Tuesday, September 6, 2011

A friend sent this to me this morning.  I really like it. Einstein was considered stupid when he was in school. I was considered stupid and did not do well in school either. I am not an Einstein but I am a helluva lot smarter than my school marks show. Part of the problem was that my folks started me to school early. I started to kindergarten at 4. It wasn't until I was in graduate school that I really caught up.


Secondly, I now know that I am dyslexic enough that I would have been put in learning disabled classes now--and probably still considered dumb. I learned differently from the way they taught. I am a kinesthetic learner--I learn by doing rather than by hearing. It is why I excelled in music because I enjoyed practicing. I love to do research now that we have computers. I am not one for sitting and reading ancient tomes in dusty libraries. I get very antsy in libraries.  And I am allergic to either the dust in dusty libraries or to the library past of past years.

As an ENFP I am one of those intuitive persons who doesn't know how I know stuff but I know it. This is one of the most common personality types for clergy. We are only 10% of the population. One wag said that on any given Sunday that folks like us are preaching what we don't know how we know to 90% of the population who does know how they know stuff. No wonder the Christian message has had such a difficult time being understood!

I also speak and explain things by allegory (it is why I preach well) rather than repeating facts. But it does not serve when trying to do academic work. It has surprised me that I have gotten so much enjoyment about writing in the past 10 years.

But most of all, I do so enjoy those whom I have met on the various chats I have been a part of over the past almost 20 years I have been on line. I am still not too tech saavy. I have never learned techy language and so I still have difficulty telling the geek fix-it guy what is wrong with my computer. I just know that it is sick and needs some help--it doesn't work right. J's computer isn't much better. It is flinchy. But it also has Windows 7 rather than Vista which is on mine.

It is interesting how much of my life has been determined by how others thought I should learn-- even while I was doing doctoral work.  I wonder if education means learning how to learn the way others learn in order to prove to others that I have learned rather than educators reaching into me and finding out how I know what I know.  Just sayin'...

1 comment:

Crimson Rambler said...

I am more aware as I grow older of how much "education" -- in the institutional sense of the word: testing, credentialing etc. -- consists of learning how not to let on what we don't know, more perhaps even than learning how to demonstrate what we do know... This was a most interesting post, and I thank you.