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+---- Thread: Educational goals (/Thread-Educational-goals)
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Educational goals - John Nicholson - 11-01-2007
:choc:
Therefore we have to think that thinking itself is perfectly natural, listening to stories and remembering the old stories is perfectly natural, but unless we are trained to read we cannot read the complicated stories that are essential for us to understand the world we live in, without reading we have to rely on the importance of the things we see and hear. Without reading our brain can never develop to its fullest mature working potential, reading is the very essence of life, the French philosopher Descartes said that when he read he was in touch with the finest minds of history, it is possible for each and every one of us to be in touch with the finest minds of history, if we are taught to read perfectly.
What does reading depend on, it depends on recognising and converting symbols into sound, the brain recognises those sound symbols as ideas, the best possible start a child can make in reading is to develop its brain by the use of numbers, numbers are an easy key to the human brain, we only needed 10 symbols to write any number whatsoever, by learning to understand those 10 symbols and the thirty words we need to express those numbers allowing us to formulate a concept of a million million million, or whatever we so wish,
The ease at which the human mind can understand mathematics, is the key to building and extending your neural pathways, pathways which are eventually used for controlled, powers and an evaluation of everything we do, pathways by which we consider everything we see and hear, the very pathways that you are utilising at the moment to read these words. These pathways are best opened up in the young child with mathematics, many concepts can be understood in a visual format, instantly the human brain is programmed to learn many things instantly, and the breadth of the things that it can learn instantly is expanded exponentially by the comprehension of simple mental arithmetic, something as simple as adding numbers together prepares the human brain to understand reading, every child needs perfect mathematics, every child needs to be taught to read early in its life, every child needs to be taught a foreign language at the earliest possible opportunity, mixing languages only enhances the potential of the human brain, for 10 years I have studied the potential of the human brain, when perfect mathematics has been utilised as the starting point within education.
Until the child reaches 10 years of age, every lesson the child needs to learn can be learnt by doing something, Maria Montessori understood this from simple observation, for all the 100 years since she learned about the human brain, some children have been educated by her principles, in the next hundred years every child will be educated by the simple principles she fully understood, simply by doing something our human ability creates mental understanding and comprehension of it.
Well-designed computers will eventually teach all of us everything we need to now except the fact, that they will never be able to teach us to read and count, simply to make every child count in this modern world, we have to teach them to count, not only have I the comprehension of the human mind, and its potential, I have designed and understand this simple steps we need to take, to learn and teach perfect mental arithmetic, and perfect reading ability, my method of education I described as the mathematical road to reading.
We already possess the knowledge we need to build a better world, but simply first of all we need to utilise that knowledge to build a better teaching programme. All that I have managed to do is to recognise what is available, what the problems are, and how we can begin to solve them, the only thing I need now is your help. :blackadder:
Educational goals - John Nicholson - 21-01-2007
:detective:
THINKING OF THINKING
It is now over ten years since I first discovered the value of the abacus, in relation to teaching arithmetic. A child can use simple manipulations to process arithmetic in a visual and physical manner, where repetition of this counting procedure, combine with the order of the abacus, to build within the mind of a child, a permanent visual memory (a mental map) of the processes involved in addition subtraction division and multiplication.
A simple piece of television journalism set off a ten year programme of personal research into just how the brain works, we are faced with philosophy or science, the greatest natural philosopher within education will for ever be Maria Montessori, what I learnt from the abacus in the study of it led me towards Maria Montessori and her philosophy within education, she realised that children learn best whilst they are doing practical things, it is the manner of human evolution, we have learnt to do things by copying the actions of others, we learn language by copying the sounds we hear, we recognise the sound of voices of the people we are familiar with automatically, we develop our ability within speech, automatically. By far the greater part of our intellect is subconscious and automatically carried out.
we think quite naturally in relation to our personal experience (using an abacus is a personal experience) without any effort whatsoever, this is the manner of natural thought within our daily lives, our evolution as brought us from a time where only speech and physical events were relevant to our daily lives, great thinkers have evolved philosophies in order to try to understand the unproven factors within human understanding.
When we raise the level of thought beyond personal experience we are combining abstract thought, with that experience and the experience of others, to understand the experience of others we have to read it see it or hear it, Abstract thinking, thinking not within our personal experience is more dependant on the personal experience of others, we are more geared to use words to give and understand that experience then any other form, reading is an extension of hearing in gaining the experience of others, the story provides the structure for abstract memory.
In order to develop our abilities in abstract thought we need to develop two core basic skills, mathematics and reading, practise in both skills is a major part of education, mathematics is a real process the basis of all science which is part of the proof and structure of all science, the more mentally able we are in mathematics the greater our personal understanding of science.
In today's world a completely uneducated child with the availability of television and radio would have more awareness of the world, then the most intelligent man alive 50,000 years ago, simply this means we are still using the same brain to understand the world around us but the facilities are far better than anything we had previously, only in the last 5000 years have we had written language, my research leads me to believe that the abacus in its various form is approximately the same age,
Quite naturally in normal circumstances we learn to do everything that society around us does, but we live in an age of specialisation, we have instant access to information accessible to everone in many forms,
In the majority of the last 5000 years we have relied on the written word to convey information, every one of us has the physical ability to read and count, if a child is able to speak normally and possesses normal vision they can be taught to read and do arithmetic. Maria Montessori observed that children learn best from doing things, if we are to guarantee universal reading and writing and mathematical ability, we have to simplify basic skills education.
That simplification comes best from standardisation. In arithmetic the abacus is perfection my design of Abacus One is suitable for any child in any language.
Concentrated rote learning, even simple counting from one to a hundred is rote learning. The simplicity of ten, is the basis of all arithmetic, that simplicity is a natural endowment of our two hands, every child will quickly establish awareness of ten, when we concentrate their mind on their fingers.
The two human hands are natures finest educational resource, control and manipulation of the two hands is perfectly natural, once the child has established natural speech, explanation of the numbers one to ten from left to right establishing each finger with its appropriate name and position should become standard practice everywhere.
Once the child has developed the language to count to ten and the ability to name each finger and understand the numerical value of that finger, it is a simple mater to transfer the idea of ten to the right hand column of abacus one, simply by counting upwards the child becomes familiar with the picture of the written number, the child may be unable to write the number at first, either as a word or a symbol, but it is becoming familiar with the meaning of the word and its position on the abacus, only the right-hand column of the abacus represent reality, one counter equals one number, but as the child learns the simple vocabulary of arithmetic, it becomes increasingly aware of the symbolic value placed on the counters in the central and the left-hand column of the abacus.
Abacus One is designed to be the child's first personal computer, teaching the child in the form of showing their child is partly the duty of the parents, assisted naturally in association with reception class teachers. Virtually every family in Japan and China and Russia are brought up understanding their country's national abacus.
Sorbian, sau pan and Scotty
Because of the design of abacus one, and its simplicity with in use, following natural international awareness of fingers in early mathematical awareness standard early arithmetic teaching will become possible. Rote learning of times tables is followed immediately by practical demonstration through physical process into mental process.
Systematic finger by finger, toe by toe, step by step, counting process’s build mental awareness, and mental ability in addition subtraction multiplication and division, endowing the child with a natural mental arithmetic ability, (abacus mentality) transferable to notation, in arithmetic.
The mental arithmetic process in establishing neural pathways in arithmetic are vital in the reading process, concentration on low case numbers alone, when combined with early arithmetic leads to children being able to read in a natural manner.
Educational goals - John Nicholson - 21-01-2007
26 low case letters, prevent the child having to learn the capital letters initially, (recognition of capital letters is automatically achieved when reading) and simplify initial word building, where alternative sounds are naturally assimilated, in the main simply by picture recognition; cat at flat fast fat rat mat
Reading ability develops naturally after the low case letters have been recognised and established in their alphabet sounds first, automatic appreciation of alternative sounds can be left to the child's natural personal ability.
During my research over the last ten years, I have discovered the impossibility of teaching a child something relatively simple purely because it was unaware, of something equally as simple but which the child was unaware of, I found myself in a position where I could not teach a child this, simply because it was unaware of that.
Is of course we will never be initially able to teach a child everything we needed to know, but of course there are many simple things which a child needs to know, working back from the abacus even after years of research I became totally aware of how few children are perfect in understanding ten, or even relating their fingers to ten, try a simple test of your friends, aspirin and the number of the middle finger of each hand when you count the fingers from one to ten across the two hands, naturally the Smart Alex`s tell you that they only have eight fingers and two thumbs we are looking to create a perfect mental picture of ten, it is easily possible to think of eight fingers and two thumbs, as it is to just think of ten fingers in a row, the thumbs of course represent the numbers five and six, finger five is to the left and fingers six is to the right. These are simple observations which every child should learn, part of a central awareness of ten, every human child should perfect its appreciation of ten, by identifying each finger by its number name.
Of course we can teach a child many things which are easier to learn before we reach perfection in regards to the name of the fingers and their individual positions on each hand, but simply by insuring this appreciation of ten, would raise the standard of mathematics teaching throughout the world.
Once the child is able to master ten, both within the vocabulary and the specifics finger, it is well able to transfer the concept of ten to the units and left-hand column of the abacus. Looking at Howard Gardner’s different theories of intelligence, rhythmic chanting is often associated with rote learning, the long-term value of rote learning in establishing a permanent memory, is best is illustrated by learning the times tables, once the times tables have been permanently established within the child's mind, they are rarely forgotten, they are available throughout the life of the child as an instant answer, totally automatically produced for the occasion.
The saving of calculation time, once permanent memory of the times table is established, is in a lifetime of normal arithmetic not even calculable.
Simply by using the abacus to follow any chanted calculations in either counting numbers directly or the question and answer associated with the times table provides the child with the memory of the answer and knowledge of the process involved in the calculation.
Simply by the use of the abacus to understand rote learning makes it an invaluable tool for a child learning mathematics.
The central purpose his piece of writing is to tie into the mind of the reader, the link between small pieces information, and abstract thinking.
Educational goals - RonPrice - 26-01-2007
Fay teaches at the University of West Australia and I taught for 35 years--not any more. Thinking about education and goals I wrote this:
_______________________________
NO THINGS BUT IN IDEAS*
There is a tension between transience and permanence; resolution is often out of reach. The complex and estranging social and political realities of our crazy age create separation, loss and increased awareness. In all of this lies our vulnerability, our privacy and our fragmented memory and perception--and our personal goals.
-Ron Price with thanks to Fay Zwicky, The Lyre in the Pawnshop: Essays in Literature and Survival: 1974-1984, UWA Press, 1986, p.186.
Can I clearly express the mixed feelings
of this staggering complexity,
this pervasive estrangement that reaches
everywhere because so much is going on
everywhere on this tortured planet.
You can’t convert emotion into art
with the slip of a pen, the drop of
a few keys on your word processor,
you know? But by God, I’ll try to say
something about my vulnerability and
all its ifs, buts, maybes, not quiets, shifts;
my privacy and its quiet darknesses,
its holes and its climbing into light
with a memory and perception
that come together in mysterious ways
that often seem to just happen.
Ron Price
16 December 1995
* William Carlos Williams’ now famous line ‘No ideas but in things!’ is turned around in much of my poetry.
Educational goals - John Nicholson - 11-02-2007
:am: hi Ron I gues this is you:Interests: reading, writing, the social sciences and humanities, walking, sleeping, comparative religion, eating, drinking, watching TV, looking at the river.
Educational goals - John Nicholson - 11-02-2007
:pcprob: here i am Ron still hammering home my thoughts can you understand the urgancy of an old man with an important idea.
Two weeks ago i felt i had finaly understod my own teaching system and so i wrote this.
IMPROVING EDUCATION AT A STROKE
200-27-01-28
PREFACE
If I told you that I had spent the last ten years just thinking about perfection in teaching, in particular mathematics through number awareness, and that number awareness guarantees that every child will be able to read easily. That I could teach an adult how to teach this in just one day, using only the child's fingers the abacus and the alphabet (a pack of cards) and that the simplicity of my method would also guarantee its universal acceptance as the standard model in basic skills teaching.
You would be unlikely to believe me. I have done it in order that every child shall benefit from the keys to technical thought quite naturally.
John Nicholson
Introducing perfection in number awareness, proving by simple observation that early proficiency in numbers builds the neural pathways for early reading.
Creating windows for the mind.
SIMPLY TRY IT
During the last two weeks i wrote simple explanations,
:tourist:
READ THE MAP
WHAT IS VITAL IN EDUCATIONAL LOGIC
SIMPLICITY
PERFECTION
ORDER
CONCENTRATION
JUSTICE
HUMAN CONCERN AND HUMILITY
LOVE
COMMON SENSE
ABACUS & ALPHABET
ENSURING UNIVERSAL NUMERACY
The true simplicity of numbers comes directly from ten symbols and place value.
The fingers hold the meaning of the ten symbols.
Abacus One holds the meaning of place value.
Logic tells the world one method of meaning fit's all.
Logic tells the world one method of teaching fits all.
THE BEST METHOD
Demonstrations with the fingers and Abacus One will always achieve perfect mental arithmetic ability.
ENSURING NUMERIC AWARENESS
Standard practice ensures within any human endeavour, best illustrated by ten symbols and place value in mathematics, that standard practice itself creates simplicity and public awareness.
ALL WE WILL EVER NEED TO TEACH MATHEMATICS IS KNOWLEDGE THE FINGERS AND ABACUS ONE
GOOD ADVERTISING MEANS PERMANENT MEMORY ASSOCIATION
ABACUS ONE = HSBC = UNIVERSAL EDUCATION
ABACUS & ALPHABET
ENSURING NATIONAL READING
TEACHING LOGICAL READING
Who teaches a child to speak?
The mother speaks to the child.
The child copies the sounds and builds the associated meanings.
WHO DOES MOST OF THE WORK? THE CHILD
The child has an inbuilt need to communicate.
Who teaches the child to read ?
A combination of parents and teachers.
The logical observation is that parents have a lot of time and little experience and that teachers have a great deal of experience and little time, logically they need to co-operate within method.
The principals of logical reading from abacus & alphabet.
An open minded philosophy based on
Reason ( always capable of change)
Observation ( starting with Maria Montessori )
Scientifically proven (relevant to the latest neurological research)
Practical systematic (steps of logical reason)
LOGICAL PROCESS
Reasoning (for clarity and necessity)
TEACH THE ALPHABET IN LOW CASE ONLY
Method (Sing it see it say it overwrite it) until perfect.
OBSERVATION. ( letters are as relevant to reading as numbers are to mathematics)
READ BY ROTE every two and three letter word in low case in the English vocabulary. Until perfect ( also every relevant syllable by rote)
USE THE CHILDS NATURAL INTELIGENCE to read one hundred picture/word cards, to establish automatic awareness of the phonetic.
Educational goals - John Nicholson - 17-02-2007
:dazed: written for british farmers but usefull here
It is Saturday morning, 12,000 dairy farmers have got up to produce milk to sell it in supermarkets eventually with all the cost and effort that they put into their business at probably less than the cost of bottled water.
Just whose fault is it, it is a problem that has been caused simply by sidelining the leadership of the National farmers union, for a number of years I have made my business to meet and discuss directly the problems of British agriculture with people who are extremely concerned about the long-term damage caused to British agriculture purely because the leadership of the National farmers union will make no effort whatsoever to use the strength of British farming against the government of the day. Your website is one of two places on the Internet where you can place matters which are of concern to farmers, I write under my own name purely because I believe anything worthwhile must have authorship, even the most profound statement in the world has no relevance if it is written without authorship.
We are not in a Secret Service it is time some of your members started to use their real names, normally been moved to off topic would have been no concern to me, but my last posting was probably the most important posting . something I believe will be the most useful piece of information that I personally shall ever be able to impart to the whole world.
I said that if we teach a child to recognise each finger from left to right on the left-hand as a number and call that finger the name of the number, the child will naturally appreciate the meaning of that number and develop a natural concept of numbers.
It is something completely obvious to me that it has taken me 10 years and an immense amount of reading and thinking to be able to write something as simple and as obvious and as important.
It was the simple lack of understanding as to the value of what I had written which has promoted me out of bed into this bloody old shed of mine to write back to the British farming forum, obviously farmers can recognise my name and if they do not like the type of thing I say they can avoid reading anything I say, that is their prerogative.
There are only two places which the government will look to on a daily basis your topics and the topics of the family weekly your website came about purely because the farmers weekly in its innocence destroyed something very valuable, you have created something equally as valuable as the farmers weekly forum was previously.
I Value being able to write on your website, I try not to use too much profanity, whenever I feel it is necessary I always try to indicate the strength of my feelings with a few - - - - -
my father bless him swore very little, he had his own swear word for all occasions bugy nuisance or in my case beggaring lad, within business families and wisdom that is always passing on from father to son even on his deathbed he never failed to advise me of his disagreement with anything that I had done or proposed to do.
When I bought what I consider to be one of the best farms in Yorkshire he said to me why bother to beggar yourself for 200 acres (buying 700acres with a large morgage) of land,( i had 500 acres and a small morgage) he said to me you don't do any work you drive around in a Jaguar car, you enjoy yourself why cause yourself any problem,
In my tormented life, losing my farm through a conspiracy between Unilever and the Midland bank the words of my father ring out clearly to me, but even if I was to be fully aware of what was to happen to me I should still have taken the same course, but had I had the business experience I have now, I should never have given the Midland bank an agricultural charge, over my farm, nor would I have kept even one pig without it had been in a limited company.
Life is unfair, it is unfair for thousands of young children who were being born without adequate food suppliers, it is unfair for thousands of people who are being slaughtered unnecessarily purely because neighbours believe that their perceived enemies are different to them, thankfully my mother preached to me as well as my father, she told me that only the politicians should fight wars and then there would never be any,
There is a constant war in this world it is the War of commonsense, the words that I wrote about teaching a child to reconise the name each finger by the number we use in our language is a vital piece of knowledge, at the present time I am bringing my work together reading three books, the mathematical brain written by Brian Butterworth (a leading Neuroligist) he is tellingly clearly that children are born equal in the mental ability especially as far as numbers are concerned, the manner of teaching and the individual childs desire to learn is the only thing relevant to developing a mathematical brain.
The second book I'm reading is a measure of all things, basically it is the evolution of the metric system as we know it today, measurement which was established by the French at the time of the French Revolution, the development of the metric system, it is the simplicity of numbers which is so important to us, in the front of that book I have written the most important thing in mathematics is not a number at all but just the simple concept of .
Something so small you can hardly see it the decimal point.
• Moderators and the owner and developer, congratulations on your achievement but if you Miss this point you are missing the most valuable point something extremely small but something so usefull.
The third book that I am reading is called education for 1.3 billion written by
LI LANQINY the former Chinese Vice President, a human being of exceptional talent and humility, someone capable of following the outlines of Confucius and the thousands of wise and intelligent men that he studied in order to achieve lasting importance in guiding a tremendously difficult National structure where China was lagging far behind the rest of the world, his efforts alone are outstanding in the development of the Chinese economy and the Chinese educational system and I would recommend it to God
Educational goals - John Nicholson - 21-06-2007
:tourist:
IF WE CAN DO NO MORE THEN ENSURE THAT WE TEACH EVERY CHILD TO READ WRITE AND COUNT WELL IT IS ENOUGH IN OUR MODERN WORLD
THE WORLD OF INSTANT REALISATION
:pcprob: -----:pcprob: --------:pcprob:
I KEEP HAMERING
A Good parent can do it
BUT THE STATE AS TO ENSURE IT
But a good parent can ensure the child can play chess
" " " " " " " " " type
" " " " " " " " " SPEAK A SECOND LANGUAGE
" " " " " " " " " PLAY THE PIANO
the first four years of education we should aim only for these six items
from 4 2 8 we can work entitirly on brain function,
from 8 2 12 at 8 with their best brain possability perfectly in place
they have to absorb millions of sound bites of info
from 12 2 16 they need to be taught how to grow their own food
cook their own food build their own house and extend their own knowledge at will
where children are only taught to read write and count and never see a school again life will become their tutor.
fail them here and we fail human future