Appropriate Developmental Education

What does it mean that human beings grow from divine sparks of pure energy to full-fledged identity in less than ten years? What does it mean that it is a public school’s job to nurture this transformation? These questions have not been effectively engaged in our schools. Our hazy, general understanding of developmental education is not fit to join the conversation. Our understanding, as far as I can tell, goes little further than worried quibbling over the age-appropriateness of various influences. These are appropriate concerns, insofar as influences are precisely that which shape identity. However, I think this discussion tends to distract us from a more useful and energetic heuristic for human growth.

First of all, what is a human being? Let me be both fervently faithful and ruthlessly secular: Human beings are pure energy. For now, I insist upon this fact because it is a much more realistic way to think of people than people tend to think of themselves. Human beings are so self-centric that their very language describes differences among humans as if they were greater than the differences between all humans and everything else. The divine spark ignites a flame that burns upon the earth, and must take its place on the earth, on peak or valley, and burn like only fire burns until it is quenched and evaporates into the universe. We should realize that we never dreamed of a king or a queen so great that they couldn’t be every child.