> I have to admit that I wasted most of my school years. Finally when
> I really began to pay attention and learn I decided to drop out and
> go live on a kibbutz.
The only useful think I learned in high school, was touch typing, and
that was a Saturday class. I did, however, get to see one teacher really
enjoy teaching about geology. It was very, very encouraging to see that
someone could be so happy with life, and still do a darned good job
teaching us something. That was probably the most useful lesson of all.
> I really wonder about teaching kids about computers or even using
> computers in schools. The last thing I ever want to happen is for
> kids to learn software and become reliant on .... someone else.
> Perhaps if they only allowed linux in schools -- NO ms or even macs
> and no mice.
Yes. in a way.
> Now I haven't given this much thought, about computers, but I think
> that a lot more of school ought to be devoted to who we are. What is
> a human being, how does a human being do what it does, how can it do
> it better etc. Study what past human beings have said and done.
Not what we have done, WHY we did it! How many times did we get to
flip through maps to see the animated movement of boundaries over the
years, and the force of populations and ideas? ZERO! Yet that is what
moves the boundaries!!!
Memorizing dates is stupid! They have passed already! Understanding
the forces and flows, on the other hand, let you predict the future. The
best history book I read, was something like "The Establishment of the
European Hegemony in the New World..." and the best economics book was
"Manias, Panics, and Crashes".
> Give them computers in college.
There are classes of operations that can not be learned unless you
are trying to build things, and it is only when you are young, that your
operations-learning centers are flexible enough to HABITUATE to the
playing of what-if games using those operations.
Computers are just another language, as is mathematics, and French.
I speak fluent Lithuanian and English, because I learned them as a child.
I am not able to carry on much of a conversation in French, because I
learned it in high school. My facility at computer programming comes from
the logic I learned as a little kid playing around with electrical
switches. As a high school about-to-graduate, I weedled my way into an
advanced course in Logic and Philosophy, excitedly anticipating learning
something so that I could get involved with that growing new field called
computers. (Big attraction: air conditioning and no smoking signs.) What a
Disappointment!!! I already knew all that logic crap! It was just using
different words for the same stuff I learned playing with electrical
switches and light bulbs at age seven! (Got an A or A+ in the course,
flabbergasted the instructor that this high school kid could grasp it all
so quickly. There was nothing to grasp!!!)
Yes, we need to know who we are. But who we are, is what we build,
how we transform the space around us. There is also the spiritual promise
we project about how we will behave, how we will respect each other and
what we will, and will not, promise to do. That, more than the technical
abilities, determines what we will be allowed to transform; because it
determines who will choose to work with us, and us to work with them.
My two philosophical statements:
I don't have to be right; but when I sign off on it, it has to work.
To souls, Life is but a game we can not long win at. Sooner or
later, the cold winds of death will sweep our souls yet again from these
transient bones; and soon, our names shall join the legion of the
forgotten. All we may do, is to play this game with honor and dignity,
and leave the playing field better for our having partaken in this game.
And with that, perhaps we shall be invited to play this great game of Life
again.
I think I've done a few encores in the last few thousand years... And
crappy as this world sometimes seems, it is HEAVEN compared to the
snatches of the past I remember!!! This world is a heaven we humans have
built over the millennia, and hell compared to what we may yet build, if we
but learn to think clearly, and extend to others the freedoms we wish for
ourselves.
-J- (C) 1997, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------- http://www.mall-net.com/javilk
--- Laugh at yourself, Our Creator loves company -- and You! ---------------
--- After all, we wouldn't want our Creator to cancel the show, would we? --
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