MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
A Question of Race (NEW CONCEPTS)
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

that imbibing knowledge without question is common, and is poor education.


No, goddamnit, it is education. And it's a good thing. Take no notice of Boreades, the really keen (sic) minds imbibed knowledge without question. That's how I got where I am today. By hoovering up stuff the best way I could. Which was without questioning it. Borry's 'awkward squad' are now living on social security in a mobile home park just outside Redditch.

Once you've got the knowledge ... well, that's a different matter.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

It appears that Borry and Roger live in a parallel universe from me. They believe in the actuality (never mind the desirability) of pupils questioning their masters. Let's put some figures into the debate.

I attended full-time education for sixteen years -- primary, secondary, university. In that time I cannot recall ever taking issue with something my teacher said. I don't mean actually taking public issue with him in the classroom, but just thinking to myself, 'That's surely wrong.' Of course I may have forgotten isolated occasions but given that they are isolated and given my subsequent career I find this unlikely. If it did happen there does not seem to have been any consequence.

But that's just me. Perhaps I am a natural conformist. However, I cannot recall any of my classmates doing so. Not once. And that is statistically significant because while my classmates were often the same year on year, there were a lot of them and they did change radically from time to time. So we are talking (say) fifty classmates during my primary school days, a hundred during secondary and perhaps two hundred at university. That's 350 people who, as far as I can recall, never once publicly contradicted a teacher's teaching.

Nor can I recall anybody saying anything revisionist, as it were, out of school. 'Didn't you think ol' Davies was talking cobblers about the Welsh mining industry. My da's from there, I'm going to ask him.' It never happened. Nor anything like it. Not even at university I'm afraid. And I did politics!

Now of course it may be that there were pockets of intellectual malcontents that I didn't know about, 'Quiet, that appalling tick Harper's coming and he might report us for opposing the central role of the gentry in the English Civil War.' But again I don't think so.

So, come on, Borry, Roger. Give us your experiences from whichever side of the staffroom door you happen to find yourself. Real events, mind, not pious recollections of what might have been if only you knew then what you know now.

PS I apologise for the length of this missive, Roger. Do as I say, boy, not as I do.
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Part of a 2012 interview with Judit Polgar was aired on Women's Hour in which she says as part of her preparation she gets into the mindset of her opponents ("mental resolve") and has to be very fit physically. The WH piece was really about whether men and women 'think differently' and was sparked by a comment by a chess grandmaster called Nigel Short (beaten more than once by Judit) to the effect that women can't be as good at chess as men because of their brains. Not that men's brains are superior...just different... apparently.

The neuroscientist who appeared on the programme flatly contradicted this since there are no known physical differences in the brains of male and female children (male brains tend to be slightly larger though not disproportionately because men are generally larger than women) but, on the social side, girls are much less likely to engage in macho pursuits, which include chess. Clearly nurture can't be solely responsible for success but it can create the will and self-belief, social environment permitting.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Nigel has just made the same comments again.

Judit has replied again.

http://time.com/3828676/chess-judit-polgar-nigel-short-sexism/

Judit has a plus score against Nigel. So everytime he mentions this, his awful personal record against Judit is going to be brought up.
Send private message
Grant



View user's profile
Reply with quote

Hatty wrote:
male brains tend to be slightly larger though not disproportionately because men are generally larger than women

Actually men's brains even allowing for the difference in size are on average 100 grams larger (that's about the size of a cooked hamburger).
Unfortunately, men really do have very slightly more brain power (but of course I have to say this is only an average and there are still many intelligent women and stupid men blah blah blah).
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Mick Harper wrote:
I attended full-time education for sixteen years -- primary, secondary, university. In that time I cannot recall ever taking issue with something my teacher said.


This is so strange to me. And unexpected of you. I was absolutely infamous throughout my school career for challenging my teachers regarding nearly everything we were taught. Many of them hated me for it. I was constantly expelled from class for disruption, merely for suggesting the teacher had it wrong. Even in Mathematics, I used my own systems for algebra.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Just as strange for me. But since I never encountered an Ishmael in all my years I have to go with my version of school-life and assume Ishmael is a true one-off. Others perhaps might write in with their experiences.

It may be relevant to point out though that I was in fact a leading member of Borry's awkward squad. I was constantly being caned (something I have to pay for now), given detention regularly, the only member of my sixth form not to be made a prefect, etc etc. It was only intellectually that I omitted to kick against the pricks.
Send private message
Boreades


In: finity and beyond
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Strange indeed.

I realise now that "awkward sods" was an awkward phrase to choose.

I too believe that children soak up knowledge willingly and like sponges with an almost infinite capacity. I accept that 99% of children are natural conformists.

I also realise my explanation lacked a few crucial details. Perhaps I was being too modest, and didn't make it personal enough. My "But sir" questions were never disruptive or malicious. The ones I can remember were things like "But sir, we can make the bunsen flame go higher if we do this...", or "But sir, we've still got some Potassium left, can we do that again?", or "But sir, I still don't know where Silly Mid On is".

I was never bored at school. I never thought I was especially bright or gifted. If I had been, I might have figured out why the classes lasted an hour when I had grasped the material in the first five or ten minutes (after which I spent the next 45 mins buggering about and winding my class mates up). Maybe I had a photographic memory, or I could speed read. I'm still not sure what it was. But I never ever revised for any O-Levels (got ten of those) or A-Levels (got five of those), and won a school prize for it. I still remember it didn't feel special, I was just mildly confused why my class mates hadn't done the same. Perhaps it was because some silly sod had been winding them up and distracting them in class for years?

I too was the only one in my class not made a Prefect. They were very wise; I was the scruffiest kid in the class, and I would have been an appalling example of how to behave. Like the time a mate and me found some human bones in a cave, took them in to school to show the Biology Master, who sent us down to the local police station with the bones - in school time as well!

Perhaps the real question should be when and how do some of us reach the point of (so to speak) a critical-mass where our own intellect ignites and becomes self-sustaining? That's probably when we become the awkward sods.
Send private message
N R Scott


In: Middlesbrough
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Boreades wrote:
I too believe that children soak up knowledge willingly and like sponges with an almost infinite capacity.


I disagree with this statement. In fact, I believe that a healthy brain simply discards/ignores any information that isn't useful to it. This is why most education is pointless.

In natural circumstances we only learn things for one of two reasons - either because it's useful to us on a regular, everyday basis ..learning to walk, speak, use a TV remote, basic maths and literacy to some extent, that sort of thing. Or because it's relevant to us on a personal/emotional level. Anything that falls between these two things just doesn't sink in.

This is why we can read a book without any of it sinking in.

To put it simply, if you don't need to know something or care about knowing it you won't learn it.

This is how a healthy brain works. It filters information based on the personal circumstances and tastes of that person.

Revision and learning by rote is just an attempt at trying to con the brain into knowing something by repeating it so often that it seems like an everyday occurrence - but even that is massively ineffective. Even people who ace their exams will have generally forgotten most of the stuff within a few years of sitting them.

If you're interested in football Match of the Day is fascinating, but if you're not it's just background noise. It's the same with everything else, whether it's English history or Eastenders. Most school lessons are just background noise for children.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

In fact, I believe that a healthy brain simply discards/ignores any information that isn't useful to it.

'Education' is well aware of this fact which is why they punish you for not learning and set exams (with paper qualifications) to reward you. The brain quickly registers the fact that not discarding/not ignoring information is useful after all.

It's quite effective though, as you say, once this system is no longer in force ie when you leave school, the information itself mostly disappears.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

N R Scott wrote:

I disagree with this statement. In fact, I believe that a healthy brain simply discards/ignores any information that isn't useful to it. This is why most education is pointless.



"I know a song that'll get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves.."
Send private message
N R Scott


In: Middlesbrough
View user's profile
Reply with quote

You've got me there. I guess the brain can be tricked ...although saying that, catchy songs do use repetition. Like revision, only much, much more effective.

Maybe they're so effective because they combine the two drives for learning - repeatedness and personal/emotional relevance.

Maybe;-
being annoyed by someone + repetition = super memorised
Send private message
N R Scott


In: Middlesbrough
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I do think there's a lot to be said for forgetting things though. It's generally universally deemed a bad thing when people can't remember and a good thing when they can, but I'd say context is everything. Forgetting is essential for brain function.

Every day when I leave my house I walk past my neighbour's car. I have a general sense of what it looks like, but if you asked me what colour it was or what make it is, I wouldn't be sure. I certainly wouldn't know what the number plate was. Maybe if I had more interest in cars I would pay more attention, but it's just not something massively important to me.

Even though I see that car every day, on some level my brain is saying "this isn't important, you don't need it. It's adequate that you vaguely know your neighbour has a car and that it looks a bit like this".

I'm certain this is a good thing.

You always hear stories of people on the autistic spectrum who have amazing recall and do other incredible mental feats. Maybe their brains aren't prioritising information properly.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

N R Scott wrote:
I do think there's a lot to be said for forgetting things though.


To complete an identical task. Memory is sufficient.

To complete similar but different tasks quickly, you need memory and a bit of logical trial and error, which will then lead you hopefully onto understanding......an over-reliance on memory will slow you down.
Send private message
Roger Stone


In: conclusive
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Also not a prefect; is there a theme here? Dare we enquire whether the nature of AE membership is linked to being not quite the right stuff?

[Nor even a sub-prefect; but I was a Librarian. Entrusted with the task of removing the nude photos from Amateur Photographer before it went on display, lest it inflame inappropriate desires; and also thereby missing Assembly for the whole of my final year. An idyllic stroke of greatest good fortune.]

However, I have always believed that in order to understand and remember what you're being told, manipulating the ideas/facts and incorporating them into a framework of existing ideas is essential; and therefore that asking awkward questions and seeing what happens is a useful tool. To have a class of students who ask awkward questions is a wonderful thing; it suggests they have listened to at least part of what they have been told, and have some pre-existing ideas of their own. A counter to the Establishment line, concisely voiced by Lady Bracknell:

'I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.'
Send private message Send e-mail
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4  Next

Jump to:  
Page 3 of 4

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group