Lesson on TATAKalikasan, 2nd Session on Kalikasan, Kalusugan, Karunungan ng Kabataan (4K) Happy Children's Month

                             Lesson on TATAKalikasan Ateneo de Manila University

87.9 FM Radyo Katipunan, 11 to 12 a,m, Nov 23 & Nov 30, 2023 Thursday

 Kalikasan, Kalusugan, Karunungan ng Kabataan (4K)

Happy Children's Month

United Nations Celebrates Children's Month, November 2023.

 

In the Philippines, it is a month-long celebration every November of each year. The celebration aims to give Filipino children access to a healthy environment, good education, and healthcare.

Part 1 - Clay and the Child
Part 2 - Discover and Develop Your Multiple Intelligence (8 Realms)
Part 3 - Children and Nature Mural
Part 4 - Ode to the Kite in the Sky
Part 5 - Integrated Art Workshop for Children
Part 6 - 24 Ways of Building a "Children of Nature" Culture

Dr Abe V Rotor

Co-Host with Professor Emoy Rodolfo, AdMU

 

 Future scientists attend a Summer Workshop in Lagro QC

        Part 1 - Clay and the Child

Knead and mold, knead and mold,

     Time may tarry with its demand;

Let not the clay sit still, I am told,

     and wait for the child to be man.

Knead and mould, knead and mould,

     Again and again, and trying still;

Godly and oblate, lovely to behold,

     For Heaven's sake, don't move the keel. ~

  “I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.”  ― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Part 2 -  Discover and Cultivate Your Multiple Intelligences (The 8 Realms of Intelligence)

Dr Abe V Rotor*

All of us are endowed with a wide range of intelligence which is divided into eight domains. It is not only IQ (intelligence quotient) or EQ(emotional quotient) or any single sweeping test that can determine our God-given faculties. Here in the exercise, we will explore these realms. With a piece of paper score yourselves individually in each of these areas. Use Scale of 1 to 10)

1. Interpersonal (human relations)

Sometimes this is referred to as social intelligence. Leaders, politicians excel in this field. “They exude natural warmth, they wear disarming smile,” to quote an expert on human relations. Name your favorite person. I choose Nelson Mandela, Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger.

2. Intrapersonal (inner vision self-reflection and meditation) Priests, nuns, poets, yogis, St. Francis of Assisi is a genius in this domain. Didn’t Beethoven compose music with his inner ear? Didn’t Helen Keller “see” from an inner vision?

3. Bodily-Kinesthetic (athletics, sports, body language, dance, gymnastics)

Michael Jordan excels in this domain. Now think of your idol in the sports world, or in the art of dance. Lisa Macuja Elizalde is still the country’s top ballet dancer.

4. Verbal-Linguistics

There are people who are regarded walking encyclopedia and dictionary. The gift of tongue in the true sense is in being multilingual like Rizal.

5. Logical-Mathematical

Marxism is based on dialectics which is a tool in studying and learning. Likewise, this realm includes the intelligence of numbers – math, accounting, actuarial science, etc. This is the key to IQ test. Einstein, Newton, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle are my choices.

6. Musical (auditory art)

Mendelssohn, Mozart, Chopin, Abelardo, Cayabyab, Lea Salonga – name your favorite. Beethoven is one of the world’s great composers, yet he cannot dance. I like to listen to Pangkat Kawayan play Philippine music.

7. Visual-Spatial (drawing, and painting, sculpture, architecture, photography)

The great artist, Pablo Picasso, was robbed in his studio. Hog-tied, he carefully studied the robber, the way an artist studies his model. After the incident he sketched the face of the robber and gave it to the police. The police made 100 arrests but never succeeded in pinpointing the culprit. The sculptor Rodin wanted his subject to look as if it is melting. What could be a better expression of poverty for his masterpiece, The Burghers of Calais?

8. Naturalistic (Green Thumb, Relationship with the Natural World)

There are people who are said to have the “green thumb”. Their gardens are beautiful even with little care. There are those who can predict weather, and tell you if the fish bites, or it is a good hunting day. They pick the reddest watermelon, fullest macapuno nuts, just by feel and sound. Good doctors, I suppose have the green thumb too.

What are your top three? Can you see their relationships? Relate them with your strength. On the other hand, in what ways can you improve on the other realms?

Make full use of your strength. And remember there are early and late bloomers. Nothing is too late to be able to improve on one’s deficiencies.

Maybe you lack a good foundation to explore your talents in a certain domain. But why don’t you catch up? Do you recall late bloomers who succeeded in life? As you reflect on your scores I’ll play for you on the violin On Wings of Song by Felix Mendelssohn. Fly, fly high and be happy like the birds. Just don’t be Icarus.

Reflect on the following:

1. Your strength and you weakness

2. Your “idols” and models

3. Resolution and affirmations ~

 Multiple Intelligences of Great Men and Women Who Changed the World

Identify the particular realm of intelligence of each of these great men and women.

1. Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the great English explorer and the first white man to penetrate the heart of Africa and establish the first hospital for the natives there, was very effective in his mission not only because he was a good physician, but he was gifted with other talents. He was a minister, a musician, a naturalist and a philanthropist. Although he was criticized by his detractors for his philosophy on “reverence for life,” his outdated medical practices, and racial attitude, he was admired by mankind, and his legacy of dedication to others endures. The world will always have the memory of a giant who tried in his singular way to love as Jesus loved, oddly but honestly lived his beloved song: The deed is everything; the glory naught.

2. Carl Gustav Jung was a master of the abstruse. His explorations took him through yoga, alchemy, fairy tales, tribal rites of the Pueblo Indians, Hindu mandalas, extrasensory perception, prehistoric cave drawings – and an estimated 100,000 dreams. But when Dr. Jung was accused of having left medicine for mysticism, he replied that psychiatry must reflect all of man’s experiences, from the most intensely practical to the most tenuously mystical. If the details of his work were sometimes foggy, his overall purpose was clear: to help man live at peace with his unconscious. 

3. Mother Teresa required poverty, chastity and obedience but also a fourth vow, service to the “poorest of the poor.” More than 3000 sisters of the missionaries of Charity joined her to pursue the religious path, aided by brothers in a separate men’s order and a host of lay co-workers. Together Sister Teresa and her followers operate a network of some 350 missions, spread across scores of nations, that administer hospices, food centers, clinics, orphanages, leprosaria and refuges for the insane, retarded and aged. What drove Mother Teresa into this deep dedication? She received a “call within a call” – a special vocation in which she felt God directing her to the slums. Such call is reminiscent of the voice that commanded Joan of Arc to lead the French army against the English. She did not live to see the liberation of her native land. 

4. Alexander the Great – His teacher was Aristotle, the greatest scholar, naturalist and philosopher, who said, “It is easier to make war than to make peace,” an advice that guided Alexander as he conquered the whole of Europe, the Persian Empire and Asia, as he tried to unify empires into One World, the idea of “united nations.” 

5. Winston Churchill, one of the greatest statesmen the world has known drew the chart to victory and peace not only with the pen and in the war room, but with paint brush on  canvas. How did he find time and concentration to paint on the bank of Thames when Hitler was pounding London with prototype ballistic missiles? 

6. Amadeus Mozart was compared to anything in Nature that the author Helen Henschel thought of him as beautiful smiling sunny landscape. “There would be gray skies too – and rain, and cloud, and always in the end, a shining rainbow.” The music of Mozart exudes this vivid imagery. 

7. Robert Baden-Powell, the father of scouting is said to have saved his small camp which withstood 217 days against 9000 well-armed Boers – through the art of bluff. There must have been something else beside bluff that made his plans work effectively. 

8. A fine soldier though Alfred the Great was, his heart was elsewhere – in religion and law, education and art and literature. At his court he gathered all the scholars he could persuade to settle with him, while he consulted the elder men who were wise in the law. 

9. Francis of Assisi was also a poet as is proved by his hymn “The Canticle of the Sun”, the song full of the freshness of a re-born life, expressing his love of all creation. 

10. Jean Henri Fabre PHOTO, explorer of the insect World, grew up a happy child in spite of poverty. He paddled and went about exploring, found the stream that fed the pond and made a little water wheel. Throughout his life he was a shy man, ill at ease with adults but happy with children. He wrote in his diary, “There were five or six of us: I was the oldest, their master, but still more their companion and their friend.”

11.The loss of an arm and an eye did not stop his career. When he was ordered to retreat facing apparent naval defeat with the Spanish armada outnumbering his own fleet, Horatius Nelson, put on the telescope on his blind eye and said, “I don’t see the enemy, sir,” and then proceeded to fight and won. Dying on the deck of his fighting ship his last words were: “Thank God, I have done my duty.” 

12. Florence Nightingale the founder of the nursing profession had the love, almost the adoration, of her patients. Her patience, her determination and persistence were tested during the Crimean war. Miss Nightingale and 37 women volunteered to work in the war front’s hospitals. In a few weeks the death rate in these hospitals dropped from approximately 42 percent to 2 percent. Florence Nightingale brought healthcare in the battlefield, bringing reforms in management and technology in military hospitals in Crimea where a war was then raging. She instilled discipline among the wounded and sick soldiers while keeping their spirit high, and brought to the attention of the political leaders and society their plight. She demonstrated how valuable women are in a world dominated by men. The world still loves and remembers her as “The Lady of the Lamp.” 

13. Excerpt from the autobiography of Louis Pasteur PHOTO: “I have not yet dared to treat human beings, but the time is not far off, and I am much inclined to begin by myself – inoculating myself with rabies and then arresting the consequences.” Pasteur had never lacked the courage and had never hesitated to come in contact with the most dangerous of the contagious diseases. But it never became necessary because of the arrival of little Joseph Meister, who was bitten by a mad dog. The test was made on the boy and saved his life.”  

                                        

14.The most exciting stories in science involve the sudden spark when mundane observation meets sudden inspiration. Such is the case of the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming, Galileo watching the swing of a lamp in the Cathedral of Pisa and deduced from it the law of the pendulum, and Sir Isaac Newton watching the fall of a apple and deducing the law of gravity.

It is as humorous as the sudden realization by Archimedes of the law of buoyancy. But stories of this sort are not coincidental or incidental; they are deliberate efforts of testing a theory and looking for evidences and application. Such is the story of Louis Pasteur whose discoveries in microbiology led to a new field of medicine which is immunization, Christian Barnard revolutionizing surgery when he conducted the world’s first heart transplant. Such stories continue to amaze us. The Human Genome Project has opened before us a new horizon in medicine heretofore unknown - gene therapy. 

Cause – The Common Denominator.  The common denominator in the lives of these great men and women is that they cling to a cause. Often, it is a very personal one that this borders on egotism. But the cause for which one lives is not for him - it is for others, others’ welfare. That cause is therefore bigger than oneself. It is for which one can give himself away, unselfishly, convincingly at sacrifice level, often renouncing good life. 

Great men are those whose vision and mission are aimed at entering that great hall of humanism – the regard for love, equality, justice, compassion and faith in fellowmen. We quite often hear that the lives of great men and women are the influences of heredity, training and environment. True. But the great reserve is the eight realms of intelligence. We do not go far to prove this contention for our own national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal lived this model life.~ 

 Part 3 - Children and Nature Mural

Wall Mural by Dr Abe V Rotor (7ft x 90ft) 

"A thing of beauty is a boy forever." AVR  wall mural at author's residence, 

Barangay Greater Lagro, QC 

Three young musketeers are set to conquer the world 

      away from the mall, home and school;

If Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were real and alive today, 

     we wouldn't know who's genius, who's fool.

Who is the primitive, who is the civilized, oh brother!

      when we prefer the city over the quaint village,

car for walking distance, processed over fresh food,

      philosophy over instinctive knowledge.

Everything defined in rich vocabulary, but a rose is a rose

      and nothing else, energy to matter and back, 

universal cycles no genius will ever truly understand,

     Homo sapiens! it is humility we lack.  

Innocence in children, we make up for the falsehood

      of the world of grownups and sages;

Einstein and Darwin never knew the whys of the world,

      children have been asking for ages.

If genius is reborn in the innocence of children, 

      then knowledge into wisdom distilled, 

compensated in old age for the young ones' sake:

     'tis the fate of humanity in Nature sealed. ~      

“When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.” ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

                            

“and when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.” 

― Ruskin Bond, Scenes from a Writer's Life

 

“Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't dis what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced?" ― Tom Stoppard, The Coast of Utopia

                     Part 4 - Ode to the Kite in the Sky 

Dr Abe V Rotor

Kite Flying on the Lakeshore in acrylic, group project, 

Children's Summer Art Workshop, circa 1995.  

Fly high into the sky, until you see us but minuscule on the ground, 

how insignificant we all are, to the world and to the universe;

Fly with the wind with all your might, that we too, feel we are flying,

save our strength, our will and faith to remain with Mother Earth,

our home, our only planet, our spaceship, the place of our birth.

Fly high with our dreams, our fantasy of conquering space and stars,

how lofty dreams are, how ambitious, how proud we humans are;

Fly away from our hold, be free, drift aimlessly if you call that freedom;

then neither you are a friend, nor we are your master, but a renegade, 

breaking away from the rules and order that humanity has made. ~ 

"Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country." - Anais Nin

Part 5 - Integrated Art Workshop for Children

Conducted by Dr Abe V Rotor 

Living with Nature Center 

Poblacion, San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

First Batch graduates with guest Vice-Mayor Ma Nancy Dy Tabanda (middle row, 4th from right)

Workshop Overview

1. Workshop sessions: every Sunday (3 to 5 pm) from Jan 22 to Mar 5.

2. Participants: schoolchildren, boys and girls, 8 to 13 yrs old, from SVIS, other schools.

3. Graduates: 16 completed 5 sessions (10 hours, including makeup sessions). 

 

4. Other participants: to complete required sessions and output, for second batch.

5. Teaching Method: lecture, hands-on and on-the-spot, Dr Abe V Rotor as instructor.

6. Syllabus: based on Multiple Intelligence (8 realms), Rizal et al, as models.

7. Integrated art: principally drawing and painting, introductory music and literary art.

8. Critiquing: selected works on exhibit, others returned to owners, or on file. 

9. Management: art tools and materials, and snacks provided by organizer for free.

10. Decorum: classroom and laboratory discipline, values oriented.

11. Foundation: back to basic, talent search, skills development, application.

12. Respite or break from boredom, anxiety, cartoons, rock music, TV, computer

      games.   

  

Workshop participants work before a wall mural painted by the author; 

on-the-spot painting session under the trees

 

13. Creativity: based on the saying, “imagination is more important than knowledge.” 

14. Freedom: self expression, self confidence, freedom and independence.

15. Learning alternative, and bridge with school, church, community – and home.                     

You may take pride in having a state-of-the-art smart-phone, but not more than a painting you yourself made. A gadget can’t be part of you, but a piece of art you made – painting, melody, story, verse - is your own. It is part of you. It is a prize you give yourself and no one else can take it away. It is a lifetime achievement; in fact it is your legacy. Kids learn early in life the struggle for excellence, not only in the classroom, social media, or on the street, but in themselves. The greatest struggle is with oneself – it is the biggest triumph, but it can be the biggest failure, too. Yet there is always the opportunity to conquer that opponent. This is the road to excellence. Each day you become a better person, ad infinitum. ~

“Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” ― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

 Part 5 - 24 Ways of Building a "Children of Nature" Culture

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature School on Blog

 Young biologist studies a specimen. 

 

 Summer  workshops for kids.

 

Tree planting and home gardening 

1. Our children need to know the true meaning of biodiversity. Four attributes - richness in kind, population, interrelationship, dynamic stability (homeostasis)

Biodiversity per se does not guarantee sustainability unless integrated with functioning systems of nature.

2. Our children’s development must be holistic In all four stages: genetic, childhood, lifestyle – and fetal (in the womb). Sing, talk to your baby while in the womb.

3. Our children are at the front line and center of people’s revolution spreading worldwide.

Russian war on Ukraine is accelerating; there is no clear solution seen. Arab Spring is sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, so with the escalating unrest questioning the present world order. All over US the young are angry at economic inequity. Resurgence of instability is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza Strip, Sudan.  The Philippines wakes up to the greatest scandal in government in its history - Pork Barrel (PDAP) and Development Acceleration Program (DAP). 

4. Our children become new heroes – heroes for the environment, martyrs for Mother Earth. Heaven is in a regained Paradise on earth.

The coming of a universal faith, irrespective of denomination. To be saved is not by faith and promise. Heaven starts here on earth.

5. Let’s prepare our children to face the consequences of loss of privacy and secrecy, from personal to institutional transparency.

“You can no longer hide. There is no place you can remain with anonymity.” Wikileak unveiled classified information about the Iraq and Afghanistan war. Bank secrecy laws and safeguards are changing. Citizens have the right to know many hidden financial transactions.

6. Our children’s involvement in social media makes them actors and not mere spectators. They become involved, concerned with issues, local and far reaching.

There is need to strengthen Development Communication (DevComm) over conventional entertainment and reactionary media.

7. Our children will inherit our aging infrastructure. Aging Infrastructure pulls down the economy, increases risk to disaster, creates ghost cities and making life miserable.

A new field of biodiversity has been born in deserted towns, on the 38th Parallel between South and North Korea, in land mines areas, ghost towns, among deserted high rise buildings, in high radiation areas like in Chernobyl (Russia) and Fukushima (Japan).

8. Our children are deprived of natural beauty and bounty with shrinking wildlife, conversion of farms and pastures to settlements, and destruction of ecosystems.

“Canned Nature” (delata) have become pseudo Nature Centers. Gubat sa Siyudad, Fantasyland, Ocean Park, Disneyland

9. Our children, and succeeding generations are becoming more and more vulnerable to various infirmities – genetic, physiological, psychological, pathologic.

Computer Syndrome is now pandemic, and its toll is increasing worldwide. South Korea is the worst hit.

10. Our children’s learning through codification defeats logical thinking and creativity. Thus affect their reasoning power, judgment and decision, originality of thought and ideas.

More and more children are computer-dependent. They find simple equations and definitions difficult without electronic gadget.

11. Our children face the age of singularity whereby human and artificial intelligence are integrated. Robotics robs human of his rights and freedom – new realm of curtailment and suppression. (2045 – The Year Man Becomes Immortal – Time Magazine)

This is falsehood!

12. Our children find a world of archives - memories, reproductions, replicas – of a real world lost before their own time.

We are making fossils, biographies, dirges and laments, as if without sense of guilt.

13. Our children will realize that optimism will remain the mainstay of human evolution, rising above difficulties and trials. Hope is ingrained in the human brain that makes vision rosier than reality.

Anxiety, depression will continue to haunt, in fact accompany progress, but these all the more push optimism up and ahead.

14. Our children are overburdened by education. They need freedom to learn in their own sweet time and enjoy the bliss and adventure of childhood and adolescence.

E-learning is taking over much of the role of schools and universities. Open Universities, Distance Learning will dwarf classroom instruction. Beginning of a new University of Plato’s dream.

15. Our children will witness in their time the beginning of a post-capitalism order, environmental revolution, rise of growth centers and shift in economic dominance and order, more green technologies, and space exploration.

This is Renaissance in the new age.

16. Our children will continue looking for the missing links of science, history, religion, astronomy etc, among them the source of life itself and its link with the physical world.

Linking of disciplines, narrowing down the gaps of specializations, making of a new Man and culture.

17. Our children become more and more transient in domicile where work may require, and for personal reasons, and when given choice and opportunity in a global perspective, intermarriages notwithstanding.

“Citizen of the world” is a person without a specific country. He is therefore, "rootless," so to speak. Humans since creation are rooted politically, culturally – and principally, biologically.

18. Our children will have a family size of ideally 2 or 3 children, enabling them to achieve their goals and dreams in life. They will strengthen the middle class the prime mover of society.

A natural way of family planning and population planning, trend of industrialized countries.

19. Our children will clean the land, water and air we the generation before littered. They will heal the earth we defaced, damage. With generation gap closed, the task will be shared by all.

We must be good housekeepers of Mother Earth now.

20. Our children will be part of devolution of power, decentralization of authority, a new breed of more dedicated leaders.

Children hold the key to change. It’s the Little Prince that changed and saved the pilot in an ill-fated plane crash in Sahara.

21. Our children face acculturation and inter racial marriages. Mélange of races is on the rise – Eurasian, Afro-American, Afro-Asian, etc. – a homogenization process that reduces as a consequence natural gene pool.

Culturally and scientifically, this is dangerous. Homogenization leads to extinction of races and ultimately the species.

22. Our children will live simpler lives, going back to basics, preferring natural over artificial goods and services. In the long run they will be less wasteful than us.

There is always a hidden desire to escape when things get rough. This is instinct for survival either by detour or turning back.

23. Our children face the coming of the Horsemen of Apocalypse – consequence of human folly and frailty (nuclear, pollution, poverty). More than we grownups, they are more resilient to adapt to the test.

History tells us that this is true.

24. Postmodernism may do more harm than good for our children in a runaway technology and culture. They cannot and will not be able to keep with the pace and direction of change.

This is not true. “I am the master of my fate, I’m the captain of my soul.” And this is what we want our children to become – but only when they are CHILDREN OF NATURE. ~

* LESSON on former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio

738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday