On Failing Elementary School

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My daughter has been tested as highly gifted and this has lead me to attend some seminars for the gifted and talented.

One of the most interesting things that I have learned is that gifted people sometimes do not do well in elementary school.

Most people assume that if you are highly intelligent and you don’t do well, then you were simply bored. However, according to the lecturer, it turns out that many bright people simply don’t understand what the teachers are looking for. They presume that the simple answers can not be the correct ones and get lost trying to evaluate less obvious answers.

For myself, I don’t think that the simple answers are simply too trivial, I think that they were just plain wrong.

For example consider the following question:

If I say consider the following statement: The color of the ball is white. Then which of the following is true:

a) The ball is white
b) Hallow balls float
c) There are some balls that are black in color.

A statement without a declaration of truth is simply undecided. How can a ball be white? Only the color of a ball can be white. The other questions are undecided, based on the information that you are given, but you could get stuck trying to make your best guess.

In any case, I thought that the comment was illuminating.

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That’s a damn good observation there, Ed. I’ve noticed several times at work when similiar incidents happen. I have been called stupid before for asking my boss “how” to build something specifically. What he wouldn’t realize is that, unlike himself, who is only familiar with “way X”, there are other ways to frame a cased opening, or a cantilever, or a bulk-head, etc., and assumes that I am the ignorant one. Ironically, it is his lack of experience that makes him tend to call those who know more, the stupid one’s.

“Are you tellin me you don’t know how to do it!”

“No man, I’m sayin there is more than one way to do it. How about this? Leave me alone and come back when I’m finished.”

“No, I want it done “this” way!”

“Okay man, but I know a better way.”

“Are you calling me stupid?”

“Um…yeah.”

“You’re fired!”

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b)hallow balls cannot float in the air;
hallow balls do not even have to float on the water;
hallow balls are not balls;
hallow balls do not make afloat;
hallow balls can only be made afloat.

c)colour is not a space into which balls could be accomondated;
some balls are black insofar as they are in colour, if they are not in colour, then they are not black;
if the colour of the ball is white is true, then the colour of some balls cannot be undetermined;
there have some black balls, but elsewhere do not have some black balls;
how can the colours of several balls be taken as a singular colour black?

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Hi Detrope:

I will respect your wishes.

Hi Uniqor:

Loved your response. I think that I may have responded similarly.

I am curious if you had any problems with very early education? I certainly did. On the other hand my daughter seems to be doing just fine.

Thanks Ed

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There is such a thing as being too honest for your own good.

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Ed3, the problems I had during my school years had been a matter of my own concern, I had oppressed them inside. Whenever I tried to express those problems, my exam results declined and my parents, teachers lashed out on me, called me a rebel without cause, lack of respect for traditional standards, intellectually inconsistent and extreme, just immature, don’t know what you’re talking about, et cetera, et cetera.

They almost had me, they almost managed to convince me that I was as stupid as everybody else. I blame them, I have had no Nobels under my belt so far, because they forced me to act averagely and to kill my potentials. The system, the socio-ethical-cultural rules, is made to bring the average joel out of born genuises. Society is a talent killer, potential burier, herd matrix. The genuises in history hitherto, have been lucky individuals who were somehow away from the reach of the matrix, to a certain extent. This extent of freedom, is the extent by which genuises can grow up to be who they are.

Ed3, I highly recommand that you educate your daughter at home, before it is too late.

And I highly recommand a certain book written by a famous German educationist, whose name I forgot. This guy educated his son according his own devised systems and methods, as a result, his son spoke some ten languages and was admitted into a top university at sixteen years old. A true polymath, his son later became.

One thing I remeber clearly from his book: “proper education only after four years old, are not recommanded. Proper education only after seven years old, must be avoided at all cost”. The point was, that people’s potential must be and can only be authentically and effectively exploited before a certain age limit. I have conviction in this point, and his book in general.

No offersprings of mine are going to stupid schools. I want to breed future revolution starters, humanity directors, creators of art and pioneers of science. You, Ed3, certainly have got what it takes to achieve something big with your girl.

Think big, man, Simon Weil II could be in your making.

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I think part of it is that the school system is really pretty much a baby-sitting enterprise. As Uniqor correctly pointed out, if we wanted our children to actually learn things we could be doing a much better job.

But, that isn’t the point. We want to keep children in a controlled place while the adults work and we want the children to conform to the system. Any material that is learned beyond that is purely bonus material. It is there is they want to engage themselves, but it isn’t a requirement.

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Xunzian, I advocate revolution of humanity. I do not want children to comform to the system. I do not want them to be controlled as the way they have been. Controll is potential murdering. The system is herd making. All these, the entire educational system and ideaology behind, must be evolved anew. Revolution.

The aim of the revolution is to direct humanity forward, nothing else. The enemies are ethics, religion, culture and language. Language, is the point of Ed3, is the attack of his thread. Born bright people are naturally beyond the confinement of linguistic constructs, they are born beyond common logic. They clash with the system, in which language and logic reign supreme. But they are children without material power, they are easily brushed aside and turned into the conforming herd member. They are easily wasted by society. This is the tragedy, yours and mine, ours.

We must revolve against this. To do that, we must pen down popular ethics. Ultimately we are fighting with ideas, not people. The being of human beings must be affirmed, whereas the beings of human beings must be constantly overcome, so that they may eternally return and become, in authenticity and power, nobility and grace, creativity and bliss. This is the background. This is the grounding of my points made here and elsewhere on this forum, in these forums. It is Nietzschean, always.

But, we have to provide the alternative. This provision is the plan for the future of our race. This plan encompasses all areas of science, directed by existential philosophy, supported by political economics. It maybe realised by clashes of pens, or perhaps, it has to be realised by clashes of swords. Whatever it takes. We shall have fun. We must have fun, extraordanary fun, to play the biggest game is to join the revolution.

Make no mistake, something about humanity there is and there ever will be we can never hope to change. We do not want to change those, anyway. The corporate structure is a piramaid of directors, executives and operators. This structure reflects the social structure at large. Nietzsche the director, Mao the executive, Feng the operator. This is the constance of humanity we need to affirm.

No soldier not wanting to be the directive, the general, is a good soldier. Well, the director is ethical philosopher, onotologist, political economist and epistemologist. Every person should strive to be one of those. The new religion for the directors of humanity is Zarathustranism. The Eternal Recurrence. This is the religion of the future generations, whose church ground we must now find, fund and found. We, at least, must strive to be fathers and forefathers of overmen. In being these fathers, we become gods ourselves, creators of time and space for our genetical continuations.

http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/nietzsche_wtp04.htm

Xunzian, san, you cannot be any lesser than your ancestorial spirit, your inheritage power, your intrinsic desire. This age we are living in is a result of centuries of decadence, the spirit of the ancient is lost by now. it is crap and filth, slump and dumb. This spirit is to be restored. Our race will absorb more energy from the universe than ever before, someday, this day towards which we place our purpose of living. We gather the energy for a start, the spirit, the will. We honor and overcome our fathers by doing so, we become who we are supposed to be, only by doing so. Everything else is bull shit, waste of human flesh, inconscequential energy flux, pathetic drift, macrosms of decadence.

Our most powerful and essential human, humane, existence exists in this concentration and expression of energy, this aura and glow, nothing else.

This is eternity to which man strive. We want deep eternity, that is, to educate these people and give them a cause.

Jesus is comming again this Christmas. That is so sad to know. This is pathetic. This lonesome Jew has been hanging and dangling around for two damn thousand years none stop. Well shit, people, let the man down.

This man, Christ, is in our language, logic, philosophy and science. His legacy prevades us. Why? We have been systematically conditioned and moulded to honor him, since we were something better. This within us, we should overcome, to live up to the great little guys who now lie forever buried in the family photo album.

When you marvel at the perfection and power of the former you smiling and embracing, in some photograph from twenty years ago, you cry out loud and wonder what a piece of useless shit you have turned out to be as what your miserable existence is now. You failed yourself. We failed ourselves and most of us are perfectly willing to fail our children. Stop, those fucking shitworms, they must change their mind and realise their failure, so that may they, their former greatness, be redeemed via the success of their future generations. This is the redemption available, on the table, not some shit “oh holy father save moi” shit…