The Hair of My Great-Great-Grandmother

Why do you put so much emphasis on how the teacher can set free the child’s ideas?

They find themselves in their metamorphoses. Here is an example born out of a dance to Mozart’s Divertimento. Viktória (8): “I was a hair. First I was one of my own hairs, then, as the music changed, that of my mother, then again, as the music changed, the hair of my grandmother, then that of my great-great grandmother. 

What would a pedagogue who has been trained in our traditions say to this?

He or she would probably kindly skip over it. In worse cases he or she would shrug it off making Viki and the others feel that this is nonsense, they should find out something more clever.

What about those educated by you?

They would be amazed and delighted in their very hearts. For behold, it is a miracle unlike that which an adult would invent.

What is so wonderful about this?

Viktória, inspired by the music, met her mother, and her known and unknown ancestors. This is a profound, meditative state during lively dancing. She was looking for herself and in her happiness she found a trace, in which she is she. 

Her hair?

Yes, her hair. But where is the lesson-plan that could predict this? The other day I heard on a tram as a student from a teacher-training college boasted to his girlfriend: “I was highly praised by my teacher, she gave me an “excellent” in my exam because I wrote down even the children’s answers in my lesson-plan. And this happened now, in 2002. Not twenty years ago.

Why is it a problem if a teacher hints at the answers?

Can one imagine a creative, independent idea and, as the result of this, the development of an independent, creative personality among such circumstances? All children need the approval of adults, and they will probably do according to what is praised in them. If their ideas are shrugged off, they won’t come out with them. They may bury them and then forget them.

Do we want slave-souls in the next generation?

Why is it a problem if children follow us?

There are things in which it is worthwhile for children to follow adults. Such things that represent values, for example, the quest for truth, or the valuable folk tradition, and the traditions of art, poetry and literature. But they, the children, should decide what they want to follow, what inspires them, what they hold on to, who they want to turn to and who they want to turn their backs to. 

But how should they learn these?

From their feelings, pleasures, and experiences. Did you notice that in my example it was Mozart’s Divertimento that triggered the idea of the great-great-grandmother’s hair? The nourishment can’t be poor. It can’t be false, either. Celibidahe, the wonderful Rumanian conductor wrote somewhere that art’s aim is not beauty, but truth.

What is truth?

That’s exactly what Pilate asked from Jesus. In the Bach passion when the music reaches this part, I always start to cry with inward tears. I can see Pilate the powerful official shrug with a sense of superiority, as he sits looking down on the wandering preacher in tattered clothes. All adults who look down on children commit the same sin. It is the right of children to search for truth, their personal truth. Will Mozart bring it to them, or will it be Bach? If they are lucky to get to know such great works from the bottoms of their soul, they might find it. 

Will they tell you?

If they have enough experience of being trusted, perhaps they will. Or they will show it somehow, as they are ready.

What do they have to find alone?

A number of adults have worked on making it available to them the song “Rosemary grown on the snowy tops of Szivárvány”. From the singer of folksongs through the collector to the printer, and finally to the adult who will sing it to them before they fall asleep or during music lessons. So far this is the task of adults, to make available the songs to the children. It is that which they can’t find alone. But these same adults should be glad in their hearts later if the child says after dancing to the song that the duck would have eaten the rosemary, but the drops of water saved the plant. Again these adults should be glad even when the child says that the duck has finally eaten the rosemary, and it is over. Certainly the poor rosemary is. You see, all stories are messages from the inside. Children need a great many experiences to recognize their own story, destiny and truth. They will always have to find such truth, their truth alone.

From Mozart to the hair of the great-great-grandmother?

Yes, the ways of children are so unpredictably crooked. These are not highways, but forest paths, surrounded by leaves, and full of bumps. They are full of surprises. That is why it is rewarding to be a teacher, and to become a parent, or to get close to them somehow.