Keepers of the mind

Steven Pinker, a neuro-scientist and psycholinguist, wrote a book called How the Mind Works.  Of course, it is something not read by most educators, which is ironic since they are considered by most of the public to be the keepers of the mind in our society.  Below is a quote by Pinker from this book.

The payoff for the long discussion of mental computation and mental representation I have led you through is, I hope, an understanding of the complexity, subtlety, and flexibility that the human mind is capable of even if it is nothing but a machine, nothing but the on-board computer of a robot of tissue.  We don't need spirits or occult forces to explain intelligence.  Nor, in an effort to look scientific, do we have to ignore the evidence of our own eyes and claim that human beings are bundles of conditioned associations, puppets of the genes, or followers of brutish instincts.  We can have both the agility and discernment of human thought and a mechanistic framework in which to explain it.  (p. 93)

If educators would jump on board with Pinker, then they could get past the labeling that they do of children, past the idea that children have a finite capacity for learning, and past the ridicule that gene pools are shallow for some kids.  They need to see that minds are agile and discerning.  They need to study to know how to teach to the complexity of thinking and crack the code of how to make learning fit into that complex.  They need to continuously refine their knowledge of the mechanistic framework and know that monstrous repetition is the worst offender of that mechanistic framework.  Then maybe they could really be considered the keepers of the mind. 

As it is, educators are in caves and study little about the mind.  Some still hold the archaic and inane notion that people only use 10% of their brains.  There are not words to utter how closely that resembles the notion of the earth being square and having four corners.  So be it.  The dinosaurs of teaching are about to experience the asteroid that will kill the current structure.  There's a KT boundary just about 5 years upline from now.  They won't make it past that.  But Pinker is right, and education will adapt to it through a whole different means.  The new keepers of the mind will have learned the secrets of the agile, complex, flexible, and discerning mind.  Natural selection strikes again.  Goodbye dinosaurs!