Video Episode 06: Education as a Relational Field скачать в хорошем качестве

Video Episode 06: Education as a Relational Field

In this week’s episode, Cathy and I talk about what education becomes when it is organised around coherence rather than control. I speak from inside my experience as an autistic gestalt processor and as a teacher who refuses to begin with scores, compliance, or behaviour charts. In this week’s episode, Cathy and I talk about what education becomes when it is organised around coherence rather than control. I speak from inside my experience as an autistic gestalt processor and as a teacher who refuses to begin with scores, compliance, or behaviour charts. For me, learning does not emerge from fragmentation. It emerges from relationship—from building a relational field where a student feels safe enough to organise themselves, take risks, and grow. We spend time unpacking how gestalt processing—especially in language and literacy—is consistently misunderstood by schooling systems that privilege analytic, linear models. I reflect on students who read beautifully yet are labelled deficient because they do not break language into approved units, and on hyperlexic learners whose coherence is mistaken for performance rather than meaning. When systems insist on disassembly at all costs, they punish wholeness and call it intervention. Attunement is the thread that keeps returning. Whether I’m working with very young children or teenagers, the principle is the same: see the person as a whole. When environments adapt to the child—sensory needs, rhythm, motivation, relational safety—distress falls away and learning accelerates. I share concrete classroom examples where small, relationally grounded shifts led to dramatic changes, not because they were clever, but because they were human. We also speak plainly about systems. I name the limits of special education structures that valorise data whilst dismissing lived autistic knowledge, especially when that knowledge is not yet sanctioned by dominant research paradigms. I talk about why much of my work has lived on Substack—how recursive writing, meaning-time, and kairos allow me to think truthfully, without flattening myself to fit linear expectations. The conversation closes with a quiet insistence: gestalt processing is not a deviation. It is a coherent, ancient way minds organise meaning—and education will only begin to work when it stops trying to extinguish that fact. The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe (https://autside.substack.com/subscrib...)