BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR INSTITUTE 2003

Forum 8- Forums, more disabling/abling, and the brain as a circle ...

We are leaving them at a grave disadvantage for a successful professional/vocational life. I have no problem with allowing for brain storming and creation. However, those assignments/projects must be correct in final draft form and prior to grading, as grading is to be comprehensive...as it should be.

As professionals, Educators no less, we have the responsibillity{!} of ensuring that our students are receiving a wholistic learning experience, inclusive of exploration, spelling, computation, creating,etc. There is a fundamental credibility to the importance of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.

Furthermore, the irony here is that we have no societal grounds to complain about school systems graduating students from high school with a diploma, who cannot read; get a decent job; aspire to higher learning; refrain from a life less acceptable to 'our standards', namely a life of selling drugs, or worse...themselves; stealing; alcohol; alternative lifestyles; and the list continues...when we have not formally equipped them with tools for success. Now we are faced with the challenge of the mixed signals, which manifest themselves in a variety of ways. For example, remedial classes in college/training, which is money spent needlessly, instead of being spent for credit courses leading to a degree/certificate.

Literacy programs are predecated on our iliterate high school graduates/drop~outs. Billions of dollars are being spent to give essentially young adults the same education they should have gotten during the formative years...for free. Thus, more students than we realize are being thrust into the realm of debt, putting them at a further disadvantage. Often this cycle is due to fault, solely not their own.

If being held to task was one of several entities that enabled us to be professionals, therefore positive contributors to society, then why are we settling for less of our generational offspring? It is apparent to me that with the wealth of technology avaliable today more opportunity for success must be more, not less, prevelant. This includes, but is not limited to spell check {no offensive to anyone, as I realize the concerns are valid. However, {in my opinion} this is not, and cannot be, an excuse. Rather, we need to create an on~going means of enabling ourselves, our students, and anyone else we interact with to be wholistically successful.

The Universe is not pleased with our personal and professional complacency. Thus, many problems of today {both generational and new} continue to manifest in ways that are, and have yet to be, identified. Until we realize that life is a cycle of three strongholds, in priority, of Church, Home, and School...we will remain at a wholistic disadvantage as a global society.

Consider this...intellectual genocide.

I like a lot the ideas that we came up with yesterday morning: that the forums are a new kind of writing/conversation space, somewhere between talking and formal writing, more like sharing thoughts in progress. And that one should NOT be "editing onself" in writing in them, since that demonstrably gets in the way of sharing one's thoughts (as it does for students). And that they should be labelled "spelling-free, punctuation-free, grammar-free, structure-free".

But what about the issues raised in Geneva's email above? How do we deal with those?

Lots of other interesting issues came up yesterday ... motor symphonies, organization without a conductor, the role of the genome, corollary discharge and its effects on perception, corollary discharge as a mechanism for generation of expectation, mismatches between expectation and input as a source of pain/discomfort ... and all this without the I-function.

Feel free to write about the writing/enabling/disabling issues and/or about anything else yesterday made you think about. If you want to write about both, how about doing two postings? That will make it easier for me to collect all our thoughts about enabling/disenabling in one place in the archive.

Early Voices: The Leap to Language

Teaching Computers to Work in Unison

If I want to use my Serendip web page for my students, then some of the more computer savvy ones might pop into the Forum and read my comments, some of which use sarcasm related to their foibles. If Antoinette, or anyone else, wanted to use it in a professional presentation, then my comments directed to a particular audience become grist for someone's unintended mill.

Our bodies were created to work in sync (perfect harmony) with each other in order to establish patterns of coordination. That is wonderful and amazing! As they say that "God Don't Make No Junk."

If in fact we suffer from ,as Antoinette suggests ,a spelling deficiency,some "check" system must then be created within the classroom to guard against continuous errors during instuctional periods.We are,after all placed in positions for the children to emulate.

Our students will not "rise" if we do not create a "standard" of expectations!

My internal clock is set for Kenya and Italy, whhile visiting these places, I did not need an alarm clock, I just got up att 5:45 each morning. At home to get up at that time, I would need to be cattle- prodded out of bed.

HELP!

The ideas presented yesterday are a strain for me to understand, but I think Paul is doing a good job at slowly building at least a superficial understanding of this input/output model of neurons. I still waiting how this impacts what we as educators should do or think differently.

I do agree with Keith that the interconnectivity of the nervous system is fascinating especially in its complexity. The more you find out about the biology, the more there is to know and understand. We think that researchers should be able to "fix" mental illness in the same way we are able to develop treatment for physical problems. Now I understand a little more how taking a pill and supplying just one chemical is not enough. Although it may kickstart some neurons to begin to communicate, its difficult to know what "concert" will be produced in the end.

So I will read over the forum today, look at the content notes and work on my web site. I this way my electronic presence will be with you.

Compare to Asian or European cultures that put education first, they have made the choice and will sacrifice everything (at the basic family level) to be sure that the children receive the best education possible. This is not the norm for America. On the other hand, the essence of America is dynamic. Foreign engineers, doctors, and other professionals flood into our country daily. We need them. Philadelphia brought in 250 Indians to teach our children science. Perhaps in time their(and other immigrants) impact on their new country will change our focus.


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