philosophy
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The Four Original Languages
The four original languages are music, visual language, story-telling, and movement, and are imbedded in us at a DNA level. They speak to and from the heart of our being. The printing press is only a thousand years old, but the four original languages are as old as we are as a human species.
No matter where we call home, where we were raised, or what we ate for breakfast, our brains process information pretty much the same as anyone else in the world. Which makes sense—our genomes are 99.6 - 99.9% identical, which makes our brains nearly so.
Learning is life. The only way we survive and thrive is through learning. Our brains are hard-wired to process learning and communicate learning in four ancient and distinct ways - via the Four Original Languages.
We are social-emotional beings and the four original languages are the original ways we connect socially and emotionally.
Emotion is essential to learning, and should not be underestimated or misunderstood as a trend. Emotion is where learning begins, or, as is often the case, where it ends. It is neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things that we don’t care about.”
Using a functional M.R.I., a scanner that reveals brain function in real time, you can physically see when students are emotionally engaged. We see activations all around the cortex, in regions involved in cognition, memory and meaning-making, and even all the way down into the brain stem.
Great teachers understand that the best, most durable learning happens when content sparks interest, when it is relevant to a child’s life, and when the learners form an emotional bond with either the subject or the teacher in front of them. Meaningful learning happens when teachers are able to create an emotional connection to what might otherwise remain abstract concepts, ideas or skills.
The emotional connection that can result when teachers make learning personally relevant to students is what differentiates superficial, rote, topical assimilation of material from a superlative education marked by deep mastery and durable learning. There are no silver bullets in education, but emotional engagement and personal relevance are the tools that can improve the educational experience, and performance, of every child, in every school.
Frances Moore Lappe - ”Community – meaning 'nurturing human connection' — is our survival. We humans wither outside of community. It isn’t a luxury, a nice thing; community is essential to our well being.”
The four original languages help build those collective human connections - they therefore are crucial in their own way to our survival as well as our learning Language is the means by which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves.
The functions of language include
Several cultures have independently viewed the main function of language as the expression of thought.
The Four Original Languages are the four original forms of expressing thought.
The four original languages are music, visual language, story-telling, and movement, and are imbedded in us at a DNA level. They speak to and from the heart of our being. The printing press is only a thousand years old, but the four original languages are as old as we are as a human species.
No matter where we call home, where we were raised, or what we ate for breakfast, our brains process information pretty much the same as anyone else in the world. Which makes sense—our genomes are 99.6 - 99.9% identical, which makes our brains nearly so.
Learning is life. The only way we survive and thrive is through learning. Our brains are hard-wired to process learning and communicate learning in four ancient and distinct ways - via the Four Original Languages.
- Music
- Visual Language
- Story Telling
- Movement
We are social-emotional beings and the four original languages are the original ways we connect socially and emotionally.
Emotion is essential to learning, and should not be underestimated or misunderstood as a trend. Emotion is where learning begins, or, as is often the case, where it ends. It is neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things that we don’t care about.”
Using a functional M.R.I., a scanner that reveals brain function in real time, you can physically see when students are emotionally engaged. We see activations all around the cortex, in regions involved in cognition, memory and meaning-making, and even all the way down into the brain stem.
Great teachers understand that the best, most durable learning happens when content sparks interest, when it is relevant to a child’s life, and when the learners form an emotional bond with either the subject or the teacher in front of them. Meaningful learning happens when teachers are able to create an emotional connection to what might otherwise remain abstract concepts, ideas or skills.
The emotional connection that can result when teachers make learning personally relevant to students is what differentiates superficial, rote, topical assimilation of material from a superlative education marked by deep mastery and durable learning. There are no silver bullets in education, but emotional engagement and personal relevance are the tools that can improve the educational experience, and performance, of every child, in every school.
Frances Moore Lappe - ”Community – meaning 'nurturing human connection' — is our survival. We humans wither outside of community. It isn’t a luxury, a nice thing; community is essential to our well being.”
The four original languages help build those collective human connections - they therefore are crucial in their own way to our survival as well as our learning Language is the means by which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves.
The functions of language include
- communication
- the expression of identity
- play
- imaginative expression
- emotional release
Several cultures have independently viewed the main function of language as the expression of thought.
The Four Original Languages are the four original forms of expressing thought.
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Music
-
Visual Language
-
Story-Telling
-
Movement Language
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This is the first of the four original languages.
It begins in the womb - the regular and comforting rhythm of a mother’s heartbeat is the constant companion for the foetus. It’s the first baseline in the song of life. A mother’s humming and singing is the melody that eventually accompanies it.
Interest in the effects of music on the brain has led to a new branch of research called neuromusicology which explores how the nervous system reacts to music. The evidence is music activates every known part of the brain.
Music affects mood is by stimulating the formation of certain brain chemicals. Listening to music increases the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine is the brain’s “motivation molecule” and an integral part of the pleasure-reward system.
Playing music with others or enjoying live music stimulates the brain hormone oxytocin.
Oxytocin has been called the “trust molecule” and the “moral molecule” since it helps us bond with and trust others.
There’s evidence that the oxytocin bump experienced by music lovers can make them more generous and trustworthy.
Children with musical backgrounds do better in subjects like language, reading, and math and have better fine motor skills than their non- musical classmates.
Early music lessons encourage brain plasticity, the brain’s capacity to change and grow.
Listening to and playing music can make you smarter, happier, healthier and more productive at all stages of life.
It begins in the womb - the regular and comforting rhythm of a mother’s heartbeat is the constant companion for the foetus. It’s the first baseline in the song of life. A mother’s humming and singing is the melody that eventually accompanies it.
Interest in the effects of music on the brain has led to a new branch of research called neuromusicology which explores how the nervous system reacts to music. The evidence is music activates every known part of the brain.
Music affects mood is by stimulating the formation of certain brain chemicals. Listening to music increases the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine is the brain’s “motivation molecule” and an integral part of the pleasure-reward system.
Playing music with others or enjoying live music stimulates the brain hormone oxytocin.
Oxytocin has been called the “trust molecule” and the “moral molecule” since it helps us bond with and trust others.
There’s evidence that the oxytocin bump experienced by music lovers can make them more generous and trustworthy.
Children with musical backgrounds do better in subjects like language, reading, and math and have better fine motor skills than their non- musical classmates.
Early music lessons encourage brain plasticity, the brain’s capacity to change and grow.
Listening to and playing music can make you smarter, happier, healthier and more productive at all stages of life.
The second of the four original languages:
After birth, Visual Language takes precedence. One of the first things we see Is our mother’s smile - and before long we respond in kind.
Visual Acuity is the process of deriving meaning from what is seen. It is a complex, learned and developed set of functions that involve a multitude of skills. Research estimates that eighty to eighty five percent of our perception, learning, cognition and activities are mediated through vision.
From when our eyes first open as a newborn, our vision accounts for two-thirds of the electrical activity of our brain – a full 2 billion of the 3 billion firings that occur per second – neuroanatomist R.S. Fixot in a paper published in 1957.
40% of all nerve fibres connected to the brain are linked to the retina. Half of all neural tissue deals with vision in some way. More of our neurons are dedicated to vision than the other four senses combined.
Neuroscience research over the past 40 years has revealed that there are roughly 30 different visual areas in the primate brain, and that within these areas there are parallel streams of processing and distinct modules.
If Visual Language takes such a priority in our brain’s functioning, then clearly it must be a priority to engage Visual Language at every opportunity and stage of the teaching and learning process.
If our goal is to reach all students, then it's critical to include visual imagery in learning. Students must be given opportunities to express themselves — to show what they've learned or are thinking — through projects that incorporate visual imagery, including art.
When children are asked to tell stories, if they draw while telling the story, the story is richer, the vocabulary is richer, the communication is better. While children are drawing, they're using another part of the brain, bringing out creativity in the story as well as in the art.
This modern world is becoming increasingly more dependent upon the use of visual images to communicate, so helping students become visually literate is of increasing importance. It's no longer enough to read and write, our students must learn to process both words and pictures. They must be able to move gracefully and fluently between text and images.
After birth, Visual Language takes precedence. One of the first things we see Is our mother’s smile - and before long we respond in kind.
Visual Acuity is the process of deriving meaning from what is seen. It is a complex, learned and developed set of functions that involve a multitude of skills. Research estimates that eighty to eighty five percent of our perception, learning, cognition and activities are mediated through vision.
From when our eyes first open as a newborn, our vision accounts for two-thirds of the electrical activity of our brain – a full 2 billion of the 3 billion firings that occur per second – neuroanatomist R.S. Fixot in a paper published in 1957.
40% of all nerve fibres connected to the brain are linked to the retina. Half of all neural tissue deals with vision in some way. More of our neurons are dedicated to vision than the other four senses combined.
Neuroscience research over the past 40 years has revealed that there are roughly 30 different visual areas in the primate brain, and that within these areas there are parallel streams of processing and distinct modules.
If Visual Language takes such a priority in our brain’s functioning, then clearly it must be a priority to engage Visual Language at every opportunity and stage of the teaching and learning process.
If our goal is to reach all students, then it's critical to include visual imagery in learning. Students must be given opportunities to express themselves — to show what they've learned or are thinking — through projects that incorporate visual imagery, including art.
When children are asked to tell stories, if they draw while telling the story, the story is richer, the vocabulary is richer, the communication is better. While children are drawing, they're using another part of the brain, bringing out creativity in the story as well as in the art.
This modern world is becoming increasingly more dependent upon the use of visual images to communicate, so helping students become visually literate is of increasing importance. It's no longer enough to read and write, our students must learn to process both words and pictures. They must be able to move gracefully and fluently between text and images.
The third original language:
“Story is the most human thing in existence. It’s how we assemble the random data of daily life into memories, how we communicate lessons, how we bond.
Storytelling is a universal human trait. It emerges spontaneously in childhood, and exists in all cultures so far studied. It’s also ancient: Storytelling is also a central focus of Indigenous epistemologies, pedagogies, and research approaches. Elders’ stories inform discussions of storytelling types (mythical, personal, and sacred)
storytelling as pedagogical tools for learning about life
storytelling as witnessing and remembering
sharing stories of spirituality as sources of strength.
Story is a basic foundation of all human learning and teaching (Cajete, 1994).
As culturally responsive teachers, we see children as stories. This is how Māori see people. The first question is always, ‘where are you from?’. The answer is to tell your story of where you are from - your mountain, river, iwi, hapu, Marae and whanau.
Establishing that connects people to the land and people to people and people to common stories.
Each child is a story to be understood. They have poetry and beauty, there are conflicts and resolutions, passages of action and drama, but through it all there is pathos, humanity, love, and the rise of the human spirit in the face of adversity.
Our goal as the “ghost writer, come prompt, come editor of their story for a time, is to help each child and their story towards a fulfilling, uplifting, happy ending.
Continuing this analogy a little further, when we read a good story we become immersed. We see the story through the protagonist’s eyes, we feel the connection, we empathise and we engage and connect emotionally.
At its heart this is Culturally Responsive Practice. We seek to see the world through each child’s eyes. We empathise and connect at a visceral level.
Teaching is governed by the Education Act 1989, which goes under the heading “In Loco Parentis”.
Whoever wrote the Act this way was inspired. In Loco Parentis means Parent in Place. This in turn means between 9am and 3pm (at the minimum) we are the mum and/or dad to each child in our care. The parent in place. Each child becomes our son or daughter. Each child becomes our own flesh and blood, and takes the place of primary importance in our life - for that is what it means to be a parent.
As parents, we love to tell our children’s stories. We want to understand our children, seek the best of them and for them, and support them to be happy and successful.
“Story is the most human thing in existence. It’s how we assemble the random data of daily life into memories, how we communicate lessons, how we bond. Empires rise and fall on the backs of stories. And writing is the first step in transforming the raw information thumping around in our heads into those stories. No matter where we push our technology, story will be the link that binds us to it, and we will always need a method to take these ideas in our minds and turn them into stories.”
Fritz Heider, in “An Experimental Study of Apparent Behaviour” discovered humans will assign meaning and patterns to virtually anything. Our perception, in its most basic form, is wired to find story in everything we see, and our memories do the same work after the fact. So it’s no exaggeration to say your brain is a storytelling machine.
Storytelling is a universal human trait. It emerges spontaneously in childhood, and exists in all cultures so far studied. It’s also ancient.
Story telling is as old as civilisation and as fresh as the new morning. Words, both written and spoken, can bring people together. They can stimulate the imagination. They can open a child's eyes to worlds of wonder and to the hope of humanity. One of the greatest gifts we can share with our children is the gift of stories and story telling.
There are at least five different types of storytellers, each with unique strengths that help them spread their ideas and inspire audiences to act.
Storytellers who ignite our inner fire.
Storytellers who educate.
Storytellers who simplify.
Storytellers who motivate.
Storytellers who launch movements.
Our earliest attempts at directly sharing stories with each other likely came from gathering around the fire. Since we couldn’t really get much meaningful work done at night, we socialised. We told stories. This element of socialisation created what has been the dominant storytelling mode for the past few hundred thousand years: the
Teller-Listener Paradigm.
We’ve developed a variety of storytelling media since then, but each is rooted in the conventions of teller-listener. The teller projects the story, the listener receives it.
We are now entering the age of the Builder-Participator Storytelling Paradigm:
The style of storytelling in which story environments are built and audiences create a story by participating with and in it. In other words, writers, directors, and producers (the “builders”) can’t force participants to partake in stories in specific ways—they can only invite participation.
Virtual reality is the intersection of three discrete storytelling modes: narrative gaming, immersive theatre, and cinema. Edward Saatchi, the producer at Oculus’ Story Studio, cites these as the three pillars of virtual reality storytelling.
And this intersection marks the advent of a new storytelling era, the Builder- Participator Paradigm.
With its unprecedented degree of immersion, VR hijacks your visual-spatial intelligence to plant you directly into the story. In other words, there is no remove between “you” and the experience. In this mode, your participation — where you look, where you move, the choices you make — effectively creates the story.
No longer are you a listener. You’re a contributor.
And therefore, you implant the story into your brain as if it were your own memory.
In all its forms - past, present and future - story telling is a most powerful teaching and learning tool.
“Story is the most human thing in existence. It’s how we assemble the random data of daily life into memories, how we communicate lessons, how we bond.
Storytelling is a universal human trait. It emerges spontaneously in childhood, and exists in all cultures so far studied. It’s also ancient: Storytelling is also a central focus of Indigenous epistemologies, pedagogies, and research approaches. Elders’ stories inform discussions of storytelling types (mythical, personal, and sacred)
storytelling as pedagogical tools for learning about life
storytelling as witnessing and remembering
sharing stories of spirituality as sources of strength.
Story is a basic foundation of all human learning and teaching (Cajete, 1994).
As culturally responsive teachers, we see children as stories. This is how Māori see people. The first question is always, ‘where are you from?’. The answer is to tell your story of where you are from - your mountain, river, iwi, hapu, Marae and whanau.
Establishing that connects people to the land and people to people and people to common stories.
Each child is a story to be understood. They have poetry and beauty, there are conflicts and resolutions, passages of action and drama, but through it all there is pathos, humanity, love, and the rise of the human spirit in the face of adversity.
Our goal as the “ghost writer, come prompt, come editor of their story for a time, is to help each child and their story towards a fulfilling, uplifting, happy ending.
Continuing this analogy a little further, when we read a good story we become immersed. We see the story through the protagonist’s eyes, we feel the connection, we empathise and we engage and connect emotionally.
At its heart this is Culturally Responsive Practice. We seek to see the world through each child’s eyes. We empathise and connect at a visceral level.
Teaching is governed by the Education Act 1989, which goes under the heading “In Loco Parentis”.
Whoever wrote the Act this way was inspired. In Loco Parentis means Parent in Place. This in turn means between 9am and 3pm (at the minimum) we are the mum and/or dad to each child in our care. The parent in place. Each child becomes our son or daughter. Each child becomes our own flesh and blood, and takes the place of primary importance in our life - for that is what it means to be a parent.
As parents, we love to tell our children’s stories. We want to understand our children, seek the best of them and for them, and support them to be happy and successful.
“Story is the most human thing in existence. It’s how we assemble the random data of daily life into memories, how we communicate lessons, how we bond. Empires rise and fall on the backs of stories. And writing is the first step in transforming the raw information thumping around in our heads into those stories. No matter where we push our technology, story will be the link that binds us to it, and we will always need a method to take these ideas in our minds and turn them into stories.”
Fritz Heider, in “An Experimental Study of Apparent Behaviour” discovered humans will assign meaning and patterns to virtually anything. Our perception, in its most basic form, is wired to find story in everything we see, and our memories do the same work after the fact. So it’s no exaggeration to say your brain is a storytelling machine.
Storytelling is a universal human trait. It emerges spontaneously in childhood, and exists in all cultures so far studied. It’s also ancient.
Story telling is as old as civilisation and as fresh as the new morning. Words, both written and spoken, can bring people together. They can stimulate the imagination. They can open a child's eyes to worlds of wonder and to the hope of humanity. One of the greatest gifts we can share with our children is the gift of stories and story telling.
There are at least five different types of storytellers, each with unique strengths that help them spread their ideas and inspire audiences to act.
Storytellers who ignite our inner fire.
Storytellers who educate.
Storytellers who simplify.
Storytellers who motivate.
Storytellers who launch movements.
Our earliest attempts at directly sharing stories with each other likely came from gathering around the fire. Since we couldn’t really get much meaningful work done at night, we socialised. We told stories. This element of socialisation created what has been the dominant storytelling mode for the past few hundred thousand years: the
Teller-Listener Paradigm.
We’ve developed a variety of storytelling media since then, but each is rooted in the conventions of teller-listener. The teller projects the story, the listener receives it.
We are now entering the age of the Builder-Participator Storytelling Paradigm:
The style of storytelling in which story environments are built and audiences create a story by participating with and in it. In other words, writers, directors, and producers (the “builders”) can’t force participants to partake in stories in specific ways—they can only invite participation.
Virtual reality is the intersection of three discrete storytelling modes: narrative gaming, immersive theatre, and cinema. Edward Saatchi, the producer at Oculus’ Story Studio, cites these as the three pillars of virtual reality storytelling.
And this intersection marks the advent of a new storytelling era, the Builder- Participator Paradigm.
With its unprecedented degree of immersion, VR hijacks your visual-spatial intelligence to plant you directly into the story. In other words, there is no remove between “you” and the experience. In this mode, your participation — where you look, where you move, the choices you make — effectively creates the story.
No longer are you a listener. You’re a contributor.
And therefore, you implant the story into your brain as if it were your own memory.
In all its forms - past, present and future - story telling is a most powerful teaching and learning tool.
Movement is the fourth language:
Dance is the hidden language of the soul
Language is a form of communication - receiving and transmitting information. Some of the ways language is defined are - communication, expression, vocabulary, discourse, interchange, intercourse, interaction; form/mode of expression.
Movement was one of our first responses to the receipt of information.
Complex as we are, we have evolutionary ancestors that were simple single-celled animals. Tracing our evolution backward we eventually reach an amoeba-like creature that can do two simple things: feel its chemical environment, and move.
Moving forward in time this animal gradually becomes more complex, gaining other senses, nervous systems, and ultimately brains and their complex capabilities. At a certain point those abilities included primitive signalling with rhythmic behaviour, and later sounds.
Thus, language and thinking are evolved complexifications of feeling and moving, and still include those as a basis.
There is a universal language in which all people everywhere can express themselves and understand one another. It is the language of movement.
We are all using this language all the time. Whatever we are doing, the movements of our bodies express something of what we are feeling. Movement expresses the feeling better than words. For babies, movement (sometimes accompanied by sound and touch) is the only language. Human beings and animals often communicate with one another though movement.
The language of movement cannot be translated into words. It must be sensed in the muscles. We have a muscle sense, technically called the kinaesthetic sense. It consists of nerve endings in the muscles and joints which send messages to the brain telling us exactly how we are moving.
The language of movement, like all forms of expression, can be cultivated on the aesthetic level and become an art. The art of body movement is dance. It is the primary art because everything we do involves movement.
Dance is structured like a language.
Movement can be more powerful and subtle than text when it comes to capturing visceral dynamics of movement, the sensual texture of experience. Dance is rich in associative or semanticity. There are instances when dance takes the form of the performative speech act.
Furthermore gestures such as those of classical ballet mime are virtual speech acts if treated as ‘the pretended state of affairs itself’ (Searle 1979).
Moreover, when considered as speech acts, these actions are all the more dramatic and emotionally stirring.
Dance is a basic human need and all people should have an opportunity to express themselves through dance.
Some dance forms tell stories or interpret music - connecting three of the languages in one expressive event.
Many children move to learn. Many more need the opportunity to learn to move. Both enrich the learning experience and help embed and express the learning..
Dance is the hidden language of the soul
Language is a form of communication - receiving and transmitting information. Some of the ways language is defined are - communication, expression, vocabulary, discourse, interchange, intercourse, interaction; form/mode of expression.
Movement was one of our first responses to the receipt of information.
Complex as we are, we have evolutionary ancestors that were simple single-celled animals. Tracing our evolution backward we eventually reach an amoeba-like creature that can do two simple things: feel its chemical environment, and move.
Moving forward in time this animal gradually becomes more complex, gaining other senses, nervous systems, and ultimately brains and their complex capabilities. At a certain point those abilities included primitive signalling with rhythmic behaviour, and later sounds.
Thus, language and thinking are evolved complexifications of feeling and moving, and still include those as a basis.
There is a universal language in which all people everywhere can express themselves and understand one another. It is the language of movement.
We are all using this language all the time. Whatever we are doing, the movements of our bodies express something of what we are feeling. Movement expresses the feeling better than words. For babies, movement (sometimes accompanied by sound and touch) is the only language. Human beings and animals often communicate with one another though movement.
The language of movement cannot be translated into words. It must be sensed in the muscles. We have a muscle sense, technically called the kinaesthetic sense. It consists of nerve endings in the muscles and joints which send messages to the brain telling us exactly how we are moving.
The language of movement, like all forms of expression, can be cultivated on the aesthetic level and become an art. The art of body movement is dance. It is the primary art because everything we do involves movement.
Dance is structured like a language.
Movement can be more powerful and subtle than text when it comes to capturing visceral dynamics of movement, the sensual texture of experience. Dance is rich in associative or semanticity. There are instances when dance takes the form of the performative speech act.
Furthermore gestures such as those of classical ballet mime are virtual speech acts if treated as ‘the pretended state of affairs itself’ (Searle 1979).
Moreover, when considered as speech acts, these actions are all the more dramatic and emotionally stirring.
Dance is a basic human need and all people should have an opportunity to express themselves through dance.
Some dance forms tell stories or interpret music - connecting three of the languages in one expressive event.
Many children move to learn. Many more need the opportunity to learn to move. Both enrich the learning experience and help embed and express the learning..
And thus it is for all these languages. They offer a means to engage, embed and express learning in all its richest forms.