Philosophical Thoughts, Meanderings, and Observations
Jump to: education, pay for performance, interstellar travel, evolution
Having more years behind than ahead, and having been a curious person, I decided to record these thoughts for no other reason than to stimulate your thinking and satisfy my own desire to write. I am, I suppose, a highly opinionated person. What I write here is not from a lifetime of study and research, but rather observations and thoughts.
First up is education/civilization. Basically, I
believe that humans are simply an animal creature with the most developed brain
on this planet. When we're born, we are essentially uncivilized. One of the
major tasks facing parents is to civilize their newborns so they can fit into
(more or less) the society that exists. How parents are supposed to accomplish
this is totally unclear. I don't know about you, but no one ever educated me on how
to raise children. It wasn't taught in the public schools. My parents weren't taught
either. Let's face it, we all just wing it! Isn't that a sad affair?
Add to this situation the fact that many of us are, in essence, children having children, and its a wonder that we've come as far as we have. Failing to make child raising a major part of our education system is, in my opinion, a huge problem. It should be on the agenda of every school.
That aside, consider this. The education system is targeted toward the majority. Therefore, the most talented, top 10%, receive a mediocre education in most cases. How big of a waste is that?
Another enormous failure in the schools is in guidance counseling. I never found a decent one and I certainly could have used one. The majority of my experience in public schools can be summed up in a phrase from a popular song, "when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school ...".
For any young people who might read this, consider this: When I in the 10th grade, my geometry teacher called my mother in for a conference. He told her he thought I was a mathematical genius and should be taken to special schooling. My mother didn't know what to do with such input and neither did I. We didn't have money for special schools. The talent went to waste. If you have a special talent, pursue it to the 10th degree! Ask for special assistance. Ask what is available and how you can get into special classes. Don't shrug your shoulders and walk away.
Most people have some awareness that learning is not single-minded. Some people learn by observation, some by reading, some by hearing, some by doing. Public schools do not try to determine how its students learn. They do not customize their teaching based on how their students learn. For me, I like to learn by knowing how and why people developed the knowledge in the first place. Don't teach me calculus, teach me what people were trying to solve that lead them to calculus. If I understand that, and how they developed the formula, I'll never forget it. Rote learning sucks.
Very few teachers are outstanding. After all, they fit on the curve, just like everything else. Society doesn't value teachers as much as we should. This is reflected in how we pay them, and some of the saying we've attached to them ( those who can, do). The truth is that many people who might have a considerable talent for teaching do not chose it. The money and prestige is elsewhere. I know I considered teaching and discarded it based on these facts. I fully support the current drive to make teachers accountable. We need to add appropriate rewards for performance.
Speaking of rewards for performance, let's talk about unions. I was a member of a union from 1965 to 1970. I'm sure that unions served a great purpose at a point in our nation's history. However, I can't say that I'm a fan of unions. Today's unions dehumanize the individual, by pretending that everyone performs at the same level and therefore deserves the same pay. In practice, the lowest performance is held up as the standard for everyone to follow. Exceeding this low standard is not popular among your fellow union members.
I believe that unions are responsible for the downfall of our nation's manufacturing status in the world. So much work has been moved offshore to reduce the cost of production. Essentially, unions priced their members right out of work. Its hard to find an individual who would not like to be paid more than they are worth, and unions took this human trait to extremes. I had a hard time getting out of the factory because no one else would pay me as much. Demanding more reward than your performance merits is a plan for disaster. It simply cannot succeed in an open marketplace.
While we're on the subject, let me say this. "Reward for performance" is touted by many large corporations. However, the practice does not meet the expectations you might develop from hearing about this "company policy". The only way to really get rewarded for performance is to be in business for yourself.
When I was younger, I had high hopes that we would reach out to those billions and billions of stars and find other life forms, including intelligent life. I saw Star Trek as a real possibility in my future. But as we've learned more and more, I believe less and less that we will ever realize contact with any other stellar inhabitants.
The fact is that at the highest speeds we've been able to achieve in space, it would take about 75,000 years to reach even the nearest solar system. Given that each 100 years yields about 5-6 generations of us, that shortest trip would take over 4,000 generations of us to get there!
Sure, we'll kick the speed up some but even if we double/triple/quadruple/multiply it by 10 or 100, we'll still only be going at a tiny fraction of the speed of light. Whoever might start such a trip will not live to see it reach the goal. And, those of us left behind will never know if they made it. Anyone who steps aboard the spacecraft to make the trip will never see any of their friends or family again, will never see sunlight again, will never breathe fresh air again, etc, etc, etc.
If you want to dream about wormholes and other interstellar superhighways, go ahead and dream.
Evolution & Intelligent Design
Of these two theories, one has a mountain of evidence supporting it and the other has essentially nothing.