Vinaire's Blog

Education: Key Word List & Glossary

Reference: Course on Subject Clearing

This Key Word List and Glossary provides an overview for the subject of Education. Sub-topics in this area shall have their own Key Word Lists and Glossaries.

Key Word List

The video above takes up these Key Words in the given sequence using the definitions from the glossary below:

(1) BASIC DEFINITIONS

Education, Literacy, School, Learning, Instruction, Indoctrination, Conditioning

(2) AIM OF EDUCATION

Aim of Education, Epistemic approach, Critical thinking

(3) LEARNING MATERIALS

Learning materials, Curriculum

(4) LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Compulsory education, Equal opportunity

Glossary

Aim of Education
Education occurs naturally. Its aim is to help one evolve to their fullest potential. Human society puts systems in place to facilitate education. Such systems should not attempt to control the education of a person. Education must occur naturally.

Compulsory education
Compulsory education refers to a period of education that is required of all people and is imposed by the government. Compulsory schooling means that parents are obliged to send their children to a certain school. If education is not happening then environment should be created for education to occur, but education itself should not be forced. The student should be allowed to follow a curriculum at their own pace. Standardized testing should not be used to categorize the students.

Conditioning
Conditioning is the process of training or accustoming a person or animal to behave in a certain way or to accept certain circumstances. There is social conditioning in every society. True education resolves existing conditioning.

Critical thinking
Critical thinking is the experience obtained from resolving anomalies. This experience is then applied towards resolving more anomalies. Critical thinking builds up on itself. The educational environment should make effort to facilitate critical thinking.

Curriculum
The student should determine what should be taught to him. The learning materials available should consists of modules arranged in a logical order starting from an overview and the fundamentals of a subject. Controversial subjects that contain “sexual” and “religious” contents are safe to learn when approached in this manner. The whole idea is the preservation of critical thinking to resolve anomalies. This consideration applies also to the education in morals, art and aesthetics.

Education
Origin: “brought up, nurtured, taught”. Education occurs naturally as the transmission of cultural heritage from one generation to the next. The basic aspect of education is literacy through which one acquires knowledge and problem-solving skills. Schools are supposed to facilitate education by assisting young minds in the process of learning.

Epistemic Approach
Education should take the approach of enabling one to see things as they are. On this depend truth, knowledge, and understanding. This approach facilitates the development of rationality and critical thinking. These abilities help one resolve anomalies and evolve.

Equal opportunity
Equal opportunity is a state of fairness in which individuals are treated similarly, unhampered by artificial barriers, prejudices, or preferences. This basically applies to learning materials and laboratory facilities that a person accesses to educate oneself. A person must demonstrate his abilities to an independent body to be qualified and certified.

Learning
Origin: “to glean, read, ponder”. Learning is the process of acquiring new knowledge, understanding, and skills. One reads and ponders until one grasps the new concepts and can apply them. Learning cannot be forced if the mind is to grow and become mature. When forced, instructions become indoctrination and learning becomes conditioning of the mind.

Learning Materials
Those materials are safe to learn from, which explain the fundamentals of a subject very simply, and build up logically on those fundamentals on a smooth, comfortable gradient.

Literacy
Literacy is the ability to read and write. It also refers to a person’s knowledge of a particular subject or field. For example, a person can become literate in another language or subject.

Indoctrination
To indoctrinate is to impose a set of beliefs so the person accepts them without examining them critically. There is some degree of indoctrination in every subject. True education resolves existing indoctrination.

Instruction
To instruct is to provide knowledge in a logical and systematic manner, so that a person can use that knowledge to improve his ability to think.

School
Origin: “leisure employed in learning”. School is a place where instruction is given to a group of children and young adults under college age. A child learns to speak language at home through imitation. He goes to school to learn to read and write that language. Later he learns other subjects by reading about them in that language. Schools are supposed to facilitate that learning process by teaching how to learn and to provide knowledge that answers questions and clears up confusions.

Comments

Nov 2, 2022
I think that in future there are going to be no classes. The student will study the subjects they are most interested in. A subject shall be divided into modules. The earlier modules shall be basic and simple. The subsequent modules shall gradually increase in complexity and difficulty. The student shall follow his selected curriculum of subjects at his own pace. Upon completing a module he will be tested on it for understanding and not for memorization. He must grasp a module 100% before he advances to the next module. This is how he acquires qualifications and skills and gets certified on them.

The learning materials shall be available online, as in the KHAN ACADEMY. The student shall mostly study on his own either at home or at school. At school he shall have help available in case he doesn’t understand something or has questions. He shall get assistance on individual basis either from other students or from the teachers. The school shall also provide laboratory and equipment facilities.

Understanding can be tested by examining if the person can apply the materials he has learned. For example, can an electrical engineer do electrical engineering? You may verbally quiz the student on how he can apply certain concepts. Give him real world situations and ask him what action he would take based on what concept.

October 17, 2022 – 11:22 AM Categories: Education | Post a comment

On Attachment and Addiction

Spiritual practice can help one overcome attachment and addiction. The following video explains the root cause of the very mechanism of addiction. I see subjects like Scientology also as addiction to highs.

Ram Dass explains the psychodynamics of the addiction cycle and he suggests that developing a spiritual practice is the best way to ground yourself and rid yourself of unwanted behaviors and anxieties.

His view that all human suffering comes from our feeling of separateness and that all addictions give the person a taste of the Oneness and of being “home” but only for the short term before the person goes into a cycle into self-loathing.

He describes spiritual practice as a way of delaying the gratification we seek in material possessions, relationships, food, drugs and whatever we use to sate the desperate sense of our separateness. He says that as we seek and as we meditate, we can intervene in the cycle of self-punishment and begin to see the emptiness of the whole cycle.

Ram Dass counsels addicted people to start a spiritual practice, saying that eventually, the addictions and anxieties will fall away. He says:

“The minute you get lost in identification with your personality to the exclusion of identification with your soul, you’ve lost it. And there a thousands times each day that you’ve lost it. And if you get caught in identification of your soul to the exclusion of your personality, you’ve lost it, equally as much.”

Here is a Wikipedia entry on Ram Dass, who was born Richard Alpert.

Ram Dass

Here are comments of Richard Alpert on “self” after his experimentations with LSD.

It is interesting to compare these comments with what Buddha says about “self.”

KHTK 23: Diamond Sutra of Buddha

I recommend engaging in spiritual practice of Vipassana Meditation (KHTK), and not drugs. Drugs can cause severe and harmful addictions, as was the case with Whitney Houston.

Here is another interesting interview with a later Richard Alpert (as Ram Dass). This interview is interesting because it takes up the strange subject of spirituality in politics.