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)