Questions of Conductive Upbringing

A green, but not yet green, "Green Man" by Susie Mallett, 7th January 2009

Part I. Problems with words

I been mulling over this subject for a long time now and the simple posting that I had wanted to write just isn’t getting finished, but getting longer and longer and beginning to cover a wider area than I had first visualised. So I have decided to do it Hollywoodsty-le, which seems to be quite the trend these days, and do a bit of sequelling.

One of the things I had been wondering about while working in Norway, and since, is how the term “Conductive Education” ever got established in the first place.

English and Hungarian

At the time in the 1980s when the world was getting to know about the Petö Institute and its work, the term "Conductive Education" was already well established but only used outside of Hungary. This is true to this day.

You will find the term Conductive Education used in English translations, English presentations and in the English version of the Petö Institute’s own Website, but in Hungarian practice and theory as far as I know it is always referred to as konduktiv nevelés (“conductive upbringing”).

The expression "conductive pedagogy" is the term used in Hungarian, and occasionally in English, to describe the actual pedagogy used within the practice of conductive upbringing. When I discuss conductive work with Hungarian colleagues in Hungarian, wherever I am in the world, we use the term conductive upbringing and not the various foreign adaptations.

Mid-1960s

I was sure that the term Conductive Education had been coined by Ester Cotton after her early visits to the Petö Institute in 1965, but Gill Maguire at the Conductive Education Library posted a blog on Tuesday 6th January saying that Ester Cotton had made no mention of Conductive Education in her 1965 report.

I had asked Gill Maguire whether she has any more information on this and, as you can read on her blog, she immediately came up with some interesting facts one of which is that Ester Cotton did use the term but not until 1967.

So from this I can probably assume that my belief that “Conductive Education “ was being used in England at the end of the 1960s by Ester Cotton and her small band of associates is correct.

But who actually coined it and why?

Is it an accurate description of what they were actually trying to describe? But then there is the question of how did the people who might have coined the phrase actually understand and interpret what they were seeing. Their interpretation of what they saw would certainly have influenced the terminology that they used, especially if they didn’t speak or understand Hungarian.

I do have one more bit of information on the early usage of the English term “Conductive Education” Certainly when Dr. Mária Hári first went to England in 1968 she and her translator both adopted the expression.

Dr Hári read two papers at a study day at Castle Priory College in England in 1968 and in both of these there is absolutely no reference to conductive upbringing but constant use of the terms Conductive Education and conductive pedagogy.

It is stated in the introductory pages of the book that contains these papers, “Mária Hári on Conductive Pedagogy”, that the interpreter who accompanied Dr Hári chose to use Conductive Education to translate konduktív nevelés. Or did he/she choose? Did the translator just adopt a term already in use (Cotton, 1967), or was it a term suggested by Dr Hári herself?

Different times, different places, different words

Lots of questions and musings, all of which arose while I was working in Norway. Why is it important to state that it was in Norway that many of my questions where formed? It is because there the term Conductive Education isn’t used, they say “conductive pedagogy”.

I begin to think about the many different forms that Conductive Education has taken on as it is practised around the world. I wonder about the similarities and the differences between what Ester Cotton saw and described in the mid-1960’s, what many Western parents first saw and decided to bring out of Hungary in the mid-1980’s and what I experienced and learnt between 1989 and 1993.

I also got to thinking about the words that all these people used to describe what is being practised, and how these words might influence the acceptance or rejection of this “new” method.

The conductors I worked with in Norway were very much interested in the actual words used in the conductive programmes, which is understandable as they have three languages to deal with while working. I on the other hand was much more interested in what terms were chosen in translation to present the work to the public. This has had a huge influence on my work here in Germany, especially on its financing. We should not underestimate the importance of the choices that we make about this, as the terms could be around for forty years, and other people may have to live with the consequences.

Back to Gill (another angel), hopefully not for the last word

Perhaps Gill will come up with more answers. Maybe we shall never get to the bottom of it.

As she says on her blog it would be an interesting research project for someone with lots of time!

Notes

Gill Maguire, Conductive Education Library When did konductiv pedagogia become Conductive Education?
http://ce-library.blogspot.com/2009/01/when-did-konduktiv-pedaggia-become.html

Conductive Education material – Profile No. 2
http://ce-library.blogspot.com/2009/01/conductive-education-material-profile.html

Mária Hári on Conductive Pedagogy – Edited by Gill Maguire and Andrew Sutton, ISBN 1897588 22 4, available from Conductive Education Library, http://ce-library.blogspot.com/

Gill (another angel) - refers to several of my blog postings in December 2008, for example http://konduktorin.blogspot.com/2008/12/susie-and-lill-in-hamar.html

Comfort food

A spontaneous visit to Café Fatal, 6th January 2009

Getting warmed up

I had not been able to get warm all day so at nine o’clock this evening I decided enough is enough, I picked up my notebook and pencil and I went round the corner to the café with the hope that perhaps their heating was a bit more efficient than mine.

Whether it was the activity, the heating or the comfort food I cannot say, but I returned after Milchreis mit Zimt, Zuker und Apfel, a much warmer person!

The glass of merlot could have helped!

Notes

Milchreis mit Zimt, Zucker und Apfel – rice pudding with cinnamon, sugar and apple.

I wanted to say a little bit more about painting

January 5th 2009

Organised spontaneity

In the Tuesday evening workers group I rarely plan any "extra activity". Most often it occurs spontaneously, depending on time and inclination. This is the advantage of working in a very well equipped and organised environment: everything is at hand, which makes organised spontaneity always a possibility.

Just a minute, was that a hint of hesitation?

The reactions that I received yesterday to my suggestion that we painted the beautiful snowy landscape were very interesting. One woman was immediately engaged but the gentleman seen in a picture on my previous posting and at the top of this one, was very hesitant. This man with athetoid cerebral palsy had surprised himself with his dexterity last week when we were sweet- making and he was about to do the same with painting. His arms, which tend to flail around when he attempts to grasp something, suddenly calmed when he quite spontaneously extended two fingers of one hand on to the forearm of the other hand, which held the paint brush. In this manner he painted to his heart's content! There was not one drop of paint or water flying across the room as he feared might be the case and had prompted his initial hesitation

What did I do?

I certainly didn’t teach him to paint. I certainly didn’t teach him how to hold a paint brush. The time was much too short. What I did do was to give him was the opportunity to be active.

In the group I give him the opportunity to use his arms and hands in many situations and, as most athetoid clients do, he finds his own solutions, usually by combining the many suggestions that I make to suit his needs.

When I suggested painting he was afraid, as this is a relatively new activity for him and he had yet to discover that some of the solutions he uses in other activities in his life could be just as well implemented here, or very easily adapted. I reacted to this fear by not reacting at all and by assuming that all would be fine (and being, as always, prepared to clear up lots of mess if necessary).

Deviation

I had actually planned on sitting down and painting with them but I was so engrossed in observing how this young man controlled his movements so spontaneously that I got stuck with the camera in my hand instead of a paintbrush.

Repetition

Again, I ask myself, what did I do? Initially I had ranted on about the lovely light and colours and dancing snow but my client just wanted to give it a go and overcome his fear, especially as the other lady was almost finished with her snow-covered trees. So all I did was to stick the chosen paper on the table, squirt the delicious paint on a plate, arrange three different-sized paint-brushes beside it and say “Off you go”! And off he went, very successfully at that, in the manner described above, calmly creating a picture that he was very proud of.

Notes

Just a Minute

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00gbc96

Snow in the City

January 5th, 2009, Nürnberg, Germany

...and even more “am Land” (in the country)

When going out of the city this morning everything got whiter and whiter until it was impossible to distinguish between land and sky. A fine snow had been falling all night and it was still coming down, touching my cheeks and making them tingle.

It was the type of snow that is not at all good for snowballing or snowman-building but because of its dryness, and therefore its lightness, it is very easy to clear away. This was a good thing as the snow had yet to be cleared around the centre where I work and, before I removed any layers of clothing, I set to pushing away snow, clearing a path for the wheelchair-users. This activity is always a really good way to get warmed up, which I needed after the tramp across the fields from the bus stop.

Yes I had actually left the bike at home today!

Snow chains for wheel chairs?

Has anyone who doesn’t normally use a wheelchair tried moving around in one in the snow?

Apart from the hands becoming instantly numb from the cold metal, and compacted snow and ice, it is very difficult to move forwards. Even in an electric wheelchair there is always the danger of wheels spinning and digging oneself deeper and deeper into the snow. This is especially so when negotiating a cleared pavement where snow is always piled up on the sides, making the paths very narrow and hardly ever wide enough, even for a baby’s pram to pass by.

I have yet to see snow chains on wheelchairs but I expect that they exist somewhere. I certainly would have been happy to have had them on a couple occasions with a wheelchair-using friend when we dared to be like all the other folks one Christmas and venture out to “walk” in the forests. I had to dig the chair out with my bare hands, pack branches under the wheels and push!

Epiphany

Work in Germany has not actually got back to normal yet after the festive season as tomorrow, 6th January, is a holiday. Most people have tacked an extra day on to their break and “real” work will start in earnest on Wednesday.

My “workers group” and I have been meeting regularly over Christmas in an attempt to combat the stiffness which usually accompanies the long break. This is a time when most physiotherapists and occupational therapists, masseurs and other professionals who have anything to do with manipulating and moving bodies, seem to shut up shop for weeks on end.

We have actually managed about eight hours of Conductive Education over the past ten days, which isn’t bad but still not enough when all the other activities which keep my clients active have been cancelled. There has been no swimming, no physio and very little fresh air.

I realised that I too was moving cautiously as I tramped through the snow, and while working in the group I took care to make sure that my back behaved itself in the cold. I have been wrapped up in alpaca, angora and oiled Guernsey wool all day, with the hope of keeping my muscles warm.

Winterschlaf (hibernating)

There are about fifty people living in the centre where we have our Conductive Education rooms, there is also a workshop and some private housing for people with disabilities.

Four people come regularly to my "workers group" on a Tuesday evening. Today however only two turned up, the others not finding the motivation to come out in the snow or to interrupt the last days of their holiday with some activity.

It had actually been the same two clients attending the group most of the Christmas holidays. It isn’t only the motivation that is lacking with the others. It is getting increasingly difficult for these people to find the money to pay for Conductive Education and it is understandable that after the expenses of Christmas they decide to take a break.

Ready for a bit of action

The three of us, however, were there and raring to go! I had cleared a path, the wheelchair-users had found someone to accompany them the few hundred metres on foot, just in case of a spot of trouble on the ice, and we were ready for a bit of action.

After the regulation eins, zwei ,drei, vier, fünf (one, two, three, four, five) accompanied by some lovely music I would have loved to have taken my clients out into the snow for the " walking programme", but being alone I found it was a bit too risky, I didn’t want anymore accidents!

From drab to sparkly and tingly overnight, just like Cinderella going to the ball!

We walked and did other things indoors, like observing the snow from the window.

I am still so inspired by the snow and the light effects from Norway, with its pink skies at night and never-quite-light days, with the blues and purples reflected in the snow, that I had been talking to my clients about it. It is really quite a change for our senses when suddenly overnight our surroundings change from the winter drabness of the grey and brown earth colours, with a hint of dull green and black branches of trees, to a delight of dancing lightness when it all becomes covered in deep snow. The white reflects the light and a weak sun changes the colours constantly, shadows on the ground are no longer black they take on colours, either warm or cold.
I talked to my clients about all of this, about the brown-to-white overnight, about the colours and the whiteness, the shadows and the shapes. I did this with the hope of inspiring them in some painting. It is difficult to guide people to see what is there and to help them transfer it to paper, rather than for them to put on the paper what they think they see, without actually looking. It is just as much about changing how we think and see and move as all other aspects of my work.

We attempted some paintings of our German snowy landscape which, although very different to what I experienced in Norway, was still very beautiful. I put a selection of papers and colours on the table and we had thirty minutes' relaxation with music and painting and enthusiasm.

Art in action

The session was a good end to the holiday season and an inspiring introduction to getting back into the swing of work. We have orders for paintings from another department in the centre, to be hung in an intergrated kindergarten, so we discussed organising another weekend of “art in action” to produce them. They have particularly requested pictures with lots of bright colours so next weekend we may be recording our experiences of the New Year fireworks or the hope that we have of spring appearing soon from beneath the snow.

Hopefully on Tuesday evening we will be back to normal with all the members of the “workers group” back in full swing and motivated once more. I will be there, hopefully riding my bike again, it will be wondering where I had got to!

I heard it through the grapevine!

Me and Sis, 1959, sharing confidences

What a wonderful tool for communication is my blog! Even better than jungle drums!

At 01.56 Central European Time I posted a letter to Kasey in the United States (see blog “Calling conductor Kasey”, http://konduktorin.blogspot.com/2009/01/eifels-nyugati-pu-budapest-by-susie.html)

Only a few hours later, at 17.00, she had replied. Now we are in direct correspondence, already swapping experiences and learning about each other's work.

How else could I have made contact so quickly?

All you isolated conductors and parents and disabled people out there, there is no longer any need for this situation to continue.

I shall be taking steps to extend this experience with Kasey to meet my own needs to get out there in the “Conductive World”.

Notes

I Heard it Through the Grapevine

Creedence Clearwater Revival

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZe9OtFNt_8

Orange tree, very pretty!

" Blooming lovely", Jan 3rd 2009

In 2007 I celebrated my fiftieth birthday and I was thrilled to have people there with me not only from my "home" town but also from further afield.

One of these journeying guests was Raphaela Roß, who arrived with her family, I have mentioned her before on my blog. She is a very special friend and a really valuable colleague, and

another NICE angel.

Once again many thanks

Raphaela presented me with a lovely, one that I enjoyed some more last night, exactly eighteen months after the first celebration. The present, the little orange ttree in the picure, has been lodging at another friend’s house since my summer moves and turmoil, and it has obviously enjoyed her green fingers.

If you look closely at the picture you will see evidence of where I haveharvested some of the fruit from Raphaela' present: tiny fruits that were very soft and tangy. Delicious.

Raphaela and I have been making plans and we are both looking forward to coming together from northern and southern Germany in 2009, to meet somewhere in the middle with two of our individual clients. We want to have fun together, instead of in isolation.

Hopefully our fingers are as green as those of the "carer" of my tree.

Notes

Orange tree, very pretty!

This refers to Peter, Paul and Mary's "Lemon tree very pretty"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbbWBMfKViE

NICE

National Institute for Conductive Education

http://www.conductive-education.org.uk/

Conductive sweet making

"Fun in between bits" by Susie Mallett, 2008/2009

Even though I just about cancelled Christmas this year I did still eventually send out the usual one-hundred cards just in time for the New Year, and I couldn’t avoid the annual sweet-making marathon either with my Tuesday-evening workers' group.

I hadn’t have time after returning from Norway to organise the sweet-making before Christmas, as I usually do, so on popular demand we did it afterwards. The sweets tasted just as good and we had just as much fun making them as always. The “workers” were not working so we met in the morning and even extended the session to give us time to relax, listen to some Christmas music and chat together.

I was infected by my Tuesday group’s enthusiasm and so today I made my own (see top picture above). Tuesday's workers' group and I have always make Christmas sweets together, ever since I started the group some ten years ago, and this year they gave me the spur that I needed to get started on my own creations.

I am always amazed at how deft some of the members of this group are, how suddenly their fine motor skills increase ten-fold (second picture). I am sure that this is because we are having fun. Sweet-making sessions before or even after Christmas will definitely stay on the menu.

Calling conductor Kasey

Eifel's "Nyugati Pu", Budapest by Susie Mallett

Kasey,

You once posted a comment on my blog, when I celebrated one-hundred postings. I think that I now know which your purple spot is on my map!

Could you please send me an email, as I should like to contact you.

Thank you,

Susie.

Synchro-something

" Lady in red" by Susie Mallett, August 2008

It is so interesting how similar themes pop up from different parts of the world within days of each other.

I know that my friend in New Zealand will immediately say "Susie, it is synchro-destiny working". I am not sure it is, I think it is something to do with what I am thinking about at a given moment, and I notice it, read it, listen to it and chew on it and churn it out again as something else. So maybe synchronicity would be a better word.

What ever it is, synchro-destiny or synchronicity, I have been hit in the face with similar, connecting subjects on several different occasions over the past two weeks, so it is probably time to stop chewing it over and write about it.

Working alone

I think that this has to do with conductor-training but it is also to do with self-knowledge, about being prepared to get stuck in and to have a go, it is about being able to make and learn from mistakes. It is also about being able to accept that one is not and will never be perfect, and that it is good practise to be for ever striving to produce one’s best.

I have been thinking about the numbers of conductors who work alone, many directly after qualifying, and have been asking myself and others "How does the training prepare one for this unusual situation?" Does a conductor succeed or fail when working alone because of training or personality, or both? How much can initial training influence this?

Working alone is not so unusual these days but this was not how András Petö or even Dr Hári would have imagined us working, isolated from our colleagues. In their experience conductors worked in teams and perhaps we too should still strive to do this even if we are working alone.

I have been self-employed since I qualified from the Petö Institute fifteen years ago. This does not mean that I have always worked alone but I did for the first two years and I have done on and off ever since. I know what it is like, I know the positive and the negative sides of it. There was often no one to turn to so I had to dig deep into my own resources. But even if I was able to solve the problems that I faced there was still not always someone there to spark ideas off, to inspire me, to laugh and joke with, to offer me moral support or take over when the going got tough. I appreciate all this so much in the times that I work in groups with other "soulful" (seelische) conductors.

I was in Norway before Christmas working with two young, NICE-trained conductors They only rarely take over responsibility for their own groups, as there is nearly always a senior conductor working with them, but they are both very capable of working independently. They are keen to have a go and find out for themselves and, despite working with others they often feel quite isolated because of the ever-changing team and the many languages used. I have already mentioned in my blog that I have worked with a German NICE-trained conductor, and I saw similar qualities in her. All of them are extremely good at asking questions and searching for answers. I suspect that this has as much to do with the training they received as it has with their personalities. This former German colleague now also works in isolation but we work in a team through telephone and the Internet and we are planning to bring two of our individual session participants together in the Easter holidays!

Training at the Petö Institute

I talked to a Hungarian colleague here in Germany about these experiences with NICE- trained students. We began discussing the differences between their training and the training in Budapest that we had both been through, at much the same time, but in different situations.

I had been 32 years of age, a teacher and an art therapist, with a few years experience behind me, when I started my training at the Petö Institute. My colleague had been 18 and straight from school.

After four years’ training I moved to Germany and began to work individually with children and their families, in their homes. There was regular input for and from parents and siblings, sometimes even an older brother or sister acting as assistant conductor for a few hours in the school holidays! My Hungarian colleague had done much the same as I did following her training, she travelled abroad and she worked with families.

Alienating training

She says that still feels a sense of guilt at not had not having involved parents enough in the work that she was doing with their children. She said that she had been too young and too inexperienced to do this with confidence. She said that the training at the Petö Institute trained one to rely on a team but it did not encourage independent thinking and working.

She is absolutely right but, because of the work that I had done and the experience that I had had before I went through the conductor-training, this did not influence me quite as it had her. Once out on my own as a conductor I was glad to be allowed to have the contact with parents again, which had been denied me in the Petö Institute. It had disturbed me a lot when a child ran out to tell her mum that she had tied her shoe laces for the first time ever and I was not allowed to show the mum how. (Thank goodness we had the bufé).

Thinking about what my colleague said I remembered how, as a trainee conductor in a group, it really did appear that it was the policy of the Petö Institute to train students to be reliant on conductors, conductors to be dependent on senior conductors and senior conductors dependent on group-leaders and so on. I even heard recently that it is still difficult to get conductors, who were training me twenty years ago, to give public presentations on their work.

I asked myself whether it could have been a conscious decision on the part of NICE to avoid this dependency and hierarchy, and to prepare the students for working independently whether in a team or in isolation. To get them ready to go out and spread the word about their profession and to practise it professionally in all situations. Surely it was the wish of the Institute that these trainees would eventually either work in Birmingham or in satellite centres in UK and this has actually happened with some. Others are spread in all corners of the world working alone or in pairs and from what I hear they are doing very well. They have learnt not to be dependent on colleagues, to use their initiative and get on with it. There are of course many conductors who trained at the Petö Institute who are doing just the same but, as my colleague explained to me, they learnt the hard way, and alone.

Let’s not be alone

Many conductors work in big centres throughout the world but many of us, through choice, or personal and family commitments, choose to practise as conductors in isolation. I am sure many of us who are "going it" alone would like to communicate with other conductors from time to time.

Surely it is time to join forces and became one of the biggest conductive communities in the world.

Notes

NICE – National Institute for Conductive Education

Bufé – the best place at the Petö Institute for eating scambled-egg sandwiches, maize salad and turó rúdis. A good place for talking to parents, participants and colleagues. It was always swarming with activity, buzzing like bees around a honey pot. From the bufé we could hear the singing from the floors above and see the children walking down the stairs to the garden. We could see whether the lecturer had arrived or whether we had time for another coffee. We could take part in the conversations with parents, which we missed within our groups, we could meet and chat with Hungarian colleagues as we came and left work. It was here that two German mums offered me their much-welcomed support as I came and went from my final exams in 1993.

Snakes and ladders

"What's it like in Budapest?" by Susie Mallett, Spring 1993

I must admit that I do not look at the Conductive Community Forum site as often as I ought to, considering how nice it has been to have a discussion forum back again. This is not due to a lack of interest on my part or even time, there is time for everything if we make it. I don’t visit because I find the site a little awkward to use, it is not immediately obvious where the new postings or comments are and sometimes it is impossible to gain access at all to post letters or to reply.

I was however there today and everything worked fine! I read and replied to the recent letter from John in Bristol who was asking where he could get information about Conductive Education in UK.

A simple question with a short answer, even I could answer it and I live in Germany! No one else had bothered at the time I took a look, which was four days after the original posting.
No criticism, it is Christmas and most people probably have better things to do, like playing snakes and ladders and monopoly under the Christmas tree or even trying out the Nintendo Wii.! (Which actually I too am longing to try out with my nephew at the end of the month and I am aiming to find someone to sponsor one for my adult clients with cerebral palsy

to use at the centre where they live.)

Back to the Forum and unanswered questions. This brought to my attention that there is no one out there any more answering questions from people looking for CE. Yes I know that I am self -employed and always on the look out for work but not necessarily in Britain or America, Mauritius, Israel or even in Hong Kong, but often I can still answer the questions. This usually takes all of two minutes even on the most complicated of posting systems.

Just wondering why no one bothers. Is it that they are not botherd?

Good luck, Wheelieman from Bristol for 2009.

Notes

Snakes and Ladders

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_and_ladders#History

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=snakes+and+ladders&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title

Monopoly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)

Nintendo Wii

http://www.nintendo.com/wiifit/launch/?ref=http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4RNWN_enDE300DE301&q=Nintendo+Wii+fit

http://index.hu/tech/hardver/szrkf080411/