Teach the Brain Forums

April 26, 2006

Good Morning,

There is a famous quote that goes something like this: "To really learn something, just try and change it". We have and have had.....enough empirical evidence for a long long time to make necessary changes in the curriculum and demeanor of subject matter and student responsibility respectively.

High schools on down through pre schools are especially conservative and just about the opposite is true with colleges and universities. I know that this is a generalization, but let me try to make a point. The group dynamics of the lower grade child are ensconced in tradition so deep that even subtle changes belie contemporary thinking. I do not feel that just knowledge of the brain is going to force changes, I believe that knowledge of the brain and scientific evidence of educational 'well being', leading to educating the total child will be enhanced ten fold with the scientific community and educational practitioners evincing the underpinnings of child development that we have just kind of taken for granted.

Child development is serious business and educators should be using their professional training along with the workings of the biological substrates of the human experience to make school a warm, comfortable, challenging place to live all day long. Can you imagine if children were to be so involved with all subjects as they are with computers and learning games et al. and education could be commensurate with their prior knowledge and interests?

Can you imagine that todays parent really is heavily concerned about getting through the system...the formal school system that is....

Building a curriculum around the needs and interests of the child can be done and oh how exciting it could be. Actually this is happening in many schools already...they are not the headlines of newpapers and television. I have seen some of the most wonderful teachers being paid far less than some of the worst teachers possible because our laws and political systems tend to rationalize the veracity of competence due to inequities built into our political educational systems both public and private. We reward incompetence and call it "dead wood'.

So what has been said here....probably nothing...but we know that we would really dislike having to sit in school all day with a boring teaching and a boring curriculum and just waiting to get outside and free to learn something.(our way).

Can you imagine being rejected by your peers and your teachers....well the standard view might be; so that is a sign that you need to grow-up and change because you seem different to them....Wrong....think about it. Children want to be challenged and would give anything to be challenged with less fear and up front knowledge that they are still part of the school family. Not being included for whom you really are. forces changes upon children to conform notwithstanding the outcome of the change. You see it every day in the conformity that teenagers take in being part of their peer group; from dress to behavior....Just something to think about....
Be well,
Rob

April 27, 2006

Good morning

Current efforts at school reform...many programs under review. Url: http://www.alliance.brown.edu/topics/reform.shtml
Best,
Rob

Hi Rob ,
You wrote:"Can you imagine that todays parent really is heavily concerned about getting through the system...the formal school system that is...."

Where the common term is; Parent's Nightmare?

Whilst we discuss potential practises for Teachers.
The real disaster is with our formal school systems?
Rampant Administration ?
Which Teachers. Parents and Students complain about?

The tail wagging the dog?

With politicians holding the dog's lead?

Today's educational focus is on meeting administrative requirements within a timeline. A production line approach with extremely limited flexibility?
Other than a faulty product, special needs diversionary section.
In a quest for administrative accountability, with constantly measurable outcomes.
Simply helping children develop their abilities to learn and a confidence in their ability to learn. Seems to have got lost along the way?

Could Schools, Teachers, Students and Parents get by without all of the current Administration?
Geoff.

Hi Geoff

School systems are so anachronistic that they still use the WW I structure of change of command. This means the decision many times has to go away from situtation related staff to line positions that push the challege up the line-staff organization until it reaches the top decision members on the organizational chart who are the furthest from the problem.

The challege or problem seems to get bigger and bigger the further away it gets from the scene of the crime. BY THIS TIME THE CHALLENGE IS UNRECOGNIZABLE.

Administrators tend to be gate keepers of the status quo and accountable to
anyone and everyone. We can easily lose sight of our reason being there.

Best,
Rob

Considering the subject we are about education
what we need to consider is how do we best achieve a fully educated world, what does a fully educated world mean, obviously it does not mean that we should all go to university, obviously it does not mean that we should stay exactly as we are, obviously we have to make changes in the perception of education, and especially in the perception of how a good education is achieved.

Having spent a couple of days with my friend Winston Hagston the professor of theoretical physics, alongside our joined interest in teaching basic skills simply to very young children, I have been asking him his views about alternative sources of energy, he tells me that nuclear energy is probably the most realistic long-term source of energy that we can look towards, he tells me that the world is continually bombarded with radiation, but human beings have withstood this bombardment, he tells me that the biggest fear human beings have regards utilizing nuclear energy is waste disposal. He suggests that only concentrated scientific research will be able to find a convenient and acceptable form of storing and reducing the danger of spent nuclear fuel. In his opinion these are problems which can be solved simply by throwing large amounts of capital into research on radiation breakdown and at matters associated with it.

His only other long-term view of fuel efficiency and availability was the alternative use of land in order to grow crops which could provide fuel, with farmers all the world over suffering lower prices for agricultural commodities; this must be at least a short-term solution. However if we are to avoid the dangers of starvation we must all look towards utilizing areas of land in a completely different manner, utilizing arid lands in order to produce crops that are efficient in their conversion to usable fuel without large industrial conversion being needed, allows us to think on a broad front.

If we are to consider areas of the world where large amounts of arid land are available in these areas occur when natural weather fails to distribute the rain in usable proportions as regards their natural useful follow-up for farming, quickly coming to mind are the central parts of Australia and the large parts of north Africa where the rainfall soon deteriorate as it leaves the Mediterranean Sea shore. Politically and practically it may be possible to persuade the Australians to take part in a revitalization as to the heart of Australia, we would be dealing with far fewer individuals whose life would be disrupted, by the extreme manner of landscape change and utilization that needs to take place, these areas have two commodities that would be essential to growing crops purely for fuel purposes, firstly they have no practical alternative use, secondly they are based in very hot areas of the world, and given the right conversion of those desert areas, photosynthesis alongside broad genetically modification would provide as with ideal areas suitable for growing crops for fuel alone.

Let us now consider what needs to take place in order to establish vast areas of cropping utilizing natures efficient photosynthesis conversion, by which we all live anyway. For many years I considered that eventually crops would be grown that were perennial on semi desert at and arid regions, those crops I considered would be able to produce their ownl nitrogen in the manner of a clover or legume, those designer crops I considered would be able to produce cereals, cereals are after all only developed grasses and in the manner of ryegrass they are perennially survivable, so we have a crop that never needs to be re-sown, no involvement in cultivation expense or crop establishment after it was once established, given then that our designer crop produced its own and nitrogen from nodules bacteria in the root system, we would then have a crop which could be grazed by animals, during certain parts of the year, and at other parts of the year would be allowed to grow naturally allowing grain to be harvested conventionally.

The dreams I had as a young man hopeing that I would be able to involve myself in feeding the world are now a distinct possibility, but in the short-term we need to cultivate these vast areas purely for production of fossil fuel,

Our major problem will be to establish perpetual supplies of water, we may be able to adapt crops to utilize seawater, we may even be able to grow crops directly on blankets which cover vast areas of the sea, but if we are able to develop crops which can utilize successfully seawater, then it may be possible in engineering terms to develop the vast natural seawater canals which would not only be useful for bringing the raw materials necessary at an economical rate to various lands thousands of miles away from the sea but we would also be developing a system of transport which is already super efficient, all we have to think about is an old horse walking alone at canal bank pulling a 50 ton load.
Whether we use seawater or not, seawater will be an essential part of industrial crop growing, once the water is in the areas of the world where we need to produse crops for industrial use, we should then be able to develop manners of desalination which utilized least energy, where crops were being grown for fossil fuels,that would be directly available in the areas where we needed to convert seawater into clean water.


Another advantage to utilizing these uninhabitable areas, would be in developing areas for human habitation in order to relieve our cities. That are continuing the centralization of populations and fossil fuel contamination to atmospheres which will only continue to develop unless we take drastic action to prevent it.

Developing the vast sea way canals through the central parts of our massive continents will provide new areas for population to live where fossil fuel consumption would be almost unnecessary in order to keep those people warmly housed as in the manner of North America northern Europe and vast areas throughout Russia.

Within my travels through Australia I came across an area along the western sea coast that had risen much later from the seabed, this area appeared to run northwards from Perth towards Gerald ton moving north along the coast of Western Australia. This area of land was mainly composed of sand, however over many years runoff from the main part of the country had carried a silt which had after all the thousands of years been washed down into the sand area, apart from growing a few stunted bushes and trees, the land was used was for agricultural purposes, however the Australians being of an enterprising nature, had discovered that a crop occurring naturally in the Canary Islands, as a shrub or tree was suitable to be grown in that area of Western Australia, I shall need to be corrected for the spelling, that will be up to Geoff, the crop I am talking about is Tagesasta, or something like it, it is also a natural legume crop, it grows deep into the sand and the roots spread out over vast areas, this allows it to be planted in rows widely spaced but using all the available land, even in the most severe drought, this crop never loses its colour, when you see it grown in Western Australia, it does not look unlike a tea plantations. Having given you some thinking on how fossil fuel shortage is to be solved, you may wonder what is this to do with education, in my opinion a great deal. Who is going to undertake the vast engineering and agricultural undertaking necessary for us to build a sustainable fossil fuel production bases, thinking quickly ahead the advantages of re-engineering the world's massive continents however the land was used for production initially, it would provide us with a safety valve should the world population continue to explode as aggressively, it would give us time to develop a safe nuclear industry, and it would giver millions of us a worth the while occupation, if the Western world put as much money into it, as it is having to provide a world police force purely to prevent hostile religious groups, blowing each other to pieces, it would be sufficient.

My simple view is that we are all one species, and we cannot occupy this planet safely unless we work together, the only way we shall ever worked together, is when we work for universal purpose. Universal purpose must be to occupy our lives as usefully, and as profitably as possible, why I use the word profitably I consider it to of a large meaning, as it is only by the most sensible exploitation of the planet resources, can we ever hope, to live in a peaceful world.

I had intended to write a discourse on the essentials changes needed within education and the perception of education, but before I started to write it, I read my own thesis which I wrote over three years ago, I still found it extremely relevant and I stand by everything that I said in it.

I hope I have made just a few people consider what is to be the world's future, and to consider the necessary changes in education which much take place if we are to achieve it.

Changes have to take place, nothing remains the same, nostalgia does not provide us with a living. What I now offer again for your consideration. Thank God for the internet. Thank humanity for the provision of it, we have to contemplate the future, and then organize ourselves to work within it.

Please take a little time from your life, to read what I have written previously for you to consider.

http://www.abacusandalphabet.com/TheBush...oncept.htm

Using this word recognition system I tried to head todays writing as conclusion, the word recognition system itself started with confusion how similar these two words are and how much are they integrated within the human brain.

On a bright sunny Wednesday morning on the third day of the fifth month of the year, I have needs to bring a temporary conclusion to what I have learnt and thought within the last decade.
My youngest daughter is near her 15th birthday, when she was four years old, I discovered they abacus and immediately set about teaching her mathematics with it, her first abacus still plays an important part within her small bedroom, it was a child's abacus of five strands each with ten bobbins, in order to understand how it worked I wrote numeral's on the frame of the abacus above each column. Within twenty four hours she was setting up the numbers on the abacus, it took myself only ten minutes watching a very well-made program to understand that using an abacus regularly imprints in within the mind of any child a multi dimensional lair of mathematical knowledge, it took my four-year-old daughter less than 24 hours to understand the principles of the abacus to set numbers to add numbers and a take-away numbers. From this position she was quickly able to tell the time and her development within reading progress proceeded quickly and broadly, throughout her school life she has never been out of the top of two or three children within her year in mathematics. My friend the professor of theoretical physics tells me that I am not a natural mathematician, who am i to argue with his conclusion, apart from the times when I was developing abacus one, I spent very little time instructing my daughter on mathematics I did however encourage her to chant her times tables, and to develop her own counting, utilising all the fingers and toes, her final display in this matter was to establish an effective memory of counting in twenties.

The only time throughout the last 10 years of her life, that I was clearly unaware of her abilities, was after being asked personally to give the answer to a problem for a friends child that it had been given at school, it is relatively simple the child had been asked to illustrate how only 10 trees could be planted in four rows of five, I spent some time going through logical possibilities, my daughter was irritated at the lenth of time I appeared to be taking to solve the problem she inquired of me what the problem was, she then drew a cross on a piece of paper, quickly followed by a five sided star, by which she immediately solved the problem, it was not her ability to solve the problem that amazed me, but the speed at which she solved the problem, she was less than 10 years old, I was so engrossed within my own studies, that I did not realise she had a penchant for puzzle books, every visit my daughter made to the supermarket with her mother, there was only one request, may I buy a puzzle book mother. Apart from her mathematical results where she is within the top three of her year in mathematics, out of 130 girls at a local public grammar schools, she shows no other sign of genius, and nor would I expect her to.


Although persistent I must be an extremely slow worker, since my discovery of the abacus and the potential of it, I became enchanted with the human brain and the many permanent memory possibilities that it offers to us, many things can be understood and remembered instantly and permanently, it is part of our human possibilities, the more that I study the human brain the more I realise the importance and breadth of language, it is within language that we ask questions and give explanation, it is within language that we identify a number, and after making a calculation concerning that number and others that we express our conclusion, there is little wonder that when we use language just in order to describe a number, the processing part of our brain understands that number just as simply as it does with every other word we utilizes.

During the mental process of a calculation many unrealised parts of the human brain will be working in tandem in order to process an answer and so within mental arithmetic it is no more or no less than the number expressing the number of times one.

Howard Gardener made dramatic steps in identifying what appears to be different abilities within intelligence, it is most useful to be able to study his conclusions, but between the theoretical conclusions that we all make about intelligence, it is most vital that in the end we consider that the human brain is working in harmony, my own personal conclusion is extremely simple there are only ever three things we have to consider, the manner of which we show each other how to do everything that we humanly do, the manner in which we correct each other when we eventually do what we need to do, and assessing and judging the achievements of doing, with regards specifically to the human knowledge we have gained personally, simply from doing.

We can call that a memory, knowledge, and as regards knowledge within the human mind, it can only at the best be compared to an iceberg, the vast majority of knowledge is way below the surface, the vast majority of knowledge within any human being, is very rarely available to be studied to be understood and to be shared easily, without massive abilities within language, those massive abilities within language will never be achieved without reading and consideration of the many aspects of humanness and the physical structures within our personal areas of knowledge, the physical structures of the world we inhabit and the ever growing knowledge and extent of the universe.

My own thinking leads me to believe that the random chance of evolution has allowed us to develop language and from our language we are able to retain vast areas of knowledge, we are also able to consider matters which may be probable but within the main part we must consider, the manner in which we live, the resulting development of the world as it is now, faced with an ever growing rapid demand for materials, necessary for the welfare of an ever-growing population, escalation of the demand for food housing and fast Growing leisure activities.

The vast majority of human beings live within abject poverty, national boundaries , and restrictions on travel, the only reason why those people that are poor and without resources are prevented from moving to the more developed parts of the world where there is the appearance of vast wealth never ending food supplies wonderful housing and unbelievable possibilities within the areas of leisure and education,

I consider it to be the duty of every educated human being to spend some time thinking about the future of the planet, a major part of adult education should be the consideration of the future, it is perfectly natural as we grow older that we wish to pass on the lessons that we have learned from the lives we have lived.

What is to happen to our family when the benign influence we imagine we have when we disappears? scientists claim that within the last nine years 90% of the world's present scientific knowledge has been developed, the sheer outrageous claim staggers belief, they are sure of one thing no one will be ever able to make that calculation.

Without the ability to change the leadership of individual countries by the Democratic wish of the population, there will never be any lasting peace, those people who wish to place themselves in control of others need to be regarded with suspicion, and however well founded their political beliefs and inspirations they started with, inevitably the power that they exercise over others is corrupting.

Only by the use of language and by the depths of collective thinking can we have any real control over our politicians, and only the words of Abraham Lincoln can convey the true value of democracy, you can kid some of the people some of the time but you cannot kid all of the people all of the time.

Whatever we are to do about the future, we have to do with considerable forethought.

Education and especially primary education is the essential link by which we can hold out any hope for a peaceful world future, the horrendous nature of atomic weapons has to some extent controlled the undemocratic developments throughout the world.
Normal thinking within the Western world as regards a restrained capitalist system, is accepted has having provided a portion of the world with the ability is to live well, to live peacefully in and in the main part to live without the intrusion of war. This situation however may not have the possibility of continuing, travel restriction and massive doses of famine throughout the undeveloped world alongside the democratic process which at the present time protects us, may lead in the future to billions of human beings becoming destabilised politically and having the political will to demand from the Western world the provision of food and the benefits of a welfare state.

Yesterday's news contains the fact that a democratically elected government in Bolivia has chosen to take over the oil producing industry, their chosen leader is a well educated and broadly experienced politician whose roots are entirely based within the National south. American Indian population.

This action taken by a democratically elected government of people indigenous to the Third World is unlikely to be approved off by western governments, both Kenneth Galbraith and John Kennedy recognised that unrestricted capitalism was a massive world danger. Most probably those who consider the necessity of unrestricted capitalism were responsible for the death of John Kennedy.
We must never forget the abilities those politicians the likes of John Kennedy and Winston Churchill had, they were born into lives of wealth and privilege, they had to fight for public recognition, and as often with those born with a silver spoon in their mouth, they had a natural air of authority, it was a part of there own personal makeup, but with those two individuals, that air of authority was well tempered by their perception of national duty.

The new president in Bolivia has a similar sense of national duty, but to his roots within the indigenous population of that country, he is a true man of the people, the second South American leader to come directly from the people.

I am no natural communalist, my immediate ancestors were medium-sized tenant farmers, although my own father benefited from the breakdown of the great English Estates after the Second World War, and became the owner of this tenanted farm, the power of big business changed my individual life, I have been given time for reflection, I have been given time to consider the future of the world, I have been given time to understand the workings of my mind, and the workings of the minds of others. Time to work out the motives of those people who would assume to be our leaders, time to consider the necessary changes within education which are needed if we are to hold any hope of a future peaceful world.


I started to write this morning with the intention of drawing my conclusions within the necessary changes that I consider need to be made within education, not only education within our own country and the Western world, but the changes which need to be made in order to provide education to areas within the world, where there are no possibilities of establishing education systems equivalent to those available within the Western world.


My first observation is this, we do not need to copy the Western world format for education, why do we not need to copy that system of education, purely because it is already outmoded.

Because we have invested such vast amounts of money to develop the education systems we have got, it will take a massive change in the perception of education to change it in any manner whatsoever, millions of people are involved in education provision and changes which involve anyone losing their job or being forcibly made to change their profession will be rejected strongly, no one wishes to lose their jobs, rapid economic change means that millions of people will be in the future faced with having to change their occupation a number of times during their lifetime.

Children obviously need to go to school, the most important thing about schools, is without doubt that the children are safe, the prime responsibility of the head teacher is to return the children safely to their parents in the evening, there is no need for them to be bothered at all during school hours, bullying from teachers or other pupils is totally reprehensible, we shall never totally eradicate it, but we must become ever more aware of it, and the possibility it has to harm, the pleasure and happiness that a child needs to feel when it goes to school, after all what is more pleasure to us then meeting with and discussing with our friends the minute details of our lives, we share our experiences through our language and the daily happenings within our lives.
A major part of happiness within school has to be concerned with the successful appreciation of the lessons we are learning, at whatever level of education we may achieve, were something becomes beyond our understanding we lose the ability to concentrate on it. Our mind works so quickly we regard not understanding anything as a danger signal and we respond accordingly, the individual mind goes into protection mode no one wishes to be thought a fool, so we simply adopt distraction practices purely in order to prevent anyone realising that there is something we do not know.

We have to accept as individuals that there are vast areas of knowledge which we shall never individually understand, most likely we will be able to understand the significance of this knowledge especially it when it is well explained to us within the possibility of language.
If we are to examine school closely, everything except the daily interaction of a school can be arranged in any other circumstances, imperceptible learning however takes place purely by interaction there on a large scale. If no teaching whatsoever took place within a school the child would benefit significantly from that interaction, we need to consider how best to harness that interaction, my belief is that as we are programmed to teach equally as naturally as we are programmed to learn we need to exploit that natural ability, being a teacher and most probably never having considered previously that most of what we as human beings individually learn is assimilated naturally, and purely because there appears to be a necessity to keep order within a school we may be alarmed at the thought of never doing any teaching in the conventional manner again.

If we were to take the first six years of communal education as being the most important part of anyone's life as regards education, that enables us to build a model, to be copied on a universal basis in order to set up schools without basic provision of either schools or teachers. Simply by harnessing the knowledge we have acquired, limited though that may be, there is sufficient realisation in order for us to evaluate and consider new concepts within primary education.

Purely because of the multiplicity of the human brain, we have to consider the development of a realization that we think we understand the things we do regularly, we may understand them or on the other hand we may not, if we are considering that the vast part of our intellect is subconscious, it is to that area of subconscious thinking that we need to address.

Conscious knowledge can be left entirely to secondary education but in fact, it is probably better to apply that application into the form of doing something useful, as the French philosopher Voltaire explained working solved most human problems, not only were we learning, we were earning, and fighting the thief of most time ; BORDOM and
its subsidiary effects on the (close study of wine and women and song)

The prevention of children becoming involved in drug taking in whatever form is a major issue in every large school. The evolution of secondary schooling is something I am quite happy to leave out of my consideration, I perceive that computers will dominate education throughout what we consider to be secondary education and throughout what we consider to be university education. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why education has to be adapted in order that it can play a role alongside the practical application in whatever subject or the career that any child or adult wishes to carry out.

My main consideration is simply to improve the ability of the subconscious human brain, some improvements will be just like the iceberg they will be clearly visible above the water, from there visibility we should have faith in the subconscious structure of the brain.

The child needs to develop sufficient speaking ability in order to be able to benefit from being brought into larger groups of children undertaking what we now consider to be formal education, almost all of my practical experience comes from dealing with children under the age of four years. What I have learnt and observed from the children that I have been associated with can be applied equally within the child's home or for that matter any size shape or type of schooling system.

Just as we all need to do things to learn things, so it is that a child needs to do things in order to utilize their naturally complex brain abilities.

In the first instance whether they realise it or not, or whether we realise it or not, whatever they are doing is building a mental pattern. Natural inclination of a child's behavior is to move from one interesting thing to another. There are three vital moments of pleasure within the child’s day.
Meeting their personal friends before the school bell rings, meeting friends at break times, and leaving school in the evening.


Consider this, one cannot make friends with people we have never met, meeting new people throughout all our lives, is naturally an important part of learning about people, the intimacy necessary for true Friendship can never come about without personal intimacy. In primary schools were the oldest children are no more than 12 years of age, interrelation between different age groups is an important part of every child's human development, establishing the intra-personnel aspects of the human mind, Howard Gardener divides this into two parts of intra-personnel mentality.
Interpersonal relationships can never take place where a child is continually seated with the same partner every hour of every day of every term.

Recognition of the these facts within primary schools, means that reorganization regarding the movement of children within primary schools will assist children within their interpersonal development, we learn naturally about each other, simply by meeting and observing those people we'd do meet,
even within a school of 600 children it can be arranged and will be of great benefit to both older and younger children, to both boys and girls, where provision for supervised Association is taking place, we have many families in today's world where children have little contact with brothers and sisters or even cousins, primary schools that are managed properly need to consider those relationships between children of all sexes and ages as a normal part of daily school behavior.

The biggest bully in any school is most unlikely to bully children they have had an association with as part of their natural school life. The nature of the school bully is prevented from development along those lines, because of the practical manner in which the school is being handled.