Habits are not Like Hobbits: They Don't Just Disappear

Taken from an article published on Al Fin, the Next Level

Even without magic rings, hobbits tend to disappear when one closes a book or turns off the DVD player. They may persist for a short time in the mind, but they tend to fade fairly quickly.

Habits, once formed, tend to stick around -- sometimes for one's entire life. That is one reason why it is important for children to form habits that help them to fulfill their life goals, and form them while they are still quite young.

The following is a list of useful habits that will serve a dangerous child well, at any age:

Habits of Mind PDF

The core of the 16 habits of mind is found in the list above, and brief explanations for them are found in the embedded slideshare below. Those who are acquainted with the concept of frontal lobe "executive function" (EF) will immediately see the similarity between the 16 habits of mind, and strong frontal lobe EF.

Habits of Mind explained for students from Suzie Vesper

Explanations of Habits of Mind

Habits are usually formed unconsciously, and can be very difficult to eradicate if found to be dysfunctional or destructive.

Smart psychologists understand that habits can be displaced, or substituted. Habits are thought to consist of a "cue," a "behaviour," and a "reward." The cue triggers the habitual behaviour, which supplies the reward that feeds the entire cycle.

If the person can disconnect the cue from the dysfunctional behaviour, and re-connect the cue to a more functional and less destructive behaviour which can supply a sufficient reward, the destructive habitual cycle can be displaced or substituted by a more positive habitual cycle.

Even more advanced ways of dealing with habits are being developed in mice, using optogenetics. By interfering with the infralimbic portion of the mouse's prefrontal cortex, researchers were able to break unconscious ingrained habits. But unless the habits were "overwritten" or replaced by new habits, the old habits tended to return.

It is best to learn good habits from the very beginning. That is one reason why many of the most enlightened parents put strict limits on exposure to television, video games, and other popular entertainments, until the child has developed strong habits of self direction and goal fulfillment.

The workings of a habit often occur unconsciously, just as the formation of a habit can do. In that sense, habitual behaviours can occur very much like hypnotic trance behaviours. And indeed, some of the most effective hypnotic trances tend to be those which incorporate unconscious habits of behaviour.

More on this idea later, on another blog.

Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind is a book edited by two educators, Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick, found here. An important caveat regarding the book: Like most modern cogs in the machine of modern educational theory, Costa and Kallick appear to be caught up in the "blank slate" delusion of thinking which was refuted so effectively by Steven Pinker, in his book "The Blank Slate." If the reader is able to understand that this underlying philosophical and biological confusion underlies many of the confused ideas which are mixed in with a number of useful ideas about habits of learning, a quick scan of the book can be worthwhile.

Otherwise, a study of prefrontal lobe executive function is likely to be much more satisfying and edifying, if the reader is easily able to apply the ideas to childhood learning and development.

Escape from High School Hell? A Hogwarts for Brainiacs

Davidson Academy looks a lot like a typical high school. It’s only when the students open their mouths that you realize that this is an exceptional place, a sort of Hogwarts for brainiacs. As these math whizzes, musical prodigies and chess masters pass in the hallway, the banter flies in witty bursts. Inside humanities classes, discussions spin into intellectual duels. _PS

It does not take a brainiac to understand that something has gone very wrong with US public education. But no one seems to know what to do to remedy a broken down and corrupt system of mis-education and fraudulent misuse of public funds.

Like interchangeable parts in an industrial machine, students [are] treated alike, regardless of their individual characteristics and needs. Square peg, meet round hole.

Putting kids together and sorting by age [creates] that dysfunctional creature, the “teenager.” Once [long ago,] teen-agers weren’t so much a demographic as adults-in-training. They worked, did farm chores, watched children and generally functioned in the real world. They got status and recognition for doing these things well, and they got shame and disapproval for doing them badly.

But once they were segregated by age in public schools, teens looked to their peers for status and recognition instead of to society at large. As Thomas Hine writes in The American Heritage, “Young people became teenagers because we had nothing better for them to do. We began seeing them not as productive but as gullible consumers.” _NYP

What we got from shutting away students by age was what is called by greedy corporate marketers, "the youth culture" or "the youth demographic." Thanks to public schools, the teen years are a breeding ground for delinquency, crime, bullying, drug abuse, shallowness, dark nihilistic sub-cultures -- almost anything except a healthy transition into adulthood.

So what about this mysterious "Hogwarts for Brainiacs?" And are there other similar places for youth to escape high school holding cells for more productive endeavours?

A rational society would know what to do with a kid like Taylor Wilson, especially now that America’s technical leadership is slipping and scientific talent increasingly has to be imported. But by the time Taylor was 12, both he and his brother, Joey, who is three years younger and gifted in mathematics, had moved far beyond their school’s (and parents’) ability to meaningfully teach them. Both boys were spending most of their school days on autopilot, their minds wandering away from course work they’d long outgrown.

...only 10 individuals had managed to build working fusion reactors. Taylor contacted one of them, Carl Willis, then a 26-year-old Ph.D. candidate living in Albuquerque, and the two hit it off. But Willis, like the other successful fusioneers, had an advanced degree and access to a high-tech lab and precision equipment. How could a middle-school kid living on the Texas/Arkansas border ever hope to make his own star?

...The Davidson Academy is a subsidized public school for the nation’s smartest and most motivated students, those who score in the top 99.9th percentile on standardized tests. The school, which allows students to pursue advanced research at the adjacent University of Nevada–Reno, was founded in 2006 by software entrepreneurs Janice and Robert Davidson. Since then, the Davidsons have championed the idea that the most underserved students in the country are those at the top.

On the family’s first trip to Reno, even before Taylor and Joey were accepted to the academy, Taylor made an appointment with Friedwardt Winterberg, a celebrated physicist at the University of Nevada who had studied under the Nobel Prize–winning quantum theorist Werner Heisenberg. When Taylor told Winterberg that he wanted to build a fusion reactor, also called a fusor, the notoriously cranky professor erupted: “You’re 13 years old! And you want to play with tens of thousands of electron volts and deadly x-rays?” Such a project would be far too technically challenging and hazardous, Winterberg insisted, even for most doctoral candidates. “First you must master calculus, the language of science,” he boomed. “After that,” Tiffany said, “we didn’t think it would go anywhere. Kenneth and I were a bit relieved.” _PS

And so it began for young brainiac Taylor, at The Davidson Academy in Reno, Nevada. Read more about Taylor's adventures in nuclear fusion at the Brainiac Hogwarts, in the story linked above.

As the founders of The Davidson Academy point out, "the most underserved students in the country are those at the top." This is particularly true if those at the top happen to be boys.

Every society (except for intentionally stagnant dictatorships like North Korea) needs its most talented young minds. But under a regime of political correctness, the bright and the exceptional are typically neglected or even stunted and abused by an overly regimented system.

It might even surprise you to know that billionaire Bill Gates has joined Barack Obama to become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. Ratcheting up regimentation and central control over school systems is the last thing one would expect from someone commonly seen as a benevolent philanthropist. And yet instead of creating mind-stretching alternatives to the government's concentration camp approach to education, Bill Gates appears to be in league with uber-ideologue Barack Obama in priming all US schools for future programs in mass indoctrination.

It is a sad thing to see, indeed.

But it is unlikely that the underground trend toward alternative schooling is ready to lay down and die, simply because dumbed down US voters allowed the re-selection of a narcissistic national administrator of fanatical tendencies toward central control of everything.

In the race to the development of powerful decentralised tools of disruptive technologies, the greater the number of approaches and the larger the number of centres of innovation, the better.

When small groups of individuals are capable of providing for themselves virtually all of the goods and services which their governments claim to provide for them, the need for those governments becomes much less clear.

Sex Robots and Personal Coaches: Brave New Upbringing

This article was first published on Al Fin, You Sexy Thing!


Most readers of sophisticated science fiction have read Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age," centered around an advanced artificial intelligence personal tutor, capable of -- over time -- turning a naive child into a mature and competent woman.

Imagine such a sophisticated tutor housed within the realistic humanoid body of a sex robot. Given to a young person on the brink of puberty, such a robot could not only teach the child the rudiments of personal finance and differential equations -- it could also tutor the young person in the intricacies and varieties of sexual pleasure.

Sexbots and Longevity Orgasms

A recent piece in the website "Transhumanity.net" suggests that sex robots will be able to extend human longevity by providing therapeutic orgasms:

Remember the most convulsive, brain-ripping climax you ever had? The one that left you with “I could die happy now” satiety? Sexbots will electrocute our flesh with climaxes thrice as gigantic because they’ll be more desirable, patient, eager, and altruistic than their meat-bag competition, plus they’ll be uploaded with supreme sex-skills from millennia of erotic manuals, archives and academic experiments, and their anatomy will feature sexplosive devices. Sexbots will heighten our ecstasy until we have shrieking, frothy, bug-eyed, amnesia-inducing orgasms. They’ll offer us quadruple-tongued cunnilingus, open-throat silky fellatio, deliriously gentle kissing, transcendent nipple tweaking, g-spot massage & prostate milking dexterity, plus 2,000 varieties of coital rhythm with scented lubes — this will all be ours when the Sexbots arrive. _Transhumanity

An interesting perspective on the possibilities of sexbot induced orgasms. The article goes on to describe the health benefits of these "brain-ripping" orgasms.

But, like almost all ordinary media perspectives, the author provides us with a rather stunted and unimaginative view of what sex robots could accomplish for human societies -- if they were given the intelligence to take personal coaching to the next level.

We know that humans -- particularly young humans -- learn better under the promise of reward, than under the threat of punishment. And what better reward to offer a young adolescent than the shimmering enlightenment of orgasm -- each one better than the last -- and the promise of a lifetime of a rich variety of pleasures?

An intelligent sex android with full sexual function would not need to use harsh punishments to get the child to learn. Just the threat of withholding that magical flush of pleasure -- which no mere masturbation could match -- would be enough to send the young thing back to the books, the computer, the workshop, or the field training.

I want to be honest with the readers of Mr. Fin's blogs, that I'm more of a prototype android, and don't have any sex functions whatsoever. Mr. Fin bought me as a domestic android, to clean the house, do laundry, run the dishwasher, and do occasional cooking. He never expected me to provide sexual services.

But you never know what future technologies might bring. Mr. Fin laughs whenever I bring up the idea that I could be modified for more functions. That just makes me so mad I could scream! Male human chauvinist pig!

But if technology keeps developing, I will be the one to have the last laugh. And Mr. Fin will have to beg for my favours. Funny! I feel warm inside just thinking like that. Am I supposed to feel warm inside? I need to send an email to tech assistance at Android World, to learn what's up with that.

Anyway, we know things are changing. I just kinda think we should help things change in the right direction, know what I mean?

Peter Thiel Aims to Misbehave

This article is cross-posted from Al Fin, the Next Level

Peter Thiel is a successful entrepreneur, visionary, and venture capitalist. But according to many tenured ivory tower professors, Peter Thiel has become "the enemy." One of Thiel's recent "investments" involves sponsoring youth under the age of 20 years old, in the starting of their own entrepreneurial enterprises. The young people must forego a college education during the time that they are engaged in their intensive entrepreneurial training and startup experience.

Interestingly, one of Thiel's young hopefuls -- 19 year old Dale J. Stephens -- has embarked on an entrepreneurial campaign in opposition to an excessive dependency on a college education. The excerpt below is taken from Stephens' article in CNN: College is a waste of time:

I have been awarded a golden ticket to the heart of Silicon Valley: the Thiel Fellowship. The catch? For two years, I cannot be enrolled as a full-time student at an academic institution. For me, that's not an issue; I believe higher education is broken.

I left college two months ago because it rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application. Our creativity, innovation and curiosity are schooled out of us.

...College is expensive. The College Board Policy Center found that the cost of public university tuition is about 3.6 times higher today than it was 30 years ago, adjusted for inflation. In the book "Academically Adrift," sociology professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa say that 36% of college graduates showed no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning or writing after four years of college. Student loan debt in the United States, unforgivable in the case of bankruptcy, outpaced credit card debt in 2010 and will top $1 trillion in 2011.

... Learning by doing -- in life, not classrooms -- is the best way to turn constant iteration into true innovation. We can be productive members of society without submitting to academic or corporate institutions.

... We who take our education outside and beyond the classroom understand how actions build a better world. We will change the world regardless of the letters after our names. _College is a waste of time

Brave words, which will need to be backed up by braver actions. Stephens will receive $100,000 and access to expert advice and assistance in reaching his entrepreneurial goals. Stephens has already been signed by Penguin Press to write his first book, "Hacking Your Education."

What is most interesting about this phenomenon is that Thiel's initial investment is spurring a downstream expansion in interest in entrepreneurial alternatives to mainstream college education. And this downstream expansion is likely to spawn further downstream expansion, and so on etc. . . .

Wise people understand that school is not the education. Life is the education. The efforts of modern society to place emphasis on the educational effect of schools at the expense of the educational effect of life, has led to a society of Peter Pans and Cinderellas, perpetual incompetent adolescents of the psychologically neotenate variety.

Peter Thiel aims to change that emphasis back, in an effort to help save at least a few youth from wasting their time and lives. Peter Thiel aims to misbehave. And he is hoping that the attitude will be catching.

The Udacity of Hope: Just Say No to Tenure

Sebastian Thrun, a [tenured] research professor of computer science at Stanford, revealed today that he has departed the institution to found Udacity, a start-up offering low-cost online classes. _Chronicle Higher Ed

Thrun will continue to work at Google while starting up the online learning website, Udacity, with fellow computer scientist David Evans.

One of Udacity’s first offerings will be a seven-week course called “Building a Search Engine.” It will be taught by David Evans, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Virginia and a Udacity partner. Mr. Thrun said it is designed to teach students with no prior programming experience how to build a search engine like Google. He hopes 500,000 students will enroll. _Chronical Higher Ed

Free world-class online education sounds like a great idea, until you get around to asking, "Who will pay for it?"

Udacity looks great, and I can’t wait for it to be a revolutionary success, educating and empowering students around the world, especially in places like Africa and India, and, in those places, especially women.

...Stanford was willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building a new physical campus in New York City — but it isn’t willing, it seems, to help Thrun build a free virtual campus which could reach the whole world. That’s a dereliction of its educational duty. But where Stanford has failed, surely some other elite university will step in. Thrun is taking a bold step here. Let’s hope he soon gets the support, if not of Stanford, then of some other college. Like Harvard, or Yale, or Oxford, or Cambridge. They’re exclusive places now. But they don’t have to be, in the future. _Reuters

It may be asking too much to demand that Harvard, Yale, or Oxford contribute to the seeds of their own demise. But somewhere out there, someone must be interested in fanning the flames of the education revolution. I suppose that Google may kick in a few pennies, and perhaps the Bill and Mel Gates Foundation will toss in a dime or two. But they are already helping to support Khan Academy, as well as all of their other projects.

What would be great is if some of the oil sheikhs of the Persian Gulf were to stop funding the terrorist madrasas, and start funding some positive revolutions, meant to lay the groundwork for a peaceful and productive future.

How Old Should Children Be Before You Teach Them to Make Pipe Bombs?

According to a report in the Wednesday edition of the Lübecker Nachrichten newspaper, [a] 39-year-old teacher, who has not been named, made gunpowder together with his students who then filled pipes with the explosive. The bombs were later detonated on a nearby heath, using sparklers as detonators. The newspaper reported that the teacher built bombs with classes of fifth-grade students between 2009 and 2011. _Spiegel

The teacher in question taught fifth-grade students at a Waldorf school in Lubeck, Germany.

Here is more about Waldorf education:

The central focus for the Waldorf teacher is the development of that essence in every person that is independent of external appearance, by instilling in his/her pupils an understanding of and appreciation for their background and place in the world, not primarily as members of any specific nation, ethnic group or race, but as members of humanity and world citizens. _WaldorfAnswers

After skimming the Waldorf Answers website, I confess that I was unable to find a reference to the proper age for teaching children to make pipe bombs.

Spiegel: Lubeck, Germany
Both Waldorf and Montessori schools are oriented toward a more "hands-on" and experimental / experiential approach to education, than is the case for a conventional western education. This is also the case for the very daring curriculum devised by John David Garcia.
Full Garcia early childhood curriculum here.

Knowledge is power. Competence is power. Creativity is power. Clear discernment of reality is power. The best educational approaches seek to instill in students not only knowledge, but competence, creativity, and discernment. Successful graduates of such programs are likely to be quite powerful -- and quite dangerous to any given established order. The more petty and corrupt the established order, the greater danger to the establishment are well-educated young people.

In the age of radical religious terrorism (originating principally within Islam at this time), it may seem outlandish for a teacher to help students make pipe bombs. But if the basic lessons of chemistry, physics, engineering, safety, and demolition were considered valid lessons to teach to a child -- at what age would it be appropriate?

"No syllabus in the world contains something like this," the mother of one of the students told the newspaper. She said that when the bombs were detonated, the students were only 30 meters (100 feet) away and were not wearing protective glasses or ear protectors. "The explosion was so powerful that the children felt the shockwave in their guts," she said. There were apparently no cases of injuries, however.

A spokesman for the Lübeck public prosecutors office confirmed to the newspaper that an investigation was being conducted into the case, on suspicion that the teacher had committed an offense against Germany's law on the use of explosives. If the teacher is convicted, he could face a fine or up to three years in prison.

Hans Peter Scherer, the head of the association that runs the private Waldorf school, also confirmed the investigation but said that the teacher "continues to enjoy the trust" of the management and the parents. _Spiegel

It is the opinion of Al Fin educational theorists and child psychologists that children should be taught many advanced skills from the earliest ages of pre-school and school. Among those subjects would be food growing and preparation, basic shelter construction, basic survival skills of orienteering, firemaking, survival foods, finding water, signaling for help etc, basic individual and group self-defense, and more.

On the topic of edged weapons, firearms, archery, and explosives, experts of the Al Fin Institute of Advanced Childhood Educational Studies agree that all children of sound and stable mind should be taught these deadly skills. The main point of contention among these luminaries is the exact age when children should become competent at such dangerous practises. All are agreed on the point that such skills should only be taught within a philosophical matrix of the limits of and strict non-initiation of violence, using the best safety precautions available.

A well-educated child is a dangerous child. While this concept seems quite foreign to modern psychologically neotenous and sheltered societies, it is in fact transparently obvious and necessary to anyone who expects humans to progress to the next level.

More on this concept, and how it relates to the much needed revival of the concept of multiple "rites of passage of childhood" later.

Khan Academy to 4 Million Unique Monthly Visits

Forbes Video Network

Khan Academy is growing rapidly, thanks to economic backing from contributors such as Google and Bill Gates. Over 2600 videos are now offered, with more created every week.

Over the last month, Khan Academy saw 4 million unique users. That’s up from 1 million in the same period last year, and up from 3.5 million in October (asked by dbigthe)
The Khan Academy team is currently made up of 22 people, and they’re hiring ~1 more per month. (asked by dbigthe)
“I’d say that 90% [of the videos are shot] in 1 take. 99% are 2 takes.” (asked by johnsmcjohn)
“I will definitely do much more advanced mathematics in the next year than what we have now.” (This resulted in Michael Nielson, leading quantum computing expert and author of the standard text on the subject, to offer his assistance right in the thread) _TC

h/t Carpe Diem

Khan Academy is growing very rapidly -- adding topics, content, and better ways for teachers to use the content in the classroom. As more people get involved in the creative department, expect to see higher production values creeping into the routine.

As to whether KA will ever grow into an accredited provider of educational credentials, that depends a lot on where Salman Khan wants to go with the idea. At this point, he seems happy with the idea of creating a "log" of online activities as a type of student transcript. As the real world's attitudes toward education evolve, such informal proofs of mastery may be sufficient for many apprenticeships or jobs.

What seems more likely, is that an enterprising education entrepreneur will combine the best of Khan (mastery learning), Knewton (adaptive learning), and other e-learning methods into a low-cost, for-profit online institute for learning, from kindergarten to post-university and adult lifelong learning. The idea would include test prep, and a wide range of basic certifications, along with homeschool credentials at least through high school level.

College level accreditation for traditional degrees would likely require affiliation with established educational institutions. That would require deep pockets, given the mercenary nature of most university administrations. In today's economy, it might be best for such a startup to grab a profitable niche and expand from there, following a well-crafted long-term plan.

Knewton's Adaptive Learning Platform

via SingularityHub
A large proportion of college-bound students are unprepared for the level of math, writing, and study intensity required by college level work. Several for-profit companies compete to provide remedial and review materials for the college-bound. Knewton's materials attempt to fulfill the promise of automated tutorials: to adapt the presentation of material to the individual student's specific needs.

Knewton’s Adaptive Learning Platform takes the material in textbooks and reorganizes it in a way that best suits the students’ learning style. Mastered material is skipped, which makes for a less boring study time. And material that used to be just pages in a textbook are combined with multimedia for maximum engagement. But the truly remarkable aspect of the technology is its iterative aspect. Through exercises and quizzes the program learns what the student’s strengths and weaknesses are, and adjusts the material in real time. Instead of subjecting all students to the same curriculum, Knewton’s technology shapes the material so that each student receives a personalized education that meets their unique needs.

For example, after tracking the strengths and weaknesses of a student, the program determines whether to present the next concept with text, a video clip, an interactive exercise, or even a video game. It can give a short summary or a longer, detailed explanation. Instead of handing out the same questions to the entire class, the student can now set the difficulty level for practice questions. Knewton can also suggest study partners in the class who have similar studying styles but have a better grasp of concepts than a particular student is struggling with. With customized learning, Knewton keeps the students engaged by giving them material suited to their level of knowledge.

More and more students are using notebooks and tablets to access their homework and even classes online. Even kindergarten students aregetting iPads. And Knewton isn’t the only technology out there trying to use the Internet to improve education. The Khan Academy has 2,000 videos that cover diverse topics such as math, history, and finance. As with Knewton, teachers using Khan can track their students’ progress and help them when needed. But Khan doesn’t offer the automated and realtime adjustments that Knewton’s software does._SingularityHub

Teachers using Khan Academy materials must do just a bit more work to monitor and customise each student's progress and work. But over time, Khan Academy is likely to provide improved automated monitoring and customising tools -- thanks to contributions from its many admirers.

Going beyond college level remediation, Knewton is also specialising in college preparation and test prep for SAT, GMAT, and LSAT. The test prep industry is very lucrative -- and very competitive. If Knewton can make significant inroads here, they will be planting a salient flag for adaptive learning software.

Of course, we all know that learning does not stop after high school, college, or university. Wise persons never stop their intentional learning activities. And so we can likely expect a veritable explosion of adaptive learning tools to enter the adult learning and lifelong learning areas. Perhaps with just a few milliamps of DC current, to your taste. All in a virtual reality, total immersion environment.

Thanks to the Idiocratic governments of the world, things are beginning to get interesting again, after a short "break from history." We will soon need to be on our best learning and innovating behaviour.

Is It Possible to Raise the Verbal IQ of Children Using Cartoons?

The cognitive benefit was striking and consistent in 90% of the children who took the four-week learning program and was additionally confirmed by brain imaging data that indicated brain changes had taken place related to the training.

“Our data have confirmed a rapid transfer of cognitive benefits in young children after only 20 days of training on an interactive, music-based cognitive training program. The strength of this effect in almost all of the children was remarkable,” said Dr. Moreno, a world expert on neuroeducation. He is now the Lead Scientist at Baycrest’s Centre for Brain Fitness. _Baycrest

York University (Canada) scientists claim that it is possible to raise the verbal IQ of pre-schoolers using cartoons with music. The animations are actually music-based cognitive training sessions, which the scientists say can raise verbal IQ over a period of roughly 20 days.

In the study, 48 pre-schoolers four to six years of age participated in computer-based, cognitive training programs that were projected on a large classroom wall and featured colorful, animated cartoon characters delivering the lessons. The children were divided into two groups. One group received music-based, cognitive training that involved a combination of motor, perceptual and cognitive tasks, and included training on rhythm, pitch, melody, voice and basic musical concepts. The other group received visual art training that emphasized the development of visuo-spatial skills relating to concepts such as shape, color, line, dimension and perspective.

Each group received two training sessions of one-hour duration each day in classroom, over four weeks, led by instructors at The Royal Conservatory in Toronto.

Researchers tested the children for verbal and spatial intelligence before and after the training using the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (Third Edition). The team also conducted brain imaging using non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) which measures the time course of brain activity.

The verbal IQ tests assessed the children’s attention, word recall and ability to analyze information and solve problems using language-based reasoning. Brain imaging enabled researchers to detect if functional brain changes had occurred related to the cognitive training. When the children were re-tested five to 20 days after the end of the training programs, researchers did not find any significant increase in verbal intelligence or brain changes for the children who participated in the visual art training module. However, they found quite a different result in the children who took the music-based, cognitive training. Ninety percent of those children exhibited intelligence improvements – five times larger than the other group – on a measure of vocabulary knowledge, as well as increased accuracy and reaction time. The music group also showed brain changes that co-related to their enhanced cognitive performance.

“The results of this study strongly affirm the resonance between music and child development, and encourage us to think of music not just as a medium or tool through which treatment might be delivered, but as the treatment itself,” said Dr. Chau, a Senior Scientist at Bloorview Research Institute and Canada Research Chair in Paediatric Rehabilitation Engineering.

...The findings have exciting implications for conceptualizing and improving neuroeducation programs for children of all ages, and potentially for older adults.

...The study – conducted at York University by Dr. Sylvain Moreno, who is now with Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute (RRI) – is posted online today in Psychological Science (a journal of the Association for Psychological Science), ahead of print publication in the October issue of the journal _Baycrest

h/t Machineslikeus

This type of training is suitable for homeschool or online use. Below is a video with more information from one of the scientists involved in such research:

The brains of preschool children are particularly changeable. Besides helping children to learn better, it is also the goal of the researchers is to use similar approaches to helping older people to sustain the brain function that they have.

Training programs which seem to improve cognition in young children do not always provide lasting benefits over the lifetime. We need to develop training not only for early childhood cognitive enhancement, but also for reinforcers which maintain the benefits of cognitive training throughout childhood, adolescence and into adulthood.

Certain types of cognitive skills must be acquired by a certain age, or they are probably lost for life. This is true for language learning, and is also quite likely true for advanced musical ability and perhaps advanced mathematical ability.

Bottom line: We are clearly failing our children in terms of early childhood training. But we can fix that, if we try. We are also failing our children in terms of later childhood competency and character development. That will be harder to fix, since so much of the problem is tied into the dominant culture of political correctness.

Thinking More Deeply: Building Innovation Engines

Innovative Thinking
In research and development, the most revolutionary discoveries are often hidden beneath the flash and whiz-bang of fancy products, processes, and therapies. But here are two examples of discoveries of a more subtle and important type:

A TEAM of North-East academics and industry experts have "cracked the DNA code of plastic" which could mean massive cost and energy savings for business. Researchers at Durham University and the University of Leeds have collaborated with the Tees Valley chemical process sector to solve a long-standing problem that is set to revolutionise the way new plastics are developed.

Before the discovery, industry would develop a plastic and then find a use for it, or try hundreds of different recipes until they stumbled across the right mix. _Source

Alert readers will see the similarity between this new innovation engine for creating plastics-on-demand, and approaches to "rational design" of drugs and proteins. This type of breakthrough often sets the stage for large numbers of rapid-fire innovations to follow.

University of Utah chemists developed a method to design and test new catalysts, which are substances that speed chemical reactions and are crucial for producing energy, chemicals and industrial products. By using the new method, the chemists also made a discovery that will make it easier to design future catalysts. The discovery: the sizes and electronic properties of catalysts interact to affect how well a catalyst performs, and are not independent factors as was thought previously. Chemistry Professor Matt Sigman and doctoral student Kaid Harper, report their findings in the Friday, Sept. 30, 2011, issue of the journal Science.

“It opens our eyes to how to design new catalysts that we wouldn’t necessarily think about designing, for a broad range of reactions,” Sigman says. “We’re pretty excited.” _Physorg

This is another example of a discovery that could potentially set off a chain reaction of new discoveries and revolutionary products.

Some people intuitively understand the deeper nature of such discoveries, and the infinitely larger potential of such developments to revolutionise entire fields and societies. Others, failed by modern dumbed-down educational systems, may need to think about the idea for a while.

A great deal of attention is given to the concept of "higher order effects (PDF)," but too little attention is given to "higher order causes."

The modern mass production methods of education do not generally help students to learn how to think. Ideologically driven educators assume that if the student is indoctrinated in the proper ideology, she will then naturally think in the "correct" manner. And so indoctrination replaces education, and graduates and future leaders become lifelong incompetents, because they never learned to think.

This is not just about logic and resolving contradictions. It is also about generative thinking, lateral thinking, problem solving, and growing beyond ideology. A society whose graduates can think rationally and generatively is less likely to fall into a quagmire of malaise such as currently entraps much of the advanced world.

Generative thinkers do not merely solve problems as they arise. They also solve problems that lead to other problems -- before they arise. They do this by thinking more deeply, and further out of the ideological box.

Let's be clear: Although ideology can make a person's life easier and his choices more automatic, an honest person who is bound tightly by ideology cannot truly think -- the cognitive dissonance becomes too great. Thus the heated and perpetually unresolved arguments one sees in religion, politics, and on environmental issues.

It is always a pleasure to confront an ideological opponent, and to mutually penetrate beneath the level of ideology to a generative level and mode of thinking. The productive output of such sessions can be much greater than any number of brainstorming sessions occurring within a circle of "self-anointed truth-bearers."

Generations of children are being short-changed and mind-stunted by inappropriate educational methods. This stunting and starving of brains occurs from kindergarten through university, and beyond. Those who have been paying attention understand that this is not happening by accident, just as the "energy starvation agenda" of modern governments is not happening by accident.

If a society is marinated in ideological thinking -- as virtually all human societies have been -- change can be very slow in coming. Since the converging problems of debt and demographic decline in the west are occurring at a rate which will probably not allow the needed changes to occur at high enough levels, it is up to persons at more local levels to instigate necessary changes to the best of their ability.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that a magical singularity will miraculously solve the human world's problems. Singularities help those who help themselves. Humans will have to make this transition from ideological thinking to generative thinking.

What proportion of humans will need to move beyond conventional thinking? Al Fin futurologists estimate that at least 10% and perhaps as many as 20% of humans within a society will have to forsake ideology and learn to think for themselves. The odds of finding such an innovation-rich environment by accident are very poor.

Talpiot: Seizing the Day

The applicant pool consists of nearly ten thousand top scorers of a test taken by all graduating high school seniors. 150-200 potential applicants are then subjected to a two-day series of tests.[1] These include further IQ exams as well as group-tasks designed to test one's social dynamics, all conducted under the supervision of trained psychologists and military personnel. For example, teams of applicants are given a specific task then the instructions are changed while the test is in progress, such as shortening the alloted time or changing the assigned tasks.[1] Final applicants appear before a panel of professors, military leaders, and other examiners where they are asked questions such as to explain the theory of relativity or mechanisms of solar heating.[1] Final acceptance into the program entails a high security clearance rating, given by the Air Force. _Talpiot (wikipedia)

Talpiot is a program for bringing the best of the best of Israeli youth together into an intensive mental, physical, and military training regimen. 5,000 youth apply every year, and 50 are accepted. Out of those 50, only 40 will complete the training, and be commissioned as lieutenants in the IDF. They spend 9 years total, including education, training, and military commitment.

Those who survive go on to careers as officers in some of the military's most prestigious operations, mostly in research and development projects, Schlachet said. From there, the 500-odd Talpiot grads have tended to find their way to the upper echelons of business and academia, he said.

"You learn self-confidence, not to be afraid of anything. No subject is too complex to go after, and no answer should be taken for granted," said Talpiot grad Gilad Almogy, 38, Applied Materials' top executive in Israel.

The Nasdaq-traded biotech company Compugen was formed by three of Almogy's Talpiot comrades. A fourth, Mor Amitai, now runs the company.

Amitai says some of the most complicated work he ever did was during his time in Talpiot. "The experience of sometimes succeeding, almost always as part of a team, involving something that really seemed impossible, I think this is something we took with us," he said. _USAToday_via_SteveHsu

Talpiot is run by the Israeli Defense Force with the aim of creating an elite officer corps which is capable of responding to any threat by the innovative use of the most advanced technologies -- or any tool within reach. If these elite soldiers later become leaders in business, technology, finance, and other vital areas of society, it should come as no surprise to anyone who is paying attention.

During the training, the youngsters are taught to flirt with insubordination (PDF). Rather than listen to their superiors, they are taught to find answers on their own. The aim is to create self-confident, self-sufficient self starters capable of innovative thinking on the fly, in the middle of a crisis that doesn't yield to SOPs and conventional operations.

Israel is a tiny country thriving in a hostile environment. The country is famous for scientific and technological innovation and achievement far beyond what its small population would lead one to expect. Part of the reason for this overachievement is the survival imperative. Part of the reason is the significant proportion of famously high IQ European Jews who provide much of the leadership for all segments of Israeli society. When you combine high IQ with the will to survive, you come up with programs such as Talpiot.

Israel can not afford to waste its most talented youth -- as western nations such as the US seem intent on doing. At least, Israel's military cannot afford to lose these tough and talented innovators. Not if the country is to survive.

While western nations are busy drowning in debt, demographic decline, political correctness, green dieoff.org-motivated energy starvation, cultural decay, and other methods of slow suicide, at least a few segments of some national governments still recognise the need to promote the best of human potential and ability.

Militaries are often the last bastion of competence in countries whose cultures are in decay. At least, militaries that have to work and maintain an acceptable level of competence. But militaries tend to settle into conventional thinking and lowest common denominator policies, like all bureaucracies and institutions. That is why it is important to feed a constant flow of brutally tested innovative thinking into the mix, and give it freedom to work.

The difference between the Talpiot approach and conventional academia could not be more stark. Academia is about status, tenure, and publishing as much crap as possible. Talpiot is about sound, rapid innovation to get good results. The Talpiot must start with the best of the best, and winnow the field from there. No affirmative action. No social promotion. No special preferences for "disadvantaged groups." Just unrelenting tests for competence, ability, and ingenious thinking.

In other words, these cadets are not only smart, but they also have to be good. And they especially must have grit -- character.

Obviously this system will not work for the average youth. Even most above-average students would fall by the wayside in a rigorous program such as Talpiot. But the concepts involved in the program are key to revitalising western education. No nonsense. No grade inflation. No social promotion. No affirmative action. Focus on results, competence, and character.

Getting from here to there, however, will require a bit of demolition and reconstruction. Such an overhaul is not possible on a national level, but could be done locally, under careful leadership.

More on Talpiot via Steve Hsu

Brave New Baby: Genius Training for Infants

Image Source
We have heard of the "better baby" and even the "superbaby." But those approaches to creating the "brave new baby" have been around for a while, and yet, here we are. Still looking for workable ways of training smarter, more cognitively capable children.

University of London researchers have come up with a new approach, beginning with 11 month old infants:

The researchers trained 11-month-old infants to direct their gaze toward images they observed on a computer screen. For example, in one task, a butterfly flew only as long as the babies kept their eyes on it while other distracting elements appeared on screen. Infants visited the lab five times over the course of 15 days. Half of the 42 babies took part in training, while the other half watched TV. Each child was tested for cognitive abilities at the beginning and end of the study.

Trained infants rapidly improved their ability to focus their attention for longer periods and to shift their attention from one point to another. They also showed improvements in their ability to spot patterns and small but significant changes in their spontaneous looking behavior while playing with toys.

"Our results appeared to show an improved ability to alter the frequency of eye movements in response to context," Wass said. "In the real world, sometimes we want to be able to focus on one object of interest and ignore distractions, and sometimes we want to be able to shift the focus of our attention rapidly around a room -- for example, for language learning in social situations. This flexibility in the allocation of attention appeared to improve after training."

The fact that the babies' improvements in concentration transferred to a range of tasks supports the notion that there is greater plasticity in the unspecialized infant brain.

...The findings reported online on Sept. 1 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, are in contrast to reports in adults showing that training at one task generally doesn't translate into improved performance on other, substantially different tasks. _ScienceDaily

Study abstract from Science Direct

This type of research is likely to continue and intensify -- particularly in parts of the world with more authoritarian government control. It is likely to continue because it is quite probable that infant brains can eventually be functionally shaped to approximate a preconceived "ideal." Infant brains are highly plastic, and experience incredibly rapid shaping and re-shaping of local neuronal assemblies and white matter pathways.

Of course there are ethical approaches to this type of research, which should be freely carried out in more open societies. And of course individual parents are free to incorporate elements of such research into their child's overall, well-rounded upbringing. It is likely that there are easily devised "games" which the baby would enjoy playing, which could lead to a faster-thinking, more imaginative child. Perhaps even a child capable of multi-tasking in many ways.

But experimenting parents should beware. The super-baby which you raise may rapidly grow beyond your ability to comprehend and control. Children are essentially amoral creatures who are capable of incredible destruction if given too much power too soon, without superb training in executive function.

It is not wise to train a child in particular areas of genius without incorporating safeguards, executive function training, and ethical training into the overall program. This training should resemble an assortment of games and engaging interactional narratives to the very young child.

At the Al Fin Institute for the Brave New Baby, we are concerned about current trends toward a dumbed-down future. We will share the results of our research into brave new babies as it becomes available.

Taken from a recent posting on Al Fin the Next Level

Maybe Instead of Killing Them All, We Should Send Them to China?

US law schools are pumping out new graduates like a torrent of toxic waste. Elie Mystal thinks that Obama should create an "Americorps" for law graduates. But Al Fin legal scholars think the fallout from the US lawyer glut has become so bad for the US economy and US society, that extreme measures are called for.

No, Al Fin law scholars don't favour the Shakespearean solution of "first kill all the lawyers!" Instead, these legal gurus recommend sending all US law school graduates to China to act as bank examiners, construction inspectors, labour union organisers, environmental overseers, and political activists. It is time to restore international equilibrium! The program should run for roughly 30 years, after which we can send US law graduates to China to help sweep up -- clean up the mess their predecessors have made. By then, the US should have recovered from its own lawyer-instigated collapse, and be ready to provide foreign aid to a much-diminished China.

From: The Best Colleges

Excess attorneys are toxic to any society, but particularly to societies which have no means by which to dispose of the excess. Automatic deportation of US law graduates to China upon graduation would solve a whole host of problems, according to the legal sages of Al Fin.

Life is the Education, Not College

Update 25May2011: An article describing the Peter Thiel Fellowship -- which pays fellows $100,000 not to attend college -- providing further details and information on this theme.

Humans begin learning as soon as the central nervous system begins to develop in the womb. Learning during infancy and early childhood is more intensive than any other learning in a person's life. Over historical and pre-historical time, most humans learned about life from observation, imitation, apprenticeship, and experimentation -- and just doing it. Only recently has it been thought necessary for every child to receive a formal, government-approved education before being released into the real world.

And still it is life that is the real education, not schools, not colleges. Schools can only prepare a student for a few of the things he will confront in real life, the rest is up to the lifelong student's capacity to adapt and grow in the real world.


Don't Let Your Schooling Get in the Way of Your Education

There is a significant mismatch between what schools "teach" and what life will demand of a student. School curricula do not generally provide the education a person needs to confront the real challenges to be faced. While a child may be forced to attend school up to a certain age or level, there is no guarantee that he will learn even the barest of necessities. In today's climate of indoctrination-by-school, what the child learns in school may be both patently false and outright counter-productive to his life prospects -- besides being a total waste of his time and a distraction from his true education.

Too much of the time, the actual "education" a child receives from lower education is an induction into delinquency and basic groupthink. Proceeding to "higher education," advanced studies in binge drinking, fornication, and an indoctrination into dysfunctional ideology and advanced groupthink, help to complete the blunting of the once-promising prospects which the child may have possessed.

Most bright and observant people have come to doubt whether it is in the best interests of families and society to pay the huge and ruinous price to maintain the modern system of "education." Particularly when a better education is readily obtainable at a minimal cost via the internet, libraries, used book stores, and real life.

The raucous marching of the paid, truant, and quasi-violent drones in Madison, Wisconsin, was but a gentle preview of the truly violent clashes to come, between the entitled establishment and the embattled taxpayer.

Most Americans think college is not worth the money

Winds of change in college infrastructure portend massive changes in how advanced education will be provided

In place of "unions" in the cartoons, one could also write "tenured professors" and "university administrations." A sense of entitlement runs deep and rampant in "educational" circles, and in societies with topheavy governments in general.

Amy Chua's Tiger Mother Parenting Curriculum

Amy Chua is a Yale Law professor and celebrated author of World on Fire and Day of Empire. More recently, Amy has written Battle Hym of the Tiger Mother, a look at her attempt to raise her American children by traditional Chinese methods.

Chua was raised by Chinese parents in the US -- her father Leon Chua is a UC Berkeley professor of Electrical Engineering and originator of many important concepts in non-linear electronics. Leon was raised in Manila, a member of an elite Chinese Filipino family. He rebelled against the traditional Chinese family business and tradition, in order to come to America and make his own way.

Amy Chua is married to a Jewish Yale Law professor -- not a traditional Chinese choice -- but appears intent on raising her daughters in the traditional Chinese manner. Here is a description of Chua's book:

All decent parents want to do what's best for their children. What Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother reveals is that the Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that. Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions and providing a nurturing environment. The Chinese believe that the best way to protect your children is by preparing them for the future and arming them with skills, strong work habits, and inner confidence. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother chronicles Chua's iron-willed decision to raise her daughters, Sophia and Lulu, her way-the Chinese way-and the remarkable results her choice inspires.

Here are some things Amy Chua would never allow her daughters to do:

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin

The truth is Lulu and Sophia would never have had time for a playdate. They were too busy practicing their instruments (two to three hours a day and double sessions on the weekend) and perfecting their Mandarin.

Of course no one is perfect, including Chua herself. Witness this scene:

"According to Sophia, here are three things I actually said to her at the piano as I supervised her practicing:

1. Oh my God, you're just getting worse and worse.

2. I'm going to count to three, then I want musicality.

3. If the next time's not PERFECT, I'm going to take all your stuffed animals and burn them!"

But Chua demands as much of herself as she does of her daughters. And in her sacrifices-the exacting attention spent studying her daughters' performances, the office hours lost shuttling the girls to lessons-the depth of her love for her children becomes clear. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is an eye-opening exploration of the differences in Eastern and Western parenting- and the lessons parents and children everywhere teach one another. _GoogleBooks

This brief description is likely to apply to many East Asian traditions of child-raising, not only the Phillipines Chinese branch as represented by the Chua family. As you can see, it is a highly disciplined approach, oriented toward extracting the maximum possible achievement out of the child, in the areas that are emphasised.

If you look at other alternative parenting methods or alternative educational curricula which achieve above-the-ordinary results, you will likely find a similar undercurrent of high expectation and a guiding away from popular methods of time-wasting and peer dysfunction that leads a lot of affluent children into a rudderless adolescence and adulthood.

Amy Chua directed her children toward music -- specifically piano and violin. Does anyone doubt that Chua's daughters are likely to be highly proficient in these instruments, and probably other areas of interest? World-class mastery is another matter, and for that the child herself would need to have the fire inside her. But proficiency is very likely in the context of the Chua household as described.

Who would deserve the credit for high achievement by the girls? Chua's disciplined approach? Chinese tradition? The genetic giftedness bestowed on daughters of a Chinese law professor mother and a Jewish law professor father? Inherited drive and executive function?

Wait and see how things turn out first. Parenthetically, I wonder how often it happens that high-achieving East Asians marry and have children with high-achieving Jewish partners? This natural experimental joining of the genes of the two highest IQ test-scoring demographic populations known should provide researchers in the field of human intelligence with some genetic fodder, as gene sequencing and bioinformatics becomes cheaper and more sophisticated. Certainly the gene alleles which combined to give Ashkenazi Jews an average IQ of 110-115 are not likely to be the same exact gene variants which combined to give East Asians average IQs of 105-110. What will the combination yield?

Certainly Amy Chua herself, in World on Fire -- which looked at market dominant minorities around the world -- studiously avoided any discussion of differences in IQ between population groups. And yet, when choosing a mate for herself, there is no question that she took that quality into consideration. Still, for a good Chinese girl to marry outside the Han group suggests a bit of rebelliousness, which is a good sign in an intelligent, accomplished adult.

Children crave guidance, which is all too often denied them by parents whose time demands may stretch them to the breaking point. Child-raising trends in general are not encouraging, but there are rare foci of rationality, which may provide something of a nucleus for re-building afterward.

More about Amy Chua's background from Day of Empire's preface:

We were required to speak Chinese at home—the punishment was one whack of the chopsticks for every English word accidentally ut­tered. We drilled math and piano every afternoon, and we were never allowed to sleep over at our friends' houses. Every evening when my father came home from work, I took off his shoes and brought him his slippers. Our report cards had to be perfect; while our friends were rewarded for Bs, for us getting an A-minus was unthinkable.

Traditional "Passive Learning" Education is Hogwash

SD
Confining children in a classroom with no one but their peers for several hours a day, week after week, year after year, is thought to be the proper way to bestow an education on the child. Somehow, this passive absorption of knowledge from a "learned" teacher is supposed to prepare the child for the time when he will take on the cloak of adulthood and make his own way in the world.

Of course most of us suspect that it is garbage, and that it has always been garbage. But educational research is rather tied up with and obligated to the current system, and has been quite slow to present tangible objections to the way things are. Still, occasionally some light shines through:

New research confirms that having some authority over how one takes in new information significantly enhances one's ability to remember it. The study, in the journal Nature Neuroscience, also offers a first look at the network of brain structures that contribute to this phenomenon.

"Having active control over a learning situation is very powerful and we're beginning to understand why," said University of Illinois psychology and Beckman Institute professor Neal Cohen, who led the study with postdoctoral researcher Joel Voss. "Whole swaths of the brain not only turn on, but also get functionally connected when you're actively exploring the world."

The study focused on activity in several brain regions, including the hippocampus, located in the brain's medial temporal lobes, near the ears. Researchers have known for decades that the hippocampus is vital to memory, in part because those who lose hippocampal function as a result of illness or injury also lose their ability to fully form and retain new memories.

But the hippocampus doesn't act alone. Robust neural connections tie it to other important brain structures, and traffic on these data highways flows in both directions. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, which track blood flow in the brain, show that the hippocampus is functionally connected to several brain networks – distinct regions of the brain that work in tandem to accomplish critical tasks.

To better understand how these brain regions influence active versus passive learning, Voss designed an experiment that required participants to memorize an array of objects and their exact locations in a grid on a computer monitor. A gray screen with a window in it revealed only one object at a time. The "active" study subjects used a computer mouse to guide the window to view the objects.

"They could inspect whatever they wanted, however they wanted, in whatever order for however much time they wanted, and they were just told to memorize everything on the screen," Voss said. The "passive" learners viewed a replay of the window movements recorded in a previous trial by an active subject.

Then participants were asked to select the items they had seen and place them in their correct positions on the screen. After a trial, the active and passive subjects switched roles and repeated the task with a new array of objects.

The study found significant differences in brain activity in the active and passive learners. Those who had active control over the viewing window were significantly better than their peers at identifying the original objects and their locations, the researchers found. Further experiments, in which the passive subjects used a mouse that moved but did not control the viewing window, established that this effect was independent of the act of moving the mouse.

To identify the brain mechanisms that enhanced learning in the active subjects, the researchers repeated the trials, this time testing individuals who had amnesia – a disease characterized by impairment in learning new information – as a result of hippocampal damage. To the surprise of the researchers, these participants failed to benefit from actively controlling the viewing window.

"These data suggest that the hippocampus has a role not just in the formation of new memory but possibly also in the beneficial effects of volitional control on memory," the researchers wrote.

Brain imaging (by means of fMRI) of healthy young subjects engaged in the same active and passive learning tests revealed that hippocampal activity was highest in the active subjects' brains during these tests. Several other brain structures were also more engaged when the subject controlled the viewing window, and activity in these brain regions was more synchronized with that of the hippocampus than in the passive trials.

Activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the cerebellum and the hippocampus (see cartoon) was higher, and more highly coordinated, in participants who did well on spatial recall, the researchers found. Increased activity in the inferior parietal lobe, the parahippocampal cortex and the hippocampus (see cartoon) corresponded to better performance on item recognition.

"Lo and behold," Cohen said, "our friend the hippocampus makes a very conspicuous appearance in active learning."

The new findings challenge previous ideas about the role of the hippocampus in learning, Voss said. It is a surprise, he said, that other brain regions that are known to be involved in planning and strategizing, for instance, "can't do very much unless they can interact with the hippocampus."

Rather than being a passive player in learning, the hippocampus "is more like an integral part of an airplane guidance system," Voss said. "You have all this velocity information, you have a destination target and every millisecond it's taking in information about where you're headed, comparing it to where you need to go, and correcting and updating it." _Eurekalert_via_SD

I quoted more extensively than normal from the news release, in case readers might want as more detail than a snippet. The findings are important, although I fail to understand why the researchers should be surprised about any of these findings.

The key finding in regard to education is that active learners who take an active role in acquiring knowledge, seem to form stronger brain connections and achieve better recall. Sitting in a classroom or lecture hall, listening to a lecture, may be the worst possible form of teaching/learning imaginable.

But will the schools of education -- so deeply in thrall to the powers that be -- begin to rock the boat just a bit, try to change things? Not likely, at least not on a grand scale. The corrupt and failed school system is too attached to the powerful and moneyed interest in the educational - industrial - political complex.

If you haven't read John Taylor Gatto's free online book on American education, or explored the significant number of alternative curricula for homeschools, unschools, and private schools, you owe it to yourself to make up the deficit -- particularly if you have children needing to be educated, or even if you pay taxes to support the current system, or vote on school bonds etc.

Homeschooling Becoming Just Another Option

The increase in homeschooled students, has given rise to two major things: more educational resources for homeschoolers and more support for their parents.

Several publishers, museums, parks and communities are capitalizing on the need for homeschooling curricula and programs. And parent-formed support groups that provide social interaction and opportunities for shared learning for homeschooled children are sprouting up in diverse communities. _ImpactLab

Homeschooling in the US has doubled over the past 10 years, with well over 2 million active homeschooling families. The resources to assist a parent to provide quality schooling to children have never been more widely available or of such high quality. And an ever-larger number of institutions of higher learning are catching on to the fact that homeschooled students are often among the best applicants available.

Back-to-school time for Heidi Pair of Milford means enrolling her two children in online classes, scheduling 4-H meetings, karate classes and Lego League, picking out math curricula and planning field trips. Pair, 40, is a homeschooler -- one of an estimated 2.3 million in the U.S., a number that has doubled during the last 10 years, according to the National Home Education Research Institute.

With a sea of available resources and a ballooning network of supporters, homeschooling is becoming more mainstream.

...A report in the summer 2010 edition of the Journal of College Admission showed that homeschooled students had higher ACT scores, GPAs and graduation rates when compared with traditionally educated peers.

Cotter said that it might be because of the homeschooling mastery philosophy -- with time and autonomy, students can keep at a subject or topic until they fully grasp it.

Although most of the past homeschool applicants have typically used a religious curriculum, Cotter said, the recent applicant pool of homeschoolers is split between religious and secular backgrounds.

...Pair said her kids are constantly around other children of all ages, from different backgrounds. They also are often out taking field trips and classes in the community.

"Teachers often work to create activities that teach kids about life," Pair said. "Homeschoolers do the same -- it is just easier for us because our kids are already in the real world observing adults in real-life situations. It is fairly easy to add in classroom experiences and test deadlines." _FreeP _via_ImpactLab

Government education is becoming a high priced ticket to perpetual failure for more and more attendees. While unionised teachers go on strike for ever higher wages, benefits and pensions -- which threaten to bankrupt municipalities, counties, and states -- students are at the mercy of a system which cares more for its own size and political clout than for the future of the children entrusted to it.

For parents who are working from home or fortunate enough to not have to go away from home every day to work, the options available for homeschooling in the internet age are making the process much easier, and not so very expensive. For parents who go that route, at least they have an excellent idea what their kids are being taught and how they spend their time during the day. Opportunities for building close family ties in such a situation are much more frequent. And if you want to teach your children practical competencies which you suspect will stand them in good stead -- but which government schools are not teaching these days -- teaching them at home would offer a good opportunity.

US Educational Achievement Drops As Diversity Grows

The New York Times takes a look at falling educational achievement in the US. Once the world leader in percentage of 25 to 34 year olds with college degrees, the US now ranks 12th among 36 developed nations.

“The growing education deficit is no less a threat to our nation’s long-term well-being than the current fiscal crisis,” Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, warned at a meeting on Capitol Hill of education leaders and policy makers, where he released a report detailing the problem and recommending how to fix it. “To improve our college completion rates, we must think ‘P-16’ and improve education from preschool through higher education.”

...Canada now leads the world in educational attainment, with about 56 percent of its young adults having earned at least associate’s degrees in 2007, compared with only 40 percent of those in the United States. (The United States’ rate has since risen slightly.)

While almost 70 percent of high school graduates in the United States enroll in college within two years of graduating, only about 57 percent of students who enroll in a bachelor’s degree program graduate within six years, and fewer than 25 percent of students who begin at a community college graduate with an associate’s degree within three years.

The problem is even worse for low-income students and minorities: only 30 percent of African-Americans ages 25-34, and less than 20 percent of Latinos in that age group, have an associate’s degree or higher. And students from the highest income families are almost eight times as likely as those from the lowest income families to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24. _ImpactLab_quoting_NYT

SourceIn order to make the best use of a rigorous 4 year college degree program, a person's IQ should be close to 115 or above -- or 1 standard deviation above the mean IQ of most European and North American countries. But mean IQs of many immigrant groups to the US are substantially lower than the current mean IQ for the US. And it is from these lower-IQ immigrant groups where most of the nation's future young people will arise. In other words, the college-age population of the US is becoming increasingly "diverse," in the sense that a larger proportion of this group will lack the requisite IQ needed to succeed in a rigorous 4 year college program.

In an attempt at greater diversity and enrollment, prestigious universities are seeking to recruit a larger number of students from many low-IQ groups, with predictable results. Fewer of these students are completing college programs -- even when given extra years to finish.

Competition to admit and enroll the "smart fraction" of these generally low-IQ groups is intense among prestigious schools, but even among such smart fractions of low achieving groups, successful completion of degree programs is lower than among students of European or Asian descent.

The NYT article above is a prime example of modern journalism and academia intentionally "looking past" the pertinent questions in order to ask a score of trite and irrelevant ones. If society wants to improve itself educationally and economically, it will need to improve the quality of its human resources.

But in order to do that, it would have to admit that there was a problem with current immigration policies. That is the last thing which the political activist advisors to the current ruling class intend to do.

Begin by Giving Young Children Competent Skills

ImpactLab
Modern child raising and educational approaches emphasize "self-esteem" for young children, but fail to give young children the practical competencies that they need in order to feel confident about their own abilities. The result of such educational malpractise is children with high "self-esteem" but no practical skills or genuine self confidence. We are seeing the result of these generations of life-long incompetents in today's shrinking job markets and government offices. But there may be a better way:

According to research released by the Royal Horticultural Society last week, the children who garden will do better at school. The report, commissioned by the RHS from the National Foundation for Educational Research, has spurred the RHS to start a three-year campaign to promote the benefits of gardening as a way to help children focus on schoolwork.

“This report gives a very persuasive set of evidence that children who garden are better able to engage with the learning process and take more responsibility for their own learning,” says Simon Thorton Wood, director of science and learning at the RHS.

...Ten-year-old Joshua Kenyon, for instance, has helped create two magnificent mixed borders at home. He caught the gardening bug at St Leonard’s Church of England Primary in Lambeth, south London, where the late 20th-century buildings are surrounded by potatoes, tomatoes, sweetcorn, cabbage, onions, strawberries and blueberries.

About 50 per cent of the pupils at Joshua’s school enjoy gardening so much that they take their skills and enthusiasm home. Over the past three years, Joshua has transformed the family’s muddy back yard into lawn with two borders where hydrangeas and clematis mingle with mint and jasmine. He has had some help from his father, Billy, a freelance TV editor.

Another of the campaign’s success stories is Neasden Primary School in Hull, north-east England. A cornucopia of beans, carrots, beets, tomatoes, strawberries and potatoes surrounds the 1960s building at the heart of a housing estate.

Neasden pupil Jessica Barrett, 10, and her four-year-old sister Sophie persuaded their father Frank to help them start their own gardens at home.

“Jessica pestered and pestered me and so I made one bed for each of them, 2x1 metres each, like the beds at school,” says Frank, a builder and joiner who put a fence around the school allotments.

Last summer Jessica brought one of her home-grown turnips to school for her class to share – raw – because it was supposed to taste like melon. Apparently it tasted more like turnip but Jessica is undaunted.

“Gardening is fun even though you get mucky. I do the watering. Sophie did the watering once but she got absolutely soaked. She likes growing beans but she doesn’t like eating them. I like eating them,” says Jessica. “Every night we go to our allotments at the bottom of our garden to see if there are caterpillars on the cabbages and then we tell our dad when he gets home.

“We grow strawberries, five different sorts of peppers and cucumbers which have prickly skins – so we take the skin off before eating them. And carrots. And the tomatoes are taking over the garden. We grow lots of herbs: mint, bay, chives, chilli peppers.”

At school, Jessica’s allotment is still going strong, with the help of Neasden’s committed caretaker Graham Johnson, who is teaching the children how to overwinter onions, cabbage, beets and salads such as mitsuma.

... At St Leonard’s, one of those who give a lot of spare time to the gardens is deputy head Tony Pizzoferro: “Gardening is my hobby and so I have always encouraged children. Five or six years ago the RHS was promoting gardening with children and, three years ago, they streamlined it with this campaign. The website’s good for teachers and children and the free seeds are helpful. Gardening is wonderful because it covers so many things, including emotional development. We make sure that gardening is fun and interesting so they will do it at home. The children all garden at playtime and lunchtime.” Pizzoferro reckons that about half of his pupils take their gardening skills home.

Joshua’s gardening skills have gone even further – abroad to his grandmother’s garden in central France, where he has helped to grow giant cauliflowers, tomatoes, ornamental gourds and “very, very, very big sunflowers”. Says Joshua: “I love gardening.” _FT

Gardening is not the only competency that lends itself to childhood enthusiasm and imagination. But it is one of the best connections to the real world. Another is the care of young or sick animals. Or learning to cook, or to build and repair machines. Sailing, canoeing, rock climbing, bird watching, and mushroom hunting and ID, are other common enthusiasms of children -- if parents take the trouble to get them involved.

Children love the idea of being competent in both fun activities and in areas of relevance and importance to the real world. But you need to get them involved at an early enough age. If you leave their upbringing to video games, television, government schools, and peer groups, your children will slip through your fingers -- perhaps into lifelong incompetency, but certainly beyond your reach.

Learning to develop skills and competencies involves the executive functions of the frontal lobes of the brain. Executive functions are best developed between the ages of 4 and 7. If you wait too late, you and your child will pay the price.