Concentration in a child is amazing to observe. Most of the world thinks that children cannot concentrate on anything but video games. But in reality, concentration is quite natural and necessary for proper human development. And the view that children cannot concentrate is rising to new heights because of the way we are using digital technologies. Digital games and apps are systematically eradicating authentic concentration and this is the cause of the epidemic of ADHD. So what precisely is “authentic concentration”?
Bernard Lonergan’s book INSIGHT can help to articulate the nature of concentration. In INSIGHT, one is drawn to different kinds of human wonder. This wonder is expressed in questions, and the questions fall into two basic types (Lonergan adds a third later in his life). The first is the question for understanding (chapters 1 – 8). It is the what and why question (What is it?). As he discusses in the book, this has unfolded in different manners throughout history. With Aristotle for example, one finds this question for understanding unfolding into “wonder” about efficient, material, formal, and final causes. Or it can be generalized into questions about potencies, forms, and acts. Modern science has turned questions for understanding to correlations, functional relations, probabilities, and developmental trends.
Whether one is looking for causes or correlations, the question arises with great thirst in one’s soul when the individual raising the question finds a clue. That clue provides a trail for human wonder. This is why Montessori was brilliant. She discovered how to build a four dimensional learning environment that was filled with clues. Furthermore, the clues help one to focus on data, and then to expand that data. Such an expansion, if done right, leads one on to the act of insight. It is a great moment when one witnesses a child going through that ah-ha moment! And then there is the natural drive to define or formulate one’s insight. Montessori again was brilliant in how she was able to help children move through these stages of wonder to insight to definition/formulation of the insight. It is this path of discovery that is sustained intellectual concentration. If a child gives up too early, or never has that insight, or never is able to formulate it, then the entire path of concentration is broken. And likely, if repeated a few times, a child will simply give up. In fact, one can find that this permeates an entire culture. Then most of the people in that culture will turn to simple hedonistic experiences that do not lead to insight and higher activities of consciousness.
The second basic type of wonder in INSIGHT is the question for reflection. Once one has an insight and has formulated it, then one can wonder if it is true. It is the “Is it?” question. To answer this question one has to take the formulated insight and “reflect” upon it. This reflection entails reviewing the data upon which the insight was obtained. If the data becomes “sufficient” then one has a “reflective insight” that is able to lead to a pronouncement or judgment that “YES” x is true or false. Again, Montessori was brilliant in creating materials and activities in which the child could reflect and validate whether what she or he has discovered and done is true or false. This kind of wonder awakens in a special way around the age of seven (which is the beginning of the second major stage of development for Montessori). At this age, a child will begin to focus for lengthy periods of time upon the truth questions (the Is It? question). This is likewise what is meant by concentration, but in this case it is a reflective or rational concentration. Without such extended types of reflection, a child simply cannot reach that “reflective insight” in which they grasp whether the evidence supports the truth of an insight. Concentration is necessary here as well.
Later, Lonergan adds a third type of wonder that is expressed as the question for deliberation. What should I do? This too has various stages and activities that must unfold if one is to answer that question. In such an act of wonder, a sequence of evaluative insights arise that generate a growing hierarchy of goods and evils. Within this framework of good and evil, one begins to settle upon what one should be doing at any given moment. Montessori classrooms are also filled with activities that awaken this third type of wonder and help to sustain it until it reaches answers. This too requires time to complete, and hence concentration. And like in the other levels of wonder, children naturally thirst to figure out what they should do and how they should participate in the making of life. Moral concentration is natural and children really do thirst for it.
Saint John Henry Newman understood how to awaken all three types of wonders in young boys and men. His Birmingham Oratory school (8 – 16 year old boys) was brilliant for this as well. He taught the boys how to concentrate intellectually, rationally, and morally so that they could find answers and thus fulfill the higher quests of the soul. More on this later.
The short answer here is that concentration is an extended activation of intellectual, rational, and moral wonder that results in finding answers through a sequence of clues, insights, and formulations. If this is done right, children will naturally begin to concentrate for many hours on end. The modern digital world though has cut this short and it is helping to escalate a world without any concentration, one in which all children are infected with ADHD.