Why Myths of Brightness Need to be Left in the Shade
The Importance of education in schools as a tool to reshape and
reconfigure the inteligence of pupils is being explored...yet again.
The value of a flexible mind; able to accommodate and explore new
ideas is as important than a mind that is a copying machine for
remembering information. That is the common flaw highlighted by
educational practitioners such as Paul Black, Dylan Wiliam and Howard
Gardner over the common measure of intelligence using versions of
Alfred Binet’s IQ test.
Shifting the emphasis from praising pupils achievements to praising
their effort, as a way of encouraging intellectual growth through
experimental thinking and effort I feel has been seen in the past as a
soft option. It is connected with patronising a ‘less intelligent’
child by praising their effort and saying ‘you can only do your best’.
The American studies from psychologists Carol Dweck and Lauren Resnik
are striving to prove that this is the way to go, but I feel
traditional perceptions of ‘intelligence’ are still stuck in the past,
and memory retention is more impressive to most than a child making
mistakes but continuing to try to get things understood.
As someone who has had a ‘practical’ career in engineering I can vouch
that work that involves your hands for anything more than typing is
not normally valued as ‘intelligent’. The idea of someone being
referred to as ‘good with their hands’ is, in my mind, accompanied
with someone sighing in a motherly way and saying ‘bless’. I think
that right brain/left brain definitions of thought initially
researched by American psychobiologist Roger W Sperry, only added to
the distinction between practical people and thinking people. The
emphasis for high wages and social standing has gone to the thinkers.
Society reveres the Managers and Judges, not the art directors and
gardeners. But that may be my Blue Collar resentment I have towards
the higher echelons of society. Break down that last sentence and you
will see the ingrained conditioning I have as a typical member of
society; resenting those that have gained success through ‘clean’
work. The class system is often populated with people as equally
divided by their preferred style of thinking as by their social class.
In other societies where practical and intuitional skills can often
mean the difference between life and death often have leaders that
excel in these skills. I’m thinking of ‘wise men’, village elders,
people that may not do well in IQ tests, but can keep the delicate
balance of a society together by gut feelings and trusting their
intuition. I don’t see them taking a problem and creating a pros and
cons list and a spread sheet to discover the statistically favourable
solution. When a society overcomes immediate environmental dangers it
seems that the worth of intuitive practical skills lose their
relevance as impressive attributes.
The idea of using tools as cheating is common, but the quest for
intelligence and knowledge may be slowed or even halted by the
restriction of these helpful aids. In 1963 some British schools
adopted phonetic spelling with the ITA system. It was designed to
encourage pupils to explore imaginative writing, rather than being put
off from expressing themselves with the fear of misspelling words or
diverging from accepted sentence structure. In 1966 the scheme was
abandoned by most as the results were non-conclusive. The National
Primary Structure for under 11’s is currently advising schools to
relax on spelling to encourage writing content. As usual, education is
riding the chronological merry-go-round as ideas come around time and
time again. But relaxing the rules allows invention. Why is poetry
often the pastime of academics? Is it the rush of reading something
new that breaks the rules? A naughty challenge to their structured
lives that excites their revolution gene?
Thinking as a free form sport is still shunned by most as being
‘dreamy’ and keeping your head in the clouds. But the ‘Blue Sky’
thinking style of modern executives; where everything goes when
searching for untapped ideas that could make money, is a relatively
modern concept that embraces broadening intelligence by exploration of
a minds capabilities by setting it free. I think that this Blue Sky
thinking model is still satirised in office based comedies, connecting
it with gormless overpaid executives rather than cutting edge business
leaders.
With larger and larger societies breeds the need for competition, as
individuals strive to set themselves apart from the crowd.
Unfortunately this competition has many rules it would seem. Stray too
much out of the accepted norm and you are not a free thinker
experimenting in the quest for greater intelligence, but a threat to
society’s order; a rebel. So competition follows restricted paths of
acceptance, with spelling, morals, laws and past examples reigning in
the direction of new exploration of ideas. People fear change in
general. I do. So encouraging pupils to colour outside of the lines
with their thought in the search of new intelligence faces some
ingrained resistance. I feel it is the way, but others will say that
that way leads to revolution, and no one wants that, do they?
reconfigure the inteligence of pupils is being explored...yet again.
The value of a flexible mind; able to accommodate and explore new
ideas is as important than a mind that is a copying machine for
remembering information. That is the common flaw highlighted by
educational practitioners such as Paul Black, Dylan Wiliam and Howard
Gardner over the common measure of intelligence using versions of
Alfred Binet’s IQ test.
Shifting the emphasis from praising pupils achievements to praising
their effort, as a way of encouraging intellectual growth through
experimental thinking and effort I feel has been seen in the past as a
soft option. It is connected with patronising a ‘less intelligent’
child by praising their effort and saying ‘you can only do your best’.
The American studies from psychologists Carol Dweck and Lauren Resnik
are striving to prove that this is the way to go, but I feel
traditional perceptions of ‘intelligence’ are still stuck in the past,
and memory retention is more impressive to most than a child making
mistakes but continuing to try to get things understood.
As someone who has had a ‘practical’ career in engineering I can vouch
that work that involves your hands for anything more than typing is
not normally valued as ‘intelligent’. The idea of someone being
referred to as ‘good with their hands’ is, in my mind, accompanied
with someone sighing in a motherly way and saying ‘bless’. I think
that right brain/left brain definitions of thought initially
researched by American psychobiologist Roger W Sperry, only added to
the distinction between practical people and thinking people. The
emphasis for high wages and social standing has gone to the thinkers.
Society reveres the Managers and Judges, not the art directors and
gardeners. But that may be my Blue Collar resentment I have towards
the higher echelons of society. Break down that last sentence and you
will see the ingrained conditioning I have as a typical member of
society; resenting those that have gained success through ‘clean’
work. The class system is often populated with people as equally
divided by their preferred style of thinking as by their social class.
In other societies where practical and intuitional skills can often
mean the difference between life and death often have leaders that
excel in these skills. I’m thinking of ‘wise men’, village elders,
people that may not do well in IQ tests, but can keep the delicate
balance of a society together by gut feelings and trusting their
intuition. I don’t see them taking a problem and creating a pros and
cons list and a spread sheet to discover the statistically favourable
solution. When a society overcomes immediate environmental dangers it
seems that the worth of intuitive practical skills lose their
relevance as impressive attributes.
The idea of using tools as cheating is common, but the quest for
intelligence and knowledge may be slowed or even halted by the
restriction of these helpful aids. In 1963 some British schools
adopted phonetic spelling with the ITA system. It was designed to
encourage pupils to explore imaginative writing, rather than being put
off from expressing themselves with the fear of misspelling words or
diverging from accepted sentence structure. In 1966 the scheme was
abandoned by most as the results were non-conclusive. The National
Primary Structure for under 11’s is currently advising schools to
relax on spelling to encourage writing content. As usual, education is
riding the chronological merry-go-round as ideas come around time and
time again. But relaxing the rules allows invention. Why is poetry
often the pastime of academics? Is it the rush of reading something
new that breaks the rules? A naughty challenge to their structured
lives that excites their revolution gene?
Thinking as a free form sport is still shunned by most as being
‘dreamy’ and keeping your head in the clouds. But the ‘Blue Sky’
thinking style of modern executives; where everything goes when
searching for untapped ideas that could make money, is a relatively
modern concept that embraces broadening intelligence by exploration of
a minds capabilities by setting it free. I think that this Blue Sky
thinking model is still satirised in office based comedies, connecting
it with gormless overpaid executives rather than cutting edge business
leaders.
With larger and larger societies breeds the need for competition, as
individuals strive to set themselves apart from the crowd.
Unfortunately this competition has many rules it would seem. Stray too
much out of the accepted norm and you are not a free thinker
experimenting in the quest for greater intelligence, but a threat to
society’s order; a rebel. So competition follows restricted paths of
acceptance, with spelling, morals, laws and past examples reigning in
the direction of new exploration of ideas. People fear change in
general. I do. So encouraging pupils to colour outside of the lines
with their thought in the search of new intelligence faces some
ingrained resistance. I feel it is the way, but others will say that
that way leads to revolution, and no one wants that, do they?
Following on from my previous statements, I just was thinking about
the traditional emphasis of 'intelligence' being academic rather than
practical in nature. If you look to the three school system of pre-
national curriculum days, which was seen as the highest level of
education and which was seen as the lowest? What was taught at these
schools? Again, fact retention and academic studies was emphasised at
Grammar schools, and practical 'homely' skills were taught at the
technical and modern schools. The placement in these schools was from
the 11 plus exam, which valued the non-practical skills, and filtered
out intelligence preferences of its candidates and sealed their fate
as far as their expected career paths, with success and money greatly
favouring those with a grammar academic school education.
Preceding this system of valuing intelligence type was a national
obsession of males exerting dominance over woman, with the main method
used being the control of what woman were given access to in the form
of education. Keep a woman at home busy with practical homely skills
and child rearing and their ability to gain success and money through
academic careers was removed. This was so common place that is was
seen as the natural order of things and a two tier society that
separated the sexes was maintained. A similar problem has been more
recently reflected in South Africa with the collapse of Apartheid. The
countries black population had been subject to a large extent to a
lower standard of education than the white population. The rules of
the Apartheid society kept most black people in practical low paid
work, with their access to educational resources that could enable
them to compete on a level playing field with the white workers
greatly limited. Even now, 16 tears after the fall of Apartheid, with
legal obligations to employ black people in academic 'white collar'
jobs in place, the system is still fighting to catch up on years of
oppression of education. This article may recognise the importance of
all educational types, but the world in general still doesn't seem to,
especially as its governments, business leaders and media moguls
almost entirely come from an academic educational upbringing.
the traditional emphasis of 'intelligence' being academic rather than
practical in nature. If you look to the three school system of pre-
national curriculum days, which was seen as the highest level of
education and which was seen as the lowest? What was taught at these
schools? Again, fact retention and academic studies was emphasised at
Grammar schools, and practical 'homely' skills were taught at the
technical and modern schools. The placement in these schools was from
the 11 plus exam, which valued the non-practical skills, and filtered
out intelligence preferences of its candidates and sealed their fate
as far as their expected career paths, with success and money greatly
favouring those with a grammar academic school education.
Preceding this system of valuing intelligence type was a national
obsession of males exerting dominance over woman, with the main method
used being the control of what woman were given access to in the form
of education. Keep a woman at home busy with practical homely skills
and child rearing and their ability to gain success and money through
academic careers was removed. This was so common place that is was
seen as the natural order of things and a two tier society that
separated the sexes was maintained. A similar problem has been more
recently reflected in South Africa with the collapse of Apartheid. The
countries black population had been subject to a large extent to a
lower standard of education than the white population. The rules of
the Apartheid society kept most black people in practical low paid
work, with their access to educational resources that could enable
them to compete on a level playing field with the white workers
greatly limited. Even now, 16 tears after the fall of Apartheid, with
legal obligations to employ black people in academic 'white collar'
jobs in place, the system is still fighting to catch up on years of
oppression of education. This article may recognise the importance of
all educational types, but the world in general still doesn't seem to,
especially as its governments, business leaders and media moguls
almost entirely come from an academic educational upbringing.
The Hole in the Wall Project
Original article the newspaper referred to
Free computer terminals set up in India’s ‘slum’ villages,designed to provide a path to education.
I believe a few key social economic issues prevent the
same scale of success in the UK as has happened in India. Firstly,
curiosity comes from an enquiring mind that is free to explore. Most
children in the UK have people and companies falling over themselves
to occupy their time. Also these UK children have been groomed their
whole lives to depend on formal education for their knowledge. Life
paths and careers are discussed and prepared for often before their
birth. It is a well planned and directed train that the children ride
through their life journey.
On the other side, in India, these ‘slum’ children have very uncertain
futures. Their exposure to education was often bound to manual labour
and tasks necessary for daily living. Their curiosity has endless
reserves and a promise of new and exciting skills must be
intoxicating. If they are given access to a PC, a curious mind can
experiment and quickly build from a system that is designed to be easy
and intuitive to use. A child in the UK may ‘play’ with a console in a
shopping centre for a few minutes, but their spoilt experiences of
technology would bore quickly and yearn for ‘better graphics’ and the
latest web site or game instead.
New Delhi physicist Sugata Mitra believes that you can multiply the
effectiveness of 10 teachers by 100 - or 1,000 - fold if you give
children access to the Internet. That may be attractive to a situation
where teachers are limited, but guidance and mentoring from a teacher
still enables known paths of deviancy that result in harm or anti-
social behaviour to be avoided. An infinite amount of monkeys may be
able to type out Shakespeare given the resources and time, but they
will produce also a infinitely greater amount of illegible crap as
well.
The Indian experiment also mentions the results of ‘minimally invasive
education’ using free range of the internet and exam questions to gain
learning, free from guidance. This has been duplicated in the UK.
Again, this is possible, and the enthusiasm created from ownership of
this style of education may be powerful, but it is also open to
misinterpretation. A web site dedicated to announcing the deaths of
celebrities before their actual demise often sparks international
mourning, until the ‘diseased’ manages to prove their mortality. What
do we get when scientific principles are absorbed incorrect, or bigots
provide their opinion as fact?
One thing the Indian experiment may do, if email is adopted by these
inquiring children, is to open the doors to paedophiles straight to
these curious and unguarded lives. Another consequence is to topple
English as the adopted ‘World Language’. India has 17% of the world’s
population, second in the world only to China. 99% of the world’s
countries only make up around 1% of the population individually. USA
only has 4.5%. The new international language of the world may soon be
Hindi.
same scale of success in the UK as has happened in India. Firstly,
curiosity comes from an enquiring mind that is free to explore. Most
children in the UK have people and companies falling over themselves
to occupy their time. Also these UK children have been groomed their
whole lives to depend on formal education for their knowledge. Life
paths and careers are discussed and prepared for often before their
birth. It is a well planned and directed train that the children ride
through their life journey.
On the other side, in India, these ‘slum’ children have very uncertain
futures. Their exposure to education was often bound to manual labour
and tasks necessary for daily living. Their curiosity has endless
reserves and a promise of new and exciting skills must be
intoxicating. If they are given access to a PC, a curious mind can
experiment and quickly build from a system that is designed to be easy
and intuitive to use. A child in the UK may ‘play’ with a console in a
shopping centre for a few minutes, but their spoilt experiences of
technology would bore quickly and yearn for ‘better graphics’ and the
latest web site or game instead.
New Delhi physicist Sugata Mitra believes that you can multiply the
effectiveness of 10 teachers by 100 - or 1,000 - fold if you give
children access to the Internet. That may be attractive to a situation
where teachers are limited, but guidance and mentoring from a teacher
still enables known paths of deviancy that result in harm or anti-
social behaviour to be avoided. An infinite amount of monkeys may be
able to type out Shakespeare given the resources and time, but they
will produce also a infinitely greater amount of illegible crap as
well.
The Indian experiment also mentions the results of ‘minimally invasive
education’ using free range of the internet and exam questions to gain
learning, free from guidance. This has been duplicated in the UK.
Again, this is possible, and the enthusiasm created from ownership of
this style of education may be powerful, but it is also open to
misinterpretation. A web site dedicated to announcing the deaths of
celebrities before their actual demise often sparks international
mourning, until the ‘diseased’ manages to prove their mortality. What
do we get when scientific principles are absorbed incorrect, or bigots
provide their opinion as fact?
One thing the Indian experiment may do, if email is adopted by these
inquiring children, is to open the doors to paedophiles straight to
these curious and unguarded lives. Another consequence is to topple
English as the adopted ‘World Language’. India has 17% of the world’s
population, second in the world only to China. 99% of the world’s
countries only make up around 1% of the population individually. USA
only has 4.5%. The new international language of the world may soon be
Hindi.
Learning to Learn
I agree that wanting to learn comes from within. I would define
that as curiosity. Curiosity is a search for a reward, and that reward
must normally be enjoyable. A colleague said that children that are active
in their hobbies make better learners in school. I don’t know if that
is cause and effect (affect, effect, affect), it may be cause and
cause. These children may be more mentally active all around, where as
others that have little motivation for hobbies may have less
inclination for learning, and activity all together.
I think motivation is the key. We were told that the brain makes the
physical chemical entries to store ‘knowledge’ only when it is
motivated and sees the information as relative. It is a filter to
allow the wash of inconsequential input that passes through our 5
senses daily to be graded and filtered as important (keep) and
irrelevant hum-drum (forget or ignore). If this didn’t happen we would
pop from the input. The tick in my opinion as a teacher is to deliver
knowledge as relevant and rewarding material; to make it a ‘keeper’.
Personally, I can give hours at a time to a hobby or interest, but
only seconds to a dull instruction manual. With my study and my
assignments for an educational degree course I have to sit and wait for the level of
stress to build to a point to gain enough relevance to begin; the
point where if I didn’t I would not have enough time to complete and
fail the course. I recognise the mechanism and try as I might, so far
I cannot talk my brain into bypassing it. The scare of failure makes
the task relevant. That is my motivation, that is one way how I learn.
With my interests I learn because it is a distraction that pays
rewards. I cook because I like food. I read fiction because I like to
fuel my imagination. I play computer games because they are designed
to be ‘doable challenges’. Now I have to use these techniques to teach
others.
that as curiosity. Curiosity is a search for a reward, and that reward
must normally be enjoyable. A colleague said that children that are active
in their hobbies make better learners in school. I don’t know if that
is cause and effect (affect, effect, affect), it may be cause and
cause. These children may be more mentally active all around, where as
others that have little motivation for hobbies may have less
inclination for learning, and activity all together.
I think motivation is the key. We were told that the brain makes the
physical chemical entries to store ‘knowledge’ only when it is
motivated and sees the information as relative. It is a filter to
allow the wash of inconsequential input that passes through our 5
senses daily to be graded and filtered as important (keep) and
irrelevant hum-drum (forget or ignore). If this didn’t happen we would
pop from the input. The tick in my opinion as a teacher is to deliver
knowledge as relevant and rewarding material; to make it a ‘keeper’.
Personally, I can give hours at a time to a hobby or interest, but
only seconds to a dull instruction manual. With my study and my
assignments for an educational degree course I have to sit and wait for the level of
stress to build to a point to gain enough relevance to begin; the
point where if I didn’t I would not have enough time to complete and
fail the course. I recognise the mechanism and try as I might, so far
I cannot talk my brain into bypassing it. The scare of failure makes
the task relevant. That is my motivation, that is one way how I learn.
With my interests I learn because it is a distraction that pays
rewards. I cook because I like food. I read fiction because I like to
fuel my imagination. I play computer games because they are designed
to be ‘doable challenges’. Now I have to use these techniques to teach
others.
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