I remembered when I was invited to the home of Professor Alexander Russell in London.

After I put up my previous posting about green roofs I went to our local farm shop to gather some locally grown vegetables for my Sunday lunch and to take a nice walk in the forest.
These walks help me to relax, to ground me, help me to contemplate on my projects and they also give me inspirations. The sky was clear; the forest was glowing with all the beautiful colours of the autumn.
During the walk a gentle thought form entered my heart from the past. I remembered when I was invited to the home of Professor Alexander Russell in London. I was introduced to him at the Hornsey Centre for Conductive Education where he worked closely with Ester Cotton. He took me to his study because he wanted to show me a model of the idea of a building he had planned with others for a children centre to be built in Jerusalem. In the middle of the room there was a huge table with the model of the building. The building looked like a beehive. If I wanted to show you the design it looked similar to Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic dome…these dome shapes were somehow connected to one another. He was so excited about it and he spent a long time explaining to me where each services will be located.
I don’t know whether this project ever came to fruition or not, but he writes about the concept in the book titled The Petö System and its Evolution in Britain.
He wrote the following: “Our holistic priority goes beyond excellence in overcoming or alleviating weakness or defects towards a progressive fostering of strengths or talent of the “ whole” child, whilst optimally integrating him with his normal peers as soon as is practicable. Ultimate realisation of his full potential must remain the ongoing target from the outset. The extensive floor is designed for integrative classes of handicapped with non handicapped infants and toddlers, starting from one and a half years of age, and extending within its opposite wing for ages three and a half to seven….”
Page 353. 6.A comprehensive Integration Floor
If you are contemplating on designing your new centre you might find some inspiration from this posting.


Geodesic Dome











Professor Alexander Russell

"Paediatrician who published the first descriptions of many metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases
Alexander Russell, emeritus professor of paediatrics and childcare Hebrew University of Jerusalem (b Newcastle upon Tyne 1914; q Durham 1936), died from heart failure resulting from ischaemic heart disease on 4 March 2003.

Professor Alex Russell had three outstanding strands to his career and a single one of them could have marked him as a distinguished contributor to the science and practice of medicine. He was house physician to Professor Sir James Spence, from whom he acquired the hallmarks of rigour in scientific research and care of the sick child by supporting the family. During his war service in the Royal Air Force he defined the syndrome of carbon monoxide poisoning in the gun cockpits at the rear of Whitley bombers, where space was confined. He showed that the poisoning accounted for air sickness that had previously been ascribed to "weakness of moral fibre" in veteran gunners. For this discovery and his field research in malaria and hepatitis he was mentioned twice in dispatches and was awarded the OBE.

In 1950 he became assistant to Professor Sir Alan Moncrieff, working at both the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hackney Road, where he founded the UK’s first paediatric endocrine, growth, and metabolic unit in 1951. He was appointed consultant paediatrician at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in 1954 and during the next 12 years published first descriptions of many metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases. Several of these syndromes are known throughout the world as the Russell syndromes. Alex was the first to describe an inborn enzymatic defect of the urea cycle (hyperammonaemia), which led to descriptions of patients with defects in every step of the cycle. His scientific research did not prevent him from listening to the parents of children with many disabilities and his welcoming smile, gentle voice, and polite manner helped them in their darkest hours.

His appointment to the chair of paediatrics and childcare at the Hadassah-Hebrew University of Jerusalem gave Professor Russell opportunities to continue his previous work as well as influence the provision of heath care to whole populations. He founded and became director of the Jerusalem Community Centre for Child and Family Development and the Children’s Hospital in Ramallah. His extensive clinical experience is reflected in his monumental books The Cerebral Palsy Entities and The Peto System. He continued to write original articles—the last in 2001 on the 4q-syndrome—and to advise colleagues throughout the world long after his official retirement."

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7399/1149/DC1

Early 1980’s
"Dr. Alexander Russell, a pediatrician working in London and Jerusalem brought Spastic Society publications by Ester Cotton to the USA and presented them to the International College of Pediatrics."

http://www.google.com/search?q=www.conductiveedconsulting.com%2F...%2Fconductive_history.doc&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7




Reference:

The Petö System and its Evolution in Britain Book II.
Philosophy, Principles & Practice
Edited by Alexander Russell & Ester Cotton.
1994 Acorn Fundation Publication
ISBN 1-899091 009

Note: Geodesic dome picture from Google images

Are we at the edge of a new paradigm?

If we are, are we ready to see it, acknowledge it and work with it?

Do we need a Conductive Pedagogical Renaissance?

What is Renaissance?

“The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence affected literature, philosophy, art, politics, science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance

Are we ready for the rebirth of and the revival of Petö’s Conductive Pedagogy?
I first mentioned this in one of my advertised training courses on 16th May 2009 'Conductive Pedagogical Renaissance series’ on my sourcesense blog.

Petö was ahead of his time in many respects and he still is… He had a single focus and that was, to create a system, which shifted the already existing paradigm about disability, especially about motor impairment.

It happened at a time when everybody was in survival mode after the Second World War.
Petö had a great understanding about human beings and about the ‘system in general’, which was created for people in the new era after World War ll. They had to accept it as a norm.

He deeply understood and worked with the laws of creation and manifestation.
He was able to see the powers, that each human being possess, whether they are aware of it or not and whether they are labelled as disabled or not.

On my first lecture with Dr. Mária Hári, she told us that always ask permission from everyone, even from a baby when you want to facilitate them at the first ‘examination’, which we call initial consultation or observation in Conductive Education.
Conductors do not examine people. I only used the word to highlight the importance of the difference.

What does the first remark of her first lecture tell you? Think about it!

It told me, that when we start our work with anyone (not just at the initial consultation, but always), we must show and have the highest respect and regard for them.
How many people who are working with Petö’s Conductive Pedagogy in the world understood this deeply and apply it as a norm every day in their work?

How many of us realised that the removing of Gill Maguire from the National Library of Conductive Education put the heritage of the work outside of Hungary to a standstill?

How many of us are truly grateful (every time when we open her blog) of the fact that she is still providing us with essential information about Conductive Education and related issues?

How many of us would be prepared to be part of creating a more formal venture in our history for the preservation of Gill’s and Andrews’s knowledge and experience?

For sometime I have been thinking long and hard about these two people who invested their best in establishing something very unique and valuable.

If we don’t look after this still available pool of knowledge and experience what are we hoping to create for the future?

How can we, who are working with Petö’s Conductive Pedagogy expect that we will be looked after if we miss this opportunity?

In all sustainable, beautiful, native cultures where people understand about life and see it as a precious commodity, they respect and love their ‘elders’ the most experienced.

They don’t brush them aside and believe that they have no more use anymore.

I am proposing to set up a contribution project for our heritage and invite these two individuals, Gill and Andrew to help us as long as they can.
We can call it the Conductive Education Information Project.
The mission of the project is to be a focal point of reliable and accurate information about the system of Conductive Education.

The purpose of the project is to provide a vehicle and a source for researchers, the media, conductive education students, conductors, students of the rehabilitation and special needs professions, health care professionals, educationalists, parents, carers, projects, Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis Societies etc., education authorities, health authorities and the government.

The Conductive Education Information Project endeavours to steer the worldwide conductive movement towards the highest quality and unified understanding of Petö’s Conducive Pedagogy.


Every project working with Conductive Education could budget for it within their means, (doesn’t matter how little it is), they can do individual fundraisings for donations towards it, and we all can approach and invite people to donate even if they are not part of Conductive Education. Just a little awareness and some good intention could create something remarkable for our future.

I believe that this is important for all of us.

If you beleive that it is important to you to take this further, please comment or contact me at judit.szathmary@virgin.net.

References:

http://www.conductive-world.info/ http://www.conductiveeducationinformation.org/