On the subject of School and Education
Written by OTiTO
On the subject of School and Education
What the right in and the wrong out means in terms of energy and substances for the body, can be applied in a similar way on the human mind. Data and information are the food for the mind. If a socially oriented person gets the suitable, right and functioning information for his problems, learns and understands them, his solutions for these problems would be without exception constructive. Once a person is capable to learn on his own, everything he wants to know and the right, matching information are providing for his problems, he could get all its problems under control and his circumstances would steadily improve. If this is allowed to every individual in this world, a paradise would only be difficult to prevent.
The ability to study, to be able to obtain data and information independently, is a fundamental key to this state. However, the subject of study is just like that of the nutrition within the earthly cultures still an extremely arbitrary affair, therefore we have so many confused, inactive and ill people.
The first major barriers, a person encounters when he has to assess information and wants to learn something, are the words of his language.
A word occurs in the human languages essentially in two guises, either spoken, as a sequence of sounds escaping through the mouth of a man, or written, as a symbol for these sounds.
The baby hears these sounds and produces them by imitation itself. The joy of the parents is big if the only word or the first sentences come out from the small body and they say proudly our child can already speak. The pupil normally learns to convert first the letters and then the letter groups of words into sounds and then to read and to write the single words as sentences. He learns orthography, punctuation and grammar. If he can then reasonably read and write its primary school is considered to be finished. The faculty is convinced that their students are now well prepared to learn the 'important things' in life.
Indeed, their pupils can produce all sounds which are written on a paper or the board, but they become quickly tired and with a lack of concentration, sit with an empty expression on their chair, some yawn bored in the middle of lessons, while some are simply dull, other are talking or deal with other things. The longer the hour lasts the more they will get restless, many are disturbing the lessons, some are dozing and waiting until it's finally over, while others are very fidgety and can barely sit still. With the dozing children one can still live as a teacher, but the fidgety and loudly hyped troublemakers should be better calmed down.
Thus the school psychologist steps in, who "diagnoses" immediately a "hyperactivity" of the troublemaker with the help of his long list of symptoms. The parents, knowing how important in today's time the education is for her child, long for a lasting solution for their "hyperactive". The psychologist explains to the parents that it concerns a chemical imbalance in the brain, which one can remedy however nowadays and recommends, the " proven means of Ritalin “ for the beginning, to restore the lost balance in the brain. The worried parents are relieved that there is such a simple solution and ensure that their child takes his medication regularly. In the meantime, five years later this now thus „quiet and affable“ youngster commits an amok run at his school and kills two of his classmates, as well as the teacher, who referred his parents to the psychologist for a consultation.
It's really a mystery what's going on here, all have made but such effort in teach something to this guy and then it turns out into an amok run.
But stop, stop STOP! -Let us zoom a little closer into the situation.
What have you really taught these children now? You have taught them to produce the same sounds like you, with your mouth. You have taught them to produce the suitable sounds to a written text. You have taught them in the group to write down words for spoken sounds.
As soon as somebody can produce the sounds of a language and can paint the matching symbols in addition, he speaks the language and understands it, we conclude - but this is a fallacy!
The fact that a person produces the sounds of a language with his mouth, can convert them into written symbols and then in turn can reconvert this symbols back into sounds does not necessarily mean automatically that he understands it really right. Take once a good dictionary in your language at hand and look for quite ordinary words, which have a long list of definitions or less usual words and check on yourself if you know and can use all this definitions. Dear teacher, let once all your students spontaneously write definitions for words like 'if' 'else', 'from', 'over', 'with', 'whether', 'how', 'any', 'under', 'subject', 'connection', 'sense', 'be', 'do' 'have', 'cause' 'effect' and similar, so completely usual words, on a piece of paper. Collect the slips and then compare the definitions of your students with the corresponding definitions from an extensive dictionary and you will understand what I' m talking about. Even a spontaneous survey in the faculty itself could provide surprises.
In the beginning I defined only the purely physical aspect for the term 'word' - and intentionally I have given you an incomplete definition. The by far more important aspect of words however is the mental aspect. But because this aspect can not be observed directly, it gets little attention. But similar things happen with the psychiatrists and psychologists when they come in touch with the spirit of a human being, because they can’t see it, they ignore it.
The mental aspect of a word is it's significance. A word gets only a significance when it encounters a mind that has a concept for it. If you encounter a language you are not able to speak, then this words are only sounds or characters with no sense. You have no concept regarding these words in your mind, so they make no sense for you. This is about the situation of our babies and our children in regard to the language with which they are confronted. The significance of the words exist only in the mind of the people in form of concepts, thoughts, ideas, image contents, pictures, experiences, conclusions etc. ... If a student has the correct and suitable concepts in his mind for all words in his textbook, he understands his field and can use it. Beyond a mind the words of a language are merely sound waves (it’s active form) or ink symbols on a paper as well as some symbols of different luminance on a monitor. (it’s static form)
Children are like robots taught to read and write, but if the children have the correct meanings of the words in their mind is left to chance – thus is basically a matter of luck!
Words contain whole thought packages and can have many meanings. To effectively teach a class by spoken words (the passing form), all children would have to have exactly the correct and fitting concepts of the spoken words from the teacher immediately in their minds. Since this will never be the case in a classroom, the teachers emotionally sense the phenomena of misunderstood words in their classrooms and it gets stronger the more misunderstood words accumulate in the individual students and remain unexplained.
Instead of worrying, that students understand all the words necessary to learn a subject, one lets the students drown in their misunderstood words.
The psychiatry and psychology reinterprets these non-optimum study phenomena of the pupils - their reactions on account of misunderstood words and other study barriers - a spiritual reaction to problems of study, - into a "chemical problem of the brain“. A new term for the disease, 'hyperactivity,' is invented and backed up with a catalog of symptoms that could, in fact, occur in any person who encounters mental difficulties in their studies. The pharmaceutical industry is pleased about the new market and quickly brings psychotropic (mood-altering) drugs on the market, which pretend to restore this alleged 'chemical imbalance'.
In this way the dangerous environment reached its dramatic climax at our schools: By the use of psychiatric drugs, as alleged 'Remedy' for the invented disease ADD, which is in actually fact only phenomena students show, while getting trained without understanding. These solutions are not only dangerous, but make the affected students in addition to soulless robots - to future citizens to whom one can sell every idea as a truth.
Today it is not uncommon that the students of the higher classes, on account of an absence of a uniformly functioning methodology of study and its thereby accumulated misunderstood words, leave the school more stupid than they were at the time of their primary school.
