Riptide coming soon

What is logic?

There are different answers to that question depending on whether you are speaking of the popular definition or the more formal philosophical definition.  So, I would like to define it as the organizational pattern into which the brain places the experiences that have value and have been recorded as notable.  There seem to be two main types of logic.  One is to communicate important life experiences to others.  The other is to relate important life experiences to quantity.

The oldest cave paintings ever found, the Cave of Lasceaux in France, support these two types of logic.  The drawings first tell a story of the kinds of animals found in the area and record the relative strength of the herds found through a repetition of particular  animals found.  The first writing in cuneiform is translated to mean who certain plots of land belong to and their boundaries, and the amount of value (money) the land was worth.  Even Homer's great chronicles of the Trojan War and its aftermath recount the story and the number of people involved.

Formalized communication through words and numbers (reading and math) acts the same way as the spoken.  Because it is a written form, a particular syntax has been developed to follow.  Different methods of teaching the syntax of the two types of logic vary in order of presentation of syntactic parts, but the overall concepts are the same.

Apparently the two types of logic appeared in time rather simultaneously in human history, so they are organizational patterns.  They develop from the amount of use they receive.  The amount of use is related to importance and value.  If one type is used more than the other, it increases.  If the two types get the same amount of use, they develop at the same rate and to the same extent because the syntax for both follow the same growth patterns (the same syntactic order).

The educational system should be presenting the two types of logic in equal amounts of time and in matching elements of syntax.  But, teachers don't know to do this, so much of the time communication in words far exceeds communication in numbers.  So, growth in math is stunted.  That's a real shame given that the world works according to numbers both in financial and technological success.  Transmission of knowledge is so very linked to the binary code and other kinds of number patterns that living with a restricted use of number logic determines how far in society a person can advance a great percentage of the time.

Since the purpose and tools of advancement in society has grown a different direction from in the last 150 years, those whose two types of logic aren't stunted will lead the way to the next step in civilization.  Unless instruction changes, it will be the children in Asia who will rise to the occasion.  The tide has already turned in that direction, and although there will be a little time, soon the tide will become a riptide.

Fingerprinting learning

Above all, the brain is efficient.  So, for learning to take place  it has to have a reason for taking up space and time.  Otherwise, why would learning take place?  So, early on in life, a person learns that experience is the best teacher.  All of us continue with this idea throughout our lives because "life" in this case refers the dichotomy of learning - what gives us pain is to be avoided, what gives us pleasure is to be rewarded.  The brain will create elaborate schemes if necessary to avoid or reward.

Learning is related to these two ideas in one form or another.  Something has to have + or - value for memory to form, so the first line of memory is to find something utilitarian that helps us in advancing ourselves or taking caring of our needs.  Language is learned for this reason.  It is utilitarian.  After a while language is manipulated, so it becomes ever increasingly more sophisticated in use, but at the outset and for most purposes it remains utilitarian.  Can schools really capture this idea?  Most learning at a school is hypothetical.  Some children can find a use or pretend a use for the hypothetical, thus making the learning utilitarian, but most cannot in the early years.

Humans also are unique in many ways.  One of those ways is in personality.  Some likenesses in personality span the human experience, but not many.  So, if learning is also to help design our uniqueness, it is laughable that education would even attempt to standardize learning.  Humans are the guardians of what they develop, and they develop it according to what motivates them, both from experiences that are utilitarian to them (because what is utilitarian is not usually universal across people) and that are motivating to them.  Commonly, this is referred to as extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.  And because humans continue their journey in seeking to be unique, they develop interests that vary in degree.  The stronger the interest the more + value it has.  The weaker the interest, the more - value it has.

So, a place of learning should enhance what comes naturally to a person.  The real problem is that people have different things come naturally to them.  What has + value to someone, has - value to someone else.  What has a great degree of + value to someone, has a + value to someone else in a greater or lesser degree. And, even if there could be a set of shared and common facts to be learned in grade 1, it would erode and disappear the older students became.  The idea of having electives after grade 5 tries rather poorly to deal with this truth.

Individualized instruction becomes impossible, then, when students are grouped in 20s or 30s or when given some broad choices.  When students ask why they should learn something, they are manifesting a primary function of their brains.  When the answer is because you will need this later in life, it is likely that the learning that sparked the question will be sorted into the discard pile.  Its utilitarian function for any value is not apparent.

I suppose one could say, "If all of this is true, then how is it that the US has such distinguished astronomers who can see planets beyond our own solar system or such wonderful surgeons who can restore health to ailing people, or such (name the group) who can (name the specialty)?"  How many astronomers can find these planets?  Oh, 30 (maybe).  Out of 315 million people.  That sounds rather individualized to me.  Even if the answer is 500, what is that percentage out of 315 million?  Even if one speaks of engineers or architects as a large group, how many can really design an 80-story building, or a building in a bay, or a bridge to carry the weight of all types of traffic for 100 years, or a vehicle designed to be electric and respond to an app from a smart phone, or...

But OK.  Test away on a common curriculum.  I'm pretty sure I know where that path leads.

The default is forgetting

If I visited a classroom today, no matter what level in the educational bulge (1-12) I visited, I would hear and see that reinforcement is a well-liked idea.   It would appear that good pedagogy includes introducing an idea and repeating it until all of the 20-30  students have at least heard it a minimum of 10 times, whether or not the concept is grasped.  Teachers wait for the golden mean to happen, that is, they wait until the middle number of students, 10-15, have demonstrated that by the 10th repetition of the concept they can perform the task.  A really good teacher will have all or nearly all students demonstrating understanding by the 10th time.

I cannot quit laughing at this notion.  Principle number 2 is all about the way that a synapse is formed.  Gary Lynch in California worked for nearly his whole 30 year career in the last two decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century trying to actually see a memory being formed.  He finally did.  And, then, he saw it replicated but not as many times as he expected.  After all his trials of getting the cells to  remember something he realized that the brain is programmed to take in what is necessary for reaction and survival, but to remember only what is worth remembering.  It doesn't really remember electrical impulses carrying information until the information is notable.

So, when I visit a classroom and see students with a vacant stare after a concept has been introduced, I know that the information being transmitted is not really notable; it doesn't have worth.  Even after the 10th time, if an idea has no worth to someone, it will not form a synapse with other related information.  What is more, Lynch found that impulses lit up (showing the remembrance) for different lengths of time, mostly measured in milliseconds.  The shortest impulses didn't last long enough to form connections to other dendrites.  So, even if a student showed understanding for one sitting, it is common only to show it temporarily, not for long term understanding.  Those memories are for information that has worth.

The real job of a teacher seems like it should be to show worth for the information dispensed.  Otherwise, it would appear that ease of forming ideas is rather a lost cause.  Reinforcement (repetition) doesn't have a place in memory formation.  Perhaps it does in memory storage, but the last word is not in on that yet.

I do see a problem for the schools knowing how memory is formed.  What is notable is many times linked to what is in a person's background, what is of value or interest, or what contains motivation for a particular individual.  I'm not sure a teacher has that varied a bag of tricks.  Even if a teacher does, I am certain a teacher doesn't have the time for making information notable to such a varied number of students (making one piece of information notable for someone, times 20 or times 30, times the number of concepts to teach in a day's time).

There's a reason one size does not fit all.

I'm seeing iridium

Here's the great irony.  Teachers in the classroom today think they are teaching things that are relevant.

Hmmm.  Let's review.  My 15-month-old granddaughter knows how to look at pictures on the phone by swiping from left to right and vice-versa to change from one picture to the next.  She knows how to enlarge and shrink the screen.  My daughter and her friend even tonight were joking about having to learn cursive handwriting when no one ever writes that way anymore.  Online banking has removed the need to keep a check register.  Receiving change from cashiers is always preceded by the "register" telling you how much change is needed.  Every smart phone made in the last two years has the capability for people to search by voice command and texting can be done by speaking rather than typing.  Text messages and Facebook messages are typically about 20 words long.  Twitter only has room for 140 characters per tweet.  No matter how long an article is on the internet, most people read only the first two paragraphs.  Information garnered from articles with headings is most of the time limited to the heading and two sentences.  Fewer and fewer people handle money.  People swipe their cards instead.  Skype and Facetime are as easy to use as regular voice mode when carrying on conversations.  Taking pictures of things to remind ourselves of what information it might have carried is the most common way for reminding ourselves of something.

It's a great irony that teachers think their classroom teaching approximates anything relevant to survival in today's world.  I'm seeing the iridium already building up in the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene (formerly the Tertiary) layers of the Earth.  Just by way of reminder - no dinosaur remains have been found above the K-Pg (KT) boundary.  The brain really does develop through what it takes to survive in the present and in the future.

I'm thinking that some changes are in order.

Much ado

The brain will assess its environment.  If it is hostile, it will determine whether to stay and ward off the danger, thereby learning something, or retreat to fight another day.  In education, the environment is called socialization.  But, that is a cover term for allowing a lot of sorting to happen in order to find a pecking order.  That kind of sorting teaches a student that a day of reckoning will happen sometime during the school year when her or his order will be decided.  Much of the time a person will not like the sorting process or the order that is decided for them.  The environment then begins to grow shields and spears and limits learning severely.

Also, the brain will assess the learning environment for its value in determining future success.  It will override the impulses for flight or fight if it thinks the long-term result is worth the fight or the retreat.  But too many times, there is no information worthy of subject matter matching future needs for survival, thus no relevance.  Then, the environment is deemed hostile since it is of no use.

Bill Daggett has been harping on the importance of relevance in the curriculum for years.  People have ignored him.  But, the evidence is written on every senior's transcript because the ability to communicate in numbers is very, very low and the ability to communicate substance meaningfully with words using any format has diminished.  Following Daggett's ideas for relevance would certainly help.   A student will certainly learn more if two things exist.  1) ensuring that the learning is clearly linked to future success, and 2) ensuring that the environment does not make one feel that fighting or fleeing is necessary.  Otherwise, 12 years of education is much ado about nothing.

Refinement time

So what would education be like if teachers paid attention to the principles found in the brain studies and cognitive research?

First, the brain has developed as a tool for survival.  That comes with a flight or fight feature.  When a child finds that she or he no longer can survive in a school environment, flight takes place, if not in body, then in mind.  People who describe "mentally checking out of school" say they wish they had been able to overcome their fears, but they couldn't and it has limited them, following them into adulthood.  But, beyond the safety of the environment, a person retains information that pertains to his or her perceived survival for the future.  If the information isn't pertinent, then why bother with it?  The principles that follow decide the data's fate.

Second, the brain follows a particular method for forming synapses, connections linking things that are remembered.  And, things that are remembered must have something memorable to spark a particular kind of impulse to flow to a cluster of dendrite terminations for the possibility of joining a synapse in the first place.  That memorable spark has to be remarkable because the brain's default is set to forget what is seen, heard, touched, smelled, tasted, and felt unless it is memorable.

Third, the brain is very efficient, so it only allows for knowledge that advances the individual's cause.  Information that is utilitarian is the primary reason for learning anything.  After that, information tagged with motivation (both intrinsic and extrinsic) gets captured for a synapse to form.  After that, information that is compatible with one's personality, what some call information of interest, is used to personalize, and tailor one's experience.  And, finally, information that comes from someone else of value, that originates from an established rapport with someone significant, will present itself as important enough to connect with other information garnered.  So, general information is packaged by the brain and made unique or it won't be remembered for a synapse to be formed.

Fourth, the brain follows a certain logical pattern - one that follows a protocol for growth in two areas.   The areas, one for communication in words, one for communication in numbers are designed to develop simultaneously and equally.  Lack of stimulus for either logic stunts its growth.  And, lack of stimulus translates to lack of efficiency, which throws its development back into the arena of principle three above.

Fifth, the brain functions best in a dynamic environment, not a static environment.  Although routines are established for involuntary systems of the body, routines for learning have not been observed as necessary for forming synapses.  In fact, connections made from various sources of information are stronger connections and more numerous than connections made within a single environment, such as attendance in one room with the same people for years at a time.

Other principles exist, but these five are enough for a person to see that what is touted as education today doesn't follow how the brain forms multiple and strengthened synapses in an efficient, logical, and personalized manner.  It's high time for schools to reconsider what forms the basis of information retention.  Someone will do it.  Probably someone in the business community.  He will make money, and the method will be efficient... like the brain.  We will ultimately see how much time is wasted today on things that don't have much to do with efficiently transmitting information for future survival.

Hard to watch

Stephen J. Gould's book, The Mismeasure of Man, accurately reviewed the outrageous testing and false hope that the U.S. put in psychological testing.  Aldous Huxley's Brave New World portrayed the natural societal results of such outrageous notions as people being born with a certain amount of IQ and the jobs that that IQ was suited for.

To some degree American society listened to Gould, but for the most part, the populace and educational community, including those trained to teach America's children, have continued to perpetuate those early 1900s outrageous, unsubstantiated notions of the psychological community regarding IQ.  Copious studies of the brain exist from both medical and cognitive scientists that discount entirely the early notions of IQ.  It is clear that humans' brains are equal and that learning takes place across the world's populations regardless of the formality of the training.

I am so very sorry that the educational community continues to accept the notions of psychology from the early 1900s and ignore research from more specialized and better suited fields bearing on how people learn. It is hard to believe that 150-year-old ideas and techniques still inform modern teachers, curriculum directors, and educational businesses.  The 12-year, lockstep, uniform, curriculum with its accompanying tests to "ensure that everyone learns only the same set of ideas" leads to mediocrity at best.  It serves no one's best interest.

The world has changed and in the next 10 years will undergo such radical changes in information delivery that  to continue the current system of education will be certain doom for all those who perpetuate it.  Fortunately, people like Ian Dukes have spoken loudly enough for anyone with ears to hear.  Others like him are paying attention to the current, specialized research in brain studies and are laying out paths for people to follow so that learning in the US doesn't become antiquated and contribute to the country's demise.

I leave it to the business community to lead the way out of the mire that the public schools seem to be unable to find their way out of.  My hat is off to business leaders like those at Exxon and those who are associated with Bill Gates who can see some handwriting on the wall and react accordingly and timely.  I am counting on them.

Transparent printing

Traces is the word I usually use when speaking of things that linger from the past and show themselves in the present.  I think that is because traces is a word used in the linguistic literature to show underlying grammatical structures that have disappeared but that still have prints on the surface structure of a modern usage.  But the word traces lacks the idea that the prints left from past use are still extant because they are so very important to the people still speaking the language.  The prints have merely survived for one reason or another through accidental fortune.

When it comes to experiences that have indelibly imprinted my current way of thinking and acting, I believe that a different word is better.  Latin had two words that have come to us.  The way the roots came into English were the same,  via French, and were only separated by a couple of hundred years for their entrance into the language.  The second word meant the same as the first, but had an aspect the first one didn't have.  The first word shows up in a number of  examples like tract, retract, detract, contract, subtract, and a few others.  The past participle form of trahere is tractus  which meant to drag.  That implies that someone can see evidence of the item being dragged.  Tractus morphed into a verb in French during the Middle Ages when French customs and language were fashionable in London.  That French word  became the word trace.  But, another Latin word was making its way into English, also via the French influence on English, at almost the same time, vestigium,  footprint.  That word showed up a little later in English as vestige.

So, now two words exist to choose from that are very close in meaning.  As I consider my current way of acting and believing, I want to choose the more recent word.  It is not merely a fortunate accident that I have become what I am, it is because someone's live and active footprint stepped into my life.  Someone walked with me and became a part of the fabric of my soul, my psyche.  The memory foam of my mind recorded the exact print and it lives in a place within even today.  The vestige of that print is extant... deliberate... and very important still... for anyone to see.

Enjoying a few moments of water

A fish out of water tonight.

I was sitting at a table in the banquet hall at a charity attended by many who had deep pockets in the suits they wore, came in their Benzes, and gave generously to the cause.  The program was nice, the food was excellent.

During the speaker's allotment of time my mind wandered, however, to a place I would have rather been... far, far away, where there was relaxation, ease, laughter, and love.  For a few moments, I enjoyed the water. I stayed there as long as I could, but the speaker finished, the charity ended, and reality reset itself.