Stereotypes…
I think most of us have stereotypes. I try to work on most of mine, but some I don’t really care about because they are about people who will never be influenced by my thoughts. One of those is Goldie Hawn. As long as I can remember, I’ve thought of her as a blonde, and not much else. I haven’t even thought of her much, why would I?
Well, I read in the Vancouver Island Adoption Blog about a new program here in a local school. The blogger (an adoption resource worker and good friend of mine) went into her children’s classroom and was amazed to see those little plastic pockets that usually have letters of the alphabet in them, full of cards that had the words “amygdala” and “hippocampus” and “pre-frontal cortex” written on them. Obviously, that got her attention because those aren’t commonly found in a third grade classroom.
It turns out that Goldie Hawn has started a foundation to bring neuroscience into the classroom to help children overcome the stress and anxiety that interferes with their learning process. She developed this curriculum with some experts at the University of British Columbia. It isn’t in all schools yet, but it sure should be. Can you imagine what life would be like if our kids, their peers, and the teachers all understood how to process feelings? If they all understood how to re-establish (or just establish) self-regulation? If they all understood differing emotional skills as well as they understand different learning skills? If they were taught from kindergarten about how to acquire self-regulation skills in the same way they’re taught reading skills? What different lives our children would have. What a different world we would all have!
Go to http://www.thehawnfoundation.org and check this out. See if you can bring it to your school. This is our chance to change the world.
And, that is the end of my stereotypes – I’ll never, ever again think of anyone as a characteristic – clearly I don’t know what lies beneath. Lesson learned.
