FYS

Well I said a couple blogs ago that I wanted to blog about the idea of random thoughts.  Well Dr. Campbell helped me realize and to ultimately comprehend that we as people do not have any thought processes that are random.  We are not wired to work this way.  However, you will hear in everyone’s dialogue almost daily something such as “wow, that was a random thought”.  We think through linkages.  Nothing is random that we corellate.  Our brains link for example a word to an object.  A phrase to a movie. Or a song to an event.  A picture to a person.  A person’s personality to possibly another person.  Communication is a world of linkages.  One thing leads to another which branches off to another or many others.  Random does not exist in the human processes. 

Now, another thing I would like to talk about is from today’s discussion.  Well you may be ironically thinking this blog has random composition. Does it really?  I’m linking thoughts that have been stimulated by FYS classes.  Leave it to me to be overly analytical!  Continuing on, I would like to further discuss my opinions on the school system and teaching processes.  A wonderful word was brought up today- autodidact.  This is someone we would classify as a self-taught person.  Well when I thought in depth about this classification I started to get ambiguous opinions.  I started questioning whether an autodidact can truly exist…. because afterall everything we learn is from previous teachings or findings.  Such as Ariadne’s case of learning to play the guitar.  She claimed to be self-taught, however Dr. Campbell began questioning how she taught herself and it revealed several other factors that played a role in her learning to play the guitar conventionally.  These factors lacking of flesh-composed teachers but paper and computer.  Does that make them any less of a teacher? In my opinion, NO.  A teacher is something that assists and aids in the learning process.  Well, does that limit it to a person? ….NO. So can a person really claim to be an autodidact?  My analysis leads me to believe that no one can truly be an autodidact.  We derive our learning from others who derived theirs from others and so on and so on. 

I could go days talking about learning and the education system.  I have plenty and plenty of opinions regarding that.  However, I will condense for my blog’s sake and your sake as well. In the reading from Nelson he is very straight forward about his opposing views to the education system.  He feels we have limited ourself completely in structure by stripping our minds of creativity/individuality and replacing it with routine.  I agree that structure does take away from the time of specialization- but there’s a time for specialization as well.  However, I feel structure is required for the majority of people to go on and become an individual.  We learn and take from our structural foundation and apply this by going into a direction that intrigues us.  I feel at this point in my life that my years in elementary to high school provided structure at a very essential time.  A time where our brain is constantly shaping and growing psychologically.  A time where we are sponges for information.  We can not build on until we have learned a variety of basics.  All our courses at some point corellate.  They work together in a sense.  Science goes with math and english.  English goes with literature and vocabulary.  History goes with research and english.  What I’m trying to say is that these basics are general and do not limit us in any sense when coming to finding our own paths.  They allow aid and fluency in finding our paths.  We are able to attain prior knowledge to further innovate ourselfs and apply it. Of course there’s going to be negatives with every positive.  Of course there will be issues or downfalls to every structure we set up.  Our education system is far from perfect but who’s to say what foundation is the RIGHT foundation.  We are all individuals.  Some of us get motivation from face-to-face contact because we need that connection, some of us are better with diagrams and charts, some of us are better with numbers, some of us are better doing things digitally.  What I’m trying to get at is that I can’t possibly agree/disagree with Nelson’s ideas on education.  From my experiences I can say that I have benefited from the structure provided early on and it has helped me to follow a more specified path for my future and profession.

Dr. Campbell brought up an interesting question.  Would we personally prefer a “self-taught doctor” or a doctor that took the conventional means of learning such as college?  Well, as I’ve said before I do not believe in the idea of someone being self-taught.  We all attain prior knowledge and apply it to our means.  School doesn’t necessarily define a person or their intellect.  As Dr. Campbell said and I truly agree “if you are ready to learn, school is anywhere”.

This entry was posted on September 22, 2009 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.