The Core Curiculum - CrossFit for the Brain

It's a hoary old argument in academia about the value of a core curriculum that all students must take. This causes some friction between teachers and students.

I loved the analogy below which was part of an article called Cross-Training for the Brain by Rob Jenkins.

The core curriculum is really a lot more like cross-training than like weight-lifting. Yes, to be mentally fit, we have to push against resistance. But we also must encounter different types of resistance and respond to them with different parts of our brain. That’s why math majors need to study literature and English majors have to sit through math classes and all of them need to take history and science and fine arts and so on.

What we have traditionally referred to as the “core curriculum” in reality is nothing less than cross-training for the brain.

In my academic training I have studied medical science, business and the humanities at postgraduate level. I can say from experience that the 3 different approaches taken in science, business and humanities cause different resistance in differing parts of the brain. This has been beneficial for my intellectual flexibility and problem solving.

DK

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LIving a Thousand Lives

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

Shared experience across time and space is the essence of reading. In my 59 years I have lived many hundreds of lives vicariously through the books I have read. I have been a man, a woman, rich, poor, old, young, educated, uneducated, wise and foolish.

I have lived in Ancient Greek and Roman times, during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance (both Arabic and European), the 17th-18th-19th-20th-21st centuries and I have travelled the length and breadth of the universe.

This has all been accomplished without getting off the sofa!!

Long live reading!

May you all live a thousand lives.

DK

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Unschooling: Birds don’t go to flight school

“Birds don’t go to flight school.” ~ Linda Dobson

I love Linda's quote. Schooling is not necessary for learning about life and life activities. Children learn to speak before they go to school. Birds learn to fly by doing not by teaching.

Unfortunately we often limit our children from learning naturally by inclination by forcing them into schooling.

It is amazing how the negative effects of schooling stay with you for life. I can still remember vividly the dull, boring, meaningless days of my so called "education".

I should have been pushed out of the nest to fly!!

DK

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James Altucher on Literature, Reading and Writing

"English literature is best learned by reading the books you are passionate about. Writing is best learned by having real experiences, writing every day, and reading the great writers who inspire you" James Altucher.

James Altucher is an inspirational writer and the quotation above is taken from his book, I Was Blind but Now I See. James is an advocate of self education as an alternative to an expensive university education for young people. This makes him a controversial figure but I agree with him that reading and writing with passion help to educate us in life's big lessons. Reading and writing is free and both activities help to form our minds.

Buzbee on Book LUST

For the last several days I've had the sudden and general urge to buy a new book. I've stopped off at a few bookstores around the city, and while I've looked at hundreds and hundreds of books in that time, I have not found the one book that will satisfy my urge. It's not as if I don't have anything to read; there's a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I've been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that's afflicted me most of my life. I know enough about the course of the disease to know I'll discover something soon.”
― Lewis Buzbee, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History

I have to say that I have suffered from book lust from the time I first discovered libraries at the age of seven, and second hand bookshops when I was eleven. Over time I have added book sales, garage sales, charity book fairs, digital archives and of course Amazon for my Kindle requirements.

While it is a lust, I believe it is a harmless and very enjoyable one. And of course it is not all about lust, love comes into the equation as well.

Many of my happiest times have been with a book in my hand. I clearly remember going into a bookshop in Alnwick on a snowy winters day and drinking coffee and reading my purchases in front of a blazing open fire - Bliss.

Book Lust
DK

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Deschooling Society - Education for Social Control

“School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.”
– Ivan Illich, “Deschooling Society”

Illich raises a germane point in his quote above. School maintains the social status quo so that people do not question why society is as it is, and who controls it. This is at odds with the concept and meaning of education.

Why is it that regimes burn books? It is because reading sets people free and exposes them to new ideas. We drug our children's minds at school so that they conform and learn not to question. This is why schools are so important to those who control society (the military-industrial-political complex). Schools are needed, not to educate but to control.

This also explains the flak that comes from the establishment when home-schooling is discussed. Home-schooling, deschooling and unschooling all pose a serious threat to the status quo because they turn out engaged and questioning, self motivated learners. I would suggest that any critics reading this post should get out and meet some of these kids. Be prepared to be very scared. These kids are not afraid of adults, do not accept things at face value and are usually not impressed by what conventional society has on offer.

Imagine a generation of children who are not interested in spending hours in front of the TV or playing video games. Who are not exposed to all of the advertising that brainwashes people and contribute to their feelings of inadequacy. How refreshing to talk to young people who are interested and engaged within their communities and families.

They may turn the age...

DK

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Taking Children Seriously as People

"We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people."
~ Alice Miller

Children are a unique gift to society due to their spontaneity, enthusiasm and curiosity. Parents and grandparents would agree that having children around adds a joyful presence to life. Seeing things through the eyes of a child is like being a child again.

Do we cherish this child's view of the world? For a while we do, but when our children reach a predetermined age we march them off to school where their view is unimportant and the rule, little children should be seen and not heard prevails. School is a humiliating experience for many children - the slow, the divergent thinkers, the gifted, the disabled to name but a few groups of disenfranchised groups within our schooling system. Not all children are ready for formal schooling at the age of 5 or 6. We know that boys mature later and probably don't "fit" into a school environment until the age of 7 or 8. In fact I would argue that none of our children are ever ready for school as it is institutionalized now. Schools are about social control, not education.

What do you think?

DK

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The Buddha on Teaching

Believe nothing merely because you have been told it . . . or because it is tradition, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conductive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings – that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.
- Gautama Buddha

This advice coming across the centuries is as important as the day it was spoken. The Buddha was a great teacher but he encouraged his followers and students to examine and analyse the teachings they received. His view that we should seek the good of all beings is at odds with today's schooling factories that turn out many blind learners without the skills to examine the world around them objectively. To use Gatto's term it is all about the interests of "the Combine" - big business, the military, transnational conglomerates and those who pursue wealth at all costs. For their interests to be served they need an army of unthinking people who are "educated" to obey without question, to endure boredom and have arid inner lives.

There are now millions of our young people who have been home schooled, deschooled or unschooled and who will not obey but rather challenge the mindless burearcracy that keeps the products of formal schooling in thrall to their masters.

May they turn the age...

DK

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Leonardo de Vinci on Learning

“Just as eating contrary to the inclination is injurious to the health, so study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
– Leonardo da Vinci

Today's education system is very efficient in turning out uninterested students who are turned off learning. The desire to learn has been strangled by the educational strictures we put upon them. Schooling works to conform children into a mold that makes them into pliable, unthinking "educated" automatons.

Why do we allow this to happen? Surely we need learners who desire to learn and are self motivated. One size doesn't fit all in education or any other human endeavor.

It is time to release education from the teachers and give it back to the learners. Let children develop the keen curiosity they demonstrate before entering the formal schooling system.

It is our only hope for an increasingly complex future...

DK

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Einstein on Education

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. ”
– Albert Einstein

It is a sad indictment on our schooling system that it dampens and even kills curiosity. Our gradated system from kindergarten to a PhD is tightly controlled with many gateways to weed people out. The problem with this approach is that the A students tend to regurgitate what their teachers want. This is a trick learned early on, well before we hit college. The top students make the least mistakes when experience in the real world is built on learning from mistakes. The education system doesn't reward divergent thinkers and non conformists.

Young children are very happy to make mistakes, it doesn't worry them until they hit formal schooling. They will sing, dance, share their thoughts with abandon. By contrast try getting a group of adults to sing or put themselves into a situation where they might make a mistake in front of others. They tend to freeze or withdraw. Karaoke may be the exception, but most people won't try Karaoke until lubricated with alcoholic beverages. What would learning look like if we had not contacted the formal schooling system?

With the creativity of children and thirst for knowledge encouraged we would have a nation of learners: self-motivated, creative and curious, sharing a passion for life. Instead we have many children sidelined, left behind and ignored. So much for "No child left Behind"

The good thing is that some people survive schooling with their curiosity intact and go on to do great things. Conversely many home schooled or unschooled children get a great education and then excel at university.

Long live Curiosity.



DK

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The Key is Fact Finding not Fact Memorization

“Our rapidly moving, information-based society badly needs people who know how to find facts rather than memorize them, and who know how to cope with change in creative ways. You don’t learn those things in school.”
– Wendy Priesnitz

Our educational systems are still fixated on teaching facts even those these facts are often out of date due to the explosion of knowledge. Today's facts are often tomorrows fiction. Technology and science are making very fast progress so memorization is inefficient.

I worked at a computer start-up company in the early 2000's and one of our engineers was a brilliant young man. I wondered why he didn't have any post graduate degrees. When I asked him why he replied, "I did a BSc in Mathematics and at the end of that time I had learned how to learn myself". He could speed read through technical manuals and remember all of the pertinent points. This man has had a very successful career to date because he is self motivated to learn and expand his knowledge base. He also applies his learning straight away.

Given the fast turnover in knowledge we all need to be self motivated learners. By the time someone has got to PhD level in the sciences the information gleaned as an undergraduate is often irrelevant. What is needed are not more PhD programs that take years to complete but more courses that are short, focused and applicable. Such short courses would allow one to keep up. This is where MOOCs are a breakthrough. Of course many of us just make our own courses based on our current interests and curiosity.

DK

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Illich on Schools

“Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends upon knowing that secret; that secrets can only be known in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.”
– Ivan Illich

Those of us who are readers know that knowledge acquisition is often serendipitous. We read many books, make connections and learn along the way. In fact we mimic the hyperlink system on the world wide web (www), or maybe the www mimics our reading!

Illich argues that society has made schooling into a system owned and controlled by an elite, who know the secrets. It is an educational coterie of druidic mystics. We are told that education is the key to success, that only teachers can teach and that we need the proper authorisations, grades and certifications to get to the next level. This approach constrains real learning and in fact makes the erroneous assumption that all people learn at the same rate, at the same age and that they all need the same content. Educating in this way extinguishes the flames of true learning and curiosity and then teachers complain how hard it is to teach kids who they themselves have constrained.

I celebrate the opportunities that the Internet brings to us all to liberate true learners from the shackles of the educational institutions and let them follow their own needs, interests and curiosity.

DK

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What Exactly do we Learn at School

“There were no sex classes. No friendship classes. No classes on how to navigate a bureaucracy, build an organization, raise money, create a database, buy a house, love a child, spot a scam, talk someone out of suicide, or figure out what was important to me. Not knowing how to do these things is what messes people up in life, not whether they know algebra or can analyze literature.”

– William Upski Wimsatt

This quote by Wimsatt highlights a problem with today's schooling system - a lack of relevancy to life and living. People can do 12 years of education and still be unequipped to cope with independent living. Why is this? It appears to be caused by the professionals slicing out something for themselves from every day life while making children and young adults dependent on them and their tests, grading and diplomas.

Education should be about learning, not teaching. How is it that our children can learn their first language without any formal teaching? Children experiment, interact with others and learn naturally and spontaneously. Compare this with the foreign language instruction within our schools and universities. Some people come out of college with a degree in a foreign language and still can't speak the new language fluently and idiomatically. The academic approach is not the best fit to learn a new language. Compare this with young children who move to a new country with their parents. They pick up the new language by interacting with their peers. Children below the age of five who have not been stifled by traditional schooling are not afraid of making mistakes. FACT - you can not become fluent in another language without making many mistakes. Yet schools reward those who make the least mistakes with the best grades.

It has taken me a lifetime of formal education to realise how I have been cheated and robbed of real learning. I am rectifying this now at the advanced age of 58.

DK

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The New Illiteracy

Today's quote is from a prescient thinker of the last century, Alvin Toffler. Alvin Toffler is an American writer and futurist, known for his works discussing the digital revolution, communication revolution and technological singularity. Toffler is a former associate editor of Fortune magazine. - sourced from Wikipedia

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

– Alvin Toffler

At the time this was written in the 1970's the pace of change was much slower than it is today. Toffler, as a futurist, was able to forsee that as change increased so would the pace of learning. But the interesting point is not about learning, but rather the unlearning and relearning required to keep pace with technological change. Formal education is not well positioned to react to the disruptive change that is increasingly appearing. In fact the university system as we know it may well disappear in the next 50 years as it loses relevancy to self directed learners, unlearners and relearners. Another influential thinker, also writing in the 1970's, Ivan Illich, visited this theme in his book, Deschooling Society.

Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being "with it," yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.”
― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

Learning, unlearning and relearning are all best done outside of the constraints of the formal education system.

Your literacy in this age depends on your own self-directed learning.

DK

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