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| Spring in England, 2014 |
Hope
In the
many years that I have been involved in Conductive Education I have read about,
and talked to many parents of children with disability about, how Conductive
Education came into their lives and with it brought them a sign of hope.
It was the
hope for the future that had been missing from many of their family lives since
setting off on a road living with disability. Dealing with medical services,
social services etc. daily struggles for information and advice, had worn away
any hope that they had after the birth of a child with a motor disorder.
Suddenly,
on discovering the possibilities offered by living a conductive lifestyle, many
families report that they also rediscovered hope. Conductors and Conductive Education
came with high expectations for an active enjoyment of life and families often
reported that they became functioning families once more after embracing this
new hope.
I
remember well a personal experience with a family and the rediscovery of hope
from many years ago, when I was with a German conductor-colleague visiting a
family in Germany. This family had already had a wonderful, eye-opening experience
of Conductive Education with their child with Hungarian conductors. They had then
got in touch with me wanting advice on how best to continue a conductive
lifestyle at home, something they so desperately wanted to do. As the family
lived a long way from my home, but quite near my friend’s, we made the
house-visit together hoping that one of us would be able to offer help in the
future. I remember it so well as if it was yesterday.
We were
chatting away to the Dad as if we had all known each other for years,
discussing the difference that their knowing about conductive pedagogy and
upbringing had already made to their family life, when he asked –
“What is it about conductors, what is it that they
all bring into our lives, into our home? There is almost something tangible in
the air when they are about!
What is it? There is
something, no matter what nationality the conductor is, that radiates from all
of you, something in your souls that is so similar whether British, German or
Hungarian?”
I said
that I have heard many parents talk about how something different is in the air
when they speak to conductors about their children. They say that conductors
discuss the abilities and not the disabilities.
The
father we were talking to suddenly realized that what seeped out of the souls
of the conductor and into the souls of the family was the hope that goes hand
in hand with conductive upbringing, a renewed hope and the assurance that as
parents they could make a difference to their disabled child’s life, that they
could learn to teach their children how to learn just as they do for any other
children.
I have
never forgotten the chat with that Dad. It was one of the experiences in my own
conductive life that I learnt from. I realised then that there are different
kinds of hope. Families that discover Conductive Education have often been
searching for something for a long time, they have not given up hope, but have
lived in hope that hope could one day be restored.
I live in hope
I live
in hope – as someone said to me recently this is an odd expression. Living in
hope that hope will be restored is even odder, but I think that it is this that
we experience and hear about in Conductive Education, having not given up hoping to find hope
– hope has been restored while practising conductive living.
That’s
how it worked for me anyway.
We hear
so much from the families that we work with, from parents and grandparents,
carers and siblings, that finding out how to live conductively has restored
their hope.
But
what about when living in hope is not such a positive experience?
In the
09.05.2014 The Guardian Weekly I read
a sub-heading that made me stop my search for my favourite article – Nature Watch – that is always my first
read.
On the
page headed – This column could change
your life, I read –
‘A wonderful thing
happens when you give up on hope… you realise you never needed it is the first
place’
– which of course was an invitation for me to
read further.
What, I thought would the families I work
with think if I was to say this to them?
Giving
up hope
As I read the article I realised that I was
reading about a different kind of hope. Not the joyous, positive hope that our
families share with us, but perhaps it’s the kind of hope that they refuse to
let go of as they search, but that they really can give up when they find
Conductive Education with the renewed positive hope that comes with it.
In the newspaper article Oliver Burkeman describes
how someone experiencing long-term unemployment always has the hope of finding
a job, always feeling permanent pressure to search for work. It is only when
this pressure is removed, when retirement age comes along, that life can start
to recover. When someone reaches retirement age they can let go of the hope of
working again, they are released from the pressure of living the ‘norm’ and can
recover and live with other hopes, positive hope.
Hope reborn
Burkeman also suggests that one recovers more
fully from widowhood than from losing a job perhaps because widowhood is
irreversible and there is the hope of being happy again. After losing a job
there could be a long road ahead, searching and desperately hoping. You can read more about his thoughts on this
here –
The families we work with that rediscover
hope through Conductive Education need time to recover too, from the period in
their lives when the positive kind of hope was missing. Conductors, as that Dad
told me so many years ago, pass on hope through their work and take an active
part in the recovery of many lives and many families.
Only just last week I took a step back and
watched the children in our afternoon conductive group radiating hope through
their chats about life now and their dreams for the future. A happy atmosphere,
a positive atmosphere, a hopeful atmosphere was all around me as I worked. I could
almost reach out and touch it.
Notes
Oliver Burkeman, The
Guardian –
Thank you for bringing the question of Hope back to the forefront of my consideration. Looking back over entries on both your blogs I realise just how often the notion of 'hoping' surfaces in post after post. I am sure that it more conductors published their thoughts as you have done over the last years then the same reoccurence would be apparent. It is hard to imaging how one could be a conductor (or any other kind of effective pedagogue) without the continuing hope that, if only you were to try a little this or a bit of that, then an effect would be apparent. This is nor just pedagogic optimism, that is too passive a concept here, for pedagogic hope has to involve the element of human agency, the conductors' and the learners', in determining that there should be change. The transfer of new hope, its internalisation by learners and their families, is then as vital an outcome for the conductive process as any that one might suggest. It is certainly one reported in personal account after account of the experience of Conductive Education.
ReplyDeleteSo why is it that this essential mechanism and outcome outcome of CE has not been investigated by researchers over the years. Presumably one response to this question must be that to do so would be just too hard.
Hope presents an odd problem for researchers. Is 'hope' a psychological phenomenon, a kind of emotion, or is is more of a philosophy of living? Or is the distinction between philosophy and psychology, a relatively recent one in the history of ideas, shown by this very question to be less sharp than conveniently agreed? This is hardly the sort of discussion likely to attract the modern-day grant-giver, who may find outcomes such as strength of grip or speed of walking rather more material – even though much these might be far, far less relevant of what really matters in people's experience of living.
Looking back I see that you have frequently mentioned hope in the public domain, as both ingredient and product of CE; Rony Shencker has referred to it in public presentation; and I too have mentioned it a few times. If CE does not generate hope then I suspect that it has failed. If it does, then it is on the road. Maybe folk out there would disagree with this simplistic analysis. If so, fine, they may have important and valid points to make. Maybe others may go along with it in broad terms. Fine too, but broad terms need refining – like, as you have suggested, by differentiating different kinds of hope, to forge sharper terms for analysis.
Looking back to earlier posting of my own on this I see that my own understanding seems to have evolved little if at all over the last four years, for example – :
http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/10/hope.html
Thanking you for chasing Hope once more out of her box.