Let us take another look at Cubed.

Yet another wonderful essay from Cubed - Education and Jihad - Part VII.

Cognitive Style and Education.


Major points:

Our cognitive style influences not only our interest in, and therefore our ability to learn, certain subjects easily but also how we relate to others.

Taking into account different cognitive styles when working with and teaching chidren only makes sense.

Our cognitive style appears to develop in utero. The nature part of nature vs. nurture seems to be where it's at with cognitive style. As cubed points out: "Serious, prolonged abuse or neglect can produce permanent change, but not ordinary child-rearing practices." It appears that we get what we get. (I've noticed with my 2 girls that they both had completely different personalities and it was apparent at birth.)

Our differences in cognitive styles can clash. Knowing our own, and each others, cognitive styles can help in our ability to communicate with and understand each other. It can also help us homeschooling families to understand our children and come up with ways to help them when they are struggling.

A majority of elementary teachers share the same cognitive style. "They think concretely, and place a high value on orderliness, predictability, neatness, personal appearance, strict adherence to schedules, attention to detail, and compliance with the rules by their students. For about half her students, this works well."

Everyone has the same lobes in the brain, using the same chemicals to create electrical activity that can be measured."It is the emphasis on which lobes that are used that produces the differences we observe from one person to the next."

Young childrens' brains are still developing connections at a high rate. They are very elastic and even when a deficiency occurs in one lobe another can take over some of the function.

So! Our public education system cannot accomodate all of the cognitive styles - there are 16 groups. Lots of different combinations. The reason that the public education system cannot accomodate many different cognitive styles is "because the SYSTEM has evolved instead into a “one-size-fits-all” behemoth that has lost sight of the individual." The SYSTEM is the problem and why our kids are graduating high school unable to read. However the kiddies are being taught about being a good worker who doesn't rock the boat, doesn't question, doesn't make any trouble. Obeys.

In Cubed's own words:
"That, of course, is what Islam has done with its children; it has overridden their individuality with the express purpose of creating compliant, don’t-rock-the-boat types who will be good members of the Ummah, doing exactly what their Mullah Masters demand of them. This is easiest to do if you start young, when the brain is still plastic and making the connections that will be there for a lifetime, and also easier among certain types whose cognitive styles tend to prefer the existence of a strong external structure to live by so they don’t have to derive one for themselves."

There are about 5%-10% of Moslem children who will not fit into the mold that they are crammed into from a very early age. They are our hope and we cannot forget them. They have a cognitive style that will not sit easy with what they have been hammered with.

Well - I just knew that we all would want to know our cognitive style - check out this link, take the short quiz and tell me what YOU are!

I am ISFJ - introvert, sensing, feeling, judging. Slight on the ISF, heavy on the J. It appears that I am a 'Protector/Guardian'. Then there were these things over to the side in a box that said, Rational/Idealist/Artisan/Guardian. What that means I have NO idea.

Happy Mothers Day to those of you to whom it applies. God Bless America!