Looking Forward by Kenneth Jr. (snow like ashes .txt) 📗

have brought into the world an imbecile baby, it would be equally abhorrent for any twenty-first-century man or woman to bring into the world a baby that is not equipped with this supplementary brain. Such a person, even though possessed with an I.Q. equal to Einstein’s, would feel like a moron relative to his companions.

Scott is aware that the implantation of this brain booster does not automatically produce an infant who can solve problems in calculus. The resource is there—available but untapped—just as the capacity of young Mozart existed at birth even though his infant fingers had never touched the keys of a piano. Only maturation can provide the experience and motivation that enables these young infants of the twenty-first century to make use of their great heritage.

The Child Is His Best Teacher

No attempt is made to teach these children anything. There are no schools or teachers. Their teacher is the multi-dimensional environment that is designed to interest, stimulate, and challenge. The basic information they need has been implanted in their supplementary brains. It has been found that any attempt to teach them only retards the learning process. Experiments have shown that the best way is to let these children explore their environment. If you want a child to learn to work a device, you put it near him. He does the rest. His natural curiosity leads him to observe the operation of the teleprojection screen, and he begins to request Corcen to furnish him with programs. These cover the entire range of knowledge and entertainment. However, obscene material used on TV and movies in the previous century, showing brutality, murder, and sadism, are not available in the nursery.

When a child observes things that correlate with information programmed into his supplementary brain, a flash of insight comes. He is literally on fire intellectually. His thoughts race into the exciting new areas of thinking and feeling that he is discovering inside himself. He learns that the spirit of creative inquiry is one of the most delightful things that he can experience. A great feeling of dignity and worth is achieved as the child explores his own inner resources and integrates them into his expanding world of people and things!

Children are not informed about the areas in which their brains have been pre-programmed. They discover these for themselves. The greatest thrill comes when they discover the one area in which they have total information. No other human knows the pre-programming of their supplementary brains. These patterns have been set up by Corcen to add spice and adventure to life.

“Scientific research has established that the curiosity of a human child is many times the amount needed for his intellectual development if environmental conditions are stimulating and there are no teachers to interfere,” Scott’s associate tells him. “Everyone who associates with growing children is instructed to avoid telling them what they should or shouldn’t do. Back in the twentieth century, education was sometimes considered a process of helping a child fit into society. Now we know that fitting into society may be taken for granted, for we have found that children raised without hostility and scarcity develop social skills that enable them to achieve the finest possible relations with other people.

“Those who associate with children think only of understanding the feelings and interests of the child. They ask the children questions and practically never give them answers. The children have to find their own answers—perhaps from the limitless facilities of Corcen. This makes life more exciting and never blighting. They develop a feeling of intellectual adventure. The child develops with personal authenticity.”

The Creative Adventure of Educational Research

The men and women who enjoy the challenge of improving the next generation have developed thousands of new ways to meet the needs of infants and children. Nothing is taken for granted. Little is copied from the past. The people who are working in this area of the new civilization do not feel they have any final answers. They know that they are getting results. They are confident that their methods are superior to any ways of rearing children that have ever been used before in the history of the world. They know that by observing carefully and thinking creatively and by continually measuring the results, they will find more effective ways of doing things. Whatever “errors” they are now making will eventually be corrected.

Through sensitive, scientific research an effective environment for each age level has been evolved. Constant research is in progress to find out just what is happening and how it can be improved. It has been found that an environment that gives optimal enjoyment and development at six months retards at one year. The surroundings that are best for a one year old will hold back a two year old, and so forth. Great care is taken to provide an environment that is scaled to meet the needs of each individual age level.

“The nurseries are designed so that the child never needs correction, for it can do nothing undesirable in this environment,” Scott is told. “In the twentieth century a toddler of two years old could hardly do anything right. Every time it turned around it had to be admonished, ‘No! Don’t go out in the street, you’ll be killed. Don’t reach up to the top of the dresser because you might upset Mommy’s bottle of perfume. Don’t pull the tail of the dog, or he might bite you,’ and so forth. Such constant bombardment of a young child makes him a lifelong slave to external patterns.”

The Cybernated Nurseries

Scott sees that the nurseries of young children in the twenty-first century are scaled down in size so that children have no feeling of being small and inferior. All natural functions, such as eating, eliminating, playing, sleeping, and so forth, can be done in any way that the child chooses in the cybernated nursery. Living areas are engineered in such a way that children can not hurt each other prior to the time that they develop their