"The brain actually does quite well with failure" and
to know that " we have an unlimited potential to learn"
--- Orjinal mesaj ---
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Cc:
Sent: Mon Aug 09 22:08:14 EEST 2004
Subject: Re: conscious of evolution or Brain 101
?Moreover, there is no way back to the old dance.? (Funda Oral)
Funda:
if only everyone understood.
Phil
Phil- it is like how we learn swimming or walking...understanding is possible
as we experience and live.
OST may encourage us to try, to face chaos... to jump into the water so we
can create something original and new.
Funda Oral
Funda,
Actually, you are more accurate than you may know. The way one learns to
walk, or to do anything you can put the words "how to...." in front of, viz. how
to talk, how to drive a car, etc., etc., is the same for all human beings.
To understand this, one needs to know that the job of the brain is to keep the
organism alive and viable in the environment in which it finds itself. To
do that, it has to learn. The brain learns by doing the following:
1. Setting an intention to learn (may be conscious or unconscious).
2. Developing an hypothesis about the method to perform the task (the
"how-to").
3. Putting the hypothesis to the test by trying and usually failing.
4. Adjusting the hypothesis and testing again, usually failing.
5. Continuing to adjust the hypothesis until some semblence of success is
achieved.
6. Continuing to refine that process until suitable success has been
achieved.
In so doing, the brain develops a physiologically-existing dendritic network
of cells all connected up and which become denser the more that pathway is
used. Once you have learned to drive a car (most of us can remember some of the
trauma and errors around that experience) you no longer have to think about
it consciously but can relegate the process to the network in your brain; the
process and mechanics of driving no longer require your focussed attention and
you can then chew gum and drive at the same time. Even listen to the radio
and not run off the road. Not to mention hold a conversation. :)
Few, if any people remember it, but you learned to talk in the same way.
Your brain was born able to deal with all the sounds of the world. Depending
on which culture and language you were born into, those were the sounds your
ears heard and the brain tried to make sense of (the brain's job, remember,
making sense of the world to survive). Your brain was bathed in meaningful sound
by your parents, family and the culture around you. Pretty soon, you began
making sounds of your own and one day you chanced on "Ma-ma" or "Da-da", or
the equivalent in your language, and the environment went nuts. Wow!! Better
do more of that because I got lots of hugs and kisses. And, so it went,
trying and failing, getting feedback that the sound you tried had no meaning and
then, getting strong, positive feedback when you were successful. That's how
your brain built the network for talking in your language. And not some
other language. Furthermore, you lose the ability to make certain sounds,
again, depending on the language.
You can probably develop some principles from the above sequence, one being
that failure is one of the primary methods for learning. The brain actually
does quite well with failure. It's the ego that is the problem. That's
another subject.
OS rarely fails, but sometimes it can be better than others, maybe call it a
limited success? That's opportunity knocking for learning. The army calls
this AAR, After Action Review, so they can close up the learning loop. Very
sharp practice.
There is a reading process which uses the above to develop fluent readers
99.5% of the time and to correct poor readers (those with small errors in their
dendritic pathways of the brain for reading) or teach those who never learned
to read at all to read as fluently as they talk. The stats are that 99% of
those people learn to read correctly and as fluently as they talk. The time
required is about 10 tutor hours per grade level gained for adults, sometimes
much shorter for those with only small reading pattern errors, and around 12-15
hours for children, who have less experience of the world and hence, a lesser
spoken vocabulary.
Too much to explain here but.....it does work, and the schools won't hear of
it because it requires them to abandon most of what they think they know about
teaching reading. So, they continue to produce 25%++ functionally or
totally illiterate students while all the time 'blaming the students' for not
learning. (The students have ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, psychological disorders, etc.,
etc., and etc., all excuses they use to explain their failure to teach ALL the
students to read, or do math). That's a large rant, so I'd better stop.
Paul Everett
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