Por Augusto Cury
Marcos Cristovam Lopes de Paula (Tradutor), Claudia Marchese Winfield (Tradutora), Tyrel Lincoln Hauter (Tradutor), Letícia Felizari de Paula (Tradutora), Lara Marchese Winfield (Tradutora).
In the early 1900s, Alfred Binet created a method to identify which students were more prone to present learning difficulties. This method was acknowledged as the first IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test. Later on, many other scholars worked on this concept, and this instrument underwent several adaptations, also
encompassing other factors. However, until the last decades of the 19th century, all of these versions were variations on the same concept of intelligence: rational, linear, and centered on the intellect.
Meanwhile, scholars noticed that several students with high levels of IQ were unsuccessful in adulthood. On the other hand, there were many young people with an ordinary IQ level, who shone both in their personal and professional lives. So they wanted to find out "what would have made the difference" and, in the end, two factors stood out: the emotional aspects and, more recently, the social ones.
Dr. Cury, a contemporary thinker, author of the Multifocal Intelligence Theory, has studied the complex phenomena of the thought building up, the formation of the Self, the conscious roles of memory, and the process of shaping thinkers. He explains the functioning of the human mind (the "last frontier of science") and states that we need to know the processes involved in this functioning. This knowledge will help us understand the actions and reactions of those around us – especially our children and students – so that we can help them overcome their socioemotional hardships.
The author describes four phenomena that he calls “copilots of our mental aircraft” that act within milliseconds, even before the Self realizes this. He states that these phenomena can either sponsor the most beautiful, creative, and enterprising thoughts or make room for the biggest nightmares and mental ghosts.
Dr. Cury also claims that Education has been treating our children as computers or robots, that is to say, storers and processors of information, rather than potential thinkers. Memorizing and processing ready-made data affords no distinction for a student – in fact, one of the most serious problems we face today is the excess of information, which overloads our minds and causes the Accelerated Thinking Syndrome (ATS), the evil of this century, according to the author.
Hence, Dr. Cury sustains that begetting a deep change in Education worldwide is paramount, aiming to transcend the Cartesian standards, thus adopting a more humanistic approach. One cannot separate reason from emotion in education processes. In addition, as parents and educators, we should hug more and judge less, celebrate more achievements than demanding more results. Only
in this way will we encourage our young ones to become entrepreneurs and unleash their creativity.
The author also states that there are no rules, but there are, certainly, tools and several techniques to shape brilliant and socioemotionally healthy minds. These tools and techniques aim to protect emotions and nurture healthy relationships, so that each child and student can become the author of his/her own story. Concerning relational issues, Dr. Cury shows the benefits of virtues such as forgiveness, gratefulness, and kindness towards those around us – yet, above all, t
hat the greatest recipient of that is the Self of each one of us!
Finally, it is highlighted, as the author himself says: regardless of religion, we all have a lot to learn from a character who lived 2,000 years ago – The Master of all masters. We should study his mind, and learn from the techniques he used in order to shape free and healthy minds.