Thoughts about education

I have always idolized the way ancient Greeks studied. So, one day I discovered myself thinking of how we could establish a school like they used to have, but with a couple of changes of my own.
First of all, only the most fundamental subjects would be taught. Philosophy, important languages according to the location of the school,  combination of math and physics and PE. This school wouldn't be meant to give one a chance to go learn any desireable subject, it would be more of a branch-school, but more on that later on.

Philosophy is something that teaches us to think, so this is required to study any other subject. Students would be taught the ideas of greatest thinkers of history with the purpose of helping students to induce their own. Biographies would be left out due to their meaninglessness, because it's the ideas that matter, not the man. Main method of teaching would be of course, the discussion.

Languages are also needed, because socializing with foreigners is inevitable. Nowadays, the teaching of languages would be quite good if it weren't to the faulty method. In every other subject the structure must be taught first, gradually filling it with facts, but not in languages. It just doesn't work. Language  must be taught the other way around by letting students see how it's spoken and learn to do it as good and only then gradually letting them know why is it done so. Perhaps it works better, because that is how languages were born, words first, rules later whereas other subjects were developed rules first, facts later.

Next on the list is the combination of maths and physics. They should be taught together, because math is the system physics is based on. For trying to understand our world, math alone is insufficient and becomes inconceivable later on. The method of teaching should be that whenever taught new mathematical method, one will also be shown how to use it for solving problems in physics and vice versa - whenever a new physics problem occurs requiring a new method.

Anima sana in corpore sano. I also believe in it and that's why PE is also a must. In addition, healthy people live longer, therefore increasing the probability of inventing new ideas. Still, my idea of a good PE lesson is quite different from the one we have now. Instead of doing big bunch of useless exercises like jumping over a stick or running in circles, practical techniques like hunting, countrywork and martial arts should be taught. These all include exercises we do nowadays in PE, but they are also put into good, practical use. It helps to reduce the vulnerability, we, humans have, that even though we are on the top of the food chain, we are physically inferior.

One day includes one subject only, because it is more efficient than reminding students what page they should be on at the beginning of each fraction of a lesson. Also, this way the students are fully focused on only one subject, without others troubling their mind. It keeps them in the "spirit" of the subject for whole  day making it easier to acquire new knowledge.

Now that we know what and how should be taught, we need to know who are the students expected to study there. This school would be limited to those of higher talent, motivation and interest in real subjects. I wouldn't limit it to men only, like it was in ancient Greece, because I believe that even though the school is based on rational mind and men are, on average, more rational and less emotional, women should be given fair chance to prove themselves. The process of choosing the students involves series of tests of will and ability of derivation, rather than the ability of remembering facts, like we have now. Physical abilities and health are also important due to the demanding PE lessons. Healthy body is something ancient Greeks worshipped by carving statues of gods in perfect human form.

The students would, indeed, have less knowing of history, chemistry, biology, ... - everything being taught to us nowadays. But the students of this school would have much more complete vision of life and world overall. They wouldn't have to know large amount of facts, because the ones they have would be connected to each other a lot better. As the school would be on the same place as our gymnasiums on the education ladder, it gives excellent base to anyone interested in further studies of science.

One class would include a maximum of 10 students, any more would mean that a student would be given too small amount of attention, less would reduce the efficiency too much. In addition to students self motivation there would be competition with other classmates and classes as whole, too. Competition is one of two forces driving evolution and in the process of developing ones skills. The second one is cooperation, which is covered by full-class competition, where classes that support their weaker members, prevail.

The teachers would need to be the best to be able to teach a bunch like the one described. The school would concentrate teachers that love their job and are competent to teach their subject. Unfortunately, nowadays we are mostly to find the ones teaching because it is only thing they know or they are doing it just for the money. Teachers would rather get paid less and teach less-motivated students who won't question. There are exceptions, of course, and I am happy to have met and taught by some of them. Teacher must be an authority to hold the group under control, but aswell their friend to be warm and believable. Kind of like a good big brother.

The last and somewhat less important element of a school is the environment. It must provide the peace and tools for the students. I can imagine for example an old renovated manor with a clean and beautiful park, where the students walking along the teacher could learn and discuss different ideas.

Many claim that "elite" schools are bad, that they reap the cream and somehow see it as a bad thing. I think that we should have even "eliter" schools, because we have enough students with a special need called talent, but nowhere to put them, where they could show their real potential. I believe that my school would do exactly that, helping talented rise higher rather than dragging them down, because others are incapable of keeping up.

This is my idea of a perfect gymnasium along with other thoughts regarding teaching methods. I hope that someday a school like this will be possible.

Pain

Rational mind is something we are proud to have. Though, yet again it has proven itself being insufficient: when it comes to emotions, it's a pathetic coward. The moment we are struck with one it's nowhere to be found.

I have already discussed why we could need emotions and intuition as whole package. Also I'm not going to talk about emotions overall due to the diversity and complexity of it. This time I'm going to focus on one which I believe to be the most destructive of them all - the pain.

We are ready to do almost anything to avoid the feeling of pain. I'm glad that modern medicine has it covered as long the pain is physical, so I'm not going to stop on that. What interests me more is its mental form. Why do we need it? Why is it so powerful and long-lasting? Could we someday eradicate it?

Why do we need such self-destructive emotion as pain? It can shut us down completely, taking away any hope we might have left and draining away every bit of happiness. They say: whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. That's true all right, but it's not the whole truth. The strength we gain from pain is temporal or perhaps in worse cases permanent numbness. Is it the strength we want? Or perhaps it has exactly the same purpose as Its physical counterpart - signaling us of an dangerous error? But how could it be applicable in case of a broken heart? The error of choosing wrong mate? For all we know the one left with pain is also the one truly believing that the match was a good one. Or perhaps It's something else rationally useful backfiring at us? What then? Seems like I'm unable to answer what is pain good for.

Another thing I find curious is why does it have to be such a strong emotion. Wouldn't a lot less be enough to let us know that something is not right. Maybe this is something that the first question should also cover. Still, I am amazed by the destructiveness of it. To be able to maim somebody like that is truly extraordinary. Rare aren't cases when the pain has driven people suicidal, therefore maiming one for eternity. It also tends to have the ability to recreate itself from even the smallest incident that's related to the source of the pain giving it the resilience. However you look at it, the potential destruction it can cause to a human being, is immense.

Be it useful or not, dosed correctly or not, one thing is for sure - large majority of us doesn't want it happening to themselves or to their dearest ones. Could we get rid of it someday then? Yes, but the method could be compared to nuking a city to destroy the rats living in it. I believe that in the future a pill could be conjured, which upon using results in complete numbness of emotions, therefore also eradicating the pain. But this wouldn't be the solution we want. I don't believe that we will be able to remove any specific emotion, ever. There won't be painkillers for soul, so to speak.

In the end, the pain is just an enemy we are bound to flee from until struck, then we either fight and survive, therefore getting another chance or give up by killing the pain along with yourself. The last one is something I wouldn't recommend, however. I would also like to believe, that one could get stronger with each fight, without becoming numb, but better in avoiding and relieving it. However, I don't.

Sorry for ending with such hopelessness, but that's exactly, what the pain does.

Path of happiness

Note that the title doesn't say path TO happiness, so don't expect to find any guidelines on how to be happy, if I knew that I'd be filthy rich and probably wouldn't be writing this. What I am going to write about is what I believe is the mechanism of happiness. What are the requirements of being happy?

I think that happiness is based on our needs and whether they are satisfied or not. A person is truly, absolutely, 100 percent happy when all of his or her needs are satisfied. When some are and some aren't then the person is partially happy. Now, there are two possible ways to achieve this theoretical complete happiness. One is by satisfying your every need one has and the other is getting rid of them.

Nowadays, people living in developed countries have almost infinite number of different needs, but they also have the same amount of possibilities and means to satisfy them. But what we don't have is infinite time. Therefore it is impossible to reach complete happiness in our society this way. However, partial happiness is achievable by satisfying the most important needs we have, such as hunger, tiredness, comfortable life, feeling of belonging and of course, love. After satisfying the important ones, surely secondary ones will be brought up to make us miserable, but as they mean less to us, we can still feel ourselves at least a bit happy.

Now, the other way achieving complete happiness is to reduce the number of needs to absolute minimum until the need of existence. I believe that is something Indian religions call nirvana. This, however, requires enormous amount of dedication and willpower and even then, reaching the result is not certain. But the idea of reducing the needs stays.

What could the practical approach be then? As neither of the options alone is unreachable for an average joe, then what about combining them into one? We should satisfy the needs which are quite impossible to be free of. We should eat, sleep, love each other and satisfy everything else, which are very important for our well-being and for which we have time, meanwhile trying to get rid of the secondary ones, which would otherwise stay preventing us from being happy. I believe that by applying this idea, one could live reasonably happy life.

This has got me thinking, whether it wouldn't be better if I was born in some of the developing countries, where I would never have many of the secondary needs I have here, like the need for internet and everything it contains, television, tasty food and so on. It would be much easier for me to be happy, since huge amount of my needs never existed and the number, which I would have to be dealing with is much smaller, wouldn't it? No, because I could lack the means for satisfying my main needs, which would make me far more miserable. So it's a beak down, tail loose situation, where neither one has an easier way of reaching happiness than the other.

As I said in the introduction, this is not a guide on how to reach happiness. It lacks direct instructions and doesn't count in the difficulties one might have during the process. But it is a general idea of what happiness could be and what it takes to be happy. Something thoughticious for a day.

Let's change!

Should we change something and how? These are the questions everyone should ask from themselves, before changing anything from one thing to another. The answers can be very simple on most cases and we won't even notice answering them, but when we are dealing with bigger things, then we should acknowledge these questions and answer them thoroughly beforehand. With following I am going to show you my idea of how a change should be brought about.

Step 1: There has to be something wrong, something not working quite as it should before we make the decision to change something. There is no need to fix a machine that is already working. Yes, you have to maintain it, oil it from time to time, but you mustn't make it completely new just cause you feel like it. In a situation when we see, that the "machine" is not working, the first thing to do, is to find out why was it made so in the first place. Simple example from everyday life: you happen to notice, that the electricity main switch is turned off. We have a problem: no electricity. We decide to change it without finding out why the switch is turned off and so we pull it back on. Now there might be a fellow electrician, who turned off the electricity so he could work and we just killed him. So the first thing to do is to find the cause why things are as they are.

Step 2: When we have found out the reason why things are like they are, then we may start to find a change to fix the issues. Next thing to do is to check whether the change fixes issue. In the example case, the off-switch most probably is the cause why there is no electricity, so we can be quite sure, that by changing the position of the switch, we solve the problem of having no electricity.

Step 3: Now comes the hard part in most of societies - the discussion. We have to find the people, who know the most about  the current issue and check with them, whether our solution is a good one or not. This time the person we should talk to is the electrician. We go to him and ask about the switch.  We say that we need the electricity and by the end of discussion we get to an agreement that the electrician finishes his work in 30 minutes and will tell us when to turn the switch back on. This step is particularly hard because we believe that we already are the smartest one and we need no-one else and also because of the compromise part.

Step 4: The people with the most knowledge of the issue have had their say and given us the green light to do the change in its new form. Now is the time to do it. In the example this part is not very hard: just go and pull the switch. But it can be hard when large quantities of resources are involved, when we have to find the right men to do it. The change in practice must be as close to the one in theory as possible. In the example we have to make sure that we won't send someone half-minded, who tries to pull the switch horizontally even though the lever moves up and down.

Having done all the steps above correctly and thoroughly I believe in the success of a change. In real life, when we notice that some change has made things worse or is insufficient, then probably someone skipped a step or wasn't thorough enough.

For example our final exam of Estonian language at the end of gymnasium. I don't actually know what was wrong with the initial one (Step 1), therefore I cannot be sure whether the change fixed the issues (Step 2). But I am certain that they failed miserably in Step 3, because neither the teachers nor students were taken into the discussion, who after all are the ones most close to the problem and should not be left out. Step 4 was accomplished marvelously: they found the money and the people who made sure that the brand-new exam paper was in front of us when the time came. The result was a complete failure as expected having missed one step completely and being dodgy in two.

This is my idea of how things should be done. If you have a better one or if you would like to offer additions, feel free to do so.

PS: Read comments for necessary improvements of the idea.

Court case #47

...Thank you for your side of the story, Hansel and Gretel. Now it is time to call the other side for her to give her testimony."
The back door of the court room opened and to everyone's surprise, out came an old and clearly devastated poor old lady. There were burn marks all over her face and arms. Hansel and Gretel were terrified to see that she still lived. Everyone were quiet and tension was palpable as the old lady sat down at the bench. The judge, however, remained calm and asked:
"It is pleasure for you to have come, I hope you have recovered well."
"I'll live," answered the witch.
"That is good to hear. Could you please share your side of the story with us?"
"Sure," answered the old lady and began to speak:
"It all began with quite a pleasant evening, I was getting ready to go to bed when I heard that someone was eating my house. I went to watch and saw two young children, one was taking pieces off of my roof and the other gnawed my window. I was afraid that they would eat my whole house, so I called them in and gave them a full and tasty meal. After that, as I saw that they were quite tired, I led them to the beds, where my grandchildren used to sleep, while they were here during the winters. As I had put them to sleep I sat down and realized, that I was quite afraid of these two, I saw that I am surely too weak to contain the maliciousness I saw, when they, without knocking or asking first, began to demolish my beautiful house. So I decided to take the boy, who was clearly stronger than me, to the stables, where I could lock him, but where he would be comfortable enough laying on the hay. Anyway I planned to hold him in there as long as their parents came to get them, I just could not let them out to the woods where they would starve and probably die. During the next days I fed the boy as good as I could to make sure that he wasn't hungry, still, every time I asked him to give me his finger so I could know whether he is getting enough or not, he did not seem to get any larger. I was quite worried for the health of the boy. One day, oh that fateful day, I decided to make something special for the two children, using the oven I have. As I was busy preparing the meal, I asked the little girl to check whether the oven is hot enough. She answered that she is unable to do that. I was quite surprised. How hard can it be to check the oven. As I went there, to do it myself the little girl pushed me from my back so I fell right in the middle of the burning coal. But that was not enough for the little girl, she also slammed the door shut. Despite the unimaginable pain I managed to kick the door open and roll myself out. As a last glimpse, before I lost my consciousness, I saw the two running away, carrying all of my dearest pearls and gold, I had collected for the purpose of leaving them for my dearest grandchildren. I would have stayed there and died, if it weren't for the nice young lad walking by, who I discovered tending my wounds as I woke up in his cottage." The witch sighed  deeply, after reliving the terrible emotions related to the incident. At least she had said,what was true, what really happened.
Hansel and Gretel were paralyzed. Their parents were crazed and if it weren't for the lad accompanying the old lady, they would have surely finished what their children had tried, but failed to do.
Now everyone looked at the judge. His face was clueless. After about half an hour of deep consideration, the judge opened his mouth and declared the verdict:
"...

What comes next is for you to decide now that you have heard the other side of the story. Who do you believe, as there is no other evidence than the two sides of one story? Strangely enough, most of our society has already decided, as only one side of this tragic story is told to our little children.

Word limit

Here's another wild idea of mine. You could also call it thought experiment. Well, try to picture a world, where every man and woman has a limited amount of words. The exactly right amount would be hard to tell, but it is not important at the moment either. Just that everyone can say only limited amount of words during one day and the ones that were left unused won't be transferred over to the next day. One more important aspect is that the daily amount is tradable as a normal currency.

The trading of these words would perfectly reflect the dependence one has of another. The more words you got, the more important you are, because you represent somebody else, using the words that they gave you. For example, whenever you elect a politician to the government you would have to pay a certain amount of words, because he must represent you in places, where you aren't able to go. Also, when a child is born,  he will not get the whole amount right away, but only a fraction of it, rest is given to the mother and father, who at the early years of the child are responsible and have to make decisions on his behalf. As the child grows up he gains more and more words, until he becomes a grown-up and receives the full amount and the ability to buy and sell words. The words have no meaning anyway until one is responsible of them.

By buying and selling of words, one might run completely out of his daily amount. That is quite normal, because every society has members whose words are not important and therefore not needed to be said, or if everything is already said for him. I imagine that our superstars and -models would have quite a few words to say for a day, because they would have to give them to the countless managers, producers or stylists. The ones with a huge amount of words would be definitely the politicians, who need them to dispute matters or hold speeches. The larger the amount of words one has the more responsibility he has to use the words given to him wisely and without wasting, but having more words means more freedom.

How much would this world differ from the one we live in today? Well for certain we could see quite clearly, who is depending on who and the actual leaders of our life. Also, the world would become quite laconic, without any useless blabbering, because everyone would have to think before whether the situation is worth wasting any words or not. New language with shorter forms could be invented, again, to save the amount of words used. Everything people say would have more meaning due to the thinking before saying, but a lot quiter and perhaps more boring, who knows.

This one is really thoughticious for me and I can still see lots of room for development. This is just the definition of the idea. The further development is up to anyone who sees it worthy and has the time to spare.