Being curious about the particulars

I’ve noticed that when I have a specific question, as I did with Napoleon, this focuses my mind as nothing else can. Thus, when I began to wonder about Russia, and how anyone could conquer and hold so big an area before the age of railroads and mass communication—much less the digital age—this drove me through Geoffrey Hosking’s Russia and the Russians: A History.

It was fun to discover the answer and, since I had to return the book to the library before finishing it, I look forward to learning the whole story someday. Before I had to quit reading it, I found the track to another compelling question: How was the Chernobyl disaster ever allowed to occur? I gleaned hints from reading about the Stalin years.

This has all added up to an exciting quest to learn about events that have shaped our world.

My curiosity: The tiger lunged

As we have seen, the more history books I read, the more curious I became. But I couldn’t always read to satisfy my curiosity because I had little time.

Then, after years of deprivation, I was drawn to the eleventh volume of the Durant series, The Story of Civilization. This one is titled The Age of Napoleon. Since I already knew something about the French Revolution, I wanted to know why, after kicking out monarchs, the French people had accepted another one, Emperor Bonaparte.

This volume is 779 pages. I steamed through it in about a week and, astonished by this explosion of curiosity, wished I could slow down. I ended up with severe eyestrain, and no wonder. But I couldn’t control my drive to finish the book.

Ever since, I’ve known that a tiger is circling me and will pounce unless I feed it regularly.

My curiosity branches out beyond cello teaching

Sometime in the midst of the previously mentioned cello-related experiments, I began to wonder about other subjects. How did Hitler come to power? How was something so terrible ever allowed to happen?

I read William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which answered my question, but posed so many others that their magnetic pull next drew me toward the six volumes Churchill wrote on World War II. Somewhere along the line, I read about the Dunkirk Evacuation; surely one of the most spectacular episodes in the history of recent warfare.

Discovering thus how fascinating events crop up in history, I became a confirmed aficionado. Part of my delight came from remedying my ignorance. Probably because of this, I read out loud to my husband and children William Manchester’s The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972. I eventually began reading Will and Ariel Durant’s eleven-volume set, The Story of Civilization.

Then circumstances prevented my pursuing history and all other subjects I was curious about, for at least five years.

How right brain cello playing and teaching stimulated my curiosity

The essence of right brain activity is to release one’s attention into uncharted territory. Therefore, when I began daydreaming during my practicing, and encouraging my students to do the same, we never knew what would happen.

One of the best moments occurred when a student felt the beat while playing. Feeling the beat is not the same as counting “1 2 3 4.” Too often, when even intermediate-level musicians count, they tap their toe, but neither the count nor the tapping is regular, as the beat is supposed to be. Instead, the demands of a musical passage usually sabotage the attempt to keep a regular beat.

When my student felt the beat, before I realized what she was experiencing, I heard her playing much more steadily; as though her toe-tapping was working the way it was supposed to. Only, she wasn’t tapping her toe. Instead, the beat was pulsing inside her like an orb of light.

Right brain cello playing

Recently I’d read The Right Brain by Thomas Blakeslee, a book all creative artists should read, especially performing artists. Through Blakeslee’s influence, I launched a series of experiments with my practicing and teaching.

To access my right brain, I began letting my mind float while playing the cello. This is a cardinal sin for classical musicians because we’re supposed to focus at all times, whether we’re practicing, rehearsing, or performing.

But I discovered that engaging the right brain is merely a different kind of focus; an experience of the multiple sensations of cello playing. This is a synthesis of the many discrete motions that produce sound.

My curiosity revives

As we have seen, I began to build my own studio of private cello students. I could run my studio the way I wanted to, and before long my curiosity began to revive.

This began, not with my paying students, but with the discovery that my two children had distinctive learning styles—distinct from each other, and different from any other students I’d ever taught.

Soon I became equally curious about my paying students and their learning styles. Along the way, I discovered the power of my right brain. My excitement built until I felt that my curiosity had been ignited to the point where I saw a mental picture of myself throwing a lighted match into a pool of gasoline.

Part One: Discoveries about my curiosity, the low point

I share the stories in this and following posts, hoping you might see your child or yourself.

By the time I was in my early 30s, my natural curiosity appeared to have been nearly extinguished by two things: 1. a public school education during which I was never identified as gifted 2. the draining effects of working for other people.

Then I had an outbreak: I’d been reading the book of Job, in the Old Testament, and found myself leaving the public library with a stack of commentaries on Job, which I’d just checked out. But when I got home with them, I discovered that, as usual, I was worn out by my long days of cello teaching.

I had no energy or motivation—either in evenings or on weekends—except for necessary chores and watching Perry Mason re-runs.

Eventually I quit my teaching job, and circumstances allowed me to start my own cello studio—under nobody’s supervision but my own—three states west of where I’d formerly been teaching.

Gifted children and schools

Children’s stress signals such as headaches, stomach problems, and severe anxiety were reported by many at a support group for parents of profoundly gifted children which my husband and I attended for a few years after we had our two children tested. These parents had put their children in schools for the gifted.

We couldn’t help noticing that these schools weren’t serving these students. But by then we’d learned what a tiny proportion of the population the profoundly gifted are, and consequently, the extent of their special educational needs. The profoundly gifted are as far removed, in IQ points, from the moderately gifted as are the latter from the norm. So it makes sense that regular schools for the gifted can’t serve them.

The solution? In a utopian world, special schools for the profoundly gifted. But how could there ever be enough of these schools, good enough, widely distributed, and affordable? As it is, there almost certainly aren’t enough schools for the moderately gifted, either.

Since our world isn’t perfect, every family has to make the best choice they can. I’ve seen 1. A public, major, organized advocacy campaign by a mother determined to make the public schools do their legally mandated job 2. As above, parents struggling to help their profoundly gifted children cope in schools for the gifted 3. Parents struggling (more) to help their profoundly and moderately gifted children cope in regular public school, sometimes grade-skipping, sometimes just trying to get teachers and counselors to see reason 4. Home schooling

I urge families who see no way they can home school to open their minds to the possibility. No path is going to be problem-free, and all require time and attention. But at least, with home schooling, your time and attention are more likely to be used to help your child learn, rather than in struggling with a difficult situation involving a school.

Do you have a child like this?

She can’t keep track of objects such as shoes, and her mind appears to wander during routine chores such as toothbrushing. Often, after a bout of daydreaming, she’ll announce a new math insight or some other significant realization.

Apparently, from an early age, she needs to save any object that crosses her path. But she hasn’t yet learned how to organize her collection, which can range from a tennis ball and a pad of sticky notes to a small calculator and a bunch of pens. Even paper clips and other tiny things appear important.

Although this will cause major disorder in her bedroom and on her desk, if she has one, perhaps it’s best not to mandate tidiness, except to keep the basic rules of safety. Although vacuuming will be difficult, it might be harder still for her to try to decide where items should be put.

For parents to impose a scheme of organization might not work either because often these children need to discover their own methods—for everything, including how to keep track of their treasures.

The solution? Hands-off, perhaps, because it might cause intolerable stress to suggest or require neatness of a child for whom collecting is more important.

Home Schooling: Would the public schools do a better job?

Among parents’ internal barriers to home schooling, the idea that a public or private school would do a better job appears to loom large. I admit I’m heavily biased on this subject, because we home schooled our two children from the beginning. Now successful young adults, both have thanked us for home schooling them.

But prejudice against home schooling is still strong, and I detect this bias in parents who are sure they couldn’t equal the quality of education from an institutional school.

I freely confess that our home school felt chaotic and disorganized, but this was because we discovered how much more our children learned—and how motivated and curious they were—when allowed to follow their own paths. By their teens, it had become clear that they were learning far more than they would have in any school.

We also seldom followed any curriculum, or used any coursework. Instead, as a general guide, we used E.D. Hirsch’s series, What Your First Grader Needs to Know, What Your Second Grader Needs to Know, etc. through sixth grade. By the end of most school years, our children knew much more than Hirsch’s books specified for their grade level.

Books, and their curiosity, ensured a good education for them, right up until they finished high school.