Having watched how the public school system works and how people have theorized the betterment of academia in general in fiction, I think there is something to be said for analyzing the controllable conditions promoting learning. I believe that the first several years of a child’s formal schooling should be spent, not on math, science, social studies, english, etc… The first several years of a child’s schooling should be spent leading them from mental exercises to the memorization of long conversations or blocks of text.
Much of a child’s formal learning is spent drilling into memory only a few basic principles. If the first several years of a person’s life were spent learning to memorize and repeat large quantities of information, then they’ll already be able to hold onto the text and notes, and all the teacher would have to do is help them understand how the principles in the book apply in practice.
I never once finished a text book in a classroom. I think that is a failure on the part of the institution of learning as a whole. The purpose of a textbook is to put forth the most basic and important principles of a subject of learning. The textbook itself explains how to perform the work. The responsibility of an early teacher should be to facilitate the remembrance of information, rather than a large number of things that a student should, but probably won’t (at a young age) remember very well.
Institutional learning should spend a considerable amount of time playing memory games to strengthen this ability in a child. It should be drilled morning, noon, and night in subtle (and hopefully fun) ways from around the age of five until the age of 10. This should begin with the parents from infancy as matching games and children’s songs. It’s easier for a human being to learn a song. There’s science to suggest that scent has something to do with learning.
The nature of the exercises involved in the learning of a child should evolve as their ability to remember it evolves. The future of humanity is in computers. The fundamentals of computer use should be taught early and used far more often than they are now. Each child should have a computer with access to an encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus and any other texts required for the class.
Studies should be established to determine the most easily remembered flow/rhythm/organization of information during each stage of a child’s mental/intellectual development. Milestones in a person’s psychological and intellectual development should be watched for, both to identify each child’s strengths and weaknesses, and as criteria to move forward.
Specialized learning programs should be developed for each child based on the areas in which they show aptitude and interest rather than the idiotic system of age range classification we have now. Human beings are not all created with the same talents. We should be determining and building upon these talents to encourage a child in areas in which they might make a difference. The areas in which they struggle should be worked in as needed to facilitate the working knowledge of the paths upon which they excel.
We should specialize early to maximize the amount of knowledge we can absorb in the fields in which we have talent. The individual strengths and interests of each person as they develop will naturally balance out, in numbers of successful and satisfied adults, as fields in which they will excel and be satisfied are targeted and presented to them at the earliest possible age.
The professional needs of a society could be analyzed by computer and students suitable to and interested in the work needed could be funneled specifically where needed. If personality profiles are developed on each child and classrooms are kept small, it should be possible to ensure that a small ‘family’ of students don’t have serious personality clashes.
Teaching would not have to be such a specialized field because the job of the teacher would be to present, and facilitate the memory of, the text rather than the understanding of the subject (which the text provides if actually presented as a whole). Theoretically the ‘teacher’ could just be a person paid to watch the students and ensure that they are actually performing a series of exercises, tuned specifically to their level of advancement, developed automatically by a computer on the fly each morning, based on each student’s level of advancement from the day before… and it would not be hard.
It would be costly to enact, but the returns would be tremendous. As each person reached excellence in a field tailored to their talents from birth, our knowledge of those fields would expand proportionately. Learning could more easily continue because the most basic thing each person would remember is how to remember.
The most important thing we can do in this world, is to put down our differences and work (and therefore learn) together because there is no mythical paradise waiting for us. We have to MAKE that paradise and we are failing. Even if there IS a mythical paradise, each man is the sum of his memories and deeds. If you believe in a mythical paradise you should be struggling to make it easier for others to find, not berating, criticizing, or murdering others for not listening to or understanding you.
The fairy tales that we tell our children that have absolutely no resemblance to the observable reality (aside from religious view [which should be personal, private, and not a subject of public discussion] )
Next on WTFisthisguy’sproblem?:
Religious indoctrination should be illegal. Each person should have the right to believe what they wish to believe without unwelcome influence from family and friends. Beliefs should be presented as children become intelligent enough to ask about (and understand) these concepts along with the other blocks of information each student will automatically be presented.
We each have personal beliefs. What those beliefs are is not relevant either to the advancement of understanding or to the betterment of the quality of human life. We do our children no favors by indoctrinating them against other people by conditioning them at a young age to believe either that their parents are lying or that the rest of the world is stupid. In either case the child is left not knowing what to believe because no matter where they go they will receive conflicting messages from people who believe conflicting things. Don’t talk to a person about religion, let your actions speak for your beliefs.
If your beliefs are violent, someone will believe otherwise and stop you, or you will eventually die in one manner or another. Those who harm others should be dealt with severely and decisively, and in such a way that the perpetrator never considers performing the act of violence or another like it again. Repeat offenders should be rendered incapable of performing the act of violence again.
At all times care should be taken to leave these people as functional as they can be. Repeat rapists should simply be castrated. Repeat misdemeanor miscreants should be placed under constant surveillance and fines should be assessed to be payed to the person/party(parties) they harm. Repeat murderers should be put down the same way that a rabid dog might be put down.
It is not alright if multiple deaths occur because nothing was done when the warning signs of a murderer began to show. No murderer is worth enough to society to allow the possibility that they might murder again. Even if the subject of their theoretical future murder might be another inmate in a facility, the murdered inmate might have been rehabilitated to become a functional and productive member of a forward moving society. Even sane human behavior is unpredictable. Nobody should be permitted to unpredictably murder anyone, much less to do it more than once.
Sleep now. more later
mynameisbundy 