I have always believed that it takes leaving home and traveling abroad to really get a clear view of the culture we are a part of. Being fish out of water in a country where the language, customs and cuisine is nothing like home, somehow helps illuminate what makes us different and in the process, enhances our understanding of ourselves. I have to say, I really like how that feels. It is why I like to travel and make it a priority in my life.
With that perspective in mind, I went off in search of a post-graduate program that was outside of my field of previous study and present employment. I was in search of an opportunity to grow and learn, and I believed that I needed to look outside of education. My journey to the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Science at the Universiteit van Tilburg in the Netherlands made perfect sense (to me). I could not have been happier to meet my 19 fellow PhD cohort students and discover 17 countries represented, and not a teacher amongst us. Photo insert: With my children (Brook, Katie and Charlene) experiencing the Netherlands.
Ok. I admit that the whole endeavour was a little outside the norm, with world class universities such as UBC and SFU just down the road from home. But I liked where it was all leading, which is what this post is about. I came to appreciate how differently others look at world and to confirm my growing hunch that education was a world of thoughts and ideas and ways of approaching things, but not the only world.
Something else became evident; a realization that was so potent, that it eventually became the motivation for writing, Lead Babies. Despite all of these other brilliant points of view, vessels of knowledge and reams of research outside of education, it was all happening in silos. The members of my cohort were talking. And it was, to say the least, invigorating. But the fact that we were a diverse group cross-pollinating each others' research and inquiry with our unrelated perspectives highlighted that what we were doing was fairly novel in the grand scheme of things.
And so... I returned to my field of special education, convinced that there is much less "unknown" than the education community is willing to accept. It becomes a matter as simple as going abroad and seeking out others who hold the individual pieces of a bigger puzzle. They are asking different questions. And so, hold valuable pieces of information that become meaningful when juxtaposed beside other also seemingly related pieces of information.
Basically, if you can't the find the answer, you didn't venture out far enough. There is no better example than the question of the causes of autism, learning disabilities, and ADHD. Lead Babies, co-written with friend and colleague, Joanna Cerazy, was a first attempt at seeing just how far we had to travel outside of the education community to bring back the missing information. It was a fruitful journey, to say the least.
LEAD BABIES
Breaking the cycle of learning disabilities, declining IQ, ADHD,
behavior problems, and autism
Authors: Joanna Cerazy M.Ed. and Sandra Cottingham Ph.D
Publisher: Kunati Inc (USA & Canada) 1-866-356-2442
Distribution: Independent Publishers Group (IPG) ISBN: 978-1-60164-192-2
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