Gerald Hüther - Mit Leidenschaft spielen - Selbstbewusstsein gewinnen

I greet you all and I am happy that I can be here with you, at least virtually. The fact is that I have been dealing with learning for many years and, above all, with the way in which learning content is anchored in the brain. And I try to make that clear again and again in public. There are many areas in which we still have the idea that learning is something that only takes place in school and that it is only possible by teaching the learners. And that's all pretty old-fashioned and comes from the previous century. But it takes an infinite amount of time for it to spread in the minds of those involved and then also in the institutions and their structures. So right off the bat, unfolding is a basic feature of all living things. So everything that lives wants to unfold. You can do whatever you want. Now it's spring, you only need to go out afterwards and then you see that with the gooseberries and the trees that are now falling out and everything that grows there. Unfolding is what normally takes place if you don't block it. So if we walk around on the gooseberries, then the unfolding is already difficult and then it often doesn't work out the way you actually imagine it. And this unfolding process is coupled with learning processes. And the idea that you only learn in school is of course completely absurd. The idea that learning is about rewards and punishments is also absurd. Learning is something that not only we humans can do. And it's even worse, you don't even need a brain to be able to learn something. Even a single cell, something like the pandora's egg or an armadillo or something like that, can learn something. Learning is a basic feature of all living things. Something that can no longer learn is dead. That's how you recognize that it's dead, it can no longer learn. And you have to let it all fall apart and then you can look at the efforts that we or you as pedagogues, as accompanists of learning processes, then take on a daily basis. And it could be that we have also become a bit victims of our own wrong ideas and that this is why everything doesn't work out so well. But I don't want to go into too much detail, but we are now really looking at what we have chosen as the topic for this small contribution. Playing with passion and then gaining self-confidence. That's a nice title and I like it very much. And yet we have to look at whether everything is right here again. What do we mean by self-confidence? Is self-confidence a cognitive performance, that I am aware of my abilities, or is it a feeling that I have? And you will notice that the term consciousness is not really the right one, because it tends to make you aware of it, so cognitively aware. But a newborn child who comes into the world also has a feeling that it is competent and that it can cope in this world. It has already learned a lot in prenatal. And that's why the newborn child already has something like a feeling that it can cope in this world. And we don't call that self-confidence yet. We wish that the feeling will gradually become something like that in this child, under favorable circumstances. In German this is called an inner conviction. So as a child you have the firm conviction that you have become someone who finds his way in life, who can master challenges in a variety of ways and the problems that exist in life in the respective age groups, that you can also solve them. That is a firm inner conviction. And then you notice that it is not just cognitive, it is also a feeling. You can't really separate that well on this journey. And if you now say, okay, how can we call this self-confidence or the feeling of competence for survival, then of course it becomes clear that you cannot teach that. So you can't teach that to anyone. And it's no use if you tell the children what competencies are. They should finally be self-confident. This kind of feeling and inner conviction that as a child you can already do a lot and therefore also find your way in the world, a child can only acquire through his own experience. That's the only way. And that must be your own experience that the child makes in his environment. And now I am with you and we, as companions of these children, can actually only ensure that we enable the child to have such experiences. And you already notice, now it's getting really exciting, because this enabling also includes that we offer the child the opportunity to grow in challenges. So to find challenges for every child, which are also suitable for the level of competence of this child. We should also make as many problems as possible for our children. How else should they learn to solve problems? So the worst thing that can happen to a child is that it grows up under conditions where it has no problems. So with these so-called helicopter parents, who try to get all the problems out of the way for their children. We have become a society that does not want to have any more problems. And of course we try to make sure that there are no more problems. But we do not realize that we need these problems. And that especially children need such problems, because otherwise they cannot learn how to solve them. There must be enough problems. And not always the rare ones, but from different areas in different areas of life. And the worst thing that can happen to a child is on the one hand that it has no problems at all. And on the other hand, it often happens that it has such big problems that it cannot solve at all. So there are always situations where we put children in situations that they cannot cope with, that are too much for them. So parents, for example, who are dissatisfied with their life. Parents who do not get their partnership regulated and who then make it clear to the children how unhappy they are. Parents who do not like to work and come home and say, such a curse, that's terrible. Parents who have their own problems, so to speak, and then transfer them to the children and put the child in a situation where it actually wants to help mom or dad or the teacher, because it realizes that she is not really happy. And the child will then realize that it is not able to do so. Then it means that it is a failure, an experience of its own failure. There are children who do not like each other anymore, because they are not able to do what is necessary. Then they start to doubt themselves, and that is of course something that the whole already grown-up self-confidence then completely buries. So if you take care of children and accompany children as an enabler, then you will also try to invite children again and again and to encourage and inspire. These are actually the three main approaches how you can help children to adopt the skills they need, so that they later develop what we call self-confidence. And that means we have to give the children the opportunity to find out for themselves how something works. Every attempt to explain to them how it is and to describe it or to do it themselves and to intervene in their own process undermines this possibility and robs the child of the possibility that it will find out for itself how something works. And to find out how something works is to learn. And that's what they all do. That's what the Blue Algae, the Green Algae and the Amoebae do. Everything that is alive is constantly trying to find out how it works, how life works, what needs to be done when this or that change occurs. And then they all find solutions, and of course they are a little different with a Blue Algae than with a child, but it's always the same. A solution is sought for a state that the neurobiologists or biologists call incoherence. Because you can only look for a solution for something if you also have a problem. And the problem that we always have is that it creates a state in the brain where not everything fits together as well. So if you have a different expectation than what is happening now, you have a problem. That creates an incoherence in your brain. If you close your eyes for five minutes and then open your eyes again and then light falls on your retina again and that is then passed on to the optic nerve, then the optic nerve has a problem because suddenly an input arrives there that was not there before and it had just gotten so used to the fact that there is nothing to do now. And that's why it's always the case that we try to make such incoherences, which inevitably belong to life, more coherent. And that is the basic principle of the way the brain works. The brain doesn't want to learn anything and the brain doesn't want anything else, but it has a single requirement that it has to guarantee and ensure over and over again. And that means that it has to be ensured up there that as little energy is consumed as possible. And nerve cells consume a lot of energy. Above all, they consume a lot of energy when they fire at each other, when it doesn't coordinate and synchronize. And that's always the moment when the previous order in the brain gets mixed up because something has entered that doesn't fit what you expect. And then there is such an incoherence and it consumes a lot of energy because the nerve cells are all firing at each other. And then the individual nerve cells can only ensure that this high energy expenditure is minimized. And they also have their possibilities. You don't even have to look at the whole child or the brain, but every single neuronal network in the brain will ensure that when it is overloaded, this overload ceases. And they do this by forming connections to the structures that generate so much input, where too much activity is pressed down on these nerve cells, and they are then inhibited. And then it's quiet again, and then the whole thing is coherent again. And that's what every child does, and that's what you do, and that's how we do it until the end of life. And then we look for a solution to restore this lost coherence. And now comes the great moment, because whenever you find such a solution, as a child or later as an adult, certain areas are activated in the middle brain that brain researchers call reward centers. And certain nutrients are separated there, and they look similar to cocaine and heroin. That's why it's always such a nice feeling when you find a solution for a confused state in the brain, so that you can get it back in order. That's the so-called aha experience, as we call it. You did a good job, and the networks that enabled you to find this solution, are now being fertilized in a way, because the activation of this reward center causes nutrients to be poured out everywhere in the brain, which act like growth factors, so in a way like fertilizers. Nerve cells contribute to further development, to make a few more synapses, to establish existing contacts. And in this way, the brain learns based on the solutions it has found. The brain is, of course, said stupidly now, but it then learns the child based on the solutions it has found by itself, how it works. And these solutions are anchored. And that applies now, and if you illustrate that, that applies, for example, to the grip of a little baby. When it starts to grip, it practices for so long, and does it again and again, until it finally becomes coherent, and then it will run. This is always tried by itself for so long, because before that it is incoherent. The child absolutely wants to stand on its two legs, like mom and dad, and there is a constant unrest in the brain if it still can't do that. And then it is tried again and again, until it finally stands on its two legs and can run. And so it goes with the language acquisition. The child is always the one who has to learn. And we, as companions of these children, only have to make sure that they don't fail in this attempt to learn how to do it, that we don't overburden them, and that we help them to learn what is really important for their further life, and not to learn something that will later become a problem for them. You can also learn, for example, and then you don't want to learn anymore, and that would be an unfavorable attitude, which you then formed in this way. Now we can all ask ourselves whether there are occasions where this kind of appropriation of knowledge and ability is particularly easy, where it is usually done by itself, and the answer is the game. Not the lessons, not the teaching, but the playful trying out how it works. And now it gets interesting, because if we look around in the animal kingdom, all animals that have a brain with which you can still learn something. So the spiders, for example, can't learn anything, or at least very little, but little kittens, for example, they can learn a lot. And this is not learned by the mother always doing it in advance, but it is learned by the kitten playingfully trying out what everything works, and how it works. And of course it is good when a mother is there who knows how it works and can already walk on two legs, then it becomes easier. But otherwise the child always tries it out, playfully tries out how it works, and that is the basic form of learning. Everything else I would not call learning anymore from my perspective, but as training and direction. And this playful trying out how it works, the children understand, of course, we all know that, first of all with their own body, over the first year of life they are constantly trying out what they can do with their hands and feet and with their tongue and with what else they can do. So they get to know their own body and acquire a representation for the neural networks that are then necessary to control the movement. The brain is structured so to speak based on the signal pattern coming from their own body and that is why all children play so incredibly much in the area of moving and constantly trying out what else is possible. And that sometimes looks strange to us, because of course they also try out movements that seem completely useless to us. But that's what it's about. It's not about usefulness, that's the hallmark of the game, but it's about getting to know what everything works, what you can do at all. That's how the little kittens learn and that's how the children essentially learn how their own body works and how to steer and control it. They learn in this way what they can do with so-called things, for example with toys. And of course they also playfully try out what they can do with their mother until she loses patience and then hopefully says no at some point. Because that's also part of the learning experience, that the child learns, aha, so far she's doing it, but at this point it's too much for her. Then the child learns, through this playful trying out, that the mother is also a person of her own, with her own needs, and that you can't just occupy her with your own interests. These are all important learning experiences. They are all done in a playful way, if the children have the opportunity to try it out, how it works. And if they then have role models on the basis of which they find solutions, how it then perhaps works best or particularly easily. This is how their own possibilities are explored, playfully, what you can do with others, also with your own siblings or later with other children. Yes, and then of course also with the adults, with the companions, in the respective educational institutions, try out everything playful as possible. And this playful trying out as possible is a kind of learning that always goes hand in hand with the activation of these emotional centers, because the child, when trying out playfully, always puts the bar of the challenge so high that the chance is relatively high that she also manages it. That is, it always fits here that it is individual or individualized teaching. The child determines how high it wants to jump and over which obstacles and difficulties it wants to go. There is no need for how big the challenge has to be. It's just not fun when the challenge it chooses is too small. It has to be a real challenge, but it also makes no sense to choose a challenge that is far too big and that the child concerned cannot handle at all. And that is why what children learn in this playful trying out is always child-like and adapted to the needs of the child in an excellent way. We can't do it better as a companion. The children themselves know where they have to put the bar over which they learn to jump. And that's because they always have these so-called success experiences. That is, they put the bar, they put the challenge, what they want to do, they set it so high that it also excites them. So they like to jump over it. That makes an incoherence in the brain. You don't know exactly, you don't know exactly if you can do it, but you want to. And then they jump over it, solve the problem, and then this incoherent state in the brain is transformed into a coherent one. And the neurons that have been activated are strengthened and fixed. And that means that the child learns more and more, acquires more and more skills, and the brain is structured based on the solutions found by the child. That's actually fantastic. As a biologist, I am completely enthusiastic about this principle because it makes it clear that this is a self-organizing process that we as adults have to take over from the child himself. And we can create conditions under which this works particularly well. And there are always such conditions where the child can dare to do something with dedication and passion that it has chosen for itself. Yes, of course you can make what you choose a little more beautiful and more attractive, but in the end it must be something that the child wants to learn for itself. And then it comes to carrying what all children have already brought to the world as a basic need, namely their innate joy of discovery and their innate desire for design. And then they go after it and try to do it the way they can somehow and mostly with an incredible passion and with a great enthusiasm for what they have already done in their respective situations, no matter how old they are. This reinforces this feeling that they can do something, it strengthens their self-confidence and it strengthens this innate joy of discovery and desire for design. And they feel that they are able to satisfy a very important basic need that they have already brought to the world through their own doing. Then there is a second basic need and that is the basic need, you all know it, for security and security or maybe we just call it connectedness. We are social beings, the children were connected to the mother for nine months and when they come into the world this is anchored in the brain as a deep experience. That was also a solution. And that's why every child finds again what it has already learned in the past, namely that there are always challenges that can be overcome. And with that there is a joy of discovery and desire for design in the world. It also has the expectation that it finds people out there with whom it can restore this feeling of connectedness. Nature has also taken good care of this. It goes as far as certain hormones such as oxytocin to support this feeling of connectedness in the initial phase between mother and child. By activating certain networks in the brain under the influence of these hormones that are then particularly suitable to learn such complex phenomena such as the appearance of the mother, the scent of the mother, the facial features and so on. Then you need a little support, which nature provides with the help of such, let's call it binding-promoting hormones. And if it were that every child could always satisfy these two basic needs, namely on the one hand could experience this connection and this deep feeling that it is as it is right, that it is as it is liked and at the same time it happens automatically that such children wait out into the world and then they can also discover their second need according to their own and shape it. This is later the autonomy with which they make their way. In our age this is called freedom. We all want to be as closely connected as possible in our age and as free as possible at the same time. And you know that unfortunately not many people succeed in this society. And that's because we all have to learn that we after this initial phase in which we got to know learning as a playful activity to satisfy our basic needs have gotten into an environment, into a reality designed by humans, where these adults are of the opinion that they should teach us and then we will as children become objects of expectations and measures and guidelines and teachings and assessments and what not. Then we make the children objects of our expectations and assessments. And that's the worst thing that can happen to a child because this is a problem that we prepare the child that it can no longer solve itself. Because it can't change us. And now there is nothing else left for the child than in this need. And this is a great need. This is perhaps the greatest incoherence that we can imagine if both basic needs, both spiritual basic needs, physical basic needs, you also know hunger and thirst or something like that, and these spiritual basic needs are connected on the one hand and autonomously designed on the other if both are injured. And that is automatically the case if a child experiences that it becomes an object of regulations, or even assessments are made by others. If these two basic needs are injured, this creates the greatest incoherence that one can imagine in the brain. And that holds the most beautiful and strongest brain out. And that's why every child finds a solution. But it doesn't look like it should look. The child helps the adult to come to reason with their somewhat strange attempts to teach the child something. The solution then looks like that it finds an emergency solution with which it can cope. So some then submit to the expectations of the adults. Some try to make the adults happy by doing everything exactly as they expect. Some resist and become obsessive. Some try to manipulate the adults. So there are all kinds of possibilities. Basically, it's all the same. The child is made an object by us. And the child finds a solution that makes it an object for us. And who can't do that as a child, he can then make himself an object and persuade himself that it is too stupid, it couldn't do math, it couldn't sing, it couldn't be beautiful enough, it couldn't be lovable enough. And you can already guess because now life becomes really difficult. Now they don't like themselves anymore. They don't like the others anymore. And that makes it all difficult. And then it's over with the playful ease in life. And then it is no longer played out what's going on, but then with obsession they try to get rid of this pain that you have if you are not allowed to belong the way you are. If you are not accepted the way you are. If you are constantly told what you still have to do and leave. And that is something that has nothing to do with games anymore. And unfortunately the term game in our current world has also fallen into such a slump. Because there are a lot of games that actually do nothing more than give children the opportunity to show that they are the best and that they are better than others. These are not competitions. These are not games. And there is also no playful trying out how something works, but you want to win and beat the other. And we have to think about whether we actually want to call it a game in the future. What the neurobiologist can say is that the playful trying out how it works is the way of the king, how a child can find out where his life is coming from and how he has to do certain things so that he is able to manage his life. This then leads to the fact that the child likes himself. That this, as we mentioned at the beginning, forms self-confidence. That it also remains open, does not lose its joy in learning. And if we could do that, then we would be a big step forward. And you notice, I'm not talking about the conditions of our schools at all. I'm actually just talking about what we as companions of the children would have to understand so that we could look at the children differently. That was the half hour I promised you. I have condensed it very much, but maybe it is encouraging enough that we can now get into an interesting discussion with each other, into an interesting exchange. First of all, I would like to thank you for your attention, which I also only experience virtually. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Hütter, for this wonderful lecture. I am also curious how you are doing here in the audience. Are there any direct questions or comments that you would like to make to Mr. Hütter? I'll jump right into the adult world because we have already come to the conclusion that the phenomenon that people do not want to question the solutions they have learned again, that they are not enjoying learning. It could also go differently. I don't even want to vary my behavior. We keep having this phenomenon that I don't want to go into politics now, but that you no longer want to think about another solution and believe that what you have found you have to continue penetratingly. Do you have experience how to crack such a nut? What suggestions do you have if you want to bring a person who is not educable back to learning? That's why I told you about saving energy. If I have a solution and notice that I somehow cope with it and don't die, this solution that I have found, even if it seems completely unfavorable at the moment, is then completely right for the subject. Everything he would change would cause it to get mixed up in the brain and he would get this increased energy consumption again. That's why some people stick to their once-found solutions and don't trust the shore, because up there in the other world, in these other ideas that are still available, there are other solutions that you can still find. So outside on the shore it could be cold, you could get in the rain, it could be slippery up there and you could fall down the slope. So in terms of brain technology, this is the more convenient, energy-saving solution. As long as you don't deal with it, it's better to continue as before. And that's not the case with children. Actually, children don't change, but that's especially the case with us adults. And I have this picture of being entangled in one's own solutions. These solutions are always ideas, and we carry these ideas around with us, realize them, until in the end we identify with our own ideas. And from this self-identification with the self-found ideas and solutions, you can't get out of it. This is partly hopelessly entangled. So there are many people who sit because they want to do everything right and because they always want to work well. This is now the entanglement of the idea. And in the end they sit in a hamster wheel and turn and turn and lose all vitality, but they work, because that was the only thing they wanted. And to get them out of the hamster wheel is a problem, because then they have nothing more they can do. Take someone like a brain researcher who has now worked hard all his life and tried to explain to others how the brain works. And then it turns out that the others don't want to hear it anymore and that they also question it because they find completely different concepts much more interesting. And the brain researcher then no longer finds anyone who listens to him. That's tough, that's difficult. And if then someone approaches this brain researcher and says you are totally stuck with your solution, you hang around here, you are no longer really alive, all day you just hang around with your attempts and with your ideas, you have to get out of there, then that is an attack on the personality. The person concerned will not allow this with his entanglement. If someone comes and questions his solutions and questions his entanglement, he will feel that this entanglement is almost as if someone is trying to cut off his arm or leg. And that's why we often have such severe counter-reactions. Then you try to tell the other you can do it differently and then he defends his entanglement. And then you have to stop because you then possibly drive him so far that he becomes really aggressive. Yes, and more questions. Yes. I think it has to do with punishment. Because even in elementary school, if you make a mistake, you are actually punished for it. I think that's why many people, if you do something wrong, that you can't admit that you have studied something wrong for decades. Now only one of us, Nassim Taleb, claims that the Gaussian bell curve is the exact calculation. My mathematician friends hate Nassim Taleb because they have studied it for five years and it has to be right because he has put everything in there and it would then so it has to be right. And besides and many things what I just heard with this, why can't you motivate people to change something or to be more flexible? I always think it has to do with losing yourself. So that you no longer have the right to exist, because you have studied nonsense for five years. Or also fear of punishment or that you are laughed at or lose your job. I also think that this punishment system in our school shapes our brain very strongly. Shapes. Yes, and the system then leads to what you normally need for the playful experiment, namely also the willingness to make mistakes from which you can learn how to do it right. That no longer happens. The children no longer dare to play when someone is watching because they constantly have the feeling that he is about to intervene if they have done something wrong again. And then the whole thing becomes a fight and then such people arise who stop thinking for themselves, who stop wanting to shape something themselves and who wait for to be told what to do and not to do. I don't know who is interested in these people later, but it is almost a systemic phenomenon that can be observed in our western society and we Germans seem to be particularly good in this sector. It is often said look in Scandinavia how they deal with their children. They have already abolished the school censorship there, they have abolished the class associations, they do year-round lessons, they no longer have a curriculum in Finland and then people drive from us there and want to see how they do it and want to introduce it here to us. But that doesn't work. Because that's not something they do there at school, but the whole life of this Finnish society is designed to make everyone firmly convinced that it is about taking responsibility for one's own life. And you can do something like that, you can also do such schools. But here in our society little has been decided that people learn to take responsibility for their own life. You have seen that in this Corona time, you can see that again now. As soon as a problem arises in society, they call for support. And someone should come to save them. In America the same. Or Mr. Orbán. This is a time of bloom, of course, for autocrats and that is why it is actually extremely dangerous what we are doing at the moment. But we have been doing it for a long time and many generations have already done it in front of us. With self-confident people who come from school, there would have been no chance of National Socialism. That was, so to speak, the prerequisite was that they had to do it. We have one more question, Mr. Hötter. We would like to ask you again. I don't have such a big question. I just wanted to say, there may also be a few low-performers who are very happy with their lives. Who may be a little confused, but maybe still for themselves. After all, if we find a smaller challenge and then also this wonderful substrate exchange, and then sometimes say, wow, it was great, I did it today, to go to the mailbox myself and not to send it to my wife. There may be such people, and I think that's very good. I want to look at how we enable children and young people to grow up well and by not voting out our norms and values directly but rather say this exploratory behavior, which is often evaluated in many places, because it does not fit into my thinking pattern, my pattern, maybe not in my beautifully cleaned kitchen, but it is there. And how can you find a good coexistence there? It was very difficult for me just now, but I think it is very positive. That doesn't mean that I perceive it differently, but it also always means that the basic needs of the child must first be met so that it can discover the world with play. A child who is permanently hungry, a child who is always cold, and so on, that often does not come to play, how can we accept their being like that? And how can we give them the opportunity to continue to live and be able to live an exploratory behavior? I would just like to give you a little more positive drive again. I don't want to spread a bad mood here, but it is important to me that everything I have described here is closely related to the fact that we live in a society in which we make each other objects. We can't avoid that at all. This is already the case in all the dependency structures of the customer and the buyer and the seller, the teacher and the student and the predecessor and the employee. These are all basic object relationships. And it is no wonder that they then also become objects. And then you are absolutely right that there are some who solve this reasonably well for themselves. And then there are some who go against it. And I'm actually most afraid of those who adapt very successfully to the expectations of others, because they are the most entangled. And if you have been very successful with a complicated idea, then you can no longer let it go. Then you probably have to die with it. But one more message. I think a solution or a way would be this second basic need for connection, for being heard and seen. With children, adolescents and adults, especially after this Corona Dispense of every relationship, to force more again, to listen to people, to hear their stories. And ultimately this means for us pedagogues, heart education. So what attracts me, what draws me to other people, what makes me curious about the solutions of other people. Maybe the other is also interested in my solutions. But I think the important thing is what we have to force again, to build up relationships, to give opportunities for conversations, to bring dialogue back into the world. It has been lost. I am very grateful to you for that. I would now have as a positive outlook hung on it. Yes, that is also the only way from my point of view. We have to give our children the feeling that they are taken by us unconditionally as they are. There is such a wonderful definition of love. Love is the unconditional interest in the development of the other. And that is pedagogical art. That you have an unconditional interest, no matter how the student is and how much he gets on your nerves. That you still do everything to make him develop. You don't learn that in pedagogical universities. And that is not to be replaced with professionalism, so to speak. You have to like the students as a teacher. I would very much advocate that we help each other to learn how to like someone even though you can't even though he gets on your nerves. How can I, for example no, I don't want to give any examples now. How can I create that I like someone that I don't like? And the answer is that we should all learn to look for something in the other that we like. In every person, if we get involved, there is something hidden but not to the other, just to have a relationship. A relationship also has a father who beats his child to the child. But you have to be ready to meet the other from subject to subject. And then it can happen. Then you can, if you get involved in such a meeting, you can, in a child, in a teenager, even if he behaves terribly, always find something that you like. And then you could try to invite, to encourage and to inspire this part of this other person that you like. And then you will realize that the whole person will follow you because it depends on them. You don't have to like everything, but if you find something that you like, then you come into contact with the other person. And then you can actually try out your original character as playful as possible. We will only be able to do this in a world in which we have learned to approach each other and to have interest, unconditional interest, in each other. Not because we are curious, but because we care and I know that very well. But I am firmly convinced that if we don't make it, we will no longer have a place on this planet.