In previous topics, he addressed the fundamental questions in which ethology, paleontology and anthropology can serve as tools to better understand our children, especially when they are babies.
However, our children grow and these disciplines, focused on explaining the characteristics of our species from the evolutionary point of view, will continue to serve us a lot. Our children are Homo Sapiens Sapiens and that already tells us a lot about them, about how they grow, how they relate, how they learn and how they are happy.
Our human baby grows
The human baby continues to grow dependent to move (remember that we have been nomadic or quasi-nomadic for millennia) and will look for the arms of your mother or another known adult to carry you despite being able to walk already when you get tired or feel insecure or afraid. It is a natural impulse that reveals how healthy our son is, evolutionarily.
Our brain continues to grow after birth at an enormous accelerated rate, and only when we reach two years can we calculate that we are in the same stage of growth as that of, for example, a newborn chimpanzee.
That is, at two years our children are able to do, approximately, what a chimpanzee, a close relative, does, although, of course, he has also learned many other things thanks to his long childhood and his great brain. Until then, he is as vulnerable and dependent as a fetus of our cousins.
Neotenia
We are born, therefore, comparatively, in a fetal state and the most curious thing is that we maintain throughout our life many characteristics of the immature organism, what is called neotenia.
Our neotenias are very characteristic of our species, which maintains the absence of fetal hair during its existence (with exceptions located in the body), is devoid of natural defenses (claws or fangs) and does not stand out for its ability to escape at full speed. We remain vulnerable as offspring, at least in appearance.
But we are not helpless, far from it. All our potential to survive lies in our brain and in something extraordinary that in the human being highlights: the ability to learn from past experiences through emotional memory and project their actions in the future. A very particular neotenia, to continue learning throughout life and maintaining curiosity. What makes us human.
The Sapiens Sapiens learn
Our characteristic is this, that of intelligence and lifelong learning. This determines that, although we are able to learn many things, the ones that remain permanently learned will be those that have emotional and significant value for us, those that matter to us and those that we know, from experience, that are useful to us.
This whole learning process is maintained throughout our lives, which undoubtedly is a very determining characteristic in the human being but that is based on the long process that is the upbringing and education of the human child, who investigates for himself and seeks the support of a trusted adult who emotionally contain and take care of your safety, while teaching you rules, procedures and strategies.
We learn in emotionally enriching and meaningful contexts and that, especially in children, is something that must be taken into account.
The best school for Sapiens Sapiens
The best school is life. I mean that what we touch, love, live and experience is what stays in our brain because it makes real sense and we care.
If we go back to paleontoanthropology we will find in it possible answers about what would be the ideal educational system, which would be consistent with our characteristics as a species.
Human children have grown, during 99% of the time of our species on Earth in quite small human groups, with direct contact throughout the day with his attachment figures and his direct family.
Institutionalization for educational reasons It is something artificial and very recent from the point of view of the species. It is a cultural strategy, nothing more. It does not really respond to the natural learning or emotional needs of children, but it could be adapted to them with a little effort. Its need and usefulness should be in line with respect for the natural characteristics of the species: children grow up in small groups and with the presence of their parents. Nothing is gained by separating them early or preventing them from gradually adapting, with their constant presence, to other groups. And less if those groups are of many small children, of the same age, with a single adult.
People who taught children sapiens things sapiens loved them and children loved those adults. They were his family.
The natural socialization of the child sapiens sapiens It occurred in the large family group, with people of all ages, with permanent adult supervision at a very low ratio, since that human groups should be around 20 to 30 individuals. The children he played with were familiar and familiar, and were few and of different ages, which favored some learning and others teaching.
Being with 20 other children of the same age several hours a day and with only one adult with whom they do not have a personal family bond is something very rare and novel in our species and clearly does not match our evolutionary programming. It may have useful reasons, but not defensible natural reasons. And it should be able to add both.
Children naturally socialize and learn, in an environment consistent with the evolutionary characteristics of our species: in small groups of emotionally united children and adults and of all ages. An ideal school for sapiens sapiens should work on these premises and favoring theexperiential, meaningful, individualized and emotional learning.
Going back to the boy, who still growing but greatly in need of protection, care and feeding, is prepared to develop language and learn with pleasure. As group beings our learning and our well-being is given by emotion, love, recognition and acceptance. Learning and developing emotionally is very difficult in a hostile or neutral environment. Love and knowledge go together in humans. Do not force detachment.
Separate issue deserves the game, as a fundamental element that structures the learning of human puppies, a way of experimenting, representing and interpreting reality through imitation and safe action. Do our children play a lot and is the game used at school as a basis for learning?
The environment influences us, our parents too, but that It should not happen against our genetic and evolutionary conditions, but favor them to achieve a full development of all our possibilities.
Paleontoanthropology, a discipline that analyzes the way of life of our ancestors (genetically equal to us) has much to teach us about our children and offers us tools to understand and care for them better, such as what they are, small sapiens sapiens Helpless and in need of all our love. Another day, if the subject interests you, we talk about Adam and Eve, not about the biblical ones, but about the oldest ancestors common to all human beings.
