What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success

[chervilant]

20. First,

Our crumbling, co-opted system of public education has--for decades now--convinced two-thirds to three-quarters of us that we have 'average' or 'below average' intellects. This is a load of El Toro Poo Poo, as is demonstrated by contemporary research on timed IQ tests. When the 'timed' aspect of an IQ test is eliminated, most research subjects score 'near genius' on the test.

I contend that humans learn in different ways and at different paces. The most powerful evidence I have for my contention is my work with my students. When I remind them that we all have fully functioning brains, FULLY capable of learning whatever we WANT to learn, profound things ensue.

First, I have to help my students overcome the psychic wound inflicted--I believe--by years of poisonous pedagogy, wherein we are relentlessly told that most of us have average or below average intellects (hmm...I wonder whose is THAT agenda?). I help my students take the hierarchy out of intelligence, so that they may 'unlearn' several myths about their intellects.

By convincing the majority of us that we are mental midgets, the PTB remain secure in their economic hegemony. (Plus, this falsehood benefits the uber wealthy further as the basic underpinning of our species' divisive anti-intellectualism.)

Abraham Maslow contended that we humans have an intrinsic need to create or achieve. *WHAT* we create or *WHAT* we achieve is as varied as there are humans on this planet. I would add that we humans fervently desire to be recognized or esteemed for what we create or achieve (which is a likely explanation for our species' preoccupation with personal *power* as measured by *wealth*).

Indeed, our species *thrives* on esteem and recognition. If we hope to help our fellow humans recognize the stultifying and objectifying Bernaysian mindset cultivated by the corporatists bent on securing their hegemony at our expense, we must extend to our fellow humans the esteem and recognition that is the raison d'etre of our species.

(BTW, RTTT is a pathetic bastardization of NCLB. The current administration remains complicit in vilifying veteran teachers and attacking teachers' unions--apparently privatization and future profitability are the 'raison d'etre' of the Corporate Meglomaniacs who've usurped our media, our politics, and our global economy.)

(Part Deux to come...)