The Connection Cure for Education: Keys to Emotional Health and Learning

Learning is an area close to my heart, so often when I am reading something, my mind wanders to how whatever I’m reading might apply in an educational setting. This was certainly the case with the latest book I picked up and read in my hammock during the last lingering days of summer.

The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service and Belonging, is a new publication released this summer by a journalist doing research in the area of what’s known in some medical circles as “social prescribing”. In this book the author, Julia Hotz, shares how more natural ways of treating physical and mental health challenges have been life-changing for many people around the globe. While she is not writing in the context of education, I think her findings are more than relevant when it comes to our learning environments. Here are her conclusions: 

• That as humans we need connection with other real life human beings to satisfy our need to belong. We need to care for each other, and be cared for, in a context of safe relationships.

• That we need space to move our bodies: in the not-so-distant past this was a necessity of daily life, we needed to move to survive and our work was primarily physical. This shift to a sedentary lifestyle has been hard not only on our physical bodies, but our minds and emotional lives as well.

• That we need the arts to express ourselves and process our world; again this was built into many of our cultures in the past through art, music, and drama but we are losing this as we move more towards a focus on academic performance in education as well as a focus on perfection and outcome rather than process.

• That we need time in nature; which again, was simply part of our life when we needed to be aware of our environment because we relied on the creatures that lived in it, the plants that gave us food, the rhythm of the days and seasons. Our move indoors with artificial environments have taken us farther away from this connection. Our self-sufficiency has left us nature-starved.

• That we need to take care of each other and help others in need; volunteering our time and energy with people, animals and our environment. This provides not only a sense of purpose but also contributes to a feeling of being part of something bigger.

As a developmentalist, a lover of nature and the arts, and someone who believes in the power of attachment, Hotz’s conclusion left me unsurprised. However, I realize that the medical model, and I would argue many of our current education models, are far from recognizing the healing power inherent in a return to a life of connection to self, community, expression, and nature. In her words: “Instead of just treating symptoms of sickness, social prescriptions reconnect us to our sources of wellness. And instead of just addressing ‘What’s the matter with you?’ … social prescriptions address ‘What matters to you?’.” 

Thinking of this concept of “social prescribing” in relation to education led me to ponder …

What would it be like to focus more on the relationships between adults and children, increasing the strength of connection between teacher and student (and parent and child) instead of on peer-to-peer relationships? For these are the relationships that will serve the child best in the long run. The more the child or adolescent is able to depend at this vulnerable age, leaning on those who can keep them emotionally safe, the more they will naturally move to explore their world, to stand on their own two feet and to interact with others without losing their sense of self. 

It’s the paradox of development: the deeper the attachment roots go, the more able to find one’s wings.

What would shift if we created opportunities for older generations to mentor the younger ones, for elders and other members of the community to be brought into the school setting? What would it look like for the education and upbringing of all children to include opportunities to take care of someone or something else – helping a younger student read or write, tending to a plant or an animal in need of care? How might our classrooms and communities look different if we were to incorporate some of these opportunities for deep connection and caring?

It’s a kind of cascading care that is largely missing in our current peer-oriented society. And these kinds of experiences have the potential to bring a sense of worth and purpose to all involved.

How can we increase and benefit from our awareness of the natural world? Can we infuse our lives with movement, outdoor exploration, and connections with nature, bringing those practices into the rhythms of our day – not just outside of school, but in our learning environments too? It has become clear that we need to move more for our health and well-being, so what better place to move than outside – walking, climbing, gardening, throwing or kicking a ball around. 

It’s a chance to help us feel more connected with the outer world, which naturally opens us to a world beyond the screen and makes us receptive to learning.

What would it be like to create opportunities to explore our inner world through art or music or drama or writing? Ways to express ourselves, but also to find expression through the words and voice of others, as we find resonance? We need these areas more than ever in our learning environments, for the sake of our emotional health and for the sake of our receptivity to learning. These are the very core areas of culture, and we need them for our school culture to thrive!

It’s ultimately these types of emotional playgrounds that give space for our emotions to come out and express through a song, an instrument, a drama scene, a free writing exercise, a poem. 

Where would we be if we started to intentionally implement some of these real life connections, cascading care, and emotional playgrounds back into our homes, into our learning environments, into our communities? I personally believe we would be well on our way to a revolutionary kind of education that would encompass a solution to the growing lure of screens and social media in our children’s lives. I’d love to see us get back to the basics. 

What do you say? Are you in?