Removing the Harmful Teachings of Fixed Intelligences
I regret the Figure that usually accompanies this paper did not go through. It is free to all on request at mayfieldga@bellsouth.net
The false teachings of fixed intelligences and abilities have made many students and adults feel inferior in different areas. This false teaching in school and in society has created much peer pressure and class distinctions. It has created much anxiety, hopelessness, and psychological suffering, which is leading to many escapes such as drug/alcohol abuse, violence, depression, and suicide. I hope you can see the connection between the harmful teachings of permanence in ability and its deadly effect on the mental/emotional health of our students and adults. My theory will provide two large tools we can all use to continually improve our abilities and our lives. This will remove this false teaching from our schools and society.
Our abilities are greatly determined by the amount of, quality of, and consistency of all the mental, emotional, physical, and social support, knowledge, and skills we have received from family and peers from infancy onward. You can see how any inadequate amount, quality, and consistency of any of those supports over time could greatly affect ability and skills when compared with someone else who received sufficiency of those various supports. The good news is there are two, large tools we can use today to continually improve our mental/emotional health and abilities despite our individual environments.
We need to see mental stress more accurately as mental frictions that accumulate in our everyday lives and hurt our ability to think and learn. For example, laughing, crying, running, and swimming are not good stress but very low, if any stress. Here, we are using energy, but we are not creating mental frictions from it. In this definition, stress does not occur when energy is expended without mental frictions. Also by seeing stress more accurately as layers of mental frictions that occur not just as immediate problems but also as layers of subconscious (below the surface) problems and other unresolved mental frictions, we can see how our individual environments then greatly affect our ability to think and learn. We can use this better definition of stress to help students and adults continually improve their ability to think and learn by learning how to more permanently reduce such layers of mental frictions.
The first cognitive tool: stress is more accurately defined as one or more layers of both conscious mental frictions and as layers of other mental frictions being worked on by the mind subconsciously. When we are performing mental work, our minds are also subconsciously working on other layers of mental frictions from various situations, problems, hopes, plans, circumstances, responsibilities, etc. All of us are acclimated to (not aware of) different amounts or layers of subconscious, mental frictions that impede our overall ability to think, learn, reflect, and develop skills over time.
Try to picture an upright rectangle representing our full ability to think and learn (Figure page 6). Then begin drawing from the bottom, narrowly spaced horizontal lines to represent layers of many minute and some more substantial layers of mental frictions our minds may be working on consciously and just below the surface or subconsciously. The space we have left represents our leftover ability to think, learn, and grow mentally and emotionally. The length of this space also represents our length of reflection time or time to think more deeply to consider long term rewards or consequences for a course of action. This shows just how our individual environments greatly affect our ability to think and learn. Persons with higher layers of mental frictions will have to work harder to receive the same mental reward for mental work expended. Ask yourself, which makes more sense, are we just genetically more or less able or do our individual environments greatly affect our ability to think, learn, and develop skills. For our own good, we need to recognize how our individual environments greatly affect ability and also how we can more permanently reduce mental frictions to continually improve thinking, learning, and mental/emotional health.
My theory provides a way to understand and more permanently reduce layers of mental frictions. We can begin to understand a little more each day how the elements of our individual circumstances, responsibilities, problems, along with the weights or values we are applying to those elements are creating various mental frictions. By understanding how our layers of mental frictions are created, we can then learn to understand why a certain layer of mental friction is occurring. We can then learn how to approach those areas that are creating mental frictions in our life more correctly. Then with a small change in a value in a certain area of our life, we can then resolve and more permanently remove that layer of mental friction. This helps us to make changes in values we use to deal with persons, problems, situations and set up better principles of approaching those things that will help resolve other layers of mental frictions. This will help prevent other like mental frictions from occurring in the future. This enables us to more permanently reduce layers of mental frictions that hurt our ability to think and learn. With each more permanently removed layer of mental friction we will be able to continually improve ability to think, learn, and extend reflection time (think more deeply and correctly). Remember, to more permanently reduce layers of mental frictions we need to change the principle or value that created that mental friction, not just that problem to prevent similar mental frictions from occurring. This will more permanently remove layers of mental frictions. This will also improve our sensitivity and awareness to information.
By improving our sensitivity and awareness to information, we will be able to perceive and correct more subtle mental conflicts, which hinder our ability to think, learn, and reflect. Improved sensitivity and awareness to information and elements around us are important for abstract thinking and problem solving. Abstract thinking ability is realized and increased as a person lowers his layers of mental frictions sufficiently. This understanding could open the way for greater advancement or better accumulation of skills by students in higher math, science, and other areas of abstract thought that require more mental energy, deeper thought, and long-term, more complex accumulated skills, over time.
The box on page 6, representing our mental ability shows how layers of mental frictions accumulate and hinder ability to think, learn, reflect and develop skills over time. The top of the chart shows how layers of mental frictions can create psychological suffering and many escapes. Note the line on the top left side that represents our length of reflection time. A shorter reflection time coupled with psychological suffering can lead to many harmful, situational stress reactions and escapes that would not occur had there been lower layers of mental frictions before that situational stress had occurred. By more permanently lowering layers of mental frictions, we can prevent many deadly forms of escape. By lowering our layers of mental frictions, we also increase our reflection time or time we take to think, plan, and make decisions. As a person accumulates high layers of mental frictions, he begins to experience two bad things at once; he experiences psychological suffering and his reflection time shortens - His desires, goals, enjoyments, and methods of problem solving become more simplistic or short-term, less thought-out.
The psychological suffering and much shorter reflection time may then create a need for a catharsis or escape from that high, accumulated mental tension. This condition makes drug/alcohol abuse, teen sex, the catharsis of violence, and suicide more appealing in view of the immediate reward or release from layers of mental frictions such escapes provide. By helping students and adults maintain lower layers of mental frictions, we can help prevent the psychological suffering that leads to many harmful escapes. Too bad this wonderful technique is not being used in school today.
The second cognitive tool: the myth of hard work is beneficial only when performing old work (skills already mastered), not in performing new mental work (skills which are in the process of being learned). There are misguided beliefs regarding mental learning, especially when they attempt to compare mental learning with physical work. As a result, we have many misguided sayings such as "Just believe you can do it." or "Just put your mind to it" and you will succeed. Such phrases sound very good but still follow the harmful myth taught by Sir Francis Galton and still maintained today in our schools.
The attitude of hard work when performing a new mental work actually impedes learning. Motivation in mental areas equals mental reward received for mental work expended. As our pace and intensity in approaching mental work exceeds our immediate knowledge and experience, we create exponentially greater mental friction and further impede our ability to think and learn. This hurts both short and long-term motivation in mental areas for many students. This also shortens our length of reflection time (ability to think more deeply). High layers of mental frictions also cause many students to approach mental work in an incorrect way or try too hard.
When approaching new mental work, situations, problems, or academics, students and adults should begin slowly, even to simply reflecting on the new information they have. This will create a small base area of knowledge with notches to add more information. As we slowly add more information, our area of knowledge will increase naturally and the number of notches to add more information will multiply, thus naturally expanding our pace and intensity of learning. If we applied our present myth regarding mental work and immediately applied a lot of mental energy, we would waste energy trying to place a lot of information onto just a few notches. In this way, we can see how incorrect pace and intensity hurts both short and long-term motivation in mental areas.
By trying too hard, we are overwhelming our minds with information before understanding and usefulness has been established. This is another reason why the myth of permanence in ability continues, because only slight improvement occurs with hard work. We should instruct students to approach mental work and other aspects of their life at a slower pace and "allow more time with less intensity". Note: this is not to say we remain at our same pace but much more dynamic, or, a person naturally increases pace and intensity as knowledge and experience increases.
Students should allow more time to allow their knowledge and experience to increase their pace and intensity naturally. If we take our time, we will make it easier to learn. Then as a person develops skills in different areas, new skills can be learned more easily; basic skills can be inserted into more complex skills, thus pace and intensity will then increase naturally and will factor over time with equal enjoyment. This is very important for long-term motivation in mental and academic areas.
Approaching mental work correctly is important for students to learn and enjoy learning new knowledge and skills (including academics). The little girl said as she learned to do something new, "This goes here and that goes there." had the right idea. In time, she will know where this and that goes and will proceed to learn other, more advanced skills with equal enjoyment. In the physical world, we may work hard, whereas in the mental world, we need to work easy. This is the correct way to learn mental work and to continue learning more advanced skills over time. Just pushing information on children as if they were machines does not help learning but only separates students with present skills from the many other students who have been deprived.
The delicate dynamics of approaching all mental work correctly (including academics) affect every aspect of our life. The dynamics of approaching mental work correctly should be seen as a skill we should use continuously at all times and enhanced with training. By teaching this skill, we will greatly improve reflection and planning skills for students and adults. By lowering our layers of mental frictions and altering our pace and intensity in approaching newer mental work, we will increase motivation to learn and develop more complex mental/emotional/social skills over time. This will continuously improve thinking, learning, and increase the hopes and aspirations of students and adults when confronting new situations, problems, needs, goals, and yes, academics.
Students can use the process of lowering layers of mental frictions to improve intrinsic reward and long-term motivation in academics. Students who begin this process later in life will still lag behind their peers in knowledge, confidence, and experience in areas they are lagging behind. However, using those principles, a person can begin to catch up and even go ahead of his peers. After correcting my speech impediment, I did this.
By showing students how our individual environments do greatly affect their ability to think and learn, students and adults will have far more respect and esteem for themselves and for others. By providing students with tools to approach their individual environments more correctly to continually improve their ability to think and learn, students will have more long-term hope of changing and developing in time, many of the qualities they admire in others. This will release students from the harmful myth of fixed abilities taught in school and improve life for all of us by reducing many escapes and other problems such as dropouts, drug/alcohol abuse, and suicide.
My complete Cognitive tools, my latest version with many applications for peer pressure, class distinctions, Male Crisis, major violence, and other problems in society is free to all by e-mail. My older version can be read from my site at http://learningtheory.homestead.com/Theory.html
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