Re: The dumbing of America?

On Feb 9, 7:01 pm, "g" <gillaw...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Keith Hudson" <keithhud...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

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On Feb 8, 6:25 am, "Gil Lawton" <gillaw...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Keith Hudson" <keithhud...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

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Keith,

I stand corrected. Thanks for clarifying.

This CAN be brought around to bio-evolution, after all. To the subject of
simplistic pseudo-models then...

My primary aim has been, and is, to try to articulate issues I perceive to
exist with simplistic models which EDUCATORS themselves teach kids to put
down as answers on tests, when neither teacher nor child has ever learned to
examine and questions mind numbing simplistic stereotypic nominalism
(substituting name recognition for understanding).

When, for example, one points out to the average "schooled" adult (among
those I meet) that such as term as "natural selection" is merely a name for
something that occurs, and does not disclose that the MECHANISM whereby it
proceeds is far from understood yet, one gets a blank look.

I know at least one individual who has graduated from university and had at
least an introduction to biology who could write down something on a test
regarding "natural selection" and get an A... but who never learned to give
any thought to HOW.

This is comparable to a person's believing he understands all there is to
know about "the radio," because he knows how to transmit and receive. To
transmit, you must access a transmitter set, plug its cord into an
electrical power source or insert a battery, plug a microphone into it, be
sure to push the button on the mic when you speak. And receiving is even
easier. You access a radio receiver, push its on-button, manipulate the
station dialing button or dial, set the volume to where you like it, and sit
back and listen.

The very lack of an educational conditioning whereby one might ever discern
that there is anything at all WRONG with this picture as being HOW radio
works is symptomatic of what is wrong with at least SOME educational
institutions and protocols.

In listening today to a lecture on the anatomy and physiology of the human
heart, I found myself being required to begin learning the precise meanings
of forty-some-odd new words. But, I thought I already understood clearly
the distinction between the most fundamental distinction made in the first
minute... the distinction between understanding the "anatomy" of something
and the "function" of it. A surgeon can learn anatomy from looking at
pictures and dissecting corpses. A surgeon has to know the intricacies of
inter-functioning of organs, cells, and interrelationships between systems.

Naturally, being preoccupied as I am in recent days with the concept of what
is called "natural selection," my mind wandered off the lecture and onto
what an enormous handicap biologists are strapped with in trying to
understand HOW genetic mutations and related physiology work even
contemporarily... due to the fact that only VERY, VERY RECENTLY has
technology become accessible to researchers, wherewith LIVING cells could be
observed doing their things in real time. Also, cell specializations are
only very bluntly understood. Only a veritable handful of complete genomes
are fairly well mapped. Only in recent years has it become known that
humans have a mere fraction as many genes in their genome as some organisms
thought until recently to be non-complex, and to need, or have, only a few
genes.

And, to multiply the challenges gradually becoming resolvable in our
contemporary muddlings with currently living things (their physiological as
well as anatomical interactions) some among us have the naiveté to presume
that it is simple and easy for us to look at a few bones from creatures dead
these many hundreds of millions of years, and see a progression from one
morphology to another and understand clearly HOW natural selection did that,
utilizing RNA and/or DNA.

How can it be that we would teach kids to shut up and memorize, and not
teach them to understand that if any answers are to be found those answers
still lie in the future, and in at least a FEW kids who do not assume that
they "know" much, by virtue of having parroted the "right" answers to some
questions.

Sorry to get carried away. But what is wrong with this picture?

g

Gil,

There's not a lot wrong your picture that I would want to quarrel with
violently. However, even though my original posting was quickly
deflected into more general matters, the kernal of its argument kept
strictly within the brief of this group -- namely the slight allelic
differences in brain genes as between Ashkenazi Jews, average European/
Americans, and coastal Chinese. In giving what I thought were relevant
selection factors involved I had to delve into history and geography
somewhat.

Unfortunately no-one else took up my principal theme. Perhaps this was
due to the dangers of getting too close to politically incorrect
matters concerning the spread of allelic changes of brain genes around
the world and appearing in this or that level of concentration in this
or that ethnic group -- or at least the microcephalin family of genes
which still seems to be susceptible to change. But never mind, allelic
changes due to drift or selection come up frequently in this group and
perhaps one day a member with more specialised knowledge of brain
genes might be encouraged to participate a little more specifically.

Keith Hudson



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