This article from PsychologyToday is fantastic. It's very true.
These are just some snippets I found meaningful. Go here to read the whole article. I highly recommend it.
"They learn that their own questions and interests don't count. What counts are their abilities to provide the "correct" answers to questions that they did not ask and that do not interest them. And "correct" means the answers that the teachers or the test-producers are looking for, not answers that the students really understand to be correct."
"Students recognize that it would be impossible to delve deeply into their school subjects, even if they wanted to. Time does not permit it. They must follow the schedule set by the school curriculum. Moreover, many of them have become convinced that they must also engage in a certain number of formal extracurricular activities, to prove that they are the "well rounded" individuals that top colleges are seeking. Anyone who really allowed himself or herself to pursue a love of one subject would fail all the others."
"Teachers often say that if you cheat in school you are only cheating yourself, because you are shortcutting your own education. But that argument holds water only if what you would have learned by not cheating outweighs the value of whatever you did with the time you saved by cheating."
"One of the tragedies of our system of schooling is that it deflects students from discovering what they truly love and find worth doing for its own sake. Instead, it teaches them that life is a series of hoops that one must get through, by one means or another, and that success lies in others' judgments rather than in real, self-satisfying accomplishments."
10/25/10
Smart People
I'm sure there are a lot of people who think that those around them are dumb because they never talk about anything interesting. The truth is there are probably some people that really have nothing interesting to talk about most of the time, but I think many very smart people don't consider sharing what they know because it's so obvious to them, and instead of being something always on their mind, it becomes a part of them--so much so that they don't even consider it knowledge.
Say someone was watching you work a math problem and you multiplied 9 by 8 in your head. They ask how you got to 72 so quickly. You'd probably think, "9x8 is just 72..."
Our multiplication tables are so deeply ingrained in us that we don't really even consider it knowledge.
When someone learns about/gets better at/practices something, they lose sight of what's common knowledge. And what tends to happen is they lose the incitement to try to share with those on a different level of understanding because it's frustratingly futile.
Regard my cheesy drawing depicting competence on an artful level.
In short, the stick man on the upper level doesn't have the motive to descend to man on the lower level using the dumb elevator. He'd rather hang around and wait for someone to come up a level to talk to him.
(I suppose a set of stairs would have been more befitting to convey my point, but I already closed Microsoft Paint.)
Say someone was watching you work a math problem and you multiplied 9 by 8 in your head. They ask how you got to 72 so quickly. You'd probably think, "9x8 is just 72..."
Our multiplication tables are so deeply ingrained in us that we don't really even consider it knowledge.
When someone learns about/gets better at/practices something, they lose sight of what's common knowledge. And what tends to happen is they lose the incitement to try to share with those on a different level of understanding because it's frustratingly futile.
Regard my cheesy drawing depicting competence on an artful level.
In short, the stick man on the upper level doesn't have the motive to descend to man on the lower level using the dumb elevator. He'd rather hang around and wait for someone to come up a level to talk to him.
(I suppose a set of stairs would have been more befitting to convey my point, but I already closed Microsoft Paint.)
10/17/10
Sir Ken Robinson on Changing Education Paradigms
Here is a talk by Ken Robinson at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts (RSA), a rising organization that embodies much of TED’s vision.
10/14/10
Myopia
It scares me how little I know and how small we all are but how much we think we know. Does anyone feel the same way? I hate to think that some people hide in a little cave of myopia, but myopia is everywhere. If you think about it, animosity, pretentiousness, conceit, anger, depression, and even happiness are somehow tied to myopia. If we could always see the other side of things, what would our emotions be like? If we're angry, are we failing to acknowledge the precariousness of the other person's situation? If we're always happy, are we missing a depressing side of everything? If we're depressed, are we missing all that is good? I like to think the latter is true, and even if it's not, I choose to live by it obviously because it makes me happy. Perhaps our limited perspective let's us be motivated. Maybe we become ambitious because we can't see everything ahead of us. I think when I'm older I'll look back and think that things I tried were stupid, but I'll realize that if I didn't do them, I wouldn't have gained the experience that led me to do whatever it is I am glad I did.
It seems that as the human mind learns more about the world around it, things lose value. Some things that you find entrancing lose their awe when you realize that there is so much more out there, and many times, you realize you can't get to it.
The question is whether we should remain ignorant and enjoy ourselves, or strive to be wise and acquire knowledge. Unfortunately, the only way to find out is by acquiring more knowledge and becoming wise. It's a strange paradox, but since the only way to know is to become wise, we should do so.
Steps we can take to get out of the cave of myopia:
1) Be curious
Ask yourself what everyone might be thinking when people are expecting you to think your own thoughts. When you're thinking about something, think about why you are. Think about what led you to the thoughts you're having. Be skeptical of your thoughts. When you do something irrational, try to prove that it was rational. It will ultimately lead you to being more rational. When something is interesting to others and not to you, figure out why. Think about why the things around you work the way they do. Try to guess what people will say next, and try to figure out where they're thoughts might be coming from or what their premise is.
2) Be empirical
Don't be boring. Don't do the same thing everyday. Take a different way home from school or work than you normally do and try driving slow if you normally speed and vice-versa. Listen to music you normally don't. Read a book that doesn't look interesting to you. Talk to someone you don't know. Do something that makes you feel uncomfortable and get comfortable with it.
3) As banal as it sounds, consider the golden rule. (Wikipedia's definition makes it seem less cliche and more applicable, so read that if you have trouble taking it seriously.)
I hate hearing that, and it hurts to type it, and you probably stopped reading for a second after reading that, but the real value behind it isn't as cliche as the phrase. Because we cannot live inside another's mind, we have to rely on our own experiences to judge whether how we act is justified and circumspect. Before disregarding this, think about it. The best way to implement this into your instinctive, reflexive thought is when someone is angry with you for doing something, remember your thought process in that occasion. Make a conscious effort to commit to memory the defensive strategies you prepare in your mind to counter your offender. Then, the next time you are angry at someone, find this experience deep down in your brain, or at least the feelings from it, and consider them. If you do this enough, it becomes a reflex, and you'll find it increasingly easy to tolerate others. Make your anger rational. It's hard to do when you consider what the other person might be thinking.
If everyone would be little more curious and empirical, so many problems with society would be solved right away. I'm sure of it.
I feel like I'm writing some kind of self-help book on anger management or something. I don't know what happened, but I still think these things work and make people more perceptive. I don't mean to sound like I know everything about being wise. I certainly don't; these are my attempts at explaining how I think myopia can be overcome. This is really more a way for me to sort all my jumbled thoughts.
It seems that as the human mind learns more about the world around it, things lose value. Some things that you find entrancing lose their awe when you realize that there is so much more out there, and many times, you realize you can't get to it.
The question is whether we should remain ignorant and enjoy ourselves, or strive to be wise and acquire knowledge. Unfortunately, the only way to find out is by acquiring more knowledge and becoming wise. It's a strange paradox, but since the only way to know is to become wise, we should do so.
Steps we can take to get out of the cave of myopia:
1) Be curious
Ask yourself what everyone might be thinking when people are expecting you to think your own thoughts. When you're thinking about something, think about why you are. Think about what led you to the thoughts you're having. Be skeptical of your thoughts. When you do something irrational, try to prove that it was rational. It will ultimately lead you to being more rational. When something is interesting to others and not to you, figure out why. Think about why the things around you work the way they do. Try to guess what people will say next, and try to figure out where they're thoughts might be coming from or what their premise is.
2) Be empirical
Don't be boring. Don't do the same thing everyday. Take a different way home from school or work than you normally do and try driving slow if you normally speed and vice-versa. Listen to music you normally don't. Read a book that doesn't look interesting to you. Talk to someone you don't know. Do something that makes you feel uncomfortable and get comfortable with it.
3) As banal as it sounds, consider the golden rule. (Wikipedia's definition makes it seem less cliche and more applicable, so read that if you have trouble taking it seriously.)
I hate hearing that, and it hurts to type it, and you probably stopped reading for a second after reading that, but the real value behind it isn't as cliche as the phrase. Because we cannot live inside another's mind, we have to rely on our own experiences to judge whether how we act is justified and circumspect. Before disregarding this, think about it. The best way to implement this into your instinctive, reflexive thought is when someone is angry with you for doing something, remember your thought process in that occasion. Make a conscious effort to commit to memory the defensive strategies you prepare in your mind to counter your offender. Then, the next time you are angry at someone, find this experience deep down in your brain, or at least the feelings from it, and consider them. If you do this enough, it becomes a reflex, and you'll find it increasingly easy to tolerate others. Make your anger rational. It's hard to do when you consider what the other person might be thinking.
If everyone would be little more curious and empirical, so many problems with society would be solved right away. I'm sure of it.
I feel like I'm writing some kind of self-help book on anger management or something. I don't know what happened, but I still think these things work and make people more perceptive. I don't mean to sound like I know everything about being wise. I certainly don't; these are my attempts at explaining how I think myopia can be overcome. This is really more a way for me to sort all my jumbled thoughts.
10/11/10
What the weekend has taught me that school cannot...
Something peculiar happens nearly every weekend for me--something that never happens at school. Starting normally on Saturday night or Sunday morning, I find a deep curiosity for something, it escalates, and I pursue it until Monday morning. This weekend it was blind euphoria, last weekend it was cognitive dissonance. There's always something interesting to learn. The frustrating and increasingly evident fact is that these kinds of curiosities and interests are never provoked in a school setting. There's something about the way we've been taught for so long that discourages our own curiosity, and we don't even realize it. We get "educated" away from our curiosity in a school system that places right answers above questions and general intelligence above specific intelligence.
Today I learned how blue screens work, how ribbon microphones are manufactured, how ink is made, what clairvoyance has to do with pre-cognition and retro-cognition, what hot, cold, and warm reading is, that listening to an audio book at twice the normal speed is twice as productive, a myriad of other things, and I got to talk to a very talented cellist about compositional efforts and music education. All of these things I attribute to productive education, (I know at least, that the conversation I had with the cellist will greatly influence how I deal with my future) but I did them all while I should have been reading the Odyssey and taking notes from my government book. I do suck at time management and I do realize, teachers, that I could have done my homework and THEN done these things, but the reason I do this is because if I stifle my curiosity while it's at its highest point, I'll lose sense of how to achieve it and I'll lose my love of learning. I've learned that the best way to be curious is to never place anything above the need for curiosity. The reason I think students do not have high curiosity in school is because they are trained to ignore it. They're trained to get the "right answer" instead of questioning why the "wrong answer" is wrong.
A demonstrative scenario:
A teacher instructs a student to solve for the final velocity of a free falling object on a test. The student arrives at the correct answer, yet the teacher marks it wrong because he did not use the calculus based method he taught in class the day before.
The "educated student" -
Without questioning the context under which he's solving for the velocity, he tries to solve the problem logically, implementing physics, which makes the most sense to him, in order to solve the problem. The student asks why he got points deducted and is told that he must use the "correct method." He quietly submits with, "Okay" and goes to his desk.
The curious student -
Asks why he is solving for the final velocity. He receives the overly used excuse of "Because you need to know how." He seeks out a situation in which final velocity would need to be determined and ponders the benefits of solving for it. He then solves the problem using physics, which makes the most sense to him to solve the problem. He asks why he got points deducted and receives the same response as the 1st student. Instead of quietly submitting, though, he asks why the calculus based method is more efficient than the physics based method. He then argues for his case but considers the teacher's reasoning of why the calculus method is more efficient. He learns the calculus based method and applies it to the next problem he solves. He then commits to memory the different situations in which each method should be implemented and the reasoning behind both and considers its application in any other discipline that might concern him.
The first problem with both situations is that the teacher marked the problem wrong based on the rationale that the method he teaches is what the students must follow.
The second problem is that the teacher gave no context for the problem, which leaves the students with no real live application for the problem. In order to learn something, students need a reason to learn it. They need to want to learn it.
The third problem is that we have in conventional education systems way too many students like the 1st student. They have no impetus to determine why their teacher's method is the best and they don't attach what they learn in school to their lives outside of school.
The fourth problem is that students are rewarded for following the 1st student's approach. Doing exactly what the teacher tells you what to do will get you an 'A', but this approach is like reading a step by step instruction manual to playing monopoly that tells you every property to buy, which properties to build on, when to build, which token to use, with whom to trade, and what to trade. There's no fun in that. If you played that way, you would be bored and never learn why what you did produced the results you got. The potential for adaptability is lost. You would lose interest very quickly and there would be no innovation in playing.
All these problems are inhibitors of curiosity. I believe that real learning cannot happen without curiosity.
Students are losing interest. They're losing curiosity because they're being educated out of it.
If students are educated in order to be able to govern and direct the future, how can they do so without innovation? Innovation is derived from curiosity. You cannot have innovation without it. We don't know what the future will hold, but the type of education that we have is based on the presumption that we do.
Update: As a result of saying up late to write this, I probably won't get up in time to read the spark notes of the Odyssey for the quiz in 8 hours. Too bad I missed out on Homer's story of the great Odysseus for an explanation of why I could care less.
Today I learned how blue screens work, how ribbon microphones are manufactured, how ink is made, what clairvoyance has to do with pre-cognition and retro-cognition, what hot, cold, and warm reading is, that listening to an audio book at twice the normal speed is twice as productive, a myriad of other things, and I got to talk to a very talented cellist about compositional efforts and music education. All of these things I attribute to productive education, (I know at least, that the conversation I had with the cellist will greatly influence how I deal with my future) but I did them all while I should have been reading the Odyssey and taking notes from my government book. I do suck at time management and I do realize, teachers, that I could have done my homework and THEN done these things, but the reason I do this is because if I stifle my curiosity while it's at its highest point, I'll lose sense of how to achieve it and I'll lose my love of learning. I've learned that the best way to be curious is to never place anything above the need for curiosity. The reason I think students do not have high curiosity in school is because they are trained to ignore it. They're trained to get the "right answer" instead of questioning why the "wrong answer" is wrong.
A demonstrative scenario:
A teacher instructs a student to solve for the final velocity of a free falling object on a test. The student arrives at the correct answer, yet the teacher marks it wrong because he did not use the calculus based method he taught in class the day before.
The "educated student" -
Without questioning the context under which he's solving for the velocity, he tries to solve the problem logically, implementing physics, which makes the most sense to him, in order to solve the problem. The student asks why he got points deducted and is told that he must use the "correct method." He quietly submits with, "Okay" and goes to his desk.
The curious student -
Asks why he is solving for the final velocity. He receives the overly used excuse of "Because you need to know how." He seeks out a situation in which final velocity would need to be determined and ponders the benefits of solving for it. He then solves the problem using physics, which makes the most sense to him to solve the problem. He asks why he got points deducted and receives the same response as the 1st student. Instead of quietly submitting, though, he asks why the calculus based method is more efficient than the physics based method. He then argues for his case but considers the teacher's reasoning of why the calculus method is more efficient. He learns the calculus based method and applies it to the next problem he solves. He then commits to memory the different situations in which each method should be implemented and the reasoning behind both and considers its application in any other discipline that might concern him.
The first problem with both situations is that the teacher marked the problem wrong based on the rationale that the method he teaches is what the students must follow.
The second problem is that the teacher gave no context for the problem, which leaves the students with no real live application for the problem. In order to learn something, students need a reason to learn it. They need to want to learn it.
The third problem is that we have in conventional education systems way too many students like the 1st student. They have no impetus to determine why their teacher's method is the best and they don't attach what they learn in school to their lives outside of school.
The fourth problem is that students are rewarded for following the 1st student's approach. Doing exactly what the teacher tells you what to do will get you an 'A', but this approach is like reading a step by step instruction manual to playing monopoly that tells you every property to buy, which properties to build on, when to build, which token to use, with whom to trade, and what to trade. There's no fun in that. If you played that way, you would be bored and never learn why what you did produced the results you got. The potential for adaptability is lost. You would lose interest very quickly and there would be no innovation in playing.
All these problems are inhibitors of curiosity. I believe that real learning cannot happen without curiosity.
Students are losing interest. They're losing curiosity because they're being educated out of it.
If students are educated in order to be able to govern and direct the future, how can they do so without innovation? Innovation is derived from curiosity. You cannot have innovation without it. We don't know what the future will hold, but the type of education that we have is based on the presumption that we do.
Update: As a result of saying up late to write this, I probably won't get up in time to read the spark notes of the Odyssey for the quiz in 8 hours. Too bad I missed out on Homer's story of the great Odysseus for an explanation of why I could care less.
10/10/10
Sokanu: The Blog
Whoever has not visited this blog should do so. The creator of the blog got his inspiration from Ken Robinson just like I did. It's aimed at helping people find their passion and it has some excellent passages about education.
http://blog.sokanu.com/
http://blog.sokanu.com/
Blind Euphoria
Two nights ago, after returning home from the "homecoming football game" which I did not actively watch, I got to contemplate the social paradigm I'll call "blind euphoria." It happens without fail at all the large social events I've been to. And it seems that the best way to recognize this paradigm is by consciously placing yourself outside of all the excitement enveloping you. What seems to happen to attendants of these large social events is that as a result of planning to enjoy their evening and completely immersing themselves in a certain effort, (the football team, the band, the student section, the walk-around-and-look-cool people) they tend to lose their normal perception of propriety and others' perceptions. When you accomplish something fantastic, and you are just euphoric, you believe that all eyes are on you, but you don't mind it; in fact, you enjoy it. You feel more significant to others than you actually are. And even the consideration that you are experiencing blinded emotions does not help but mitigate your distorted sense of propriety. You still cannot help but have pride in yourself. But this is definitely not a bad thing because if those around you share the same state of mind, atypically progressive things can happen.
When two people have a conversation with each other while both permitting blind euphoria, a new understanding of one another or a new relationship not attainable in another setting is created. In this kind of circumstance, people tend to act in a way they normally would not, like greeting someone they never talk to or shouting something personally hilarious but not publicly hilarious. Perhaps the reason that memorable experiences are associated with large social gatherings is because the the energy normally put towards conducting oneself adequately and avoiding awkwardness is put toward living in the moment instead.
It's captivating to think: If there were some way to keep such an elevation of emotion at its place, would it be as enjoyable? Would we actually experience euphoria constantly? Just like question of "Is there light if there is no dark?", It could be argued well that there would be no euphoria because there would be no absence of it, but imagine if it were. What would perennial euphoria be like? I think the benefit of having only temporal euphoria is having depression that allows us to contemplate euphoria. That itself might prove to be a better alternative to experiencing euphoria perennially. There really isn't any application in questioning it, but it's an interesting concept that, if studied, leads to new realizations.
The most fascinating and enlightening thing for me to do is to step out of this poignant realm in which I find myself engaged and observe this blind euphoria happening. Seeing yourself objectively rather than subjectively is a door into a world of curiosity otherwise latent.
When two people have a conversation with each other while both permitting blind euphoria, a new understanding of one another or a new relationship not attainable in another setting is created. In this kind of circumstance, people tend to act in a way they normally would not, like greeting someone they never talk to or shouting something personally hilarious but not publicly hilarious. Perhaps the reason that memorable experiences are associated with large social gatherings is because the the energy normally put towards conducting oneself adequately and avoiding awkwardness is put toward living in the moment instead.
It's captivating to think: If there were some way to keep such an elevation of emotion at its place, would it be as enjoyable? Would we actually experience euphoria constantly? Just like question of "Is there light if there is no dark?", It could be argued well that there would be no euphoria because there would be no absence of it, but imagine if it were. What would perennial euphoria be like? I think the benefit of having only temporal euphoria is having depression that allows us to contemplate euphoria. That itself might prove to be a better alternative to experiencing euphoria perennially. There really isn't any application in questioning it, but it's an interesting concept that, if studied, leads to new realizations.
The most fascinating and enlightening thing for me to do is to step out of this poignant realm in which I find myself engaged and observe this blind euphoria happening. Seeing yourself objectively rather than subjectively is a door into a world of curiosity otherwise latent.
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