Is it all in the Mind?

Most of today's society is a result of what educational circles call programmed learning. Anyone who is in the field of education soon comes to learn of programmed learning, so much that most learning is self learning anyway. With a computer, one can learn most any subject that one would want to acquire. So why is there a need for a teacher in the classroom anyway? Good question. Who needs the teacher when the students know all the answers already?

Why do we persist in higher education, and the process of handing out degrees? Is it really necesaary? If anyone knows of Tom Jefferson at all, one will learn quickly that he did not believe in degrees of any kind or even a standardized grading system, and for years the University of Virginia did conduct itself according to his own personal principles. It did change eventually, I admit, as uniformity is nationwide and degrees are a part of the lifestyle of university education.

But think about it...why is it necessary?

Years ago in the state of Michigan, one of the two Detroit newspapers ran long articles about certain senior citizens who had not the benefit of a bona fide four wall education, but who were self educated through their life experience, which included both book reading, and the application of knowledge for specific skills.

There are many people who shunned the institutions to acquire lifelong learning processes individually as they wanted to see and know the world about them.

Programmed learning is the art of instilling specific and pre-determined ideas into the student's mind so that he can assimilate and comprehend the lessons of the day as designed by the individual professor or teacher. Most teachers are trained to have a lesson plan for a long range period of time in which certain skills and ideas are promoted and taught in the classroom. The basic reason for testing is to determine if the teacher succeeded in accomplishing his task of teaching that lesson properly to the student. Tests reveal much about teachers as they do about students.

A child can do it for himself at home. He can memorize all the alphabet at home, and test himself with his parent or parents to see if he has learned it, and then go back to school to demonstrate to the teacher that he has learned each and every letter of the alphabet. The teacher feels then that he or she has accomplished the task because the student has learned the letters of the alphabet and proved it in the classroom.

In life, we then day by day acquire bits and pieces of knowledge which fall outside the curriculum of study but are added to our own individual schooling and training so that we become self - educated in many aspects of life that schools do not cover.

We have to wash the dishes after supper, hang our clothes properly in a closet, store flat things in a chest, and sweep the hardwood floors with a broom, run a vacuum over a carpet, and before you know it, we have passed household duty chores without having a grading sytem or a degree or diploma that says that you mastered this or that particular skill.

So that the learning process becomes a matter of what you learn behind the four walls of a classroom for the problems that are "all in the mind" and in the daily ongoing homelife which includes responsibility in handling chores and duties that are considered family and personal. Mom and Pop education versus higher learning with teachers education.

Health care begins at home. Learning to brush one's teeth, acts of cleanliness and good hygiene skills begin in the house with mother and father leading the way to know when to take a bath, how to comb and brush your hair, which clothes to wear in public and which to wear for play or at home, which doctor one will have to see if one gets bruised on the playground or in the front or back yard. All this knowledge learned at home is never graded, scored, or in anyway, evaluated, but simply taken for granted, but is probably more essential and important to a good life than learning how to dissect a sentence in grammar, or how to do fractions or to know the multiplication table...all of which are very important but probably not quite so important as knowing how to dress properly for church or a baseball game, or how to be sociable with family, friends, and visitors.

KNowing how to play a game of billiards, how to throw a bowling ball, how to overcome neighborhood bullies, how to defend one's self in a fight, how to avoid a fight, all these are natural learning situations with which most school children learn that the art of living is more important than the actual sitting in a chair at a desk in a classroom could ever be.

But for some few brilliant minds, the input into the mind is what keeps their minds occupied and interested so that natural talents which appear to develop in the school lead them to continue in the study of certain interest areas that are offered for that reason only, to enhance the mind.

A study of art, a study of history, of language, of any given topic is totally dependent upon the ability of the student to like and enjoy it. Otherwise, the subject area may simply be nonexistent for all of those who do not care about it at all.

So those attracted to higher learning accomplish the act again of sitting inside four walls, acquiring some knowledge about a given subject area for enough hours of study to merit his being considered qualified and able to be identified as a person who deserves recognition of his time and effort to earn a degree, a diploma, or a certificate that acknowledges his efforts.

Does that make him better than a person who does not do this? Only in his mind if he decrees it so.

Why I am saying all this is to demonstrate that those historians who have decided to take it upon themselves to enrich their lives through a study of a historical period are better for themselves that they have done it, if they can in turn, use it to the benefit of others who also want to learn from them.

Well, I am spun out on this now...I was trying to point out why it is that an education does matter, a degree does matter, as does any other diploma or certificate that gives recognition to the person who spent the time learning from others who have an expertise about a particular topic.

Managerial skills are probably natural for most fathers and mothers. Some just do not realize it.

I, of course, am trying to explain away why a study of myself in the past years has rewarded me with s small amount of knowledge about people who I would never have even identified with at all if given the choice. I would have criticized them, probably even disliked them, as they are not an easy bunch to understand. But for me, it has been an interesting study for which I will never earn a degree. Have I believed in it totally? Yes, completely. I also know that there are those who disagree with me and my conclusions, but that would not deter me at all from knowing that I have earned my own right to be myself regardless of who I had been in a former time.

It is good and healthy to explore the past, and especially if as I believe I am, famous beyond belief, all the better for me to learn of it now.

I can do nothing about it all as history is what other people say that you are, not what you say yourself. Spiritual revelation is what you see and learn for yourself that is kept recorded within one's own being which can come to the surface at some time in life. I advise against pushing for it until it is time...it is like that saying about wine, don't sell it before its time.

I will see tomorrow what this so called treatise does for me tonight. I always pay attention to my dreams...