On The Tabula Rasa of Humanity

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“The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity.” -Abraham Lincoln
Humans, Aristotle stated in his works “On the Soul”, are Tabula Rasa, latin for (blank slate, clean slate, or scraped slate.) This belongs to a school of thought that we are shaped by what we learn in our environment (including schooling and the like) and become intelligent from that point on. In effect, education is the key to continued human knowledge and existence.

I believe this is true naturally. In the state of evolution we live in, the average human is helpless for the first 5 years of their life, while i’d go as far as saying even a 5 year old wouldn’t live very long, let’s just make the cut off of a group 5. ( go read lord of the flies for reference)

Taking the bellcurve into account, general most humans have the potential to learn just as any other human could, just limited by environment. So, genetically speaking, the poor of Afghanistan or South American Amazons, have as much potential as someone who is born of a Yale family. Evidence of such skilled learning comes into play when schools are introduced to poor and impoverished nations. (See One aspect here and Here, of India’s Hole in the Wall Experiment)

There has been much talk lately of changing the education system, whether it is no child left behind, or a government run state system or even, a voucher program. The basic tenet of a government is to ensure the security of it’s people, and there is no better security than an informed and educated populous. A stable, minimum level of learning, well above our current level is important. In the year 1117, (arbitrary date) teaching a 15 year old calculous would have been thought insane, yet we should do it now. Today an average graduate of high school knows more than the most educated person 100 years ago, and genetically speaking we haven’t changed in 10,000 years as a race, just in our level of acceptance of what we can do day to day.

Here are two interesting facts that don’t seem to make sense. We know that in the first 10 years of life, the brain learns as if it were being given steroids intravenously. We also know that during puberty, the changes made made in the body and brain are so overwhelming, even the best trained mind of a teenager looks like someone who’s insane and high. Yet we coddle children and try to teach teens to be responsible. We would switch those, teaching children languages and higher functions of learning and then using the teen years to reinforce those methods and practice. True, i have no data for such things, but i can conjecture just like the ancients did.

Now, i’m not saying outlaw childhood play (infact, as much as my love for technology , i fully advocate the social interaction achieved by face to face interaction that is necessary for our current society.). We have to face that the argument moves beyond nature vs nurture, and acknowledge as a race, we are smarter than we are and are limiting ourselves and our potential in how we teach, and fighting over silly things like Vouchers or Privatization. Still, such fights will continue until something forces us to realize we can do more. Crisis drives humans together and brings out the best of them. Such is the Wisdom of Crowds.

OceansOfThought @ May 19, 2008