Recently my son-in-law sent me this dream about from his oldest son, Olee who is now 3 and 1/2 years old so I am sharing it because it is what we can all learn from Diego, who is the same age as Olee but has a very special gift.

I dreamed the roof on the dying house was on fire.

I asked: what’s a dying house?

It’s a special place where where people go to die. And I wanted to be a fireman like Diego, so I could put out the fire on the roof.

A house in a dream is about the self and a roof is the top of the house so it signifies the head or the mind usually.   When a roof is on fire, it a symbol for  the mind is overheated, which means that it is working too hard.   Most schools make the mistake of doing things exactly the opposite of what comes natural to children which is to first act in one’s body kinesthetically and with tactile experiences and then to think and discuss from your head.     If you have a child, make the numbers with cookie dough and then eat them,  their love for math will multiply immensely, but our tendency is to show them the number, make them repeat it, and then write it, and if the teacher is creative, then to make cookies as a culminating experience.    But this cooks the brains instead of the cookies.

The place where children to go to die is school because instead of school being a place that starts in action and then goes to the mind, it starts in the mind and then occasionally goes to the body.  If you know Diego, you know that he starts in his body and loves the sand and dirt.  If you go to play with Diego in the dirt, you are not only his lifelong friend, but you just may never get out of the dirt because his learning all starts from a tactile experience.

In Olee’s dream he wants to be like a fireman like Diego because Diego’s learning style is exactly the balance people need in order to keep their minds cool and functioning.   An overheated mind tenses the body and then tires people out, and Diego’s learning style puts out the fire.    Most people look at something like physical education as a minor subject rather than a core subject because they value the mind over the body,   but we know from research that experience is the best and first teacher, while book learning is second hand.     It is so obvious.

Are you going to learn more about Brazil by reading about it in a book or by going there and living in the culture?   This does not mean that secondhand knowledge is bad or should be avoided because it is a huge source of learning,  but the mind loves experience as a first teacher and books as secondary and not the other way around.