Is there a genius in all of us?

BBC ^ | January 12, 2011 | David Shenk

[bigheadfred]

Is there a genius in all of us?

There's one in me! It's my tapeworm--Obiwan! (just ask him)

[bannie]

I had TWO geniuses inside of me. One boy and one girl.

[bigheadfred]

I had TWO geniuses inside of me. One boy and one girl.

You girls have all the fun.

Here I am stuck at home listening to that loudmouth tapeworm.

[bannie]

That part WAS fun. (Just give your tapeworm a name!)
:-)

[decimon]

I had TWO geniuses inside of me. One boy and one girl.

Glad they escaped. Hey, that's great!

Just kidding. Hope you're all doing well.

[bigheadfred]

I’ve TRIED!

I keep saying Hey! SHUT UP!

He says his name isn’t SHUT UP! It’s Obiwan.

[DesScorp]

No, and we need to stop feeding crap like this to kids in school. Not everyone is a potential star. Not everyone is gifted. Most people are in fact ordinary, and many struggle even to be competent. This is reality. This is life. That’s the state of the universe. Hard work will get most people much farther than talent will anyway. THAT’s what we need to teach our kids.

[shibumi]

"I've come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us... I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children's power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to *prevent* children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior."

With these words, John Taylor Gatto (former New York City Teacher of the Year) hit on the plot fomented by John Dewey and his cohorts, Beard, Robinson and Verblen to "dumb down" the American public with the specific objective of making us unable to think and distinguish good from evil in an objective manner.

The election of The Usurper and the last Congress is nothing more or less than Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

One more thought from the fertile mind of Dr. Gatto:

"Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory."

[worst-case scenario]

VRW Conspirator - you gave a serious reply on a thread reserved for wisecracks. Not very brilliant of you! Bzzzt! But thanks for playing! /jk

This is very much Gardner’s theory of “multiple intelligences.” There was an attempt in the 1990s to utilize these categories in grammar education; I was involved in the start-up of a charter school that used this concept of multiple intelligences as the foundation of its charter.

NCLB essentially derailed a lot of that, because of its demand on outstanding performance in testable academic subjects in order to continue to receive any Federal funds. (The 11% of our budget we got from the Feds wasn’t a huge proportion, but for a charter school - where every penny counts - we had to consider the fiscal realities. We couldn’t afford to give that money up.

It is a great idea, but as long as student success is measured purely by high scpres on “dot tests,” academic performance will be the “most faavored type of genius.”

This, by the way, was the one area where your ideas match almost exactly the philosophies of the teachers in the classrooms. The teachers had all come to our school with years and years of classroom experience, and they knew first-hand the different types of genius that certain children are born with. They all were tremendously enthusiastic about being able to use a variety of standards.

We spent a lot of time in committee developing “rubrics,” which created testable performance standards in non-traditional study areas. It was very difficult work, since the entire school system, from the Post-War era on, is based on the “give them a test and see how smart they are” model(thanks, Stanford-Binet.) The laziest and least-involved teachers will always prefer to use traditional academic testing, since it requires so little effort to administer,

[50mm]

I’m part of the “degraded rabble”. My yearly review is coming up. This year it’s a 360 degree review which means some who probably rode the short bus to school will help decide my raise.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Fall on your knees and thank God Almighty that you are being considered for a raise at all, no matter how your “committee” got to work. Many people in this country will get no raise and are thankful just to be employed. Jes sayin’.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

Our family produced a supergenius, so I know better than most that not everybody measures up in that regard. Among the many things I learned from our supergenius: genius is overrated and a lot like having more money than you can ever spend, only you can’t give it away.

[grey_whiskers]

Courtesy *PING* to Post #6.

[mad_as_he$$]

No, there is not.

[VRW Conspirator]

VRW Conspirator - you gave a serious reply on a thread reserved for wisecracks. Not very brilliant of you! Bzzzt! But thanks for playing! /jk

I stopped reading after this line. Someone with the tact and diplomacy of a rusty razor surely must be wanting of demonstrable wisdom. I really don't want a lecture from a wannabe who tells me I am too serious for this thread then in the same breath waxes, ahem, seriously. Nice! Go ahead, look in the mirror and tell yourself that you are a genius. Oops, you are just a smarta$$.

[worst-case scenario]

Hey, I *know* I was being a smartass. No offense was intended. I actually admired your comment, and was trying (poorly, in your opinion) to use a bit of humor to state it.

Please excuse me for trying to pay you a compliment in a way you don’t approve of. I won’t do it again - but then, you probably wouldn’t want any praise from this “someone with the tact and diplomacy of a rusty razor” who is “surely ... wanting of demonstrable wisdom” either.

[Cacique]

Btt

[colorado tanker]

Is there a genius in all of us?

If so, it might be harder to find in some than others.

[SunkenCiv]

D’oh!