I am reading the book "The Dominance Factor" by Carla Hannaford.

As I read, I had flashbacks of my learning experiences growing up.

What Carla said was that people normally revert to their basal dominant way of learning when taking in new things or when under stressed. Taking me for example, I am a gestalt (right brainer) and left-eyed, while my hand, ear and feet are right-side dominant. What this means is that under stress or when learning something new, my left brain (logic side) will tend to shut down, so will my dominant right hand, right ear and right feet, leaving me clumsy, verbally challenged and unable to pay attention. But, my left eye being connected to the right brain and my right brain, continues functioning just fine!

I was very comforted by this news, because I do find doing Math and English extremely tough growing up, especially when I'm stressed. I cannot take it when people get agitated trying to teach me something new, so I fear and anticipate that moment. Sometimes, I'd rather not ask how to do something, in fear of that moment when I'm left cold sweating, unable to express myself, unable to comprehend even more due to fear.

Whereas, I think I'm pretty fine un-stressed. In fact I do have some moments of stellar in my educational career. Rare occasions when my poem/essay/chinese essay get selected to be paste on the board. That time we won the Rangoli competition and I led the team. Running competitions, I was never the best, but pretty much above average. Getting published in Straits Times were mainly expressing in words moments of disbelief, wonder or anguish.

In fact, blogging to me, is my forte, because it's my joy to deal with this emotional side of me and translate it to words. When people tell me I'm being too open or things to that effect, I can't imagine being less real or honest, unless something is at stake, because possibly one reason why I blog is that it's an outlet of emotional expression.

So what Carla strongly advocates is that, there is no smart or stupid student, but students whose learning and dominant style fit the current education system and students whose learning and dominant style don't.

I can feel her conviction in this:

We are still leaning too heavily on algorithmic (linear, mathematical, rule-oriented) learning, still expecting students to learn primarily through rote memorization, all the way up through college. Why? Memory and linear skills are easy to test and quantify. That's why! These kinds of tests give objective comparisons. But what do they measure? Facts and linear skills are useful acquisitions, but are they the most important part of a person's education? Shouldn't we be more concerned about thinking, creativity, application of knowledge to real life situations. The emphasis on low-level skills and memory testing fosters an emphasis on low-level thought processing - teaching to tests. Consequently, practice in high level thinking can be and often is shortchanged. As Herman Epstein has observed, "More than half the population in the United States never reach the Piaget stage of formal reasoning. We have knowers but few thinkers!"

The stress of constant testing diminishes the ability to see problem solving in a larger context. It turns education into a numbers game where competition, rather than cooperation, is encouraged and information is not moved to applicability or creative thought. If we can advance to an education that balances memory and thinking, and honors each person's learning style, agile learners with valuable thinking tools can emerge. Or to put it more cerebrally, as Bob Samples does: "We discovered that if the right hemisphere functions are celebrated, the development of left hemisphere qualities becomes inevitable."

I badly need to train up my left brain and allow those connections between the left and right to form. And this is ideally done in a stress-free environment. Let's watch and see!

Gosh, he's really good. He did it again, elicited a response from me...

Page 20:

"For practice, look at a head of clover in the lawn. You will see that each head is a cluster of many small flowers, each with its own banner, wings, and keel. As the flowers mature, each one forms a tiny pea-like pod. I'll bet you never noticed that before (yeh!)!"

Since young, it has been my dream to be able to identify plants.

Being in the Plant Systematics Laboratory, it's common to hear the people rattling off plant names and it's very fascinating to me.

It's something I hope to learn too.

Picked up a book off the shelf of the library - "Botany in a Day - The Patterns Method of Plant Identification" by Thomas J. Elpel.

It's a fascinating read. I love how casual and friendly he sounds. Check this out from page 19:

"So how do you distinguish the poisonous members of the family (Parsley Family)? Don't rush it. You might think that learning plants is just a matter of filling up the disk space in your head with data (uh-huh), but there is more to it than that (oh!). No matter what you study, whether it is plant identification, art or math, you learn by connecting neurons in the brain to build a neural network for processing the information (ah). Getting started is the most dangerous, because all the plants tend to look alike - kind of green mostly (exactly!). Just practice pointing out compound umbels everywhere you go, stating with the dill or fennel in the garden. The more you practice these family patterns, the more you will learn to see just how unique and different each plant is (ah, I see. Sure mate, I'll try that out)."

Can you hear me talking as I read that passage? The words in italics are my conversations! Notice how he manages to write and elicit a response from me! Amazing teacher!

The Effort of Thinking

As a University student, let me bravely confront "the effort of thinking". I think Philosophy requires a lot of thinking. Sometimes my mind goes haywire the moment I am confronted with some sort of question. Many times I religiously avoid IQ test, because I do not like the mental gymnastics required to solve problems.

But, research is about thinking.

Don't be afraid of thinking.

I'm back to my thinking through writing blog to encourage myself to think again. And I think I have misplaced my thinking through writing book, which perhaps would be good exercise for me.

I must give thanks for this ability to think and be faithful with it!