Bonding: The First Basic in Education.

This article maintains that children's inability to learn and relate to others is due to insufficient or incomplete bonding (a process that binds two people together in a close, primary relationship) especially in infancy and early childhood. The five principles of bonding cited include: the role of the senses in the process of bonding experienced by the infant in his interaction with the parent, the long-lasting effects of early events surrounding bonding at birth and infancy, and the traumatic experience of early separation from the parent. School age effects of inadequate bonding are discussed, and a promotion of interaction, or bonding, at the various stages of intellectual development is recommended. The return-to-basics movement is viewed in the light of a return to the basic needs of the child: a need to learn in a setting that does not do violence to the child's own inner timetable of development, a need to experience the security of a bond, and a need for education which does not emphasize one type of intelligence at the expense of another nor threaten the child's natural wholeness. (CM)