Philosophy 115

RIP, She who sighs. Come back to us soon!

Wow, I am most authoritarian? That's hard to believe as I don't read many books, let alone write any.

While I am here, I thought I would quiz your intellectual minds about a thought which occurred to me earlier. I was talking to someone about what is hereditary, and began pondering whether the potential for large intellect is hereditary. My thought process went like this...
In my school, there were the smart kids and then there were the 'not so smart' kids. The not so smart COULD have been struggling with learning due to lack of potential, or it could have been due to their apparent complacency toward learning. Maybe it was the other way around, that their inability to learn resulted in complacency.
Of course, then there is homelife. Are their parents encouraging the learning cycle, or imparting the aforementioned complacency.
As a child, I WANTED to learn, but found certain subjects less appealing than others. I am undecided if they were unappealing because I was not good at them, or if I was not good at them because they were unappealing and I failed to apply myself.
And then it leads me to wonder if I was 'coded' to be good in certain subjects over others. This would imply some form of hereditary intellect. You often hear of musically minded parents with musically gifted children. Is this evidence of hereditary intellect, method of parenting skills or simply coincidence. I would tend to rule out coincidence.
As I do not consider myself 'particularly' intelligent, and I see this region as a tavern filled with brainy people.... I would like to know what YOU think.

p.s. I know what Authoritarian means. The opening sentence was just an attempt at humour.... British style.

You've touched a hot-button issue in American education, Lorettastan.

In the first grade, some children come in already knowing how to read, some just know their ABCs, and others don't even know how to use the toilet properly. What to do about this discrepancy? The response of my school system was to place us in sections, with top down to special education.

What is the cause of these discrepancies? Is it hard-wired into our brains, that genetics is destiny? Does it have more to do with parental involvement? Is it both? or neither? My own view of the matter is that parental involvement is crucial in kindergarten and primary grades (here, 1-5), not only in working with children to give them knowledge, but also promoting education by valuing learning. In later grades, the student s more responsible for his or her own learning. By college, the adolescents mostly just need financial support.

In my own case, my parents had minimal involvement in my education after first grade. I would ask my mother for the intimacy of reading a book to me at bedtime, but her pat response was "Go read it for yourself." They themselves seldom read books or magazines. My father read the state-wide newspaper, which I began reading at about age ten. They refused to go to parent-teacher conferences, as they viewed those as only for "problem children," which I was not. The less involved my parents were in my education, the better I did. So I would put myself in the middle group, knowing the alphabet and rudimentary numbers, but the more my native intelligence was freed from a dependence on my parents, the better I did.

To use a diving and swimming analogy, parents are responsible for making sure their child knows how to swim and to climb the first step on the ladder, but it is incumbent on the child himself or herself to finish climbing the ladder and dive off of the board, then swimming over to the pool's ladder to climb out of the water. So, when parents take no responsibility for teaching their child and promoting learning, that's going to hold back the child in early years and perhaps handicap them throughout their education.

Fair enough?

Still nada.