Involve to Evolve.

What is it that we are searching for?
Knowledge? Perception? Something farfetched?
I think it is to force our turtle minds to deny their shell, to feel at home naked, being touched by any opinionated hand, like a mannequin on a date with all the limps of the world. You keep the best touches, you even invite them up to your apartment after a good date, like Bridgette Jones, but a turtle version.

So, what makes a good date? A good experience?
Because to learn is a first impression game, I have heard tens if not hundreds of people saying: ‘I hate Math, I hate Chemistry, I hate trampolines’, and it is all because of the first impression, the Math teacher never gave good grades and your parents were not pleased for example, learning is dead then, because now you looked at it as a super market butcher section employee that reads the white board’s list for the goals of the day.
You hate trampolines because when you were little you broke your ankle on one;

does it mean that trampolines are mean like the witch from Snow-White?
I hope not, because I like trampolines.
Here in Mexico, I have been trying to introduce the boys to some topics;

I picked: Band, Ancient Greek Mythology, and Writing.

When we do Band, we never cover songs, we make our own, because at school I felt that nothing is relevant if you not really love the subject.

So that was my first concern, to make the topic OURS, and when they wake up in the morning, 7 or even earlier and they start making a new song, it means that it is personal now, that we have a band, not that we just listen to a Music teacher point at a bad drawn chalk symbol and being told that ‘this is a note, this is a half note’ and so on. An example for that way of learning’s results is me not touching an instrument until 18, and now, two years later, me wanting to live from music.
When we do Ancient Greek Mythology, you can easily imagine that it is all lightning and murder, which I won’t deny that it is, but it is also a soap opera, and time has proven that soap operas are immortal; but there are two very important details to all that,

1.

After every story, we draw the story, BUT before we look at paintings, sculptures

etc., because the Renaissance painters and sculptors made it, but now it is time for us to make it, which means that what counts the most is to nurture our own way of receiving.

2.

Everyone is allowed to make the drawing as relevant to themselves as they like, for example Flóki like sports, Atlas ends up holding the heaviest American football in history, if that makes him remember better, why does it have to make ‘sense’?

*Take a look at Lives of Saints.

And when we do writing, there are no limits, which in school is never the case. I noticed how pleasantly guilty they felt when they realized that something can be funny, that not everything has to be serious, that you can take it anywhere, as if you bought Aladdin’s magic carpet on sale. I know that some things need to be taught, but we need more writers, not researchers that write books, and if you managed to make even writing boring or irrelevant which is supposed to be a last resort for someone to create his/her own world then there won’t be any writers, as simple as that.
If you want children to evolve, then you need to involve them, you need to give them choices, freedom to express what they think, and maybe you do, but even more important, freedom to express what they think THE WAY THEY THINK IT. Shakespeare is dead, so instead of commemorations, let’s find someone who will be better.

Vasilis