You might have noticed that "Education" is one of the items on my profile and I think I may have something to contribute. My title is "Natural Education". Now you must wonder, exactly what is "Natural Education"? You would not be the first nor the last, here goes.
Us humans have been around a long time and one of the main reason is that parents were able to teach their kids what they needed to know to make it in a dangerous world. For those who could not get the job done, they did not last long nor did their kids. That leaves us right where we are now with a bunch of humans who survived due to "Natural Education". Us humans were able to communicate with each other with languages that all tribes were able to develop and pass on. It was a very very recent event when some one in the tribe figured out how to write down the language. The guy that figured out how to write the language down did "not" invent the language, he just came up with a way to represent it with strange symbols. All humans were able to speak and communicate, but only a few were able to write it down.
Now what can you conclude from the above? The spoken language was the "Natural" part and the written part was the abstract part. Why is this important? For millions of years us humans have been producing kids who could learn the language "Naturally". What we need to think about is how we can build on the "Natural" aspect of the human brain rather than stressing the made up written part. In the past few years, educators have come to understand this factor and now we see things like "conversational" Spanish or whatever language. This new process stresses learning the new language the "Natural" way. You may all know this, but did you know that the same concept applies to many other areas of learning?
How about math or Algebra? Is Algebra "natural" or made up? Is the written part made up, but some where in the past, there was some form of "Natural" Algebra? I feel that it is just like language and "Natural" Algebra has been around a long time. Try this elementary school word problem?
The kids just got back home from tick or treating and had just eaten one of the boxes of candy. Their mother came into the room and found the empty box and asked, "how much candy did you guys eat?" They all said that they did not know, but the mother did not give up. She asked Jane how much she ate and Jane admitted that she had eaten half the box, but did not keep exact count. The mother then asked Bill the same thing and he said that he had eaten half as many as Jane, but did not keep exact count either. The mother then turned to Jill and asked how many she ate and she answered that she had only eaten two. The mother knew that they were all gone, so she turn to Jack and asked him how many he ate. Jack answered that he just ate one more than Jill. Now the mother had her answer. She knew how many each kid had eaten and she figured it out using "natural" Algebra. Can you tell me how many pieces of candy each kid had eaten?
In my next blog, I will show you how any human a million years ago could figure this out with "natural" algebra.
