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June 19, 2004
Learning patterns
The latest offering from Terry Pratchett is a follow-up to "The wee free men", entitled "A hatful of sky". The introduction essentially sets the scene, to quote:
"The Nac Mac Feegle
(also called Pictsies, the Wee Free Men, the Little Men, and 'Person or Persons Unknown, Believed to be Armed')
The Nac Mac Feegle are the most dangerous of the fairy races, particularly when drunk. They love drinking, fighting, and stealing. In fact they will steal anything that is not nailed down. If it is nailed down they will steal the nails as well.
......
The average Feegle man is about six inches high, red haired, his skin turned blue with tattoos, and the dye called woad, and, since you're this close, he's probably about to hit you" .......
The Nac Mac Feegle have a strange philosophy of life. They believe that they are dead and that this is heaven. This is based on their belief that a world this full of wonderful things to fight, steal, drink, and eat must be heaven. If you are in heaven, you must be dead.
Well, I have heard stranger arguments and even more twisted logic, but not, I will admit, from a wee man six inches tall and covered in woad. This is one of the problems with the pursuit of things logical or or philosophical. Take the argument far enough and you pass out the other side and into the realms of fantasy and the fantastic. This is where Pratchett excels; he can take a perfectly logical argument and move it that one step further down the road. Bingo, the result is often hilarious and superbly parodies our own world or its politics - but we should also be thinking carefully of our own logic process in any debate or argument. Is our own logic any sounder than the other sides?
It is in such simple beginnings that many a feud has its origins - a gesture, a smile, or a laugh misinterpretted and you have a war breaking out faster than you can telephone to say it was all a ghastly mistake. It remains to be seen what the final outcome of the politically correct lobbyists is; of one thing I am certain they provide Pratchett with at least 50% of his funniest scenarios. Let us hope that his antidote of laughter helps drive them and their ilk from our land - or at least from the positions of power they currently hold.
This week has seen a number of PC shiboleths exposed for what they are - pure sham! Perhaps the most important item was a report published by a scientific research group who have identified the method of learning used by teenage boys and girls. It identifies that, contrary to the fondly held belief that it can be "nurtured" into the learning process, it takes a difficult and extended process which allows the brain to determine its neural paths and store information, requires the "learner" to study it by turns passively and by trying it out until the correct storage and retreival systems are working to find other means of storing the information.
It seems the best way to impart the basic knowledge is - wait for it - Learning by rote! That's right, reciting the times tables and other basic work. So will we see the trendy teachers returning to classroom discipline and learning by rote? I doubt it - unless parents start to demand a reversal and a return to proper teaching. Funny thing about this research though. It was into AI and how a robot learned. It seems that we learn the same way. Repetition, analysis, and improvement based on experience.
What has this to do with the Nac Mac Feegle? Well, they serve as a good example of the logic progression which leads our educators to conclude that simply allowing mixed abilities, mixed learning skills, and behavioural problems to sit side by side, is somehow improving the education of everyone. According to their logic it is "fair" and "best practice". Right.
Humans aren't robots; they need some basic rules to live by and they need to learn and grow in order to survive. They should not be so tied up in rules that they are stifled as individuals, and they need to be able to believe in something bigger than them. The Nac Mac Feegle don't need to believe in anything bigger - they know that most of the world is bigger than them, but it worries them not at all. Maybe that's the key: we need to be less anxious about our comfort, safety, and rules and more willing to admit mistakes and move the world back to where it will be able to move forward along a new and now proven path.
Crims. That almost makes sense!
Posted by The Gray Monk at June 19, 2004 10:52 PM