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May 27, 2005 "What is this word?" A determined second grade boy points to a word in his book and asks this question. Math comes next, and everyone knows how many problems that subject brings! Year after year passes and each child moves from grade to grade with a teacher often standing close by. Classroom help is always within earshot. Occasionally, however, a student asks a question the teacher can't answer, and sometimes a person is all alone, with no one to consult. What happens then? In solitude, how does one find the answer? When a person has a fine memory, the answer may be in a facile recollection of a paragraph read years before, or one recalls a bit of a conversation, a lecture, or a movie. Add to good memory the gift of clear reasoning and the gifted person can combine ideas from many sources and deduce the answer. But when there is no teacher present, and when the memory is poor, and critical reasoning is not one's special blessing, one needs another way of coping. Yes, but what way is this? What is your answer? A child who can't easily read, think, or reason, can still compute or draw. When words don't come easily, numbers and lines may come easier. After all, a line is the record of a drawing movement. As long as the child can hold a drawing instrument and move it, the child can draw. Furthermore, the child can draw four lines and remember what four means by remembering the four similar drawing movements. In time the child understands what the numbers one, two, three up through ten mean. With ten, the cycle repeats. The child doesn't have to remember very many different verbal meanings. Even a very large number is definable and understandable using the familiar symbols 0 through 9. Lacking verbal talent and good memory, the young calculator may solve math problems that are difficult for children who spend most all their time thinking and talking with other thinkers and talkers. The thinkers and talkers may scorn arithmetic and mathematics because to them the subject seems relatively unimportant. On the other hand, a child who can't think and talk well will spend time doing something else. Neither type of student will feel congenial towards the other. The less verbal child will often be left alone to stew in his or her own juices, or else get beat up. Many clever word users are cruel and insensitive. If a child isn't talented with words or with numbers either, what use is going to school and spending six or more hours a day trying to learn words and numbers? Moreover, if the child isn't a careful thinker, he or she may never ever think about this matter. Years will go by and the student will pass from grade to grade, and never be prepared to go out and work in the modern competitive world. What, then, is the answer for this person? When you are really lost, The Answer is a Big Deal. To survive, you HAVE to find The Answer. It is what gives MEANING to your life. The Answer is schizophrenic. There are so many people who have a different idea of what The Answer is! Like the diverse patterns in a kaleidoscope, The Answer takes on so many different shapes, forms, personalities, and identities! Just to give an example, when she was a young adult Barry Stevens saw The Answer in a safety pin reflecting the sun's light. In the book Person to Person the Problem of Being Human," she called it "The Secret of the Universe." Diversity. Genius. God is in the details. Religious people say that The Answer IS God, and since The Answer is demonstrably schizophrenic, this might be why so many schizophrenics identify themselves as God. On the other hand, if you insist that God doesn't really exist, how are you going to make all the schizophrenics disappear? Face reality. Not even Hitler could pull off that trick. Diversity is here to stay. ------------ About the author: John L. Waters is an amateur psychologist and independent researcher on self-healing, integration, and problem-solving. John has created art, music and songs, prose and poetry, and helped people solve a difficult problem. For more information, read: John's letters of recommendation: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/recommendations about John's self-healing and integration: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/index.html about John's independent research: http://www.humboldt.edu/~jlw47/index.html about John's seeking an agent or a publisher: http://www.writers.net/writers/39295 Email: blueguntwo@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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