Learning how to eat a steak with intellectual sizzle

[coberst]

Learning how to eat a steak with intellectual sizzle

In grades K-12 we have had teachers take us by the hand and introduce us to new domains of knowledge in slow incremental steps. The teacher takes us only to that part of knowledge that our minds were prepared to comprehend. The teacher cuts our intellectual food into bite size portions for easy digestion.

If we go to college we find that our class scheduling catalog details for us what are the prerequisites of any course in which we might wish to enroll. If we do not have the proper preparation then we cannot enroll in that course. The catalogue prevents us from attempting knowledge for which we are unprepared.

Our educational system has protected us from attempting to learn that for which we were unprepared. We have grown in knowledge under this umbrella of protection; however, we are left unprepared for the task of independent learning. Our educational system has left us without the intellectual dental structure required for independent learning.

After our educational system is finished with us we must, on our own, learn how to become independent learners; the first thing we must recognize is that we must not reject an idea because it is not easily digested. When we are not taken by the hand and incrementally introduced we will often meet ideas for which we are not prepared to deal. If we reject every idea about which we are not prepared to learn we will never learn anything new after our school daze are over.

If our response to everything unique to us is “I do not comprehend it so I will reject it” we will never be able to learn new stuff.

Our mothers and our teachers have been cutting our intellectual food into bite size portions throughout our young life.

If we reject a juice steak in the future because it is not cut to bite size we will be eating nothing but that which can be swallowed whole for the rest of our life.

Do you think that your education has left you intellectually toothless?


First Mother Fly: How's the new baby?

Second Mother Fly: Very restless. I had to walk the ceiling with him all night.