Caleb Gattegno wrote a book called The Mind Teaches the Brain. The title is provocative, challenging established concepts. It also relates to a theme developed in Gattegno’s The Universe of Babies – that our mind is at work from the moment of our conception; that even before leaving the womb, we are equipped with astounding mental powers.

Instead of expostulating theories at conventions, he walked into classrooms and showed us how it’s done.

So what went wrong? Why isn’t half the world using Gattegno’s approaches in their classrooms?

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Of course all description no matter how detailed is interpretation, since all categories impose a splitting up of the world that could have been done differently. Yet there is a difference between saying (of the same imagined event): “I asked a question and no one put up their hand to answer,” and “The class seemed

Gattegno calls on teachers to become scientists of education in their classrooms by using the tool of watchfulness.

disengaged today.” If we begin with ‘accounts of,’ without judgment, we have the chance of noticing something we had not observed before – particularly if we are able to keep records over time and look back at similarities and differences.

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Listening to him speak was an act of discovery, even though it could be difficult to follow the exact thread of his discourse. As he often remarked,

“Language is for expression rather than for communication. Communication, when it occurs, is a miracle.”

It was always striking to me that I could never anticipate what the next word in a phrase was going to be. It was as if he were inventing the language (whatever language he happened to be speaking at any particular moment) as he went along.

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