People who can actually think.

[Paloaltoguy]

...

[Paloaltoguy]

...

[Moretorque]

Most Americans, regardless of race, have an inability to think rationally and logically on a routine basis. Culture, religion, fads, trends, and tradition have far more influence on Americans behavior than intellect.

I find white Americans have no special advantage in this regard. If anything, they tend to be the most apt to suffer from this intellectual bankruptcy. Our political, economic, and social downward spiral is due to the institutional domination of whites and their inability to think about new approaches to difficult problems.

That's RACISM you racist!!!! do you think the fluoride is having the desired affect on Americans?

I am not afraid of being called racist when I am telling the truth.

But to answer your question, the effect of toxins on the intelligence of most Americans is negligible at best. The American mindset that childhood should be one of play, carefree living, and leisure is the most likely culprit. Mozart honed his skills for hours of practice, world champion gymnasts toil in pain and sweat for years before reaching success, and intellectual whiz kids pour over hours of calculus just for fun. Childhood should include fun and leisure, parents in Asia and Europe are more aware that it is a time of preparation more than anything else. That ethic is lost on most American parents and their children are at a disadvantage as a consequence.

The new Common Core education is going to fix all this however.

[Paloaltoguy]

Most Americans, regardless of race, have an inability to think rationally and logically on a routine basis. Culture, religion, fads, trends, and tradition have far more influence on Americans behavior than intellect.

I find white Americans have no special advantage in this regard. If anything, they tend to be the most apt to suffer from this intellectual bankruptcy. Our political, economic, and social downward spiral is due to the institutional domination of whites and their inability to think about new approaches to difficult problems.

That's RACISM you racist!!!! do you think the fluoride is having the desired affect on Americans?

I am not afraid of being called racist when I am telling the truth.

But to answer your question, the effect of toxins on the intelligence of most Americans is negligible at best. The American mindset that childhood should be one of play, carefree living, and leisure is the most likely culprit. Mozart honed his skills for hours of practice, world champion gymnasts toil in pain and sweat for years before reaching success, and intellectual whiz kids pour over hours of calculus just for fun. Childhood should include fun and leisure, parents in Asia and Europe are more aware that it is a time of preparation more than anything else. That ethic is lost on most American parents and their children are at a disadvantage as a consequence.

Lol, nonsense. If carefree living, and leisure is the most likely culprit. How do you explain the Finland's school system?

Finnish children don't start school until they are 7.

Compared with other systems, they rarely take exams or do homework until they are well into their teens.

The children are not measured at all for the first six years of their education.

There is only one mandatory standardized test in Finland, taken when children are 16.

All children, clever or not, are taught in the same classrooms.

Finland spends around 30 percent less per student than the United States.

30 percent of children receive extra help during their first nine years of school.

66 percent of students go to college. The highest rate in Europe.

The difference between weakest and strongest students is the smallest in the World.

Science classes are capped at 16 students so that they may perform practical experiments every class.

93 percent of Finns graduate from high school. 17.5 percent higher than the US.

43 percent of Finnish high-school students go to vocational schools.

Elementary school students get 75 minutes of recess a day in Finnish versus an average of 27 minutes in the US.

Teachers only spend 4 hours a day in the classroom, and take 2 hours a week for "professional development".

In an international standardized measurement in 2001, Finnish children came top or very close to the top for science, reading and mathematics. It has consistently come at the top for the international rankings for education systems.

http://www.businessinsider.com/finland- ... ol-2011-12

I guess it back to the drawing board for you

[Paloaltoguy]

Most Americans, regardless of race, have an inability to think rationally and logically on a routine basis. Culture, religion, fads, trends, and tradition have far more influence on Americans behavior than intellect.

I find white Americans have no special advantage in this regard. If anything, they tend to be the most apt to suffer from this intellectual bankruptcy. Our political, economic, and social downward spiral is due to the institutional domination of whites and their inability to think about new approaches to difficult problems.

That's RACISM you racist!!!! do you think the fluoride is having the desired affect on Americans?

I am not afraid of being called racist when I am telling the truth.

But to answer your question, the effect of toxins on the intelligence of most Americans is negligible at best. The American mindset that childhood should be one of play, carefree living, and leisure is the most likely culprit. Mozart honed his skills for hours of practice, world champion gymnasts toil in pain and sweat for years before reaching success, and intellectual whiz kids pour over hours of calculus just for fun. Childhood should include fun and leisure, parents in Asia and Europe are more aware that it is a time of preparation more than anything else. That ethic is lost on most American parents and their children are at a disadvantage as a consequence.

The new Common Core education is going to fix all this however.

And what would that be? lol

[Contrarian Expatriate]

Most Americans, regardless of race, have an inability to think rationally and logically on a routine basis. Culture, religion, fads, trends, and tradition have far more influence on Americans behavior than intellect.

I find white Americans have no special advantage in this regard. If anything, they tend to be the most apt to suffer from this intellectual bankruptcy. Our political, economic, and social downward spiral is due to the institutional domination of whites and their inability to think about new approaches to difficult problems.

That's RACISM you racist!!!! do you think the fluoride is having the desired affect on Americans?

I am not afraid of being called racist when I am telling the truth.

But to answer your question, the effect of toxins on the intelligence of most Americans is negligible at best. The American mindset that childhood should be one of play, carefree living, and leisure is the most likely culprit. Mozart honed his skills for hours of practice, world champion gymnasts toil in pain and sweat for years before reaching success, and intellectual whiz kids pour over hours of calculus just for fun. Childhood should include fun and leisure, parents in Asia and Europe are more aware that it is a time of preparation more than anything else. That ethic is lost on most American parents and their children are at a disadvantage as a consequence.

Lol, nonsense. If carefree living, and leisure is the most likely culprit. How do you explain the Finland's school system?

Finnish children don't start school until they are 7.

Compared with other systems, they rarely take exams or do homework until they are well into their teens.

The children are not measured at all for the first six years of their education.

There is only one mandatory standardized test in Finland, taken when children are 16.

All children, clever or not, are taught in the same classrooms.

Finland spends around 30 percent less per student than the United States.

30 percent of children receive extra help during their first nine years of school.

66 percent of students go to college. The highest rate in Europe.

The difference between weakest and strongest students is the smallest in the World.

Science classes are capped at 16 students so that they may perform practical experiments every class.

93 percent of Finns graduate from high school. 17.5 percent higher than the US.

43 percent of Finnish high-school students go to vocational schools.

Elementary school students get 75 minutes of recess a day in Finnish versus an average of 27 minutes in the US.

Teachers only spend 4 hours a day in the classroom, and take 2 hours a week for "professional development".

In an international standardized measurement in 2001, Finnish children came top or very close to the top for science, reading and mathematics. It has consistently come at the top for the international rankings for education systems.

http://www.businessinsider.com/finland- ... ol-2011-12

I guess it back to the drawing board for you

Nothing about the Finnish model suggests they view childhood as a time of play and leisure. They simply defer the evaluative process until the teens and have higher quality (Masters Degrees) teachers. It does not hurt that they have a smarter overall population than the US to begin with. You have not refuted my point at all.

[Paloaltoguy]

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[onethousandknives]

I'd have to agree with the "cushy modern life" thing to some degree. I think the reason people don't think is that now nothing actually requires thinking whereas before, most normal tasks in your life required thinking. What if you wanted breakfast nowadays? Most people now think of either grabbing something out of a freezer, or go to McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts, whatever. Not actually going around their house and gathering ingredients and cooking breakfast for themselves. And I think this goes across the board with most things in life. I think you can even see it with kid's play. I think of model kits. Model kits require a lot of thought, and a lot of time to complete correctly and require the kid to develop a perfectionist mentality for it to come out well. Now, model kits aren't popular anymore, and video games have replaced them, but now even video games despite having exponentially more power behind the hardware and better graphics, are generally less complex than even video games of 10-15 years ago (think original Rainbow Six vs Call of Duty.) In Rainbow Six it's a tactical game where you must think first and then act, but Call of Duty is all just about quickly reacting and spraying bullets everywhere because it pleases your senses right now. Delayed gratification and longterm goals are also not being rewarded in this society and people are told to just worry about "now" and it goes to things like instant meals that are bad for you, credit cards instead of saving money, etc.

The work and thinking for most things has been reduced in most people's thought processes, thus basically their brains kind of atrophy and go into the autopilot type mode described here. And I think this is the reason, is that modern life requires less thinking to even make it through life. You're not required to build or create anything (even if it's as simple as a loaf of bread you're building and creating) to make it through life anymore. You do simply exist and show up and get your paycheck for the most part. Obviously throughout all periods of the world, there's been smart people and dumb people, but the situation of people not thinking is sort of new. Where people are happy to be ignorant, where people do not have any sort of thirst for knowledge.

And it goes farther than IQ, I think you'd have better luck trying to have an intelligent conversation with the average auto mechanic today than you would with some office drone who sends emails and uses Microsoft Excel. Because at least the auto mechanic's brain is still actually in use, whereas the office worker's brain is basically off. By this, I mean the auto mechanic may actually debate and consider your point of view, even if he doesn't use big words in conversation, whereas the office worker will default into "automatic" programmed responses to whatever you say.

At least this is my take on it. I used to think "man I'm the only one who actually thinks" and that's obviously not accurate, but I think this is the separating thought process of people. People who create things in their work or spare time vs people who don't create anything and just choose to exist and feed whatever their sensual pleasures are.

[Paloaltoguy]

The reason people don't think is mostly because of formal schooling.

Synopsis
In How Children Fail John Holt states that children love to learn, but hate to be taught. His experiences in the classroom as a teacher and researcher brought him to the conclusion that all children are intelligent. They become unintelligent because they are accustomed by teachers and schools to strive only for teacher approval and for the “right" answers, and to forget all else. In this system, children see no value in thinking and discovery, but see it only in playing the game of school.

Children believe that they must please the teacher, the adults, at all costs. They learn how to manipulate teachers to gain clues about what the teacher really wants. Through the teacher’s body language, facial expressions and other clues, they learn what might be the right answer. They mumble, straddle the answer, get the teacher to answer their own question, and take wild guesses while waiting to see what happens- all in order to increase the chances for a right answer.

When children are very young, they have natural curiosity about the world, trying diligently to figure out what is real. As they become “producers”, rather than “thinkers”, they fall away from exploration and start fishing for the right answers with little thought. They believe they must always be right, so they quickly forget mistakes and how these mistakes were made. They believe that the only good response from the teacher is “yes”, and that a “no” is defeat.

They fear wrong answers and shy away from challenges because they may not have the right answer. This fear, which rules them in the school setting, does their thinking and learning a great disservice. A teacher’s job is to help them overcome their fears of failure and explore the problem for real learning. So often, teachers are doing the opposite — building children’s fears up to monumental proportions. Children need to see that failure is honorable, and that it helps them construct meaning. It should not be seen as humiliating, but as a step to real learning. Being afraid of mistakes, they never try to understand their own mistakes and cannot and will not try to understand when their thinking is faulty. Adding to children’s fear in school is corporal punishment and humiliation, both of which can scare children into right/wrong thinking and away from their natural exploratory thinking.

Holt maintains that when teachers praise students, they rob them of the joy of discovering truth for themselves. They should be aiding them by guiding them to explore and learn as their interests move them. In mathematics, children learn algorithms, but when faced with problems with Cuisenaire rods, they cannot apply their learning to real situations. Their learning is superficial in that they can sometimes spit out the algorithm when faced with a problem on paper, but have no understanding of how or why the algorithm works and no deep understanding about numbers.

Holt believes that end of year achievement tests do not show real learning. Teachers (Holt included) generally cram for these tests in the weeks preceding. Meanwhile, the material learned is forgotten shortly after the tests because it was not motivated by interest, nor does it have practical use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Children_Fail

[Contrarian Expatriate]

It would if you looked into the science behind their model lol. The mind is a connection system and learning is the process of connecting. Play and leisure help with that process. Children are born passionately eager to make as much sense as they can of things around them. Children observe, they wonder, they speculate, and they ask themselves questions. They think up possible answers, they make theories, they hypothesize, and then they test theories by asking questions or by further observations or experiments or reading. Then they modify the theories as needed, or reject them, and the process continues. This is what in "grown-up" life is called the: Scientific Method. However, if we attempt to control, manipulate, or divert this process, we disturb it. If we continue this long enough, the process stops. The independent scientist in the child disappears and that is exactly what happens in school. World champion gymnasts are using different context of memory and more use of trained reflex actions tied to the action going on. The high level processes of the brain are coordinating the retrieval of context mode and maintaining it, while activating different coherency regions that might be used by that context mode.

I suggest you read some books on CogSci books before you speak on this subject again. Start with a copy of "How Children Fail" by John Holt. You're not going to get someone that can actually think with your dated ideas. You're going to get a robot.

If you are the authority on the subject that you believe yourself to be, how are American children's hours of video game play, sedentary sloth, and disinterested academic performance connected to this high level of cognitive learning? The fact is, these and other habits of the American childhood UNDERMINE future performance.

And as someone who has overachieved above and beyond the imaginable, I consider myself more than qualified to opine on the subject, not to mention my former work with children.

Yours is precisely the mentality that contribute to the current generational drift backwards in terms of achievement.

[Paloaltoguy]

....

[Contrarian Expatriate]

See above synopsis. What you're talking about are symptoms because you're not as smart as me (no one really is). When children have their mental models (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_model) broken by formal schooling, they lose inestest in learning. They're like animals whose spirits have been broken.

Very simple.

That works out great for rich and powerful alike because smart people are very difficult — they ask too many questions, they quit their jobs, etc. Good Manageable people cannot sustain thinking for long or really think at all. They are usually childish people who need attending to by adults (upper management). Their lives are mechanical. Their thoughts well controlled like the thoughts of machinery. Have you noticed that machines don’t ever surprise you after you know their habits? We need dependent human beings, needy people unable to fill their own hours, unable to initiate lines of meaning to give substance and pleasure to their existence. A large fraction of our total economy has grown up around providing service and counseling to inadequate people – and inadequate people are the main product of government compulsion schools. Think Pavlov here with the intent that ‘Public education must limit itself to training working class students to carry out whatever task they are given to do and to accept the commands of their superiors. In other words, the real function of modern pedagogy is to render the common population manageable and to train generations into subservience to the state and corporations. The mechanisms of compulsory schooling cripple imagination, discourages critical thinking, strips children of historical bonds and causes of kinds of mental problems. A truly educated person writes his own script through life- he is not a character in a government or corporation play. The educated person is self-determined to a large degree. Read: The Underground History of American Education. It explains how the Civil War demonstrated to industrialists and financiers how a standardized population trained to follow orders without significant thought could be made to function as a money tree. The Finnish model shows you what happens when you let children develop naturally.

If you were as well informed as you think, you would be aware that Montessori Schools in the US closely approximate the Finnish model yet there is not significant difference between achievement levels of Montessori and non-Montessori school students in the US.

Therefore your unconstrained, free flow, creative play theory has been debunked long ago actually.

For all of your self-proclaimed "intelligence," you might wish to consider that social problems are at the core of US children's underachievement. To make it clear for you, if you took all public school students from a major big city in the US and placed them in a Finnish model school, their achievement would not likely raise due to issues like:

-Single parent households with the one parent using controlled substances, suffering from untreated mental problems, and struggling with near illiteracy.

-Lack of American student cognitive stimulation in the early years leading to lagging neurological development.

-Stress and violence in or near the home which impedes the ability to learn due to peptides and other physiological maladies.

In other words, social problems in Finland pale in comparison to American social problems and these, more than their educational system, explain the lion's share of differences in achievement. I realize how tempting it is to consider international successes and how they portend for American emulation. However, 260 million diverse Americans compared to 5 million heterogeneous Finns does not a valid comparison make.

In a culture like the USA, you need a more "Tiger Mom" approach to overcome the social complexities that do not exist in Nordic countries like Finland which is likely higher or the Human Development index and the USA even.

[Paloaltoguy]

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[Contrarian Expatriate]

See above synopsis. What you're talking about are symptoms because you're not as smart as me (no one really is). When children have their mental models (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_model) broken by formal schooling, they lose inestest in learning. They're like animals whose spirits have been broken.

Very simple.

That works out great for rich and powerful alike because smart people are very difficult — they ask too many questions, they quit their jobs, etc. Good Manageable people cannot sustain thinking for long or really think at all. They are usually childish people who need attending to by adults (upper management). Their lives are mechanical. Their thoughts well controlled like the thoughts of machinery. Have you noticed that machines don’t ever surprise you after you know their habits? We need dependent human beings, needy people unable to fill their own hours, unable to initiate lines of meaning to give substance and pleasure to their existence. A large fraction of our total economy has grown up around providing service and counseling to inadequate people – and inadequate people are the main product of government compulsion schools. Think Pavlov here with the intent that ‘Public education must limit itself to training working class students to carry out whatever task they are given to do and to accept the commands of their superiors. In other words, the real function of modern pedagogy is to render the common population manageable and to train generations into subservience to the state and corporations. The mechanisms of compulsory schooling cripple imagination, discourages critical thinking, strips children of historical bonds and causes of kinds of mental problems. A truly educated person writes his own script through life- he is not a character in a government or corporation play. The educated person is self-determined to a large degree. Read: The Underground History of American Education. It explains how the Civil War demonstrated to industrialists and financiers how a standardized population trained to follow orders without significant thought could be made to function as a money tree. The Finnish model shows you what happens when you let children develop naturally.

If you were as well informed as you think, you would be aware that Montessori Schools in the US closely approximate the Finnish model yet there is not significant difference between achievement levels of Montessori and non-Montessori school students in the US.

Therefore your unconstrained, free flow, creative play theory has been debunked long ago actually.

For all of your self-proclaimed "intelligence," you might wish to consider that social problems are at the core of US children's underachievement. To make it clear for you, if you took all public school students from a major big city in the US and placed them in a Finnish model school, their achievement would not likely raise due to issues like:

-Single parent households with the one parent using controlled substances, suffering from untreated mental problems, and struggling with near illiteracy.

-Lack of American student cognitive stimulation in the early years leading to lagging neurological development.

-Stress and violence in or near the home which impedes the ability to learn due to peptides and other physiological maladies.

In other words, social problems in Finland pale in comparison to American social problems and these, more than their educational system, explain the lion's share of differences in achievement. I realize how tempting it is to consider international successes and how they portend for American emulation. However, 260 million diverse Americans compared to 5 million heterogeneous Finns does not a valid comparison make.

In a culture like the USA, you need a more "Tiger Mom" approach to overcome the social complexities that do not exist in Nordic countries like Finland which is likely higher or the Human Development index and the USA even.

Wow, everything I said just went right over your head. You should be embarrassed with yourself. Really.

1. Achievement levels? Lol, again, a truly educated person writes his own script through life- he is not a character in a government or corporation play. Do you even know what that means? FYI, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin attended Montessori School. So did Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon and Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia.

2. Geez, you're right back talking about symptoms AGAIN because you can't really think. All the symptoms you list are CAUSE by school! You wouldn't have single parent households if you had better humans. Is this stuff right that hard for you to understand? Wow!

3. f**k man, get yourself educated.

None of the "proof" you posted was very good nor convincing, and you tend to oversimplify complex concepts while not being able to account for confounding differences.

I really have to question if you can think critically when you call an American child's chaotic home life "a symptom" a bad education. Even a slow child could point out that chaotic home life is a cause, not a symptom of a child's poor educational experience.

You also cite four high-achieving examples Montessori schools as proof of that system being superior. Really? What about the millions of people like Bill Gates, Peter Thiel, Warren Buffett, and Steve Jobs and the hundreds of thousands of other high-achievers who did not attend Montessori schools? I would say your 4 examples succeeded DESPITE being educated in Montessori schools.

And finally, "F**k man, get yourself educated." Is that the best you could muster? Not very impressive for someone who claims to be able to "think."

[onethousandknives]

In a culture like the USA, you need a more "Tiger Mom" approach to overcome the social complexities that do not exist in Nordic countries like Finland which is likely higher or the Human Development index and the USA even.

I think regarding the Tiger Mom approach, most people in USA could benefit from a bit more "Tiger Mom" type of approach. Here's an example I use. Who is more creative? The toddler who drums on pots and pans and makes his own song? Or the pianist who's never written an original composition but plays complex pieces of music? I'd personally lean towards the pianist, but that's not the point. The problem is, "creativity" in itself is pointless without the actual knowhow to make something happen. The kid banging on the pots and pans might be very creative, but without the building blocks to play an instrument, ie, chords, notes, etc, can't make anything of value happen from his creativity.

I feel that's the point of education, to allow you to build things using your education as a tool. You might have great ideas for a story, but without good vocabulary, correct grammar and spelling, nobody will read your story. It's the same in anything. You need all the basic knowledge, and even advanced knowledge (algebra for example is actually very useful and required if you work on engines and rebuilding them/modifying them) to build whatever you wish to build. Without that knowledge, you'll stall or come out with a substandard thing or not be able to create it at all.

So yes, you shouldn't stifle or beat out creativity, but creativity in itself isn't actually very valuable without the actual work put in, and without the building blocks of boring repetition. As PAG, with Olympic gymnasts, that's a terrible example. Olympic gymnasts do the same thing over and over and over again making it perfect. Their coaches make them do this. They don't just run around and play around like at a playground. Their coaches make them do over the course of their career, thousands of repetitions of basic boring exercises, and the complex floor routines you see are simply combinations of the basics put together. You don't see the endless amounts of dips, pullups, pushups, muscle ups, etc, they do in training to build the foundation for the "cool" stuff they do.

I personally come from a school that was probably much more "rote" as I went to a private Christian school. I learned to diagram sentences in 4th grade better than advanced English classes in public high school. Diagramming sentences is the definition of boring and rote. It builds the building blocks. This is where public school gets it wrong. I don't think you can teach someone to "be creative" they're going to be as creative as they want to be. School should give all people, creative or not, the tools to make what they want happen, and then they can decide what they want to do with them. This doesn't mean never have fun, never play, etc, yell at and berate kids, etc, but the idea of "teaching creativity" doesn't make a lot of sense to me.