Posted on 06/11/2011 4:54:29 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell
Our expensive educational system does not teach intelligence. Most publicly educated people in the US do not know what intelligence is. A majority believe it is innate, something people are born with. In fact, intelligence is a product of classical education.
One must be taught to think. Logical or critical thinking may be learned easily or with difficulty but it is a learned skill. Mathematics and classical philosophy teach thinking skills. Thinking is the antithesis of indoctrination. Teaching people how to think is categorically the opposite of teaching them what to think.
Obama has not learned how to think, only what to think. This is what makes him doctrinaire and ideological, he has mastered a limited set of ideas and principles that he applies universally in all circumstances. He has the same set of responses to every condition. He is unable to differentiate between a variety of situations and evaluate them individually. His is a one size fits all mind.
Obama's dogged insistence on applying one set of principles to every situation is viewed by a preponderance of people as intellectual rigor. For those who do not have a clue about the true nature of intelligence this makes perfect sense. It is not about thinking. It is about learning the correct response and applying it with all diligence and discipline. That is the fundamental discipline of socialism.
At its core socialism is a one size fits all political discipline. The answers have all been worked out. Learning them and applying them rigidly is the work of the true believer. Obama is, by any measure, a true believer, not an intellectual.
I agree.
Thanks for a provocative post. I’ve always said that part of what bothers me about Obama is his Manichean world view - he views himself and his beliefs as on the side of purely good, and those who oppose him or his ideas aren’t just mistaken, they are EVIL. Look at his palpable disdain and hatred towards those who have a different view - I think we’re on the same wavelength. Any idea that this guy is some sort of thinker or intellect is ridiculous. He’s a credentialed true believer, and a dangerous one.
Most anybody.
I can still remember some of the satire from 60's MAD Magazine word for word and I only read it.
I think all mine came from misapplying knowledge.
The word for that is indoctrinated. Intelligence is the ability to evaluate the knowledge offered by others.
Learning quantum mechanics involves more than being able to regurgitate principles. It also involves understanding the intellectual process that led to the development of quantum mechanics.
Yes, you are of course right about the different uses of the word ‘school’.
But your original piece, with “One must be taught to think”, implies something other than self-teaching. Your further comment clarifies your thinking, if you will.
Again, I believe we are in agreement.
This is very well written
You should submit this to every single media and news outlet you can
Rush, Hannity, and a thousand more
You are on the right track. The author of the article confuses intelligence with wisdom. As you suggest, intelligence is primarily an attribute that one is born with. Naturally, exercise (study)can enhance it. Intelligence is sort of akin to speed. Speed (either you have it or you don't) is something you are born with but can be enhance a certain degree by hard exercise and training. Now, wisdom is a learned trait based upon what one is taught and how one is trained and then most importantly applies those values. Wisdom is the antithesis of Evil. History is chock full of examples of extremely intelligent people who performed extremely evil deeds...
That is what I was pointing out.
Bless you my child. I too am engaged at FR because my mind craves the intellectual rigor of learning from and struggling with others who are intellectually driven.
But IQ tests don’t measure how successfully one’s been indoctrinated, do they?
Well when I took German in high school 35 years ago we said The Lord's Prayer in German at the start of each class. To this day it's the only bit of German I can recite.
All it means is 0bama has a good memory for certain things. Take away TOTUS and he bumbles through a speech like Elmer Fudd, don't even try to ask him a serious question that requires a gut response because his handlers wouldn't allow that, lest he has another Joe the Plumber moment.
I can still recite most parts of the Catholic mass - In Latin. And, THAT has been WAAAY more than 40 years for me. Religion stuffs it’s doctrines and rituals DEEP inside the young brain so they NEVER leave....
true. but if you went to england, i think you’d remember the year and date.
i’ve read many of your posts. and i’ve read many things by Obama.
there is NO comparison, between YOUR memory and intelligence, and his.
...and i’d also submit, that you are WAY above the national average in both also. most people i know, have terrible memories. and while i’m not as smart as you, even i am above the national average.
...and i think we ALL would like to see Obama’s records from his 2 semesters at Columbia, that qualified him for Harvard...
Thank you for your comments.
Self teaching is typically done with the writings of others as in philosophical or mathematical treatises. In those cases the reader is learning the thought processes of another.
The development of intelligence is a very personal and private activity done in the presence of a greater intellect, whether formally, conversationally or through reading or viewing.
There is "a grappling with another intellect" aspect to the process of developing intellectual skills that can not be avoided.
Chicago Tribune says all you ‘crackers’ are wrong about the Obama economy.
chicagotribune.com
Black hopes vs. white anxiety
Clarence Page
6:44 PM CDT, June 10, 2011
Race relations have undergone a curious flip-flop. Polls show blacks feel more optimistic about the nation’s future than whites, despite the Great Recession that’s giving everybody the blues.
Having a black, or, if you prefer, biracial, president explains a lot of that optimism, polls show. But white Americans, particularly working-class whites without a college diploma, have become more gloomy.
Ronald Brownstein, political director and demographic specialist at the National Journal, recently described whites who have less than a four-year college degree as “the most pessimistic and alienated group in American society.”
He cited a March poll by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project in which two-thirds of blacks and Hispanics said they expected to be better off economically in 10 years. So did 55 percent of college-educated whites. But only 44 percent of non-college whites agreed.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-oped-0612-page-20110610,0,2405310,print.column
excellent point. i concede that you and Paladin2 are correct.
many people can remember a lot from their early children. perhaps i was swayed, because i cannot recite ANYTHING from before i was 9 or 10, and i have very few memories at all from before then. (yet, i have been called a “walking encyclopedia” by friends, about things i’ve learned as an adult.)
but again, i concede that Obama could remember it after 40 years without practice.
however, it remains that he certainly knows what those words mean, and a true Christian, would not proudly recite words, that are considered by Muslims, to OFFICIALLY and PERMANENTLY make you a Muslim.
As a former teacher, I found that some children come to kindergaten and first grade with high abilities of problem solving skills and vision. It’s never been proven whether they are born with those skills or have been stimulated with activities fostered by their parents.
It’s true we’re all born with the same brain volume and mechanical abilities, but child development is not proven science. It is just estimated science.
I compare this to artists. Some artists can visualize something in their minds and lay it out on canvas layer by layer. Yet some artists have to paint from a picture or something they are looking at.
And some children seem to be born leaders and some followers. Are they learned skills, or are they innate. We don’t know. Yes, you can train a child to be a leader by putting them in the position of leadership every day...but usually they’ll never be a great leader. They will plod along based simply on limited experience or indoctrination. Without having the ability to foresee the consequences that ‘might’ or ‘probably’ will befall them on the way and foresee how to deal with them with flexibility.
Obamajad is obviously a trained robot. How many times have you heard the so-called intellectuals referring to him as a pragmatist, thinking that this imbues him with genius. When it simply means he’s a plodder, a dullard, most likely a follower like a blind sheep. And this should tell you a lot about the so-called intellectuals supporting him. They haven’t even a clue what they’re saying.
Some like to call pragmatists ‘realists’ who only have the ability to deal with what they can ‘see’ in real time. They rely on somebody elses scientific data to formulate a conclusion, which they then determine is imperialistic proof to their conclusion. Just because.
The serious problem with Obamajad is that his abilities were born in and then fostered by hatred and negativism against people who are ‘different’ from him. And thus he projects his own hatred and negativism to them. When most Americans have been born in and fostered by positives like patriotism, prosperity and freedom to self-determine and a belief that those are innate rights belonging to us all, even those who are ‘different’. And then of course, there are those of us who apply those positives with a few basic limits of morality based on ten basic commandments handed down by our Creator. He hates that, especially because it limits his ability as a con man.
In other words, this is one sicko, dangerous dude that needs to be taken out of this powerful leadership position. He’s not just incompetent. The direction he wants to lead us is wrong, based on his ideology that we need to be punished because we dare to be different from his negative robotic programming.
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