years old, On Sun, 7 Oct 2001, jim clark wrote:
> Morning
>
> On Sun, 7 Oct 2001, Louis_Schmier wrote:
>
> > Jim, an early good morning. Can't sleep. What answer is so written in
> > stone, so infallible, that it is not subject to questioning, to
> > examination, to reconsideration by ourselves of ourselves and by others?
>
> Things like: the earth is round,
Is it really round? Does it's shape change? Why? What's the impact on
what and who?
the earth is more than 7,000 years old,
How old is it? How and why did it come into being when and how it
did? What processes has it and parts of it experienced? Why
> the occipital lobes of the human brain process visual
> information,
How? Why this way? Are those lobes interactive with other parts of the
brain, how? What happens to that information?
students who actively process information are more
> likely to remember the information than students who passively
> read it,
So, why do so many profs continue to reinforce passive listening and note
taking? Why do they not truly and openly examine options?
>performance on intelligence tests is correlated with school success,
Really? Aren't they culturally biased? Aren't they linear? What about
Gardner's theories on intelligence tests. Don't other factors come into
play that have little or nothing to do, but heavily influence the supposed
prediction of these tests? Personal experience? Cultural experience?
Family experience? Nature of teaching? What is school success?
people who are similar to one another are more
> likely to be attracted to one another than people who are
> dissimilar
Tell my
angelic Susan that! Do anything regarding human beings really work 100%?
, and so on endlessly. There are many, many things
> about the world and human beings that we now know with much
> confidence.
Maybe too much confidence? Like the patent officer who at the end of the
19th century said there was nothing left to invent? Maybe that is the
definition of humility, that before we pat ourselves on the back for
coming such a long way, we realize how much of a way there is to go.
>
> > The dynamic of our disciplines is that of constant questioning, constant
> > curiosity, constant investigation, constant experimentation, constant
> > discovery. The stagnancy of "It has always been done this way," is
> > anathma to that process of learning and growing we all hold so dear.
>
> The point of questioning, curiosity, etc. is because we want to
> know answers to the questions, we want to find out what we don't
> know.
And that is my point. That we don't focus on the answers as if we have
arrived, rather focus on the questions that continue the journey.
There may be some people who are simply satisfied with
> constant questioning, and don't care about the answers, but that
> somewhat defeats the whole point of questioning.
Well, stopping at a set of answers, such as a set of pedagogical answers,
negates the value of continued questioning.
>
> If anyone said anything about "it has always been this way" it
> certainly wasn't me. My whole point was that our relatively new
> way of examining questions (reason and science) does allow us to
> arrive at answers, even if some of them might be tentative until
> further evidence is acquired. Indeed, many of the conflicts in
> academic disciplines (evolution vs. creationism, parapsychology,
> child-rearing practices, ...) occur because the new answers to
> timeless questions are inconsistent with traditional knowledge
> and are deemed unacceptable by certain segments of society.
> Perhaps the most fundamental of these conflicts is how we can
> come to understand the world better ... science and reason OR the
> traditional ways (intuition, religion, cultural practices, ...).
The conflict comes from a dwelling on the answers, the traditional
answers, and rejecting or resisting the possibility of new answers arrived
at by either a new way of questioning or a continue questioning of the
established answers.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, GA 31698 /~\ /\ /\
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