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Where Wishes Still Come True
Three fourty-minute audio programs designed to develop imagination
in children ages three to eight.
Where Wishes Still Come True is a mythic tale created
by Michael Mendizza for young children . The experience of
listening to these stories provides an antidote to the harm
which results from excessive exposure to television and computer
imagery. If "a picture is worth a thousand words,"
then every picture replaces the need for a thousand descriptive
words. It is the descriptive power of words, the ability to
create mental images, that affects the developing brain. Replace
descriptive narrative with concrete pictures and you deprive
that developing brain of critical nutrients for later forms
of critical and creative thinking.
If descriptive words create and develop imagination, imagine,
if you can, how a 60% reduction in the use of descriptive
language in early childhood impacts the developing brain and
therefore its future capacity for critical and creative thinking.
In 1950 the average teen had a spoken vocabulary of 25,000
different words. Today's teens average less than 10,000 words.
Newsweek 1999
The story behind the stories
Wonder, curiosity, imagination, inquiry, play, logic, ratio,
testing... these are the pillars of creative and creative
thinking, and their ultimate expression is science. Science
is not merely an activity, a method or field of study. Real
science is the unique human capacity to participate in the
act of creation. Science is a particular state of mind, a
quality of perception, a way of knowing, the ability to distinguish
that which is "real," universal, lawful and true
from that which is confused, misinformed or ignorant. When
asked how to bring about such a mind, a mind that could become
a world-class scientific mind, Albert Einstein replied: tell
young children fairytales, and if you want the very best scientists
in the world, tell them more fairytales.
For millennia children encountered naturally the precise
stimulus at the precise time for optimum development of their
most complex and creative capacities. Throughout early childhood,
in every culture, children were told stories - what Einstein
referred to as fairytales. The intimacy of traditional storytelling
developed and maintained close familial bonds. Equally important,
the highly abstract, symbolic and metaphoric nature of the
listening experience, descriptive narrative, challenged the
attentive brain to create a steady stream of internal imagery,
its response to the story. Very early the foundation for all
future creativity is established, including mathematics, social
systems, ratio, justice, and yes, the heart and soul of true
science.
 Several
years ago I sat next to a six-year-old girl at a local rodeo
and told her of Sparkle and his friends Dew Drop and Thistle,
wood sprites that lived in the glen surrounding an old gnarly
tree, now trapped in a city park. I sent her the three stories
and forgot all about it. Two years later, Morgan Shepard,
now eight years old, wrote a letter. There is no higher compliment
regarding the value and impact these stories hold.
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