When I was a young child, I used to be very dependant of others, especially of my maid and my mother. I wanted things fast and tried to avoid heavy work on my shoulders at all costs, therefore, most of the time I got away with it by somehow making other people do my work. I was the opposite of autonomous and mostly didn't seek for solutions of my own, until one day I was invited to a friend's beach house in Arequipa, which is a state in the south of Peru. My dad granted me permission of going to such far place, but only with one condition, that I went alone in the whole trip, including the airplane, the airport and the 3 hour taxi trip. It was a suicide mission for me; how in the world would I be able to manage such responsibility? After thinking it through, I decided that I wanted to have an adventure, therefore I accepted. During the trip I felt a bit nervous, but remembered all the steps I had to follow and the procedures I had to take. I was starting to use a critical and observant mindset, and in time I realised that everything was much easier than I thought. After successfully making it go and back, I realised that letting others do my work for all this time, was a poison that I was slowly injecting myself.
As we grow and mature we also become more autonomous, and I think this is precisely the moment when we truly start to develop our brains, our values, our sense of judgement and awareness. Once we are pressured to seek our own solutions (like I was in the trip to Arequipa), we start to use what it is know as our system two thinking, which is a system where our minds go in depth and analyse situations instead to finding fast and easy solutions that avoid thinking. This is why I believe that as a child I was damaging my own development, because I was trying not to use my system two thinking and I was missing out on everything that I could have learned until then. This is also one of the reasons why I like the Innovation Academy, because it promotes autonomy in students, which makes them seek for solutions on their own and activates the use of a system two thinking. Lately I have been very proactive on trying to find solutions to problems that I face. One of the things that even inspired me to write about this topic is my IA project, because I am building a model rocket on my own and it is not an easy task for several reasons. First of all, there are few almost no model rocket clubs and stores in Lima where I can find a professional to help me, so in other words, I am working almost entirely autonomously, but I think it's better because it means more critical thinking for me. Second, I am basing my design and formulas from American sources, and they use materials that in Lima I don't have access to, so I have to find a way to use other materials and adapt my rocket to those materials. I have really had to use an engineer's mindset in order to solve these problems by myself and not let any problem to be too big for me. I have, and still am, learning how to stop being dependent on others and be autonomous. I also realised that this means to me much more responsible and mature, which has also forced me to manage my time wisely and have my duties organised. I believe that once we are able to engage our system two thinking effectively, solutions are always possible.
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Two weeks ago I was at my grand parents house with all my family having a grate time playing with all my younger cousins and one of them told me how he had a flying scooter that could fly through the sky. Of course I knew it wast true, so I started explaining to him how it was impossible, but he refused to accept my ideas. After a bit I simply stopped arguing because I knew he wasnt going to change his mind and because I didnt want to kill his imagination. Although the conversation didn't reach a point, it made me keep thinking about the concept of arguing and refusing to accept ideas. So I started observing around my house and on the streets and realised that arguments are much more common in our daily lives than we think they are. so I started to think, why do we argue? Why does arguing take such an important role in our lives? It might not seem important, but there is a reason why throughout history we human beings are such conflict makers.
Different religions, cultures, customs and traditions have all being at some point a motive for conflict. It then became clear to me that having closed minds is what encourages and further more develops conflict. Our pride makes us want to be right, it is extremely rare for someone to accept the fact that their point of view could be wrong because it makes us feel inferior. I am not saying that debating or defending your point of view is bad, but unless there is factual evidence in place, it is most of the time, pointless to argue. Similarly, we are all free to have opinions, but we must be open minded to the fact that others opinions are equally important as ours. In other words, empathy is the value needed to maturely understand other peoples thought or opinions. With closed minds it is difficult to work together, cooperate and find solutions, but with open minds, by acknowledging and accepting different ideas, cooperation will come with ease. This is why open mind sets are so important. Apart from understanding the importance of open mindness, it is also important how to be an open minded person. During a conversation I try to be self conscious and start by asking myself one thing: am I acknowledging the point of view of this person? If I am not, I try to have empathy and put myself in their shoos. If I AM, then I ask myself: Is it worth it to argue/ debate with this person? To know this, I first see if the person is mature and also see if the conversation is taking a organised and civilised track where one is not talking over the other or yelling,. This is very important because it determines if the other person is also being open minded and capable of acknowledging your opinions as well. Lastly, the topic of conversation is also very important because if it is something very delicate or controversial like religion or gay marriage, people tend to stick to their opinions. This has being very useful to me lately because I have gotten lots of comments and misconceptions from friends about the Innovation Academy and if I know that they are mature and comprehensive, I am more than happy to explain what it is all about and erase misconceptions. I truly believe that open minds will change the world because only withe the participation and mutual understanding from both ends, will society truly develop because we will grow as an entire population, not as as entities, exclusive groups, or minorities. We need the cooperation A couple of weeks ago I was having a chat with my driver as we usually do, and he told me a very impacting story. He had taken a street bus that morning that was mostly empty and so he took a back seat. As the time passed, more and more people started to get in until it was so crowded that you could barely see what was going on in the bus. Then, a small discussion broke between a fairly old man and a pregnant women. The problem was that the women was asking for the seat of the man and the man was peacefully refusing to give it to her without making much scandal. The most respectful act would be to offer his current seat so that the women could have it and for this reason the people around the man started yelling at him of how he was being a disrespectful and coward old man for being so selfish. The man then calmly said in a joking tone "I think I should put a sign in my chest explaining my condition... but anyway, I'll move". So the man stood up, got his crutches that were under his seat and moved. To the surprise of everyone, he had no legs.
This is a perfect example of the horrible thing that is pre judging others. And the worst part is that it happens every day amongst all of us, either with small things like pre judging a book or big things as prejudging a new student. It´s like an instinct of our minds to easily pick our emotions towards others and therefore, have a fixed mindset for every time you think about that person. When we pre judge we most of the time make false accusations towards someone without barely knowing who they are. This takes a big role in teen agers daily lives and although it might not seem true, prejudging can change the complete course of a relationship because, as stated before, having a fixed mind set on someone limits our mind to accept the fact that, that person could be completely different. The reason why prejudging is most of the time inaccurate is because we commonly base our thoughts on nothing but appearances, economical status and popularity. These are the most unreliable source of information to make assumptions because they don't tell you the personality of that person neither their type of culture. Pre judging is so careless, yet so easy to do, that we do it all the time. Another problem with prejudging is that in some cases we don't keep it to ourselves, but actually let that person know your thoughts towards him. One might not mean it in a bad way or have the intention to make that person feel bad, but you never know how your message could be interpreted. For example, I remember once in the beach, when I was younger, that my mom introduced me to this boy who looked really cool but did not seem to be the smartest kid. Right away we decided to jump in to the ocean and play. Everything was fine, but I started to notice that every time I called him or told him something, he didn't respond and then told me to repeat myself a thousand times. I noticed that I had to talk louder for him to acknowledge me and this started to frustrate me a lot because I felt he was taking me for stupid. After a while I didn't take it more and screamed in his face “dude are you freaking stupid! Whats wrong with you, are you deaf you dumbass!” He looked at me very confused and scared and ran away. It was much later that I learned that he was indeed almost deaf and had to wear a machine in his ear to hear better, but he had taken it off in order to get into the ocean. The consequence was that he never spoke, looked or interacted with me ever again. I had both judged him for being “stupid” and, even worse, accused him for being that way. With the years we improve, we become less judgeful of others because we mature. Today I would have never yelled at that kid because I have being able to develop a sense of empathy and acknowledge that we never know what someone has gone through and therefore have no right to judge the way they are. Moreover, I also think that we will always prejudge others no matter our age because it is just the way we human beings are. Therefore what we must do is exercise our skills and values and recognised that we must think before we act, and that way, prejudging will be simply be a personal way to have constructive first impressions of someone, but not act according to our emotions. A few months ago I remember visiting my 8 year old cousin and his house and we were having lots of fun playing but near the afternoon I had to leave because his mom wanted him to do his homework and study. I understood the situation and thought it was fine, but later he told me how he was not allowed to watch tv nor play any type of video games during the week because he had to keep studying, and this I did feel it was a bit restricting and extreme.
It was all clear at the beginning, not of the book, but of my life. I remember when I was in the second grade that I never used to do my homework or pay attention in class because I either got bored or was too busy thinking on what I was going to do with my friends that afternoon. Not surprisingly, my grades started to go down until one day the teacher spoke to me and told me that if I got good grades, then I would be able to go to a good university and then get a good job. It took me a while, but then I realised that if I followed this simple sequence of events, then I would become successful. Although this wasn't entirely incorrect, it was much later that I realised that this sequence had some errors.
Getting good grades is not bad, in fact, I still strive to get good grades in school, but the problem comes when you are either forced to get good grades by your parents, for example, or when you force yourself into extremes to get good grades (even though you may not like the course) because the essence of learning is lost. When you do it all for the grade, then grades stop being a way to measure your learning and instead they become a way of measuring your supposed "future success". And here is where the next problem appears because once you lose importance in your actual learning, then you also lose a sense of inquiry, which is what makes us have a passion for learning and intrigue in our personal preferences, which is why you see so many people graduate from school without knowing what to do with their lives. As Peter Gray states it: "In the eyes of many parents and educators today, childhood is not so much a time for learning as a time for résumé building."(Peter Gray- Free to Learn). I didn't come to this realisation entirely by myself, I also used some sources to guide me and, most importantly, to show me a potential solution to this problem. I'v even quoted him previously and it is indeed the book Free to Learn by Peter Gray. In the first five chapters he talks a lot about free play and self education and how through those means kids learn the core values of life, how to be autonomous, how to socialise, negotiate and share by themselves. It is when you are free to make your own choices, that you find what you most like to do because, think about it, if you are free to do whatever you want, you won't choose to do something you don't like, no, you would do something you do like and therefore you would enquire about it, find sources to teach you about it and finally learn about it. That is exactly how children in hunter- gatherer villages develop and that is why those small communities work so well. So, what should be done? Well, I think that children should be given several hours of free play as well as some hours to reinforce some general knowledge because I still think that it is important to have basic math skills for example. Later, children should become more autonomous with their learning and teachers, apart from guiding their learning, they should become sources of information to which the students can go to for information. The school should then offer a wider variety of courses (of which they can drop out quickly if they don't like) and not restrain the students to only a few because there might be something students like but they haven't tried yet. Peter Gray calls this the 7th sin of schools and he states it as the "Reduction in diversity of skills and knowledge". This way, if you keep a student intrigued for learning since the beginning, they will see grades as a measurement of their learning and have a clear vision of their likes and dislikes in school. |
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