds.) Mária Hári on Conductive Pedagogy, Birmingham, Foundation for Conductive Education

A night at the theatre

2011-10-08T08:01:00.000+01:00

Fromthe late, great Péter Popper –

Anyway,I thought that the place was Pető's harem. I think that everybodywas in love with him, each in their own way and style. There werelots of grotesque and embarrassing situations.

IliSzékely was in charge iof the conductors there. After Mária Hárishe was the second most important person there. She was a greatstoryteller, and would tell very humorous stories about Pető. Shetold me a great story about a disastrous visit to the theatre to seethe play The journal of Anne Frank. According to her. Pető,who went to the theatre maybe four times a century, heard that it wasan excellent play, and bought tickets for all three of them. She toldme drolly that great preparations were made.

MáriaHári was told to put on her nicest blouse and was forbidden to comein her belted Loden coat, which she always wore, and she was alsoasked to leave her briefcases at home. She always carried twoenormous briefcases with her wherever she went. What did she carryaround in them? All sorts of things. As you'll hear, some verystrange things. And lots of books, exercise books that she consideredimportant, and many other things.

Butas it turned out, nothing went according to plan. Mária forgot towear the elegant blouse she had been asked to, and Pető decided thatshe would have to keep her belted Loden coat on throughout theperformance, and so they didn't leave it in the cloakroom. But theticket collector didn't want to let her in with her coat on, untilPető suddenly shouted 'She's rheumatic, she can't take it off!' andshoved her aside.

Thebriefcases were put down beside their seats and in the middle of theperformance, naturally during one of the lyric bits, an alarm clocksuddenly went off in one of them!

Itwas a big alarm clock,the kind one normally sees in kitchens, she hadit because she didn't wear a watch, and so put it on the lecternwhen she was lecturing students.

So,this alarm clock went off in the dark theatre, and she startedfrantically searching through the briefcase for it, while theperformance practically came to a standstill. Finally, she found thealarm clock and stopped it. The performance resumed, and for atleast five minutes. Pető didn't say anything, but that was onlybecause he was speechless with rage. At last he recovered his breathand bellowed –

'Out,get out of here.'

Naturallythis caused another scandal, because he shouted in the middle of theperformance.

Ahistorical point

Iheard this story several times fromMária personally, as I am sure did many others, andshe still giggled at the memory as she told it, but Ili Székely andPéter Popper were better story-tellers than Mária and I.

Iwould make only one slight amendment. When I knew her, only from1984, her most apparent fashion accessory was not a briefcase but ascruffy old shopping bag – still stuffed with all sorts to do withher work (she did not do much 'shopping') – and it was such a bagthat featured in the story as she herself told it to me.

Apetty point, but illustrative of a fundamental problem in assessingretrospective oral history (personal recollections shared, inconversation perhaps, many years later), seeing 'then' in terms ofwhat we and others see now.

Thereis a lot of this in Conductive Education, some of itrelating topoints that are not so petty.

Reference

Forrai,J. (1999) Professor Péter Popper, Memoirsofthe beginnings of conductive pedagogy and András Pető, Budapestand Birmingham, Új Aranyhíd and Foundation for ConductiveEducation, pp. 151-156,pp. 103-117

Reuven Feuerstein not awarded Nobel Peace Prize

2011-10-07T23:29:00.001+01:00

Ohwell, nice try

Thisyear's Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded today, and Reuven Feuersteinwas not among the winners. A pity, it would have been nice to seetop-level public recognition of the endeavour to transform humandevelopment, and who better than Reuven amongst those presently inthe land of the living to head the field. No matter, the world'sfailure to recognise and respect human transformabilty in no waydiminished the cause of those few who do – nor does it in anywaylessen Reuven's life-long achievement.

Kerfuffle

Reuven'snomination came from a group convened byUmbertoMargiotta,Professor of Pedagogyat the University of Venice. In January this year, because of myknowledge of Reuven's work and my previous involvement with Reuven,he invited me to write a 'motivation letter' (a testimonial) insupport of this. I would have six days to submit this before close ofapplications and my words would be published on the extensivewebsite, called ReuvenFeuerstein: a Man for Peace,already set up specially to bring this application to the attentionof as many people as possible around the world:

http://www.amanforpeace.net

Idid what I could, cleared out as many of my typos and spellingmistakes as I was able to find, and submitted in the nick of time. JoLebeer seemed the only other person involved with ConductiveEducation to have been drawn into this.

Ialso wrote a posting about this on ConductiveWorld.

Inow had time to read a little about the Nobel Prize, its strangeorigins and the just-as-strange mechanisms through which it isawarded. Along the way I was surprised to see that the rules forbidpublicising a nomination, indeed doing so leads to disqualification.Oh well, I thought, what do Iknow about such things? I am no academic.

Ihad, however, been a Meccano boy in my youth, and an aeromodeller anda railway modeller thereafter, and I have had a lifetime of D-I-Y andall sorts of electrical and mechanical maintainence. So I am veryaware of the deep truth of the old adage:

Inthe last resort, read the instructions

Sureenough, a couple of weeks later, I, along with others, received afurther letter urgently requesting me to remove my posting onConductive World.Ever wishing to be helpful, I of course complied, and noticed thatReuvenFeuerstein: a Man for Peacehad been amended to remove all mention of the Prize application.

Departmentof Waste Not, Want Not

Inthe event, since Reuven's application was not in fact disqualified Ican but hope that premature publicity by supporters was not a factorin the final decision. I doubt it – his is just an unfashionableand grossly undervalued cause and I suspect that it will be very longtime before there will be a Nobel Prize of Pedagogic Sciences.

Asthere no longer seems anything to be gained or lost, I present belowwhat I wrote in his support, as APPENDIXI.The withdrawn blog posting appears as APPENDIXII.

Thisis done incase the question of CE as a cognitive intervention should everarise, somehig that over recent years has seemed progressively moreunkikelt. Still, in a new world, who knows?

APPENDIXI

Conductive Education and Mediated Learning

Ships that pass in the night

ReuvenFeuerstein's life and teaching have proclaimed most publicly andexplicitly the principle that our minds are not fixed, destinedproducts of our biologies or circumstances – and demonstrated thisnot solely from his own practice but also far more widely in thepractice of others around the world, for more than fifty years. Therecould be no greater personal contribution to the peace and well-beingof humanity

In theusual course of human life the generation-by-generation creation ofthe most complex and puissant phenomenon that we know, our veryhumanity, is routinely and successfully brought into being byordinary men and women – most fundamentally, by families bringingup their children. When something goes wrong, however, disrupting ordistorting the usual social and psychological mechanisms ofdevelopment, then the problems arising may often seem impossible fix– or even to understand.

ReuvenFeuerstein's life and work have been dedicated to understanding andabove all to fixing such situations – to transform the developmentof those for whom the usual mechanisms of parenting and schooling arenot enough. His contribution is a complex one, depending first andforemost upon the belief that the development of children– all children – can and should be transformed,then creating special techniques and practices to bring this about,and of course social and organisational structures to provide thebase for implementing this.

Culturaland social disruptions, through poverty, war, migration, are terribleenough for adults, and major barriers to peace and security. Buttheir effects may be multiplied and compounded when projected on tothe psychological, behavioural, moral and social development ofchildren – with correspondingly grave, long-term outcomes,individual and social. (And, even in the most favourable socialcontexts, children with damaged central nervous systems presentproblems often far beyond the range of usual experience and the'common sense' that comes from this.)

Reuven'slong and most practical career has demonstrated again and again thathuman transformability can reach far beyond most people'sexpectations of what may be possible. Moreover, he has gone on toconvey his fervent belief and faith in the power of pedagogy inpractical demonstration to uncalcably wide audiences around theworld, dealing with an extraordinarily wide range of problems,offering his audiences moreover practical tools to do the job and todemonstrate it for themselves, and the structure toback this up.

Histheoretical ideas have incorporated much of the best oftwentieth-century pedagogy and psychology. They have introducedcountless teachers and parents, and others too, to recognising thatchildren can realistically aspire to being so much better than theyare. His practical achievements, his writing, research, organisationand proselytisation, serve as inspiration for all of us travellingthis sometimes hard road in the twenty-first.

ANobel Prize? The upbringing and education of future generations isthe most vital and humane of all human activity, for upon it reststhe humanity of future generations. So often this is taken forgranted, while the unfortunate consequences of its neglect are oftencast aside, written off, even punished and blamed. Reuven Feuersteinhas stood for two generations in the utmost esteem of everyone whotakes up the task of transforming children's development throughensuring the means whereby they may become the people they could be.He is the psycho-pedagogue par excellance, a livingsymbol.

Thevery public acknowledgement of this Prize would raise the ideals andgoals that he has embodied to the much wider public considerationthat they deserve.

APPENDIXII

Blogposting, published on 11 January 2011,
subsequently removed

Thismorning's item on ConductiveWorld,reporting the possibility of a Nobel Prize Prize for ReuvenFeuerstein has been picked up by a few news services, though it hasnot occasioned an actual story anywhere. After all, the term 'NobelPrize' is sexy enough to be trawled routinely on the Internet –once this is spotted, however, the name Reuven Feuerstein is unlikelyto ring bells. We shall see.

Thefollowing list of references does not pretend to be exhaustive but,given limitations of time and resources, will have to suffice. Itwould be nice if others could contribute further such references (inwhatever language they are to be found). It would be verynice to hear from conductors and others in CE, especially families,who have had practical contact with Mediated Learning and experienceof working the two systems together. I like to suspect that there mayhave been rather more happening in practice than is reflected in theprinted word.

CEand MLE: brief chronological bibliography

Sutton,A. (1986) Cottam, P., Sutton, A. (eds) ConductiveEducation: a system for overcoming motor disorder.London Croom Helm, p. 172

Sutton,A., Sharron, H. (1987) Two great educators, Mária Hári and ReuvenFeuerstein, SpecialChildren, March,pp. 12-13

Feuerstein,R., Rand, Y., Rynders, J. E. (1988) Don'taccept me as I am,NY and London, Plenum Press, p.29

Minnis,F., Paul, A., Sutton, A. (1990) TheTransformers.London: BBC Publications

LeBeer,J. (1995) Conductive Education and the Mediated Learning ExperienceTheory of Feuerstein, EuropeanJournal of Special Needs Education,vol. 10, no 2, pp. 124-137

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ516152&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ516152

Sutton,A. (2007) Conductive Education and Feuerstein, ConductiveWorld, 21November,

http://www.conductive-world.info/2007/11/conductive-education-and-feuerstein.html

Sutton,A. (2008)Reintroducting Reuven, Conductive World, 2 January

http://www.conductive-world.info/2008/01/reintroducing-feuerstein.html

Feuerstein,R. (2008)Recent Advances in Conductive Education, vol.7, no. 1, June, pp, 5-8

Sutton,A. (2010) Breakout at the Szalkai Farm, Pálmonostora? ConductiveWorld, 9July
http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/07/breakout-at-szalkai-farm-palmonostora.html

(Irather think that this initiative has not survived)

Footnotes (7 October 2011)

Reuven Feruertsein was not awarded a Nobel Peace Prize
http://www.conductive-world.info/2011/10/reuven-feuerstein-not-awarded-nobel.html

The Szalkai Farm does still exist
http://www.szalkaifarm.hu

Taking the long road

2011-10-07T13:39:00.000+01:00

Belgianparents working for the now, and for the future

Fabian Gillard writes–

On the occasion of the last meeting of the Association of Parents of La Famille, we addressed the issue of the long-term future of children attending the school and family centre La Famille (in Brussels).
In fact, the school and the center care for children up to age 13 years, and no more. Beyond this age, children are referred to other structures, none of which is the perfect extension of La Famille (whether in terms of work philosophy or the daily method).
It occurred to me that this question was raising serious concerns, particularly among members of the Association whose children are approaching the fateful age of 13.
My son Mano is only five years old. I do not experience this anxiety, but I will, for sure.
This anxiety refers to a question: what can be the sense of a process of guiding one's children on a along a path... that ultimately takes the form of an dead end? What is the sense of a process that ask someone to go forwards... towards a brick wall.
Unfortunately, the answer is a simple one: there is no sense!
This finding highlights the 'too small' the place granted to conductive pedagogy in schools and centers, yet this pedagogy is (strictly from my experience) the only one that permits my son the tools to become independent, to move forward, to learn.
Faced with this problem, two possibilities exist: sit down and weep, or work to create the place.
We in the APLF have decided to put our energies to this cause: creating a place for conductive pedagogy that can accommodate children up to age 18.
We are once again on the road, together.
As are our children, every day.
This makes me think ever more strongly that parents and children are recoiprocally 'conductors', each guiding the other along the same road.

http://www.parentsetpedagogieconductive.be/2011/10/et-apres.html

Therefollows an open letter to parents –

DearParents,

As you know, for a little over a year, there is anassociation of parents at the school and family center LaFamille.
Don't hesitatae to come and join us, and to share ourconviction: each of us has the power to improve the everysay lives ofour children.
How to join? By paying the annual fee of € 12to the account APLF No. 000-3259138-35, stating 'contribution2011-2012'. Thank you , we can also send us your full details bye-mail!
What does it mean 'being a member of the APLF'? Youare regularly informed of our projects and invited to attend ourmeetings (once every three months or less). Of course you remain freeto participate or not!
How to support us otherwise? By makingdonations to the account APLF No. 000-3259138-35 with "donationfor children." There are no small donations: every small amounthelps!
As for the rest: we are entirely at your disposal. Allideas, questions, projects... welcome!
Specificinformation:
Any message can be left at school for ourattention.

The APLF association in anutshell
Since its inception, theparents' association has used the funds raised (including through theBarbecue Concert held in May this year) to realise the followingprojects:

Acquiring equipment for children: the Association has offered a sandpit for the nursery as well as soccer goals and a multi-table games for school.
To improve the quality of living conditions for children during the autumn holidays, the hall on the ground floor will be renovated. To this end, a opreparation day will be held on Saturday, October 22. We need hands to scrape off the paint and sand the walls! Keep that date free, we are counting on you! If you're available, for even a few hours, please contact us!
Installating a garden: During the year, a garden suitable for children with disabilities will be built in the playground
Organisating activities: The Association has allowed children to spend a day at thenbaths in Brussels, offered (and will again this year) tickets for the Bouglione circus , offered equestrian activity for children who have gone on school camps...
Support at school: some school staff have mobilised to enter a team-sponsored marathon, on Saturday, October 15, 2011,. The parents' association has entered two that will run to raise money to school. For non-athletes, it is still possible to sponsor us!

Beyond this, the parents' association has other goals, always more.

TheAssociation and conductive pedagogy

TheAssociation has participated and still participate sn workshops onconductive pedagogy, we try to understand and disseminate thepedagogy to create a link with various professionals.
Discussionand reflection: This year, we wish to address two specific questions:

What do our children eat? Food is essential to our children. We want to examine possible ways of offering them a healthy and varied diet.
What is the future for our children? What will become of them after La Famille? We wish to examine existing structures and what we might do to improve them.

TheAssociation of Parents

http://www.parentsetpedagogieconductive.be/2011/10/rentree-2011-lettre-aux-parents.html

Smallsteps along a long road, but concrete ones taken with eyes on wherefamilies want it to go.

A principle for the future

The Association offers a further concrete example of what looks like a factor vital if CE is to hold to its essence and fulfill its promise in the modern Western world: joint 'ownership' of projects (centres, services, whatever), incorporating families' inevitably long-term perspectives.

Mária Hári in her prime

2011-10-07T08:09:00.001+01:00

Ateacher! First, last, always! *

When Ifirst came into Conductive Education the talk was ever 'Dr Hári-this'and 'Dr Hári that'. She was, as she very much wished to be, AndrásPető's living representative on Earth, unquestionably the chiefarticulator of his ideas and heritage.

Thecontemporary iconic image of Conductive Education that has beenhanded down and broadcast to the contemporary worldhasowed perhaps as much to her long tutelage and advocacy as to herpredecessor's. Once she died, though, it could seem almost as thoughher cartouche had been struck from the monuments.

Her most principled pedagogy

It maytherefore be that many who have come into CE over the the last tenyears, may have neither heard nor read what she said.Here, for those who seek them, are some really pedagogic 'principles of Conductive Education':

Petőworked during the twenties and thirties with chronically disabledadults. He developed a whole-life guiding system that was indifferentto the particular chronic illness and the first step of which was tostop being passive, lying about, and begin to lead an active life.What is new in Conductive Education is that we work this way withcentral nervous system dysfunction

Previouslyone treated such people as someone who is ill but a treatment is apassive thing. It is always essential to see the person behind thesymptoms, most especially so with central nervous system disturbanceas the central nervous system itself needs integrating. If one treatsthe separate parts separately, then where is the coordination?

Weteach and educate the integrating mind that has to lead every action.It is not a treatment – we teach. The person learns how to live,not just move or function or perform but to solve problems… Our aimis not to teach functions, muscle movements, but to educate how tolive, to solve problems.

Theperson is active and wants to solve problems and structure his ownmethod. The teacher leads, catalyses, helps the activity, ensuressuccess and a good direction.

Whatis learned from eight o'clock to nine o'clock is used throughout theday. Education extends throughout the whole day. The goal ofOccupation A then becomes the means of Occupation B.

Itis like in Alice in Wonderland. If one asks ‘Which way should Igo?’ Then one answers: ‘Where do you want to go? Then you knowwhich way.’

Thegoal is not to teach functions or movements. It is the person and thepersonality that is the most essential and everything else isincluded in this.

Whenone learns a function or activity the question is not what but how todo it. One does not learn a mechanical, physical function – it isalso a cognitive function, in which emotional and moral factors arevery important.

Thereforeit is active learning, education. Children only learn if they wantto. The role of the conductor is to make joy, harmony, interest,everything that is a precondition of active learning.

These[task series] are not exercises but models of how to solve problems.

Onegets feedback only from the outcome of an action.

Ifone cannot achieve the whole action then, to learn coordination, onemust provide little goals and make them interesting.

MáriaHári addressing Lords and Members of Parliament of the All-PartyDisablement Group, Houses of Parliament, London, 5 July 1988

Theabove passage was originally published within a longer commemorativeitem on Conductive World:

brief introductory materal and commentary
an important caution about what she meant by the word 'co-ordination'
comments byLászló Szögeczki,Gill Magiure, Rony Schenker and Susie Mallett.

Apologies forrecycling but there are well-stated fundamentals in there that cannot be stated too often.

Háriana

This postingis one of a short series of daily items on Mária Hári to bepublished here on Conductive World.

Tomorrow, a little light relief: a rare view of Mária Hári with András Pető together, to make of what you will.

Reference

Sutton, A. (2009) Mária Hári at the Palace of Westminster: some of what she said, Conductive World, 31 October

http://www.conductive-world.info/2009/10/maria-hari-at-palace-of-westminster.html

_________________________________

* Noprizes for spotting the source.

Hariána 1 – A két Mária / The two Márias

2011-10-06T15:46:00.000+01:00

Contributionto today's ceremony in Budapest

Today there is a ceremony atthe Pető Institute, marking thetenth anniversary of the death of Mária Hári.

I was asked to submit ashort recollection. Lower down this page is my text, in English, but first anHungarian translation.

KétMáriára emlékezem

Lelkiszemeim előtt két régi, fekete-fehér fényképet látok, amelyekaz 1930-as évek végén vagy az 1940-esek legelején készültek.

Azegyik egy fesztelen kép egy nyaralásról. Ragyogó idő van, ésegy könnyű nyári ruhát viselő, csinos, vidám tizenéves lánylátható a szabadban, aki jól érzi magát a meleg levegőn. Egypálmafa törzse körül forog, és egyenesen a fényképezőgépbenevet, azon keresztül pedigrám. Közvetlen érzelmi kapcsolat jönlétre köztünk, és én is boldognak érzem magam.

Amásik egy kimért, szabályszerű kompozíció. Az idő borús, ésegy drága, nyitott tetejű, valószínűleg német gyártmányúgépkocsit látok. A vezetőülésben egy szertartásosan öltözött,zárkózott férfi. Egyenesen ül és mereven néz. A mellette lévőülésen egy serdülő lány ül. Ő is szertartásosan van öltözveés tartózkodó, ő is egyenesen ül és mereven néz. Apa és lányaközött nincs érzelmi kapcsolat, és velem sincs. Szomorú vagyok.

Nehézidők és nehéz élet következett mindkét fiatal nő számára.1984-ben találkoztam először Máriával. Közeledett pályafutásacsúcsához, elindult az ikonná válás útján. Én mindkét Máriátmegismertem, a nyárit és a télit is.

Amagánemberként együtt töltött időnk jó részében a nyáriruhás fiatal lánnyal voltam. Kuncogott és pletykált (ésbotrányos dolgokat mesélt). Szerette, ha meghívják, és szeretteezt kényeztetéssel viszonozni. Szeretett vicceket mesélni (Azegyik nagy kedvenc így kezdődött: Két vak elmegy a moziba …).Kislányos volt a régi módon, nagyra tartotta a hosszú, őszintebeszélgetéseket, de azt is élvezte, ha bókoltak és virágotvittek neki. Szívélyes volt és szórakoztató.

Dehamar megtanultam, hogy vigyáznom kell, nehogy felzavarjam a másikénjét abból az autóból, aki mindig ott lapult nem sokkalmélyebben. Amint valami helytelent mondott az ember, az időjárásazonnal megfordult. Az érzelmi klíma nyomban fagyossá vált, akapcsolat megszűnt, teste és arca merevvé vált, és olyan volt,mintha egy szürke acélredőny csapódott volna le a tekintetemögött, amely elzárta a lelkét. Félelmetes volt.

Nemtudom, mások hogyan kezelték az ilyen helyzeteket, de én hamarkitanultam egy hasznos trükköt. Megkérdeztem, Pető András hogyanvélekedett vagy cselekedett volna hasonló ügyben. A mélykoncentrálás azonnali, döbbent pillanata következett, amelyetgyors, öntudatos nevetés követett, majd visszaállt az egyensúly.

Sajnálomazokat, akik csak a téli Máriával találkoztak, de az a gyanúm,hogy akik közvetlenül mellette dolgoztak, főként a nyári Máriátismerték, sokkal jobban, mint én, és megtalálták a módját,hogy az éles klímaváltozásokat elkerüljék vagy kezeljék.

Akét Mária egybeforrt egy nem egyszerűsíthető egésszé: nagybecsben tartom komplex és ellentmondásos emlékeimet arról arendkívüli Máriáról, akire ma emlékezünk.

(Fordítás:Földiné Németh Gabriella

Rememberingtwo Márias

Inmy mind I see two old black-and-white photographs taken in the latenineteen-thirties, or just perhaps the very early forties.

Oneis an informal holiday picture. The weather is bright, and a pretty,light-hearted teenage girl in a loose summer dress is outsideenjoying herself in the warm air. She swings round the trunk of apalm tree and laughs straight into the camera, and through itdirectly to me. There is immediate emotional contact, and I feelhappy too.

Theother is a stiff, formal composition. The weather is dull and I seean expensive open-topped motor-car, probably German. In the driver'sseat is a formally dressed, buttoned-up man. He sits up straight andstares. In the seat next to him sits a teenage girl. She too isformally dressed and buttoned-up, and she too sits up straight andstares. There is no emotional contact between father and daughter,and no contact with me. I feel sad.

Hardtimes and hard lives followed for both these young women. I first metMária in 1984. She was nearing the peak of her career, on the way tobecoming an icon. I got to know both Márias, the summery one and thewintry one.

Ispent much of our private time together with the young girl in thesummer dress. She giggled and gossipped (and told me scandalousthings). She liked to be taken out, and to give treats inreturn. She loved telling jokes (a great favourite began 'Two blindmen went to the cinema...'). She was 'girlie', in an old-fashionedway, appreciating long, earnest conversations but also enjoyingcompliments and being given flowers. She was warm. She was fun.

ButI soon learned to be careful not to disturb the alter ego fromthat motor car, always lurking not far beneath. Say the wrong thingand the weather could change, instantly. The emotional climate wouldbecome immediately icy, contact ceased, body and face stiffened, andit was as though a grey, steel shutter had slammed shut behind hereyes, blocking off her soul. She was frightening.

Ido not know how others managed such situations but I soon learned auseful trick. I would ask what András Pető would have thought ordone about such a matter. There would be a sudden, shocked moment ofdeep concentration, followed by a quick, self-aware laugh, thenequilibrium would be restored.

Ipity those who know only the wintry Mária but I suspect that thosewho worked closely with her ostly knew the summery Mária, better farthat did I, and found their own ways of avoiding or dealing withsharp changes in the climate.

TwoMárias fused into an irreduceable whole: I treasure my complex andcontradictory memories of the singular Mária whom we recall today.

Háriana

Iwould like to think that thistenth anniversary might prompt some further attention to Máriaand her life-time contribution to the developmentand survivalof Conductive Education. In a more mature and established sector,this might have been marked by a 'proper conference', to examine whatshe brought into the field (and what she kept out), and to explorethe possible relevance of her teaching following the extraordinarywatersheds passed since she died. Perhaps anothertime...

Meanwhile,perhaps others are marking this anniversary in more personal ways. Dolet the rest of us know if you do.

ConductiveWorld'scontribution will be a 'Háriana',a shortseries of daily postings starting today, for those who knew her and for those whodid not:

http://www.conductive-world.info/

Aparallel series of briefer announcements is running on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/conductive.world

Markers along the way

2011-10-04T00:27:00.000+01:00

(Ido not like birthdays)

ConductiveWorld first posted on 4 October 2008. This blog is therefore fouryears old today – and four years is a long time in ConductiveEducation, as in everything else nowadays.

Thefirst posting was entitled 'Why me, why now, why this topic?

http://www.conductive-world.info/2007/10/conductive-education.html

Muchwater under since then... including an attempt a year ago to escape fromblogging altogether. Here, as in all things, I must try harder. At leastFacebook now offers instant relief:

http://www.facebook.com/conductive.world

Otherarbitrary markers (making the statistic)

This will be posting number 1,403
Total page views stand now at 102,360 .
Pages viewed per day currently average at over a hundred, not much compared to many blogs out there in the big wide world, but quite a few for the little world of Conductive Education.
Total comments to date have been 1,525. I am sure that there would be more were Blogger not such a comment-unfriendly system.
Time spent on site per visit usually averages between one-and-a-half and two-and-a-quarter minutes
Pages have been viewed most frequently from the United States, followed (in descending order) by Russia, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Germany, Hungary, China, Canada, the Netherlands and Sweden. If I had any expectations, then I should likely be surpised at this.
All this has earned me not a penny.

Some things that I do not know

I have very little idea who reads this blog – or what its readers think of it.
I suspect that there is a hard core of usual suspects amongst its readership, but do no know how big this is or who they are.
I notify all new postings on Facebook but the bulk of daily hits does not come from these new items.
I do know that any mention of jobs for conductors guaruntees a flurry of hits.
Most hits involve the 'back list' of more that fifteen-hundred already published items, but whether these are mainly chance hits, whether people use Condctive World 'encyclopaedically', or what – again, I have no idea.
Hardly any CE centres worldwide refer to Conductive World in their 'CE links' listings – I used to wonder why this should be. I no longer do.
I do not know what to make of those by-country-of-visit figures above.
I cannot guess how many words all this blogging over four years all adds up too, how many postings are actually read, understood, agreed with, liked, hated. Or whether any of it has the slightest effect whatsoever!
Truely it is written, bloggers do it for themselves.

OnFacebook now

http://www.facebook.com/conductive.world

Cherish parents

2011-09-29T10:01:00.000+01:00

Is this breaucraticallypossible?

Somedefinitions

Cherish verb tohold dear, treasure, embrace with interest; indulge, encourage;promote, protect and aid, treat with caretenderness and affection; nurture, care about deeply, have highest regard for: recognise the worth, quality, importance of...
Antonyms not care, abandon,forsake

I thinkthis definition enough for present purposes.

Suspicionof parents

AnneMarie Carrie from the charity Barnardo's was on the radio this morning talkingbout the recent fall in the rate of adopting young children inEngland. She said that one factor in this was that 'we do not cherishparents' the parents who come forward wanting to adopt a child.Instead, we (that is our child-care institutions) treat them withsuspicion.

Adoptinga child is about as human and humane an activity as you can get.. So isbringing up a disabled child. One might similarly say that we do notcherish parents who bring up disabled children. Instead we (that isthe health-education complex) treat them with suspicion.

Theresult for young children awaiting adoption to rescue them fromdevelopmentally destructive limbo? They may wait, and wait, andwait... and maybe in the end just sink from view.
Anddisabled children and their families awaiting developmentallyappropriate and cherishing services to rescue them fromdevelopmentally destructive limbo? They wait, and wait, and wait...and maybe in the end just sink from view.

What dothey have in common? Of course causation is multifactorial in both,but through the distracting smoke screens of 'care', 'safeguarding','professional experise' etc. one may glimpse that – despite all thetalk – that in both we (our governing and managing institutions)simply do not cherish and trust parents enough, indeed we distrust them, and care too little for their'instincts' and what they understand might be best for theirchildren.

Whatdistinguisheds between the two? Well, at least adoption is something thatis talked about, it is on the public agenda, failure to get it rightevokes public concern.

Incompatibilities

Parentsof disabled children may experiences 'differences' about the servicesto be provided for their children when they approach the responsibleauthorities.

This isnot just, as may be the more readily expressed, a matter of cognitivedifference, intellectual disagreement between on the one handparents' understandings and choices and on the other those of the'authorities' (both meanings, hence the inverted commas).
There isalso a conative, affective, emotional disjunction between what on one side maybe a matter experienced and expressed primarily as a matter of'feeling', and on the other something that is primarily a question ofproblem-solving, professionalism, disposal.

Whatto change?

So backto Anne Marie Carrie. She was bold to express herself as she did (andit us interesting that none of the national newspapers who havecovered the adoption problem this morning have taken up this aspectof what she said – indicative perhaps of how far 'cherishing' hasfallen off the national agenda.

Canbureaucracies and their bureau-professionals become and act morecherishingly towards parents, who are as much their clients as arechildren? What might we do to enable or compel them in this, thatwould not in itself be to create further dehumanising bureaucracy?
Or is it better torecognise that the model through which our society frames itsresponse to profoundly human and humane questions, such as adoptionand disability, may be fundamentally wrong or, to use an awfulmanagerialist phrase, 'not fit for purpose'. Touse a just-as-awful political one, 'it is 'time to move on'.

We shouldnot and can not lose the human/humane factor in human affairs, soultimately it is bureaucracy that must give way, in favour of betterways of running things.

It willbe a long, hard road.

András Pető meets Jean Piaget

2011-09-28T20:48:00.004+01:00

Acontemporary note

Apszichológia eredményeinek felhasználásáról győződött megJean Piaget a Konduktív Mozgáspedagógiai Intézetben is. Itt dr.Pető András igazgató fogadta a vendéget. Részletesen kifejtettea konduktív mozgáspedagógia jellegét, amely az orthomotoroskondukció metodikai egységében magában foglalja a mozgásnevelést,a beszédnevelést, az önellátás és a munkamozgások tanítását,valamint az óvodai és iskolai oktatást.

Azismertetésben szó volt a „konduktorokról” is, akik amozgásnevelést és az oktatást is ellátják. Ezek képzéseérdekelte leginkább Piaget professzort, mert mint megjegyezte, aképzésnek nagyon sokirányúnak kell lennie. Az ismertetés utánPiaget hosszan időzött azokban a termekben, amelyekben a motorosdiszfunkciós, a cerebromotoros diszfunkciós és a spinomotorosdiszfunkciós gyermekeket, felnőtteket helyezték el. ElbeszélgetettPető professzorral a tudományos alapossággal kidolgozottmozgásnevelési, beszédnevelési, önellátási stb.gyakorlatokról. Amikor pedig fényképezésre került a sor, Piagetmosolyogva ült a beteg gyermekek közé. Azzal búcsúzott dr. PetőAndrás igazgatótól, hogy mielőbb szívesen olvasna nyomtatásbanis az intézet munkájáról, a megfigyelések és kísérletektapasztalatairó.

Extractedfrom:

Vilmos, C.(1964) JeanPiaget Magyarországon, MagyarPedagogiai Ssemle, 1964/1,pp. 113-115

Mythanks to Gabi Földiné Némethand Beata Tóthfor so speedily and efficientlyfinding me a copy of this document when I asked.

I have to admit, though, that the Hungarian language in the passagequoted above is far too complex for me. Would some kind soulout there care to offer me (and lots of other people) an Englishtranslation?

A previous posting...

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/09/andras-peto-meets-l-s-vygotskii-and-r.html

Two new gadgets

2011-09-28T10:27:00.000+01:00

Look at the top of the left-hand column

Conductive World now provides a running total of the number of its pages visited since it opened nearly four years ago, in October 2007. At the moment of writing, this stands at:

100,986

That is visitors, not postings! The number of postings so far stands today at the round figure of 1,400.

If you would like automated personal email notification of new pages as they are posted, please enter your email address in the box marked

FOLLOW BY EMAIL

and click on Submit.

Who wrote this? Was it me?

2011-09-28T08:44:00.001+01:00

Be careful how you quote

I have just found this, posted from London (UK) in 1997 on a Parkinson's Listserve based at the University of Toronto. There was no source quoted but I think I think that I wrote it. Well, most of it. There is an interpolated paragraph that is not mine – and I have always written 'András' rather than 'Andreas' and am not too sure about that 'Professor' either!. As for the rest, they look terribly familiar...

Conductive Education was developed by Professor Andreas Peto in Budapest after the Second World War. It has been known about in professional circles in the West since the early 1960s, but serious and extensive international interest began only a few years ago.

Conductive Education is not a treatment, and offers no cure. It is a highly developed system of special education directed at teaching people with motor disorders how to function independently. Motor disorders are problems of controlling bodily movements, due to certain conditions of the brain or spine, including in childhood cerebral palsy and spina bifida, and in adulthood Parkinson's Disease, multiple sclerosis and strokes.

[Interpolated paragraph here]

As a system of education (rather than exercise or training) Conductive Education aims to transform the personality as a whole, its emotional as well as cognitive aspects, rather than simply teach motor skills and functions.

The enormous attraction of Conductive Education lies in its apparent results. Visitors to Budapest over the last 20 years have remarked thatmotor-disordered children and adults there do not just function better than might be expected, but also seem different personalities – happier, more satisfied and self-assured, less handicapped.

They are learning and problem-solving independently. In quantitative terms, records indicate that around two thirds to three quarters of children who have undertaken a full-time course at the Peto Institute in Budapest go into the school system at a level appropriate to their mental potential, without the need for aids, adaptations, class-room assistants etc.

[There is also a short final paragraph that I am not altogether sure is mine]

https://listserv.utoronto.ca/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9701c&L=parkinsn&D=1&T=0&P=44810

Do feel free to quote...

By all means cut and paste, lift, quote and adapt but, whatever your source, do please state where you found the different passages that you use – not just for the sake and modest blushes of origional authors but also ultimately for the healthy development of Conductive Education – and even your own benefit too.

Where did this passage come from. A quick search suggests that it exists in full nowhere else on the Internet (though disconnected phrases and sentences blow around there like the autumn leaves) so presumably this is from a paper text written quite a long time ago. But what, and written for what purpose? Looking at the text it looks like it was written with children in mind, not adults with Parkinson's.

And not even in 1997, I hope, would I have still been using the tired old jargon of 'problem-solving', and surely certainly no longer perpetrating those dodgy statistics!

The relevance of things written may be situation-specific – and both facts and opinions may cahange over the years – all good reason to site your sources (as well as citing them!) in place and time.

By the way, I wholly accept that this passage was quoted in good will, with the best intentions to explain and inform. If these words were indeed mine then I am pleased and complimented to have been trusted to help. This situation is in no way analogous to the plagiarism of students, pofessionals and academics that Conductive World has railed against over the past couple of years, which is an attempt to pass off the work of others as one's own, for whatever purpose.

Plagiarists apart, you are most welcome to keep on using my words, and the words of others presumably, but do heed my cautions about doing so.

Interpolation

This is the interpolated passage:

Conductive Education is generally given in small classes, with a trained leader or "conductor". A typical class begins with relaxation and stretching exercises for arms, legs and trunk, but continues with an variety of cross-correlated exercises - such as (while lying on your back) touching your left shoulder with your right hand and placing your left heel on your right knee at the same time, then swapping sides. All these exercises are performed while singing a tuneful and rhythmic "one, two, one, two..." in unison, at a tempo of about 80-90 beats per minute. There are also exercises in fine hand movements, such as having one hand clenched in a fist and the other splayed out - then progressively opening each finger on one hand while folding each finger in turn on the other. These cross-correlated exercises are particularly important - and many are actually quite difficult even for able-bodied and able-brained adults to perform. A class might last about 2 hours, and it is recommended that patients attend several each week.

I do not know where this came from either, and make no comment.

Different grades of trained staff in Conductive Education

2011-09-22T12:11:00.001+01:00

Assistants, barefoots, feldshers, conductors, super-conductors...?

I would not like this topic to go off the boil.

I do not consider creating different grades of trained staff the only potential solution to the present crisis in Conductive Education in the developed economies – or even the central one. Some of it, however, is happening anyway and the question really ought to be subject of more explicit consideration.

More here on this matter soon. Here are some previous postings:

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/03/feldshers-barefoot-conductors.html

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/03/peto-institute-training-conductive.html

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/04/worls-of-assistants.html

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/04/feldsher-barefoot-conductors.html

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/12/this-mornings-offering.html

Sir John Cox

2011-09-17T10:43:00.001+01:00

A brief memoir

In a Comment on Facebook, Sheila Fuller remarks –

I … couldn't understand the reasoning behind an ex-admiral in the navy as Chief Exec for, as they were known then, the Spastics Society.

http://www.facebook.com/conductive.world/posts/156542121101611

The world was so very different then. At that time the Spastics Society was already, after just thirty years' existence, a well respected establishment organisation, and a recently retired Admiral would been seen as a safe pair of hands. Another change since those days is that he was its Director, not Chief Executive.

When Sir John Cox was appointed Director of the Spastics Society, in 1984, the organisation was already on the way into to transition from being a parents' organisation into what it was becoming at that time. By all accounts he appears to have made a good job of this.

Chas McGuigan and I had quite a bit to do with him over another matter, because of the Society's then determined opposition to the intention of the Foundation for Conductive Education and of the national parents' campaign, RACE (Rapid Action for Conductive Education) that Chas chaired, to introduce Conductive Education into the United Kingdom – and the assertion that to do so would require conductors. The Spastics Society disagreed, arguing the to me rather contradictory position that (a) CE was not really all that good and (b) the Society was doing it anyway, without conductors. Distant drums!

I always found him a decent man, bemused and uncomfortable at the company that he found himself in there. In 1988 he resigned and, though this was reported at the time to be something to do with how the Society was dealing with Conductive Education, the truth of what was going on never emerged.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1531196/Vice-Admiral-Sir-John-Cox.html

Sir John Cox was succeeded by Ken Young, Chief Executive