THE SECOND PLANE OF DEVELOPMENT

The Human Tendencies operate differently between the Planes of Development according to special, psychological differences that belong to each. At or around the age of six, the Child passes into her Second Plane of Development. This change for her is almost as a new birth.

In the First Plane, the Child is an explorer of fact. She is a sensorial explorer, for this is when she is discovering her abilities and how they can help her relate to the world in which she is immersed. The Absorbent Mind aids her in this construction.

In the Second Plane, the same Child is hardly the same person she was six years earlier, and her Tendencies operate entirely differently. There has occurred a physiological metamorphosis as she has grown from immobile newborn to walking toddler. There had been undertaken as well a radical transformation in her mind. She is no longer a collector of fact, but an arbiter. She has used the input she has gathered for classification, and developed a reasoning mind capable of logical thought with judgment.

With the Child’s change, the environment the Adult prepares and the very role of the Adult himself will have to change. The Child’s work changes in the Second Plane, and education cannot continue to work in the same way as it has in the earlier Substages.

CHARACTERISTICS OF CHANGE

Certain characteristics can be noticed that denote the change of Planes for the Child:

1. Unlike in the earlier years of her life, the Second Plane Child doesn’t want undue attention, she is strong and tough, resistant against fussing. Whereas in the first six years the Child would have drawn elaborate attention to herself at, for instance, an even minor cut, the Child between the age of six and twelve will withdraw and avoid focus. In the First Plane the Child is still finding her secure place in the family, but the older Child wants to assert her independence.

2. The Child will be venturesome and daring as proof of her capabilities. She is at once testing herself and showing others that she can accomplish even these incredible feats under her own ability. She will, however, remain within the limits of her own comfort.

3. She becomes untidy and slovenly, a marked change from the First Plane Child who was keenly insistent upon order.

4. The child will have a tendency to reject the music, food, clothing, etc. of her home. The Young Child would love something the Adult loved by default because she was still developing her tastes and took her cues from the world around her. The 6-12 Child, however, demonstrates her conviction that she is her own person capable of having her own opinions, making her own decisions.

5. The Child can become antagonistic toward the Adult in her struggle for independence (though the connection to her family and local society is still strong when it is threatened.)

6. The manners and courtesies disappear that were once so defined.

7. The Child starts conforming to groups of other children. This attraction is strongest between the approximate ages of 7 and 10, and the groups won’t necessarily be of children the same age. These groups organize themselves with a great loyalty, and are particularly concerned with the rules of their group and of the Individual within it. These groups are often the first Outside Societies the Child will join.

8. Children and their groups will often form a secret language or keep a secret treasure. This secret, known only to a select few, enhances the feeling of independence and self-capacity the children have within their group.

The Second Plane is a time of great strength and durability. The Child has progressed through her independent work, and is now making her way into the realm of an unknown society. With the undertakings she has accomplished in the First Plane, the Child has gained her confidence, and with this has come this second period of assimilation. To allow for this, Nature endowed the Child of this Second Plane with a resilient constitution. This is also a toughening of the Child to prepare for the unknown challenges ahead. She needs to be able to practice her use of the tools she has developed in a less familiar, and therefore less secure, environment, and this takes a confidence that can only come from the surety that her strength will not fail her.

INDEPENDENCE

When she has reached the Second Plane, the Child has achieved a certain degree of independence. Her intelligence is functioning and she has a well developed tool for communication in Language. Above all, she has her new capacity for reason. Whereas in the First Plane the Child was an introvert, focused on her own completion of herself, the Second Plane Child has turned outward to her curiosity for the Society around her. She is attached to friends, and starts to move away from the happiness and security on which she once depended to find from her attachment to the Family. The years below six were characterized by the Child’s adaptation to the unit of the Family; in the years after six, contrarily, she explores her adaptation to a larger Society.

There are two sides to the independence the Child is developing in this period of her life: there is the independence from her now hindersome attachment to the Family, and there is the independence she gains in attaching herself to a new society. Her fundamental need for independence drives her to move out into Society, and the attachments she forms there are a kind of independence of choice which she requires.

In the First Plane, the Child needs to:

1. Be accepted by the Family

2. Become secure through Orientation and the development of her faculties

3. Recognize the value of Independence

And if these fundamental criteria are not met, the Child will not adapt well to the needs of her new Plane. She will either cling to the Family, not ready to leave, or attach herself to a group and take activities “too far” within it—going to extreme measures to belong to her new society that are not balanced by healthy confidence of herself.

The Second Plane is a “new birth” for the Child as she becomes a member of Society, and so her needs are entirely different:

1. Evaluation of Self in a group: Having spent six years working independently to build herself and her tools, the Child now needs a testing ground. The group provides this: feedback for the lifetime of work she has put in to her formation.

2. The ability to explore further: From the first moments of Life, the Child has been exploring her environment—first exclusively by her senses, later with locomotion, and still later with Language and Communication. Society presents her with the opportunity to further her fields yet more with new relationships she is able to explore. The collaboration of friends and group members also provides her with people with which (and in whom) the Child can now extend her range of exposure. She, in her connections to these others from outside her family, will now have opportunities to discover things and cultural ideas that she would never have encountered alone. And with this same extended base of conspirators, the Child will have the ability to explore new, unknown physical environments as well.

3. Exploration by Reason, Abstraction, Imagination: The Child is no longer a sensorial explorer in the Second Plane, and longs not for facts but reasons. She wants to know what cannot be seen, the Why and How of the Who, What, Where and When she gathers through her senses. Now she is able to explore with a Reasoning Mind, and is thus able to hold the abstractions she formed in her head during her First Plane to reconstruct by logic, analogy and imagination (and perhaps research) the root causes to any phenomena she notices. This is a “hunting instinct,” the urge to sniff-out explanations.

4. Time with her peers: The Child is developing relationships that are of a new nature wherein trust must be earned, and is not assumed. This is a revolutionary idea, and she must be given the freedom to cultivate these exploratory friendships.

JUSTICE

As the Child progresses through this stage of her life, she becomes very interested in rules, the “give and take” of Society. As the Child moves from her life of individuality—focused on her personal development—to a life of interaction—focused on independence within a society of her choosing—she needs to understand the society itself into which she is venturing.

Just as the Family had its own set of rules and boundaries—the Child having explored those according to the Human Tendencies during her first six years—so too has Society. Thus, from a need to find her place into a cooperative group, the Child is working out her morality and conscience.

This Second Plane is the “training ground” for Wider Society, so how the society works is of heightened import. The Child focuses myopically on rules in order to understand what the “norms” of Society are. She becomes pointedly aware of right and wrong, and when she sees an injustice, rushes to an authority to clarify her perceptions. Though it may appear as “tattletale-ing,” it is merely a manifestation of the Child’s need to understand what is and what is not acceptable—it is her way of posing the question, “Is what I just witnessed allowable behavior?”

IMAGINATION

The Imagination of the Child is something that can only develop with enough factual basis, and for this reason only comes about in its true form after the First Plane is completed. The early years of a child’s life are defined by the gathering of sensorial input to classify. From this ordering, the Child is able to glean certain universal truths about the nature of things. Attributes, causes v. effects, logical sequence, etc. It is after this solid understanding of reality and fact has been established that the Child is able to beneficially further her explorations by use of her imagination. Imagination and Reason will become the way the Child explores the Universe, but this can only come about when she has found sufficient fodder to serve as a foundation for the journeys of the Imagining Mind.

HERO WORSHIP

The Imagination leads to a phenomena of hero worship in the Second Plane Child. Stemming from a need for a role model that comes from outside the Family, thus securing his independence further, the Child finds heroes whom she can hold in regard. But this tendency also supports other needs the Child has at this stage.

In adventure stories and stories of great deeds, the Child has a rich vehicle for her strong sense of justice—her focus on “fairness”, rules and boundaries. The Child is also beginning to understand better with her feelings than with her intellect—a wholesale movement from the outer world ruled by the senses to the inner, spiritual world. Due to this, then, these fantastic tales give the child a chance to feel compassion, especially for those in need.

KEYS TO THE UNIVERSE

In the First Plane, the Child was give the Keys to the World. This gave her the tools with which she could relate to her environment. In the Second Plane, now the Child is ready for the Keys to the Universe. She has developed her Reasoning Mind, and can therefore form the abstractions and imaginations that are requisite to empirically explore a Universe that is unknown and unknowable. Albert Einstein developed his beautiful Theories of Relativity by thought experiments alone, for it is by wanderings of the mind exclusively by which the Universe is able to be explored.

The Universe of the Child depends upon her interests, and these Keys to the Universe will breathe life into those interests themselves. “The Universe is an imposing reality, and an answer to all questions. We shall walk together on this path of life for all things are a part of the Universe and are connected together to form one whole unity.”¹ Because the Child has come to this Plane where she asks Why and How, she not only has the drive but the ability to do extracurricular research to satisfy her inquisitive mind. So she can work on impressions she has, and find out the answers herself. This is a valuable tool. She can take an interest, and with it “open doors into the functioning Universe.” She can probe even further with experiments, illustrations and followings up on leads she finds on the way. The books in the environment should be selected to give the Child just enough to get started.

The Child wants the whole vision, not just parts, because it is only from the whole that she will be able to discover those parts with her own Reasoning Mind. Thus subjects cannot be divided from one another, but must go hand-in-hand. A question in one area relates to another, all ideas interconnected. The Child will begin to become aware of the cosmic task of all creatures, everything. She will find a gratitude for the Universe and Creation, and a gratitude toward Man. Ordinary characters come into an extraordinary field for the little, positive deeds they did. Anonymous men and women from time immemorial brought forth the changes to Human Society that brought us to our world today. They had no desire to be thanked, but we are eternally indebted to them for their efforts. The Child will discover that and ask herself the question, “What would happen if these tasks stopped being performed?”

In spite of our differences, the Child will find, Humankind is fundamentally all one, arrayed toward the fulfillment of our collective needs and welfare of Society.

ROLE OF ADULT

To encourage the sense of gratitude and connectedness in the children, the Adult should tell imaginative stories with charts and pictures and photographs to give impressions, not facts. The Adult must be a “storyteller of the Truth,” thus appealing to the imagination about facets that are not accessible to the senses. With these stories and their follow-ups he can sow as many seeds of interest as possible about the entire Universe and everything it contains.

The Universe of the Child depends on her interests, and so those should be both encouraged and followed. The Adult should let the Child be free, but he must never abandon the task of guiding the Child, through her Tendencies, to the education that would best benefit her. It should be the aim of education to produce of the Child a life-long learner brought up at the very least to the expectations of Society.

To accomplish this the Adult must keep in mind two major factors: the remarkable characteristic change of the Second Plane Child with respect to the First, and her inner urge to join the group. The Child is a reasoning being now, and so it is the role of the Adult to allow that Reason to function. If the work of the Child is going to be accomplished through Reason, the Adult must facilitate Reason’s development. This can only be accomplished by allowing the Tendencies to operate.

The Adult, therefore, will remain an observer as always, but this time aware to look-out for the drastically different needs of the Child. Because the Child is defining the boundaries of her new environment, Society at Large, she will question those rules and regulations and how they affect her. If she sees one violated that she thinks she understands, then, she will call the Adult to expound upon the true nature of that rule. This “tattletale-ing” is just a manifestation of her questions, so the Child should be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” to the question of the correctness of the action the Child witnessed. If this is dealt with correctly, she will receive the answer she is looking for and her needs will be satisfied, but if it is dealt with incorrectly, and the Child finds a method to get other children in trouble, tattling will spiral out of control.

This is a social time, a time when the Child has passed from Individual to Member of Society, and so it is important that she be included in small groups for her work and lessons. The Adult can call together groups of children that are at the same developmental stage to work well together, and by mixing the members within the groups he calls, the Director can promote greater socialization between the whole class.

In the First Subplane of the Second Plane of Development, the Child is introduced to ideas, in the Second Subplane that knowledge is solidified. The materials are the same from 6-9 as they are from 9-12, only depth is different. The seeds are planted in the First Subplane, and fertilized in the Second.

Prepared Environment

If the Child is striving to join Society, able to assert herself and express herself, what kind of environment will aid this Child to develop to her full potential? With the importance in the Child for understanding Society, the children should begin to explore the Outside World. Exploring the classroom is no longer enough, the children need a wider field away from school and their homes; the Second Plane Child is just as active with her feet as with her hands. Excursions and “Goings Out” in small groups (3-4 children) should be arranged—by the children themselves—so that they can benefit from the interaction and see people in their own environments. For this then, the Prepared Environment takes on a second aspect. In collaboration now with the environment of the classroom will be the environment outside, but since the Wider World is not something that can be rigorously controlled, the Prepared Environment will be the children themselves in their readiness to explore new avenues—confidence in their abilities of communication, preparedness for Grace & Courtesy in different situations, knowledge of their route and destination, calm demeanor, capability for cool and rational thought, etc.

Inside, the environment should be as tidy and ordered as before, but this will be even more the children’s environment as greater roles in deciding the layout and maintenance of the classroom will have been given to them. The children at this level are less driven to be tidy than in the First Plane, so the Adult will likely have to set the standard.

This is the most intellectually capable period of her life, and it is the Adult’s responsibility that the Child does not waste these years. This Child has clarity of reason and an enormous potential for intellect, and this is the last chance to develop more synaptic connections before a general “house cleaning” of the brain takes place in adolescence. To encourage this and develop it, she must then undertake large work, real tasks, big projects. Large work will show the Child’s capabilities, not only to the Adult, but to the Child herself.

To allow for this depth of work, the Child must be given large blocks of uninterrupted time. It is the Adult’s responsibility to protect this.

Activity is still very important. The hand is still, as always was, a tool of the mind, so the Child will continue to understand through manipulation. But unlike in the First Plane, it is not direct repetition that will achieve this Older Child’s ends. Her Tendencies wouldn’t encourage it, and so it would be a fool’s paradise to design her education upon that old premise. Now repetition must occur through variety and amplification, a quiver of different materials used to convey the same given impression. But examples should be limited, too many examples will clutter not clarify. The Child has a remarkable capacity for abstraction, let her find new examples.

The Adult must allow the Child her freedom and independence with the materials; she may very well find different ways of doing things. With freedom for continued experience, the Child will come to understanding. And at this stage as well, the Child will begin to make up challenges for herself, often well beyond the expectation of what the Adult would ask. Do not spoon-feed the intellect, it is never the Adult’s job to know everything the Child is doing.

The Child will need to be able to check her own work, then. A Second Plane Child will find comfort in being able to evaluate herself, and this self-evaluation will let her know the limits of her capabilities. The Child will only need simple encouragement, and then she will be on her own path. This will develop self-awareness through a responsibility to fulfill herself. A new child in class may rely on the Adult until she is comfortable in the environment.