Was experience ever the best teacher? - Page 2

Peacemaker · (#26 (**permalink**))

flow-unclever wrote:

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Thank you for your contribution.

I woud thank you for yours, but I've seen them all in books elsewhere, so not really YOUR contributions are they at the end of the day, but other peoples.

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Again primates are taught to act like humans also.

flow-unclever · (#27 (**permalink**))

You read books then.

Peacemaker wrote:

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flow-unclever wrote:

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Thank you for your contribution.

I woud thank you for yours, but I've seen them all in books elsewhere, so not really YOUR contributions are they at the end of the day, but other peoples.

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Again primates are taught to act like humans also.

Peacemaker · (#28 (**permalink**))

Yes alot of them, but strangely they don't alter my world view.

flow-unclever · (#29 (**permalink**))

BlackMatta wrote:

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So how would you explain the colour blue to a blind man?

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Remember usefulness of the knowledge is only determined by the ability to put it into practice. Not every knowledge is useful to everyone no matter how fascnating that knowledge may be.

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Another very important aspect of being a teacher is your ability to choose what to teach and not to teachyour students.

Someone once said," bestowing knowledge on the wrong people is destroying it."

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Just a thought

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blkwall

Maroon Heart · (#30 (**permalink**))

@ Flow

Greetings

Also how can you know if knowledge is going to be useful or not.

When a child develops its vocabulary, how can weknow which words will be useful to the child in the future and which will become redundant?

If someone teaches a pupil about the vastness of the Universe, has the teacher's efforts in enriching that persons life via enlightenment been in vain?

Who decides if someone has intellectual potential or is just some dumb ass not worth bothering with?

How do we answer these questions or are they themselves notworth answering?

Peace

flow-unclever · (#31 (**permalink**))

Maroon Heart wrote:

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@ Flow

Greetings

Also how can you know if knowledge is going to be useful or not.
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When you embark on studying something you have goals and targets. I am studying English because it will help me to communicate with many people in the world. I am studying bantu because I want to access ancient texts written in this language etc. I will not teach a blind man how to drive because he will never need to drive. I was thinking along those lines.

When a child develops its vocabulary, how can weÂ*know which words will be useful to the child in the future and which will become redundant?
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You teach him the words which are currently in use and you do not teach him words which are currently obsolette unless he has a need to study from old texts. People study latin because they use it to have a better understanding of modern languages such as Spanish Italian English etc. atleast i would hope.
When you invest your time in studying something for the fun of it and do not see any potential use for it you become a time waster unless fun is your goal. Some people live to waste time that is their choice.
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If someone teaches a pupil about the vastness of the Universe, has the teacher's efforts in enriching that persons life via enlightenment been in vain?

Who decides if someone has intellectual potential or is just some dumb ass not worth bothering with?

How do we answer these questions or are they themselves notÂ*worth answering?
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If the teacher can see potential in the student to understand ideas about the universe and can see him making use of it well and good. I have seen many kids who got taught alot of things in their childhood you see their brains stored with fascinating information by the time they are 10 years old only to reach adulthood and become big brother fans. Foresight is a wonderful thing.

A teacher is a guide and when a student is under your wing it is your duty to make right choices for that student and i mean honest sincere choices.
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Peace

flow-unclever · (#32 (**permalink**))

Methinks you are saying knowledge must be experienced to be useful. A half concession of my view point thatÂ*we understand things in terms of our own experience, andÂ*explanations outside the context of our experience is not just useless but meaningless to us. That is why there is always a difference between what is communicated to us and whatÂ*we understand by it, particularly where the teacher and learner haveÂ*contrasting experiences relating to the topic.

But methinks you are also trying to duck the question ofÂ*possibility by focussing on usefulness.

Knowing what a sighted person means by the colour blue could well be useful to a blind person. How do you teach them the colour blue?

BlackMatta.
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Blind people are familiar with the world of sounds so you use what he is familiar with in terms of sounds and use it to build a model of colours.
You tell him there are sounds of different pitch high, medium pitch, and low pitch.
You then tell him just like sounds colours come in different levels of brightness from the very bright to the very dark. Blue falls very close to the very darkest of them which is black.

Maroon Heart · (#33 (**permalink**))

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@ Flow

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When a child develops its vocabulary, how can weknow which words will be useful to the child in the future and which will become redundant?

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This means unless you can predict this child's destiny, perfectly, you can not know which words this child will use in its lifetime.

If someone teaches a pupil about the vastness of the Universe, has the teacher's efforts in enriching that persons life via enlightenment been in vain?

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Whether you can see potential or not in this pupil, their is no guarantee the pupil will appreciate what they have been taught.

Who decides if someone has intellectual potential or is just some dumb ass not worth bothering with?

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Who can value truely, the worth of a human life?

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Peace

Maroon Heart · (#34 (**permalink**))

@Blackmatta

True words Bro

flow-unclever · (#35 (**permalink**))

Sometimes we learn of new things based on the effect they have on what we know or sometimes on models of the things we are familiar with.
Scientists - with perfectly working eyes - know about the existence of electrons. None of them has seen what an electron looks like they all know of its physical properties and they know them based on the effect it has on things they are familiar with. (Electron is negatively charged but what does negative look like?) Yet they have managed to make many uses of this thing called eectron without knowing what it looks like.

The fact that the blind man knows about colours based on his familiarity with sounds would not stop him making use of colours within his mind if he chooses to do so.

I might be wrong.

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BlackMatta wrote:

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@flow-unclever

...so sound is their means of understanding, and their limit of understanding your teaching. I would say their experience of sound is ultimately their teacher of colour, not your good self. They may understand through echo of reflection, through chords of compound colour and through music of pattern. You have not actually created anything new in their mind except the notion that their is something else a bit like sound...

BlackMatta.

Maroon Heart · (#36 (**permalink**))

@ Flow

What you have just explained is how I would suggest you could begin to teach a blind man about the colour blue. Brilliant!

But as Blackmatta stated,the blind will not experience the colour blue by simply relating it to sounds. The colour is much more than that.

The people who have built much of Atomic Theory were not normal intellects they a were all touched by genius.

A great teacher could,in principle, teach anybody genius. But what has to be admitted here is that this teacher himself,wouldalso be,genius.

Peace

flow-unclever · (#37 (**permalink**))

BlackMatta wrote:

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Sometimes we learn of new things based on the effect they have on what we know or sometimes on models of the things we are familiar with.

Only sometimes? When don't we? If the phenomenon doesn't register on some instrument that we know of, including our sensory organs, how do we know of it?

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That is why the original question i was asking concerning the notiuon that experience is the best teacher all the time. My point is yes experience is indeed a very good teacher but it is not always possibly to use experience to teach a lesson and sometimes the very experience can have the opposite effect or even the damaging effect. It all depends on who you are teaching.

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If you want to teach your child about the danger of drugs you will not put him through drug use and show him how damaging they are. Because although the damage may not be immediate the intial part of the experience could be very enjoyable, which is not exactly what you wanted to projec