Father of Human Potential - חלק מהספר.

Rafael Feuerstein

 

Father of the Human Potential

 

The Life and Creation of 

 

Professor Reuven Feurestein

 

CREDITS

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For Tal, my beloved wife,

For my siblings, Noa Aharon and Daniel-Bar,

who grew with me in my parents’ house 

and each has their own perspective,

dedicated

my perspective

 

Table of Contents

 

Introduction

 

Prologue: Who are you, Dad?

 

1. Introduction to the five revolutions

 

2. Seal of childhood

 

3. Enchanted Walls

 

First title page: The revolutions of his life

 

Chapter 1: The Five Revolutions

 

      The second revolution: “Chromosomes do not have the last say”

 

The first revolution: “Cultural difference” is not a burden, its power

 

The third revolution: The emperor of definitions has no clothes

 

The fourth revolutions: The flexible brain

 

The fifth revolution: School of the 21st century

 

Chapter 2: The spread of the method

 

Second title page: The method’s birth

 

Chapter 1: The war on the human potential

 

Chapter 2: What is between tradition and cognition

 

Chapter 3: A method in need for a home

 

Third Title Page: The power of family

 

Chapter 1: Mom, a soulmate and a partner

 

Chapter 2: The feeling of foreignness alongside familyhood

 

Chapter 3: Family photo

Fourth title page: The growth of the second revolution

 

Chapter 1: Down syndrome children

 

Chapter 2: Fundamental conflict with psychology

 

Chapter 3: From eternally protected to an active contestant - the vision of integration

 

Chapter 4: Understand the revolution’s magnitude

 

Fifth title page: Dad and I

 

Chapter 1: My journey to my father

 

Sixth title page: The secret of his personality

 

Chapter 1: His work’s secret

 

Chapter 2: His personality

 

Seventh title page: So that it will never end

 

Chapter 1: The revolution continues

 

Chapter 2: From a person to the road

 

Chapter 3: After death

 

Acknowledgement

 

Addendum: Central stations in his life

 

Introduction

 

Five years ago, a while after my father had passed away, I approached the chief editor of Yediot Sfarim, Dov Eichenwald, and asked him if he would like to publish a biography of Dad, and if he knows a good biographer. Dov was quiet for a few minutes, wrinkled his brow, looked at me shortly again , and again, and said "I found". "Who?" I asked. "You, write it , and fetch me the book", he said. , and so I did.

 

The book before you is not just a story of facts of life. The story of my father's life has provided me with a skeleton to wrap the crux upon it, as in his life of the mind that had led him to five dramatic revolutions that changed the world of education , and therapy, and essentially changed the way we understand the human's mind. If Freud exposed the subconscious, Skinner - the influence of the behavior on the human, Piaget - the influence of the thinking on the human - comes Dad , and exposes the fact that the human is a 

modifiable being. 

 

The book brings his complex , and contradictions-filled personality, the environment in which he operated , and created those same revolutions. This book is some sort of a conversation between him , and me. It is not a product of strict historical research. It is a product of strict mental research of a son's relations , and continues through to a father , and a teacher. The book brings my father's character as it has been reflected in my soul for many decades, from when I was born, and till this day. 

 

My father, Prof. Reuven Feuerstein, used to quote Martin Buber a lot by saying that "the I" was created by the "other". Hence if there is no "other" there is also no "I". The meaning my father had cast on this phrase is that in order to decipher himself, the human is in need of a "mirror" - he needs someone to observe him , and interpret him, with his words , and actions. 

 

The tendencies, the skills, our stances, all of which are becoming clear when someone stands before us , and reacts to the things we say , and do. When he responds to us, we discover various insights about ourselves, which many times we would not have been aware of without the mediation of the second side. In a certain way, we "emerge" from the other's point of view.  Our 'I' consciousness is created through the eyes of "the other". That is the code that had guided my father's professional , and personal entire life.

 

So do I, when I look at my father, on the days of his life, throughout his years of operation, whether from a distance or adjacent to him, and as well as today, almost five years after he passed away, in those times of writing the things - my consciousness is beginning to build up more , and more. As forever his son.

 

Dad used to be a prophet who looked like an oracle , and alongside it a gifted clinician. He was a person of education , and a great researcher who was crowned with awards , and titles. A teacher but also a developer , and a genius creator. A thinker , and a man of action. By all means a man of the world, besides being a sort of Hassid subjected before his teachers. He established an institution , and a global movement from the beginning till the end. He pushed dozens of thousands of people with his vision , and his method , and wrote countless articles. He spoke with world leaders , and influential people , and with even greater excitement he took care of a small child who needed his help or the most destitute family that was in distress. The eyes of his patient were bright to him, even more than the ceremonies , and the prizes he was honored with. He was the warmest person on earth yet horrifyingly uncompromising. A man with many contradictions , and complexities, and unique in the vast fortitudes that flowed through his veins. 

 

For many years I was situated in an entanglement where my personal life merged with my professional life - if as a child in front of his father, and if as a father in front of his child , and his father as one a few years later, a young one with a family who claws his way beside a father with his worldwide wisdom, influence, uniqueness, and innovations. A father that his signature mark was the beret hat, his white beard, and his penetrative good eyes. A religious Jew, Prof. with a global name, a man of the academy , and the field, who had never stopped teaching , and encouraging children , and teenagers with love , and respect, and opened a new world for them. Revolutionary , and a lifesaver. All of these , and more were in my father, may he rest in peace.

 

Like the life's weave of a human, that woven wick after wick, that is how in my writing here I tried to follow after the warp, and weft in the life of my father. To bring his complex , and contradictory personality, the environment in which he operated, solidified , and implemented his revolutionary educational approach. The five revolutions which he had formed, that have changed the world of education , and therapy have led to the recognition that the human is a modifiable being.

 

In my conversation with him, that is woven in this book, integrated facts, occurrences, characters, ranging from prominent professors to morose contenders, families, frustrations , and hopes of children , and people, rooms , and houses, Jewish villages in eastern Europe, even the donkey of Grandpa Levi enter our continuous dialogue. The biography here is not written as a chronological description of events, it is a dialogue that attempts to interpret a whole life of a father, revolutionist, creator, a guide to tens of thousands of people, a pioneer, relentless fighter. In this book, I strive to understand who he was, and even though I do not have the feeling I have succeeded in finding out, I hope that at least I was able to resurrect the man , and convey part of his spirit.

 

Prologue

 

Who are you, Dad?

 

"They will be like a tree planted by the water

    that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes;

    its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought

    , and never fails to bear fruit" (Jeremiah 17:8)

 

To try , and decipher the mystery , and the question of who my father was, what was his character, I will exhibit before you the start of a certain therapy I was present in my first steps at the Institute he established, Feuerstein Institute, The description I chose to begin with, is portrayed by Dad, the man, the educator, and the creator. 

 

In this specific story, and not as the myriad lectures he had given in the country , and the entire world, in the hundreds of books , and articles he had written , and the Israel Prize for Education he was awarded:

A fifteen-year-old teenager sits by my father's desk at the Institute. His bleary look soured the face of my father. Dad, who is known to everyone as Prof. Reuven Feuerstein, sits forty centimeters from the boy. The youngster sits in front of him in some sort of half-lying, not as someone who was summoned for an interview or a dialogue with the one who sits before him. Surrounding him is a transparent glass bubble. Even when his glance happens to coincidentally lie upon my father's glance, he looks like someone who gazes through my father's face , and not directly at him. Supposedly the face of whom is sitting before him is completely transparent. 

Suddenly the youngster recognizes a pen that is placed on the table that separates him , and my father, he grasps it in his hand, and starts to tap it at various places, and areas of the table. It does not matter to him whether the object in his hand is a pen, pencil, or plastic cup. He completely ignores the object type in his hand, and focuses only on the sound playing itself. 

 

Dad, who sits in front of the boy, and close to him, picks up an object near him as well, and starts to tap it after him. The teen taps: Ta-Ta-Ta , and my father repeats him, and taps: Ta-Ta-Ta. The teen, who initially did not even notice that there is someone who imitates him, keeps tapping: Ta-Ta., and my father follows Ta-Ta. After a few patient repetitions, the boy "notices" that there is someone who imitates him, and then starts some sort of a subtle game: The boy taps, and my father follows him at the same pace. A sprout of a relationship is born. Dad does not give up, he continues to strengthen the soft bud, and preserves it so it will not dissolve. The first stage has been accomplished, the fortified wall was breached, a window of hope has opened. At the next stage, my father tries to understand the nature of the window, and to put it into words: How has the breach happened? What sort of stimulus from the side of the mediator - Dad in this case - has created this narrow channel of communication? After preliminary drafting of the process, Dad tries to expand, and leverage the connection that has been formed. Now he takes the initiative, and expands the number of taps, he varies their power. If he taps weakly, will the youngster respond to him, and tap weakly as well? If he taps strongly, will the youngster follow, and tap strongly as well? To the initial movement, Dad formulates three stages: Establishment of a preliminary contact, drafting the connection, and leveraging it. This is naturally the first stage in creating a communication, but even that is based upon finding even a tiny island of normality, and being based upon it to form a broader one. 

 

Here, in the direct, the containing, the empathic touch, Dad is revealed as the big bang which attempts to modify, and fight the glass walls that confine inside them the soul which yearns to burst out. His entire creation was dedicated to the boy who was sitting before him, and so for another child, and another one, and thousands more. Even as a researcher with a global name, he always used to see the eyes of the child. Those eyes have escorted him everywhere, and motivated him to think, and act.  

 

A. Introduction to the five revolutions

 

Five revolutions in the education field Dad had instigated in his many years. To those revolutions was one common ground , and it is his faith in the Modifiability of the human. It is in the human capacity to acquire new skills , and upgrade them with mediating instruction , and during the mediation activity operation itself. Those are allegedly five different revolutions from one another since each one of them determined to combat an "adversary" or other opposer to the Modifiability notion, but all of those derive from one root in his perception, and this root is the Modifiability in a human. All the revolutions that are outlined in this book rely upon the element according to it the human is a modifiable being, and all those revolutions strive to create a significant alteration in a person. This is the deep core that my Dad's method so special, the Feuerstein method.

 

The beginning of Dad’s way is the first revolution, aimed against the ethnocentric approach, not to mention the racist, which views the western culture as superior to non-western cultures. The "melting pot" of Ben-Gurion, which advocated cultural assimilation, was the same. One of its expressions in Israel (till this day) is the western intelligence tests (such as the psychometric test) which measure all the state settlers with the same cultural ladder , and thus lead to harsh discrimination on a false basis from its essence. This approach is in testing a powerful adversary that to this day has not been eradicated. 

Dad used to work out of relating to the cultural differences in the Israeli , and global society. He believed that every person can change, and adapt himself to any culture he would like, and this with the help of advanced study mechanisms which apply to the living variance between cultures, and not conceal it. He believed , and even proved it during his work, in the learning , and Modifiability of the human , and objected to the favoritism of one culture over the other, one race over a second. He saw the human as a flexible , and adaptable creature.

The second revolution is "the victory over the chromosomes", linked between the faith in the flexibility , and adaptability capability of the human , and those same limitations that the body enforces upon him. 

Which after all the chromosomes, our existence program, the designers of our figure, the secret of our power but they are also the cause of our limitations. Dad acknowledged them, surely. But already in the ‘70s of the last century, in a notion that was comprehended as surreal , and very contrarian, he dared to plead that there is a way to reduce their influence. 

He argued that the human desire in combination with the magnificent learning capability of the person has enough to reduce , and diminish the limiting influence of the chromosomes. He rebelled against the common consensuses then among all the experts, including doctors, educators, psychologists, and the parents themselves. Dad had not only placed the vision, but he also showed the way. Unfortunately, even today, although the new science field "Epigenetics" brings new revelations that teach about developments that are "above genetics", still doctors, parents, educators, and experts are giving in to the limitations that genetics present before us.

 

It teaches us how groundbreaking Dad was in his approach regarding the modifiability in humans. 

The third revolution is "the islands of normality", which means to identify , and understand the same strengths of the child , and the patient. This revolution, which is the natural continuation of the first revolution, opposes the holistic labels world - a world where the definitions design the reality , and not the other way around. 

Dad had opposed with all of his powers the controlling definitions, which naturally predict what is coming, like the definition "learning disabilities" for example, and all the other definitions which refer to clinical issues such as the autistic spectrum , and other various syndromes, intellectual problems , and more. To Dad's view, the Modifiability of the human requires searching  and finding a new language of definitions. Therefore, the challenge was to overcome what people had done since by characterizing the child as this or that, his fate is decided twice - by the expert  and by the teachers, and the educational environment which accepts the expert's determination. We will explain: Psychology as a relatively young science has started to tag the human with a variety of definitions regarding his intelligence - the IQ for example. As well as definitions that treat his communicative condition - Autism for example. , and more definitions that consider his mental condition, the psychiatric, and the like. Dad saw in those definitions a mighty , and destructive barrier against the basic human capacity he had believed in - the Modifiability. The notion "We are interested in the child's strengths , and not just his weaknesses", that is common in our days among psychologists , and educators , and even become fashionable - this notion was not at all common in the 60s , and the 70s when Dad fought for it. , and it was the third challenge.