teaching number theory as remediation and enrichment

Yesterday I had a difficult day, my brain was not working completely. Although I'm on medication I thought "I want a pill." But I still went on and gave my facultative lesson of number theory to four elementary school children that have each different challenges. Although the first thing that leaves me when my brain has 'one of those days' is order (I'm more disorganized) and one child immediately felt more disorganised, they still enjoyed talking about numbers. One couldn't remember what it was what we are doing. Maybe I should write it down for him. We talked about if it's possible to divide by zero and why not. We talked about that even scientists can make mistakes with numbers. I was afraid one of the children might find it too difficult, because I tried to raise the level, but they followed. I made it easy enough and difficult enough at the same time. Don't ask me to put it on paper...

remediation and enrichment

I've started helping at the new school, a creative school that gets the best results out of children, e.g. making music instruments from both professional (strings, plectrum) and waste material. What I'm doing is mindmapping with number theory and the result after one half hour is that all four children didn't want me to stop after half an hour. It remediates language, maths skills, creative thinking and memory at the same time. I can recommend it as enrichment, motivator, remediation and attention training at the same time in education. It seems to work. After I did a remediating math crossword puzzle and the attention of the children was very good. Of course it's fun to also include some history or funny examples.

baby morality

Do babies have morality? It seems they start not as an empty leave. In this research children react on puppets that act 'naughty'. They realize this. This would mean it is possible to inherit morality either through genetics, or through the soul or both. Parenting is then more fixing mistakes and changing pathways than really building from scratch. This means children can turn out good without good parenting, or bad without bad parenting. This means excellent parents can have morally challenging children, as indeed happens, and the worst parents can have morally excellent children.

not knowledge but wisdom

We should be more interested in wisdom than knowledge. But how to teach wisdom in children. Logical thinking, knowing the difference between true and untrue seems a good start. Then it becomes difficult because virtues are dependent on value systems that may vary according to background. Although I think you can translate concepts of value systems and find out there is some accord possible between different value systems. We can agree to believe in laws of nature, in the good of a social system, in the necessity of a law system, in good and wrong although we may differ in detail which makes the world so interestingly diverse. How to teach wisdom according to differences? It is not impossible. A 'tour d'horizon'? Discuss virtues? Teach tools? Are there wisdom tools? Being able to listen to each other seems very important.
Understanding language rather than focussing on how it's written. Maybe we should define limits, in order to be able to keep your own value system but still develop a common wisdom with limits for the teacher as well. Difficult.

thinking fallacies

Thinking fallacies listed by Aristotle are still common. I may be using these myself. Missing the point probably leads to many conflicts that could have been avoided. It leads to loss of efficient use of time, human resources, possible cooperation.
Pointless fights, unnecessary stress.

exploration parent

Now I am working on a concept to help at school for enrichment of the program. I will be an 'enrichment parent'. This doesn't cost money for school, I can contribute to the education of my children and share my knowledge (I have studied psychology including statistics) and explorative fun. Every child that is motivated (or if motivation is the problem, needs this) is welcome. The concept of enrichment parents involves adapting to the level, interest, learning disabilities, knowledge of the child, therefore I choose to work with mind mapping. If one child only wants to make drawings and the other to search in literature, it's completely okay with me. I start from what the child already can say, knows, can read, can find, has concepts about. We learn how to learn. We add. If a teacher has a special request, I'll be helping. If a teacher wants me to search for info I'll do that.

Anxiety for creativity

Discussing the role of the brain in creativity is something like discussing the role of the carparts in riding. It usually leaves out the part of the one who steers the brain. But even so, with the use of technologies, e.g. MRI we can observe what parts of the brain are active when we make music or solve a problem. Howard Gardner discovered that specialisation of brain exists calling this different intelligences. A musical intelligent brain uses different parts of the brain more than a maths / reasonning brain. The question is, is this due to a preference of the soul that shapes the brain as it matures, is it shaped through nurture or is it innate? I know a psychiatrist and he is not too happy with my idea about the existence of the soul. We differ in opinion. Through meditation I've experienced some of the potential of the soul. I've seen this explained in an article on thinking. Thinking with the soul is another level of thinking that surpasses the rational and programmed and preference.

In this paper, the role of anxiety is discussed in performing music. In an anxious experience, I percieved myself outside of my body. As if I were a soul looking down at my body. Thoughts seemed to have endless time. I was in a place quiet. Untill I drew back into my body. But knew then what to do. Maybe playing music with the abilities of the soul is induced by some anxiety.