Unity is the secret of progress, and service to society is the means to
promote it. Unity is strength-when there is teamwork and collaboration,
wonderful things can be achieved. When people’s behavior confirms the
essential reality of progress, progress is not something we have been
willing to admit to in public. History confesses that man must have been
as free from all unnecessary conflicts/beliefs as culture could make
him.
It took hundreds of millions of years to evolve efficient ways
for animals to find food, avoid danger and interact with one another,
but humans have been developing mathematics for only a few thousand
years probably using bits of our brain that meant to do something
different. We vastly underestimated the complexity of our interactions
with the world because we are unaware of the immense computation. Our
brains perform to make seeing objects and turning doorknobs seem
effortless.
Constructionism is built on the assumption that children
will do best by fishing for themselves the specific knowledge they
need- but we still face resistance from mathematics textbook publishers,
who are making fortunes by selling a product that has demonstrably
failed to work, and from school boards who still think the universe was
created by an old man with a white beard 6000 years ago. Chemistry
practical tests gave me the worst experience when I was still in high
school. In the year 1997, I still recall while in chemistry lab
performing some practical tests - wanted to find out what could happen
if you mix all the chemicals together and you heat them with the Bunsen
burner. My eyes were so blind-not to assess the risks involved.
Remember, every action has got a reaction! Guess what, my test tube went
into pieces living behind unforgettable experience. Although the
misguided views about usability still cause significant damage in
today’s world, it does not give a sufficient evidence to stop you from
trying to innovate - Because creativity is all about try and error.
Always take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you raise your thinking
capacity. Pain nourishes your courage - you have to fall in order to
practice being brave. We cannot solve our problems with the same
thinking we used when we created them. At a time when science education
is in crisis, giving science its best chance means guiding children to
the objects they can love.
Today knowledge is a commodity owned and
guarded by the knowledge elite and doled out by them in various forms
that they control, like books, news papers, television and schools. They
who can get access to the knowledge through admission to elite schools
and exactly what knowledge matters through SATs- but also through
intellectual publications that true knowledge owners would be
embarrassed not to have read. As I write this interesting article this
morning, knowledge will mostly be free and the owners of knowledge will
need to go into another line of work. It will cease to be a controlled
commodity in the few years from now. I know you will find this statement
weird but I will not be polite to you. I just need to tell you what I
am supposed to tell, the rest will follow. Knowledge is in many respects
a public good. As Ian [2007] noted,” Once something is known that
knowledge can be used by anyone, its use by anyone person does not
preclude its use by others. This characteristic of knowledge is
precisely the hallmark of a public good and suggests that knowledge like
other public goods will be underprovided by market systems” [P.201].
You have to understand that you are responsible for the hope of people,
their hope for change. The true meaning of winning is giving. If I can
recall, my first three words taught in religious studies while in the
first year of high school were giving, receiving and sharing. The most
successful business people in the world have decided to dedicate their
brains and bank accounts to fixing the world leaving politics and
politicians on the sidelines. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Richard
Brandson, John Doert, Pierre Omidyar among others. Barry Lopez noted,
”One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the
extremes of nature and civilization where, it is possible to live
without regret”. These successful people I believe they have already
attained the highest level of Maslow’s hierarchy of self actualization.
Problem-solving and critical thinking are rewarded, mathematics skills
are enforced and should be taken seriously. Be like a star which never
wavers from the crescent but is fixed in steady faith. What makes
immersive 3D virtual environments the perfect medium for learning basic
math skills is not that they are created digitally on computers. Nor is
it that they are the medium highly seductive video games. Rather, it is
because they provide a means of simulating the real world we live in,
out of which mathematics arises, and they do so in a way that brings out
and confronts the player with the underlying mathematical structure of
our world. As Ian (2007) states, “The advent of mass communication
technologies particularly global television channels and the internet
has lifted the globalization of ideas to new heights”.
Life is
permeated with possibility at every instant. What distinguishes one life
from another is intention, the one thing that we can control. For
instance languages and cultures disappear if they are unable to respond
dynamically to changes in politics, economics or environments. Language
dies when it is not spoken to a new generation of children……half of our
living culture heritage will disappear in a single generation.
As
James noted, “Mind is the master power that moulds and makes – man is
mind and evermore he takes the tool of thought, and shaping what he
wills brings forth a thousand joys, thousand ills. He thinks in secret,
and it comes to pass environment is but his looking glass”. The result
of meditation and experience is not intended as an exhaustive treatise
on the much written upon subject of the power of thought. It is
suggestive rather than explanatory. Its object being to stimulate men
and women to the discovery and perception of the truth that:- They
themselves are makers of themselves. Great thinkers like Steve Jobs,
Michael Dell, Bill Gates left college to start their own innovations. I
am not encouraging you to let your son/daughter drop out of school. The
story may be different – may end up joining gambling or prostitution
business. Normally extra-ordinary people are seen right from birth.
Their thinking, behaviors and character are always different from the
rest of the children. If you can identify your son at an early age, good
for you- go ahead and develop that talent!
Our mouth is a direct
extension of billions of years of knowledge and learning connected to
every cell in our body. It is the way our body detects toxins, the first
and most powerful expression of the immune systems deciding what can
become part of you and what should not. Just as immune system is the
line of internal defense that allows an organism to persist over time,
sustainability is a strategy to humanity to continue to exist over time.
