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Mawrtyr2008's picture

General Revelation

Isn't it funny, and I think we've all had one of these experiences, how a student can hear a specific argument over and over again, in different styles of teaching, and then one day for no apparent reason it just clicks? The argument itself can be mundane or extraordinary, but the "aha" euphoria remains the same.

I'm attempting to record the way that it clicked with me to enhance Paul's description of this exact same point. So, it starts with the presumption that most people think that the brain is a box with stimuli going in and responses going out and something complicated happening in the middle (see spaghetti model). Under this linear relationship between brain and behavior, the models of education including "rote memorization" etc should be perfect! This understanding of education fits with this understanding of brain structure. This linear relationship between brain and behavior would also suggest the hypothesis that psychopharmacology would be a very appropriate way of treating any range of mental health problems. The very structure of these institutions rests on a specific understanding of how the brain works and caters to those forms of potential change in the brain.

The problem is, of course, that the brain doesn't work that way!

It's time to take into consideration that the very way education and mental healthcare were built were the result of the revised scientific method. New observations about brain structure and function that need to now be incorporated into our ongoing open-ended transactional inquiry, not in the classroom, but about the classroom (and mental healthcare too!). The point of this is that a "new loop", a new experiment, a new trail-and-error scenario with a new outcome should, and more importantly, can be made!

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