Monday 28 November 2016
A thought for the day about Mária Hári’s thoughts
When the Foundation for Conductive Education published
Mária Hári on Conductive Pedagogy in
2004 Andrew Sutton sent a copy to fellow conductor Raphaela Roß and I with the
hope that we would review it for him. I do not remember whether we actually
sent him anything on paper that he could use but I certainly read the book. You
can tell just how thoroughly I read it because that original copy is full of
notes that I made during that first reading, and since. Not only notes in the
margin but the empty pages in the back are also full with my scribblings.
This is a list of the things that I wrote there –
While
reading through the papers of Dr Mária Hári many familiar phrases leap out at
me from the pages. These phrases caused me to stop and think that if parents
knew all this from the mouth of Mária Hári they would understand a lot better
what a conductive upbringing is. And maybe also if non-conductors working in CE
read this they too could understand better and team work would be easier.
Maybe
a short book of Hári-isms would help to remind us all at different times what
our conductive aims are.
P
42 - As a conductor I too believe that Conductive Education should be practiced
in groups. This is how it was developed in Hungary, with the group as the basis
of the learning system.
In
my own experience some aspects of Conductive Education have only been possible
when I have worked with the children in their own home – ‘Constant change of environment, different treatments at night and at
day cannot be permitted.’
There
are many points in these papers that would assist families to understand that
Conductive Education is not a therapy to which they send their children but a
lifestyle for the child ‘to render as
normal an education as possible, travelling in the streets, self support and
work.’
‘In order to bring about equilibrium between child and
the environment, we do not change the environment but adapt the child’s
constitution.’
The notes stop abruptly
with a quote at the end of the page. I wish that I could remember whether I
wrote more notes elsewhere or whether the project was abandoned.
Scattered throughout the
book there are underlined sections and notes in the margins and it is these
sections that I am occasionally publishing on my blog under the title Mária
Háris Thoughts for the Day.
I will carry on with these
Hári quotations and if any reader has any memories of her words that they wish
me to include, please let me know.
Saturday 26 November 2016
Harmony at the Pető Institute, from 2011
My favourite book stall at Moszkva Tér |
Yesterday, during a break from work, I was talking to a Hungarian colleague
and describing to her my last very enjoyable experience of a conference day at
the Pető Institute. I had forgotten that I had written
about the day that I was describing here on my blog.
I did a search of my blog discovering that I had written it exactly five years ago to the day.
I did a search of my blog discovering that I had written it exactly five years ago to the day.
I enjoyed re-reading it, it has a very positive and and excited air about it so I decided to repost the
whole blog here.
It was a
bleak November day in 2011 when I took the photographs from the hotel window showing the Cog-wheel Railway terminus, which takes one to the beginning of the Children's Railway, with the chacteristic yellow trams trundling by.
I hope that we get some brighter and crisper December days when we are there for the 9th World Congress.
I hope that we get some brighter and crisper December days when we are there for the 9th World Congress.
It is encouraging to read that so many people are
expected to attend WCCE9 that a larger venue has had to be found.
Harmony at the Pető Institute
An international
conference at the András Pető Institute of Conductive Education
And what a
wonderful atmosphere there was.
This was not
only my opinion, I heard a German visitor describing how cold and dull such
conferences can feel in Germany. He was absolutely right, they can also be a
bit icy back ‘home’, but the PAI got it just right at this Hungarian Science
Festival 2011 event.
Of course I am
rather biased.
A singing soul at the PAI
My soul was
singing as I walked past the cog-railway terminal and up Kútvölgy, past János
Kórház and the other hospital, the name of which I can never remember, all done
with the rumbling of trams in my ears.
The only thing
that I felt was missing was the smell of a Trabant chugging up the hill beside
me! They are really very noticeable through their absence!
I
walked through the door of the Pető Institute with my head held high, I
did not have to sneak in like I had had to do ten years ago, and from the
first moment the atmosphere was almost electric. An atmosphere had been created
that any conductor would be proud to have achieved in their group.
There
followed a continuous bumping into old friends, mostly from twenty years
ago! It was like we had always been there. Some of my Hungarian friends were
visiting for the first time after many years too. This made for a really
harmonious singing-of-souls.
During the
lunch-break I went up the stairs that for once were not filled with singing
children, until I found the red floor and made my way towards my first-ever
group, then the spina bifida group. There, in that group, with little Hungarian
to my name and in the early months of my training, I soaked up as much through
my skin and my soul, as if by osmosis, as I could. I believe that many students
and conductors had singing, happy souls working in that particular group and
that is why we all get attracted like a magnet back there, and why when I
opened the door today Laci básci had beaten me to it. He was already there
enjoying being back home too.
Laci bácsi had
been a special friend to me during the early months in Budapest because he was
learning English at about the same rate as I was learning Hungarian. Sometimes
as he gave me a lift in his brown Láda he would give me a Hungarian lesson.
I am sad to say
that his English today is far better than my Hungarian is nowadays, but,
never-the-less, as in Rome you do as the Romans and today I insisted that we
speak Hungarian!
That funny language
When I was
still at work in Nürnberg on Thursday, my colleagues were teasing me and
insisted that we spoke Hungarian together in the lunch-break. They thought
that I needed to practise, but I could not utter one word. My
mind went blank.
I travelled to
Budapest with a Hungarian colleague and still our common language remained
German, until Friday morning when I walked through that door at the Pető András
Institute. It was like one switch was turned off and another turned on.
My two languages today were English and Hungarian, it appears that I still cannot deal with all three at once so I had automatically switched German off.
The conference
was in Hungarian. I decided that I would manage the introductions without a
headset for translation, but I asked for one later, just in case, for when the
lectures began.
The first stumbling block
I managed so
well when Mihály Szivos Ph.D., from The Hungarian Ministry of Sciences, was
speaking about the significance of unspoken knowledge in general pedagogy and
Conductive Education. I did just as well, if not better, when Franz
Schaffhauser Ph.D. spoke on the philosophy and pedagogy of inclusion.
The going got
tough when Dr Ildikó Kissné Horváth, from the Ministry, was at the podium.
Everyone in the audience I think realised, even before she told us at the end
of her speech, that she had not known that the Institute worked mainly
with disabled children and apologised for preparing a presentation about
rehabilitation with adults. This lady spoke really quickly so I finally decided
that I must reach for the head-phones.
I then did what
I always did as a trainee conductor, I held one ear piece to my ear and kept
the other ear free to get the gist in real life, in Hungarian! I find it so
important when listening to a speaker to hear how they actually say what they
say, and despite it being very tiring with two ears listening to two different
people I get more out of it than just hearing it in English.
A favourite voice from the past
As I put the
headset to my ear I got such a lovely surprise. Twenty-four years, almost to
the day, since I first met her, I heard once again the voice of our regular
translator. Ratz Kati translated for us British trainees from the word go which
was in 1987. She was our favourite translator. She knew so much about
Conductive Education, even then in the early days, so she knew how to translate
lots of the in-house terms that usually mean nothing to an outsider. She also
knew how to translate what we said in English into the Hungarian Conductive
Language
Anyone watching
me today would have wondered what the translator was saying to make such a
huge grin cross my face. As I sought her out later just as big a grin
crossed her face in the moment that we met.
Thanks to Zsuzsi
It was Kati’s
non-English speaking, school-teacher sister who I had spent a lot of time with
in Budapest she had taught me to speak Hungarian in two lessons a week for four
years. This day in 2011 was the first time that Kati discovered what a good job
her sister had done. Previously we had only spoken English with each other but
today we spoke Hungarian.
Today I was
very appreciative Zsuzsa’s patience and infective enthusiasm while teaching me
so long ago. Speaking the Hungarian language somehow allowed me to feel even
more comfortable and at home in the place that I spent four of the happiest
years of my life.
Bits-in-between
With the lovely
one-day conference over a weekend of meetings could begin.
I had meetings
planned with hopefully two of AP’s first students, from 1947. A dip in the
Gellert baths, a trip up to the castle and a long visit to the Mária Hári
Library.
Back to the
present
I loved trimming up that five-year-old blog for re-posting. It has made me look forward
even more to the 9th World Congress and I am hoping there will be even
more of my old friends to meet than on that last occasion. I know there will be some interesting presentation to attend.
I know we
all have lots of work to get through until we get there, with Christmas coming
up to it is a bit hectic, but Hungary look out, here we all come! Many of us coming home with joy in our hearts.
Friday 25 November 2016
Another thought for the day from Mária Hári
Little Princess and Jolly Professor many years ago. |
I read
Mária Hári on the bus this morning instead of writing up my notes on the consultancy
sessions in Kindergarten where I spent my mornings this week. Mária Hári on
Conductive Pedagogy was much more fun. As I read I could hear Dr Hári’s voice speaking it,
in English, during our lectures, as I read so I choose this piece for my blog.
'In
accomplishing any task, just like when acquiring any other function, conscious
awareness is the most important factor. It is therefore imperative that the
child should understand the task and be willing to carry it out. The child does
not always find the way of doing something, he must be conducted. With
the aid of applied inductive facilitations sometimes we obtain the result in a
roundabout way. On the other hand, after experience of successful movement, we
make children aware of the activity that they have accomplished. This means
that if the child has carried out the task in some way, perhaps with help of
applied facilitations, we identify the result as a realised solution. We make
the child realise immediately exactly what he has done my relating it to the
second signalling system, speech. The child also becomes familiar with his
movements by learning to express what he is doing in words too. Children are
always aware of the starting point and result when carrying out a task. Inductive facilitation
offers an opportunity of activisation; moreover it gives the child the possibility
of feeling that he has discovered the solution by himself. By this method his
inclination for solving tasks develops.
Let us
now turn to another aspect of conductive observation. Conductive observation
serves the following purpose: the conductor can give supplementary information
when the child’s own reafferents are not sufficient. The conductor keeps in
mind the individual way of carrying out a task and before the next occasion she
reminds the child of the right way of doing it. When repeating the tasks she
decreases the facilitations until the task tied to the intention is carried out
successfully, without facilitation. A task connected with speech becomes
conscious in every detail. The stability of speech is higher than that of the
movement series, therefore the stability of joining the parts of the movements
is ensured by the directive effect of speech.'
References
Mária Hári on Conductive Education,
2004 Edited by Gillian Maguire and Andrew Sutton, Birmingham Foundation for
Conductive Education, pages 39/40
Thursday 24 November 2016
Take a look at this
Umbrellas
It is something that I found on Dean’s Stroke Musings
that I think could be useful to some of my clients and maybe other people
further afield.
Dean’s Stroke Musings are my early morning read,
either in bed while I wait for the third snooze alarm to ring or on the tram. It
is a mine of very informative and useful snippets from personal experiences and
from medical and scientific research.
This is why I left a marker by it this morning
to remind me to post it here –
‘When I still needed a cane to get
around, umbrellas were pretty much impossible to use. Only if there was no wind
I could sometimes balance it on my head for short periods of time. Raincoats
were not much better, getting them zipped in time almost never occurred. Then
closing the umbrella was really a two handed event. In order to get the ribs
into the handle I had to try maybe a dozen times with one hand. The cover
sleeve was never put on again, too tight and I never was able to snap the fabric
down with one hand. I solved most of these problems by buying a reverse
umbrella. The rim of the umbrella folds up, no need to get ribs into a specific
location, cover is much bigger and easier to put on.
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