Class 10 (Year 11; Age 15-16 Years): “Balance” 

 

Ruia taitea kia tū ko taikaka anake 

Cast off the sap, leave only the heart. 

 

Although the emotions are still powerful in the student of this age, there is a marked development towards greater control and balance.  Students are much more social at this age, and far better able to work in groups.  There is a marked difference in their perception of the world and their ability to comprehend and understand basic underlying laws and structures, both in themselves and in the world in general.   

 

They may still be argumentative (each, potentially, an Odysseus!), but their greater reasoning power can more readily take hold and master the emotions.  The love of a certain dramatic sensationalism of the previous year begins to recede; they wish to understand the phenomena they meet, both on an inner and outer level.  The richness of the inner life is more easily able to express itself, allowing for greater subtlety in their response to language and to the world in general.  

  

They are more able to form deep and lasting relationships and friendships at this age, since the relationship of the self to others and to the outer world is more harmonious.  There is now a striving towards the balance between polarities, whether in chemistry (Acids, Bases, and Salts; with salt as the mediator between acids and bases), the English lessons (Homer's "Odyssey" and "The Art of Language" where words are seen as a balanced dynamic between the creative and the functional) or in history (the study of New Zealand’s history in forging a balanced, bi-cultural society). 

 

The Teachers’ Pedagogical Aims For Class 10 Are: 

 

• To find the balance between the polarities 

• To bring more consciously the aesthetic sense  

• To bring to recognition the virtues of truth, goodness, beauty as active choices 

• To help begin recognizing the individual’s life-path toward adulthood 

• To overcome selfishness, develop compassion, have ready hearts 

• To bring the rhythmic system/emotions into harmony 

• To recognise relationships between the inner and outer worlds 

• To foster awareness of one’s own actions 

•  To broaden the powers of perception