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LEARN- WHAT
SHOULD WE LEARN? You
are born with no skills, zero knowledge and totally helpless and
dependent on your parents or others for survival. In the first few
moments after being pushed or pulled out of your mother’s womb, you
have to start breathing. Then the umbilical cord Is cut and your body
must function on its own. You
are programmed to suck from your
mother’s nipple. You can make a cry. You cannot talk, you do
not understand language. Your only means of communication is the cry
that you can make, and maybe wiggle your arms and legs. But
you have senses. You can feel touch, can see,
hear, taste, smell, feel warmth and cold. And inside your head
there is a little ball of gray matter called a brain, a bundle of a
few trillion cells that can receive information from your sensors,
record it and recall it later. And
you have feelings and emotions.
These are involuntary, automatic, and unseen except that they
may cause outward expressions on your face or movement of your body.
You like the warm touch, snuggled against your mother’s breast while
you feed from her nipples. Your mother’s milk and the physical
contact give you a sense of security, that someone will be there to
take care of you,, to hold and talk to, or rock and burp you. Since
you have had no experience in the outside world you know nothing of
its rules and regulations, of conduct and behavior. Thus, you
can do no wrong, at least for several months. Thus, nothing
that you do should result in punishment, only gentle correction. Your
brain is like a brand new tape in a recorder. But not quite, as your
memories don’t always record in one exposure. More on that later
under memory. But learning is your primary job for the first 20
to 25 years of your life. First, language, to understand words, and to
be able to speak words, to
be able to feed yourself, to be potty trained, to become a social
creature, and react to your care takers, and to other children. Your
brain needs activity, needs stimulation by adults and toys to develop it
and your muscles. Research shows that if you do not get stimulaton
during these early years (first three, especially) your brain may not
develop to its full potential. You
need to exercise your muscles, need
to be able to walk and move about. Then you must learn about hazards and
dangers, stairs, streets, curbs and cars, things hot and cold, friends
and strangers, other children. In fact for the first 25 years of your
life, your principal activity will be feeding information into your
brain, trying to remember portions of it long enough to recall it on
examininations. Hopefully, you will go through grade school,. high
school and college, Then you will have a graducation, or
Commencement, as it is more properly called. Then
you will be assumed to be educated and
ready for work, to hold a job, to make your own living. The term Commencement
hints that you will really begin to learn about the real world of work. By
this time you will likely have acquired some special areas of interest,
of things you would like to do or work at,. And likely you will have
acquired a companion, a girl friend, or maybe become married, bringing
new responsibilities. Learning
has no cut off point. It should be a life long effort. The world and
society are changing. To keep up we must constantly do what we can to
become informed, and to understand the changes and events.
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