Posted by LightShifter on January 24, 2004, at 21:59:01
In reply to Re: Brain fog « LightShifter, posted by Dr. Bob on January 24, 2004, at 15:15:03
> > > I don't in any way want to sound rude, nor do I want to come off as if I'm attacking your opinion. I do, however, feel the need to respond with my own on this subject.
...How politically correct.
> > > You've obviously had a very rough time with school and, believe me, I can empathize. It's a horrible feeling to be slower than the other kids, to have to study harder and twice as long just to be half as good. It just sounds like instead of dealing with the issue (your problem) you're directing it onto an outside source, academics."
... You are being very presumptuous here. You neither know me nor have any idea how much schooling I have or how much I have educated myself, nor how much I deal with "my problem". Learning isn't so much my issue as being forced to learn things against my will at other people's pace.>>>>"Granted, when dealing with this issue academics can be terribly difficult, but that doesn't mean that it is the academics itself that pose the problem."
...I didn't say academics was the problem. I SAID THE WAY THEY WERE BEING FORCED WAS THE PROBLEM.
>>>>"It sounds like you're trying to come up with an explanation as to why this happened to you, but you want the cause to be something other than personal. Thus, it's due not to your own condition, but to the academic work, or force by others. It just sounds like you'd rather the cause of this problem be due to something other than a condition that you have. Easier to deal with that way?"
... You say you have no desire to attack my opinion above but what do you call this? Maybe you haven't had the pleasure of having teachers emotionally and verbally abuse you in school for years on end. You tend to see it all as "my fault" for not wanting to "deal with my issue" and presume teachers had nothing to do with it. Why do you hold teaching in such high esteem? Are you a teacher yourself? How the hell do you know what I've dealt with and what I haven't? It rather sounds to ne that YOU are the one who is trying to avoid reality here - not me. Your presumptousness and condescending attitude sickens me.
>>> "It isn't always the case that children with this problem don't want to learn what they're being taught."
... I never said it was. Again, I was talking about FORCING children to learn things against their wills. ALL CHILDREN want to learn, at least up until people force them to. If you ever want to get someone to hate something, force them to do it....
>>>> "I, for one, wanted desperately to learn. That was my biggest problem. I had such a thirst for knowledge (including what I was supposed to be learning in school), that not being able to learn (understand) was pure torture for me. Like you, it took a long time for things to "sink in." It had nothing to do with being forced to learn. I wanted to learn."
...I'll bet you that if you could have learned at your own pace instead of at the pace you were being driven to learn at you would have remembered whatever it was you wanted to learn. And once you are taught how to read you can do this. You don't need to learn at anyone else's pace but your own and forcing children to do so only traumatizes them - they become more worried about how they look to others and whether or not hey can "keep up" with the rest of the class than about the subject matter.
>>>> "You say that kids shouldn't be forced to learn things they don't want to learn, and that we don't need the majority of what we're being taught anyway, less for reading and math. Well, what if a child doesn't want to learn reading and math? Do we just let that child become an illiterate adult so as not to "force" him/her to learn against his/her will? Because honestly, there are plenty of children who don't even want to learn basic reading.
... I wonder how "honest" you are being here. I bet almost all children do want to learn to read unless they are forced to or have traumatic expereinces surrounding it. They want to read, and you don't need to "force" anything. Teaching has nothing to do with forcing.>>>> "How exactly are they supposed to function as adults if it isn't required for them to learn that as children?"
... Again you are being presumptuous here. It is not "learning" that is the problem. It is the METHOD of teaching that is the problem. You don't have to "require" anything. Children naturally want to learn - until you start forcing it upon them. Who are you or anyone else to say what any specific child will "need" when they grow up? In 20 years or so the world will be an entirely different place. Computers do most math now anyway. Many of the things we teach children will be obsolete. And suppose they want to be artists musicians, atheletes or poets...How much math will they need for those occupations?
> > > Education and knowledge are the most valuable assets any human can have.
...This is quite a statement. Can you prove it? I disagree. I think the human HEART is the most valuable asset a human can have. Any computer can calculate things. IT takes a human to truly care about another and this has nothing to do with how "intelligent" they are. No computer can LOVE.
KNowledge and intellect are over-rated and it is precisely these things that are causing us to hyper-focus on "education" so much that the HEART is being denied, avoided, invalidated and bypassed...>>>> "The brain is like any muscle. If it's used, it grows stronger. If it isn't, its function diminishes."
...Who said anything about "not using the brain"? I didn't say to not USE the brain. I said not to allow the brain to be ABUSED. There is such a thing as overworking and straining muscles too. To keep children at 5 to 10 years old locked inside schoolrooms for hours on end for 5-6 hours a day 180 days a year and deny them a natural childhood of play and natural leaning instead of only focusing on “academics” is not healthy. What adult do you know that won’t get totally exhausted if they were forced to listen for 5 hours a day five days a week? Their minds are being OVER developed. For the most part, they aren’t being allowed to use and develop their Creative Intelligence, to bring forth creative ideas and works of art. They’re just being programmed to repeat whatever they’re being forced to listen to like parrots. Academics is pretty much the only thing we develop in children which leaves them totally unbalanced emotionally and physically. They’re minds are being over-developed Just like yours probably was. This is why people have little care of one another. They’re being taught to compete (for grades etc.) rather than relate to one another.
>>>> "Childhood is the target age for developing a strong brain. That is when the brain is programmed to think certain ways, rationalize, solve problems. If it isn't put to use in childhood, that child will have a lessor ability for intellectual growth in adulthood."...Interesting that you used the word "programmed" here. What, you don't think children can learn for themselves without being "programmed"? Again, children WANT to learn. They are naturally curious - at least until they are forced against their wills. They don’t need to be “programmed”.
"An example would be learning a foreign language. When children are taught to speak another language, it then becomes easier for them, as adults, to learn a third. Whereas, if in childhood a foreign language is not learned, it is very difficult to train the brain, as an adult, to learn. It's possible, but much harder."
...You are talking down to me here as if I am a child and presuming I have no knowledge of how easy it is to learn as a child vs. an adult. I am well aware that children learn more easily than adults and their ways are conditioned as children. And one of the worst things they are conditioned into is thinking out of "fear" instead of out of their own Creative Intelligence. They are being taught how to "remember" out of fear - not how to THINK and appreciate their own insights. Any computer can “remember”. And once again, this fear-based "thinking" which is really remembering is a result of "having to" "or else" instead of wanting to... Regarding learning languages, if a child learns music they can speak to any human regardless of their language. You might as well just put them under hypnosis and let them sit in trance all day. That way you can be sure they’ll remember everything.>>>> "The brain is a muscle. Use it or lose it."
...Brains are composed of neurons not muscles. There is no child in the world who is not going to use their brain because they were not forced to learn things in school. Nor will they "lose it". You might want to re-study your biology. You seem to be misreading everything I posted. There was just an article in Reader's Digest about how much propaganda is behind even the math questions that our chidren are being asked. We're not kind-heartedly developing children's ability to think - we're conditioning them to think the way we want them to.
>>>> "Children must be forced to get an education for the same reason they must be forced to go to the doctor and eat their vegetables. If they're not, they will suffer as adults because their brain has not been trained properly."
...You use the word "must" and "forced" 4 times in the same sentence to prove your point... sounds pretty dictatorial and myopic to me... Forcing children to eat vegtables is the precise reason why they don't like them. It's not that they don't like vegtables so much as they have a bad taste in their mouth from being forced against their wills to eat them... and this is the same reason why they end up not wanting to go to school or learn -stop forcing them and they'll enjoy it and WANT to… Regarding doctors, most children illnesses resolve themselves without doctors or medications. Without medications, children would for the most part re-cuperate on their own and develop stronger immune systems that can fight illnesses without need for anti-biotics. We have been so brainwashed into thinking we are “bad parents” if we don’t bring our children to the doctors if they are sick and that the anti-biotics the doctors are prescribing are “curing” the illnesses that they are no longer useful against most diseases. It is our immune system that combats the diseases and this is what we need to keep healthy.
>>> "You might want to consider reading up a bit on cognition and childhood development. It might shed some light on the issue, as well as make you take a second look at what the real problem might be instead of trying to find a cause in something, anything, that has nothing to do with you."
...You might want to consider not being so presumptuous about how knowledgable or intelligent the person is who you think you can condescendingly speak down to. And while you're at it read NY State teacher of the year award winner John Gotto's book called "Dumbing Us Down" which exposes the whole reason why our compulsory educational system was developed in the first place – so businessmen could breed a compliant nation of workers as was done in Germany.
What makes you think you are the only one who "knows" what the "real" problem is? I am not denying my own learning condition - nor do I see it as a problem that I don't think as fast as others - any more than I consider it a problem that I do not run as fast as others. Not all people are “supposed to” think at the same speed. I probably have more emotional intelligence then they’ll ever have which for me, is much more important anyway. When olympians take drugs to run faster we disqualify them yet we put children on them to “think faster” and insist it’s a good thing. Maybe we should start giving all students intravenous feedings of amphetamines at school that way we can make sure everybody is “up to speed”.
>>>> "I'm sorry if that sounded harsh, but I just can not believe that, in a country where a large percentage of the population can't even read (including adults who were born and raised here), and most people can't even name one member of the Supreme Court (even though the court makes decisions that impact state laws,) that someone would say we need "less" education. If anything, we need more."... Number 1, I doubt very much you are "sorry" about your harshness at all. If you were you wouldn’t be so. Number 2, you are probably so programmed to think that the mind and knowledge is everything that you've forgotten how to have any semblance of a HEART. You don't seem to regard children as human beings and individuals who are meant to be nurtured into development like young plants, but more "corralled" into thinking and reacting the way others think they "should be" according to what "they think" is "right" for them. You think children need to be “controlled” rather than developed. Children are not cattle - they are free people who should be allowed to think for themselves and make their own decisions about what they want their lives to be like - much more than we allow them to. They are not stupid. Unless we “Dumb Them Down” to believe thay are by speaking down to them condescendingly as you seem to be trying to do to me. Who the hell are we to tell anyone else, regardless of their age, what they “should” learn? In our society we take away their own intelligence and turn it into what we "think" is "good" for them. We train them by outmoded and obsolete standards that will be mostly inapplicable by the time they reach working age. I say let them read and learn whatever their hearts desire and they will flourish and probably turn the world into a much more functional planet than the way it is right now.... The best way to get anyone to not want to do something is to force them against their wills and to force them to move faster than their own pace. Look at the neurosis, compulsion and addiction in the world today and tell me this is not true. People’s mental health is suffering as a result all over the planet from trying to “keep up” with technology. Computers were meant to serve man and now we are serving computers being tethered to cell-phones, pagers and e-mail 24 hours a day!
The INTENTION and METHOD in education are the problems. Someday I hope we'll become more civilized and realize that we are treating our children like present day slaves by stripping them of their free wills to learn whatever it is they want to learn. Liberty and Freedom for all includes children too. Why should they be exempt from human rights?...Dan
poster:LightShifter
thread:305074
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040120/msgs/305183.html