Today is learning day

Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome.

Today I shant batter you with mad rants about the war, complaints about the system, or the frustration that I feel towards the human condition. No, TODAY will be about learning. Not learning anything in particular, or learning how to learn (which is a term I both loath and agree with), but rather learning something.

I watch Ze Frank all the time; as frequently as possible in fact. Why? Well, I suppose it is because he entertains me. Yet, I feel I get more out of it than simply something to giggle to myself about and kill 3 minutes with. I think I feel this way because he says something that sticks with me, on just about every show. Ze is intelligent, I will not defend that but I do believe it, and more than that he has a way with words. He probably spends some absurd amount of time editing and writing and carefully making each episode, so it is very likely that we are being given some view of him that only exists through the window of the internet. Still, that doesn't make his points less profound, his wording any less sharp and penetrating, and his humor any more memorable and entertaining. To quote Joshua Foer, the reigning U.S.A. memory champion, "As it turns out the two things evolution has programmed us to find most interesting are jokes and sex". I cannot know Ze's motives, or even if he has any behind his video blog, but I do know that what he does works. Putting humor together with things will help anyone remember them.

This is important. In 1835, hell probably in 1935, the idea of educating someone was to give them some manner of information (more often then not a table) and tell them to memorize it. This way when they needed to use it in the future, it would be there, permanently ground into their brain. Problem is memorizing is so painfully boring it is easier to cram for a test, until you are practically suffocating on memorized terms, and then regurgitate them onto the test. After you have thoroughly purged your system of the information you can forget it until the next test that may or may not contain it. This is more than just a problem in high school. For a long time I thought, "college will be different, they understand how education works better, they will let me do things that are interesting, they will involve me." Alright, I concede it is better, but it isn't much different. There is the same old memorization, same old, "I am saying this... as slowly as possible... because it is something...you need to write down... word for word...and read until you say it in your sleep". It's all still there. Some of the more successful approaches I have seen students take to this is to add their own humor. My roommate, to this day, remembers "avocado's number" (for those non-chemists in the room it is a reference to the mole constant and its inventor Count Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro di Quaregna e Cerreto). Yes, it is lame, yes, it probably doesn't have you in stitches right now, but at the time, it was pretty funny, and it sure as hell helped us remember it, to this day.

So, to the professors, the teachers, the tutors, the parents, the adults, the neighbors, the guardians, the TA's, student teachers, volunteers, gurus, mentors, friends, and families, that are in any way responsible for someone's education, please, PLEASE, make it interesting. Add some humor. It doesn't even have to be terribly good humor (I leave that distinctions to your own standards), just something to help your students remember what the hell you were talking about twenty minutes ago. I know a lot of teachers that crack jokes in class solely to keep themselves awake. Here is a secret, it keeps the students awake too. My calculus class has both an entertaining professor and what would once have contemptuously been referred to as "class clowns". Alright, they aren't perfect and they really disrupt the class sometimes, but out of every calculus class I have been in (and trust me I have been in a number of them) I have never seen the students so awake. I have not once seen someone in that class fall asleep.

So, quick summary, memorization is necessary sometimes, but where it isn't (or if you are clever enough even where it is), using humor helps with EVERYTHING. It will keep the professor and the students awake in class (you think I am kidding about how many college kids I see asleep in their chairs? I swear it is the fluorescent lights), it will help the students remember all the information they need to more easily and for a longer period, and it will help people find the class interesting, and probably cut down on the amount of kids cutting class. NO not every professor is likely to agree to this, some of them may get stuffy and call me a fool who knows nothing about education, some of them may just say that it is both disrespectful to the professor and to the discipline. Not all kids will be swayed by this, some kids just think college is about parties, sports, drinking, promiscuity, getting away from home, etc. and I honestly don't know how to reach them (these things are not necessarily bad, they are just divergent from the point of an educational institute, that being education.). Some professors can reach them, they are greater men and women than I. Still, it will make a difference.

Alrighty, so, education needs to change, I think we all agree. A joke now and then won't hurt, but before you get the idea that I think that is a cure all (even given my few cautionary statements) I will point out a few other things that might bear some scrutiny.


First, what is intelligence? This whole piece is done MUCH better by Sir Ken Robinson

HERE:


But I am still going to write about it (hopefully quickly) so that I can put my opinion out there. Intelligence has been slowly distilled into math ability. How this happened or even why is beyond me (at the moment, I am sure motive and method are there if the research is done, I am just lazy). I think it is pretty silly though. The arts and sciences colleges seem to be shrinking while tech schools and things like the college of mathy math math (also known as Computer Science) seem HUGE. But is someone that can describe, in words that evoke the feeling, a sunset on the beach with a loved one, or a rainy day spent playing games with someone that is no longer around, any less intelligent than someone that can program a funny little box with the square root algorithm that will help you pass your calc test (because NOBODY has the square root algorithm memorized)? I am dead serious, because the man that can make you remember things that hurt and things that were beautiful, and made you feel better than you had ever felt before, in this day and age, isn't likely to get a job, or a degree people will care about, but the guy with the little box has a job and a degree people will oo and ahh. In fact, we are doing a good job of finding kids with some amazing talents and scooping them up young, stamping "ADHD" or "DYSLEXIC" on their forehead, feeding them pills and throwing them in a room with a teacher who will insist they don't know what they say they know.

Alright, COUNTER-POINT. Blah blah blah survival of the fittest. Blah blah blah medication valid in some cases. Blah blah blah some disabilities resulting in "lack of intelligence" really do succeed in inhibiting intelligence. In some cases I will admit that the administration of medication to "fix" a problem helps. These cases are generally the cases in which I feel it hasn't inhibited the other talents of the individual. Would rain man be rain man if they had just "fixed" him? Suddenly I feel like I am alluding to one flew over the cuckoo's nest. In some cases it is true, people do have actual inhibitions to learning, not just different styles of learning. A lot of the time we like to say that there is something wrong with a person if said person does not conform adequately to the "norm" (YAY normalcy *kerplow*). And finally, I will concede that some people are just stupid, actually (I know I am being an optimist here) I am going to say foolish. I have plenty of people about me that seem to truly HATE learning. They go out of their way to avoid learning anything. I personally cannot understand this.


*Whew* I just don't shut up do I?


Alright now on to what I THOUGHT I was going to be writing about in this entry. NEW TECH! Everyone loves new technology (alright not the luddites but they are nearly extinct and we don't care about them today). I mean it is all smooth, and shiny, and comes in a fun wrapper with starbursts and lots of exclamation marks and all kinds of things that should excite us like a dog about to be given half a smoked ham. Alright, I suppose I sound a little hostile there, but I guess I just like to dismiss covers entirely if I can (especially when it comes to books or anything that can be bought in bestbuy, staples, target, wal mart, etc). Still, this is a good thing. Technology makes our lives easier, ever seen a chimp try to open a bottle of wine? Today's little techno gadget is VIDEO! YAY VIDEO! Wait, what? That isn't new, you lied to me you bas.. HEY! Let me finish. Google video (still not terribly new) is doing a very google thing and compiling a bunch of videos (YAY wait...). One section of videos they are compiling seem to be educational videos. No not abs of steel, nor Martha Stewart's guide to stuff with painted macaroni on it. No, I mean videos of actual college courses. Given my current occupation (not what I am doing right this moment but rather the job I have) I would say that they were originally distance learning videos, but now, they are online, AND FREE!


Yes, dare I say it but there is a chance, that something resembling free education, is now out in the world. No it is in no way certified, and thus does no damage to higher education businesses, er.. I mean institutions. But it will provide me with INFORMATION with LEARNING with education on various things that I might be interested in, without charging me some obscene amount of money per class.

I advise you at least look at the videos

HERE:
http://video.google.com/ucberkeley.html


And here are the rest of the TED videos where I got that Sir Ken video from.

http://video.google.com/ted.html




that is all for today.