As I understand it, language and math are focussed on as the fundamental requirements to an education. This makes perfect sense in that these are our primary tools of communication and problem solving. Before we are a social creature we are individuals that are faced with the challenge of keeping mental pace with the growth of our physical form.

Something I have considered for a long time is the importance of proper comprehension of the way the body works and the need for parents to properly inform their children about physical functions they should be aware of. Much of this topic is covered in the curriculae available today and major changes aren’t required as far as I can tell and there is no particular need to introduce a greater focus on physical fitness.

That said, educational methods are developing new insight into the learning process and there is still room for improvement in fundamentals. With this in mind it has occurred to me that the importance of one aspect of learning may have been overlooked.

As a developing musician I understand that all theory aside, learning to play music is entirely concerned with recognising and keeping a beat. Not only is this what must be developed as muscle memory with physical practice, but the underlying reality of tonal recognition is that each note is a particular beat/vibration that relates to others. I have applied my understanding of timing and keeping rhythm to other activities and found that this approach develops a harmonic method managing and coordinating with my environment functionally.

Long story short, I would suppose that were it made a priority that a child could hold a beat it would follow that their subsequent ability to mange themself and integrate socially would be far improved over an education that prioritises other areas over this fundamental physical skill. I would simply support this as an inevitability of physics and that the mind must operate in the quantum dimensions with planck scale considerations.

Those areas addressed, I would be interested in the thoughts of others on where priorities should be assigned in primary education…..

Please enjoy this performance as you contemplate….

The Razors Edge!

>As I understand it, language and math are focussed on as the fundamental requirements to an education. This makes perfect sense in that these are our primary tools of communication and problem solving. Before we are a social creature we are individuals that are faced with the challenge of keeping mental pace with the growth of our physical form”

Nice light show riff, but no smell, doesn’t get me wet, no wind, and there’s always a bit of ‘fear’ being amongst it.

Starting with your first paragraph of thoughts so expressed, onto the the others later.

I start with language and math are something humans tend to do intuitively or naturally, not inclined originally by social environments, culture or experience only of this or any individuals liftetime alone. Math-like computation we do in something like mentalese. It’s not all done in the formal symbol system and operations we ‘learn’. Humans do intuitive geometry for example.

Toddlers learn language without much instruction at all, they apprehend it and adopt it aggressively. Evolved to do so. Babble even between toddlers is highly meaningful, and here.

By this..“Before we are a social creature we are individuals that are faced with the challenge of keeping mental pace with the growth of our physical form..” do you mean as in what is ultimately at work like originating, or priorities perhaps, or are you meaning some matter of chrono-development, or emerging awareness, or sociability, or what?

It’s an interesting thread by the way, and the more interesting stuff is in your later paragraphs.

transition said:

By this..“Before we are a social creature we are individuals that are faced with the challenge of keeping mental pace with the growth of our physical form..” do you mean as in what is ultimately at work like originating, or priorities perhaps, or are you meaning some matter of chrono-development, or emerging awareness, or sociability, or what?

It’s an interesting thread by the way, and the more interesting stuff is in your later paragraphs.

all those I suppose. There is a great deal to learn to coordinate mentally as you grow and your body changes. If from an early age someone learnt the drums say, this would develop their sense of timing mentally and physically. Learning about timing gives a person a better sense of physical space and their relationship to it. Because of the various systems involved, a person must not only learn to coordinate their body but also to manage it. Most instruments require a high degree of physical discipline to play well so make a good method for instilling an awareness of the limits of the physical systems.

>There is a great deal to learn to coordinate mentally as you grow and your body changes.

I think the control system (CNS) and the body-vehicle have been doing the magic together going back long before adam.

>If from an early age someone learnt the drums say, this would develop their sense of timing mentally and physically.

True (with qualifications).

>Learning about timing gives a person a better sense of physical space and their relationship to it.

Yes, in ways, I wouldn’t go too far with the generalization myself.

>Because of the various systems involved, a person must not only learn to coordinate their body but also to manage it.

Yes (again with qualifications)

>Most instruments require a high degree of physical discipline to play well so make a good method for instilling an awareness of the limits of the physical systems.

Ditch the word “instil” I reckon. Its right up there with fondness of terms like unculturate, and a few others I have no fondness for at all.

On the subject of drummers I’ve been getting into Steve Gadd lately.

You have anything in your hand you are outputting something, the holding and manipulating combine the output for a composite input (not strictly all feedback). I don’t see the ‘environment’ (that external) in maybe what’d be a typical way. I see the ‘channel’ in/out and what we do, that of movement specifically for the moment here, to be creating input. So an action like banging a drum is an input as much as an output. It’s both. The drum is in the ‘loop’, so to speak.

Is ‘timing’ the ‘light switch’ of developing human abilities, doubtful. Tight drummers sound better, Gadd for example.

But why not some dither (tech sense), I mean isn’t it varied emotions and mental states, even some unpredictability about them part of what we learn from? Of all that goes into global mental activity, isn’t some of the richness from the mix’n match, the try and test going on, isn’t it a ‘composition’. Take the curiosity in something like a horse as you drive past, that look isn’t all readiness for flight or fight, surely (readiness for time-sensitive situations). Isn’t it reaching into its toolbox in its head and doing just a little analysis.

Don’t mind my wandering, I ran a thread years back regarding curiosity, to do with something like multiplexing through cognitive resources, mix’n match, try and test.

Interesting thread. Getting cold sitting here and should spend some time with the other, and the dog too.

Aren’t we sort of ‘clocked’ by experience, of that internal and things external, even tasks (hate that word), not just by clocks etc. I mean some processes are not driven or derived from fixed clock or timebase references. Depends how you want to see them. You can see the thing that varies (the changing thing) as what you clock or reference from (you are probably thinking ‘varies compared with what?’).

We learn from dither, from error. In fact ‘dither’ is interesting (check Wiki out re that subject). Note it is literally impossible to walk a straight line with errors. The errors make walking the straightish line possible. You need the error feedback. So are you walking a crooked line for the necessary errors?

Rest time.

…straight line with errors

Should read “….without errors..”

“Inculturate” was what I intended, still have paint all over my glasses.

transition said:

>Learning about timing gives a person a better sense of physical space and their relationship to it.

Yes, in ways, I wouldn’t go too far with the generalization myself.

here I’m referring to applying an understanding of timing to new tasks

>Long story short, I would suppose that were it made a priority that a child could hold a beat it would follow that their subsequent ability to mange themself and integrate socially would be far improved over an education that prioritises other areas over this fundamental physical skill. I would simply support this as an inevitability of physics..”

As I recall marching (which it would be fair to say had some military origin) was still done at the school I attended until maybe my third year primary. Back in the day when the flag were flew that way, so to speak. Hints the history of habituation and compliance, fodder and all, motivating the group/troops. Things have changed a bit, but like Sinatra said of pop music way back, something like war or marching music, and in a way he were right, not that I like much of Sinatra.

Interestingly half of what I enjoy of (listening to) music is that different passages of the music ‘hang’ and play at different speeds over or with what follows. This suggests reconstitution possibilities are being applied, and seem to exist in and are somewhat provoked by the original composition. This for me makes it entertaining, pleasant, alive.

>Much of this topic is covered in the curriculae available today”

Bullshit it is, half the what passes for models of ‘the custodians of culture’ are social constructionists fuckwits, suspended by ideology, if it wasn’t for children being forces to go to school and mums and dads wanting child care while they did whatever it is the fuck they do, well, most kids wouldn’t attend school (they’d probably homeschool). Most of whatever the fuck it is that children are learning at school, the real stuff, like the three Rs, could be done in half the time it is. Really they are captives to group think. Probably 70%+ teachers are social constructionist fuckwits. What children learn is that clocks and tasks rule.

I mean truly school is a part of the ideological apparatus, where the emphasis is on social reality over the authority of physics.

You get no human nature studies lesson from school, or newspapers, same bullshit really.

If school was anything other than an ideological apparatus a kid wouldn’t be forced to attend, or feel or believe they had to attend.

I say fuck them, fuck the ISA.

transition said:

>Much of this topic is covered in the curriculae available today”

Bullshit it is, half the what passes for models of ‘the custodians of culture’ are social constructionists fuckwits, suspended by ideology, if it wasn’t for children being forces to go to school and mums and dads wanting child care while they did whatever it is the fuck they do, well, most kids wouldn’t attend school (they’d probably homeschool). Most of whatever the fuck it is that children are learning at school, the real stuff, like the three Rs, could be done in half the time it is. Really they are captives to group think. Probably 70%+ teachers are social constructionist fuckwits. What children learn is that clocks and tasks rule.

I mean truly school is a part of the ideological apparatus, where the emphasis is on social reality over the authority of physics.

You get no human nature studies lesson from school, or newspapers, same bullshit really.

If school was anything other than an ideological apparatus a kid wouldn’t be forced to attend, or feel or believe they had to attend.

I say fuck them, fuck the ISA.

I think Onty has blown a gasket.

>I think Onty has blown a gasket.

Very drunk.

On a more sober note, yes, music is important to ‘learning’, absolutely agree, the history of music too (including dance too I might add).

transition said:

On a more sober note, yes, music is important to ‘learning’, absolutely agree, the history of music too (including dance too I might add).

I sing to my dog

>no particular need to introduce a greater focus on physical fitness.

Speaking of PE teachers, they were a special breed of artificial intelligence.

I’d like to think ‘music’ (very generalized sense, even humming), to be some escape, or something much more even, from the normal constraints of temporality, or temporal controls – inhibitory aspects – (though do confess most of everything of controls is inhibitory, from internal workings of the mind to societal expectations), but the ‘escapes’ maybe a necessary thing that makes the rest of it work, or make it bearable.

The relationship between sound (or ‘noise’/sound pressure changes) and physical things has some similarities to the relationship between gravity and material things. Vibrational air pressure changes in a gas is via an invisible medium (for my purposes here), a medium that can be physically traversed by a material body, or more solid material mass (you, your body-vehicle for example). ‘Sound’ (ignore for a moment the question of when sound becomes sound) can go around things, and through them, but objects change how sound travels.

While some physics are constraining, some relational aspects are something different.

You can traverse physcal space in-large-part courtesy of the relationship between gravity and more material things, though the former could be seen as being more ‘solid’ in another sense. The gas envelope around this planet is held in place by gravity. The gas is sort of soft and springy, and equalizes its pressure. Slower than gravity (for contrast for my purposes here). Point though is you have media you can see through and physically traverse, but in terms of the basics of a physical environment are pervasive and reliable (‘solid’). The relational aspects to more typically materially solid things are very reliably ‘solid’ too.

In a way this lends to a ‘flexibility’ of ‘fill’ computational mechanisms, dynamic so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_holler

It’s my belief there exists an aspect of what we tend, or ideology may tend, of what maybe seen as ‘social’ that really is a special category of ‘physics’, though I am not aware it has a name category.

It exists in the relational aspects between material physical things and the otherwise physical things that are not typically material (or materially solid), though we may focus on the former.

Even humour (a joke) maybe something of the relational aspect of one media operating within another, or the boundaries. A bubbling bunch of neurons interfacing with the world, traversing the possibility space, occupying some of it, that ‘resource space’, which is not completely confined. Music has some similarities IMO.

But I don’t see ‘learning’ as like (entirely) something like incremental constructions. Not all habit, not all arranged neurons, self-arranging or otherwise. Doubtful this’d generate consciousness.

Nah, mental activity is more a media or medium, not typically contrained by brute physics. Traversable media are largely to thank for this. Interactions of. Relational aspects.

When mental resources are employed for whatever, are the compositional efforts merely the resources from an individuals lifetime experiences alone? No they are not because there’s a few millions of years of evolution in there and our ancestors all the way back to slime operated within the physics of this world.