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John Burk

Is High Ability Necessary for Greatness? | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network - 2 views

blogs.scientificamerican.com/...bility-necessary-for-greatness

ability metacognition

shared by John Burk on 16 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • John Burk on 16 Oct 11
     
    fascinating detailed analysis of the question of whether or not high ability is necessary to achieve greatness. Answer: it's not. 
  • Robert Ryshke on 16 Oct 11
     
    Thanks for sharing this. I enjoyed the post and learned a great deal about factors impacting achievement in life. It confirms my subjective view that working hard is important. It isn't all about native talents that reside in working memory.
John Burk

One Percent Education - NYTimes.com - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...one-percent-education.html

changetheworld college_process social_status best_stuff

shared by John Burk on 22 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • The emphasis on personal achievement has done more than turn the admissions process into a race to rack up résumé points; more important, to the extent that elite colleges set the pace, it is turning the educational culture into one that stresses individual perfection instead of one that stresses social improvement.
  • At the turn of the last century, the influential philosopher John Dewey saw education as a democratizing force not just in its social consequences but in its very process. Dewey believed that education and life were inextricably bound, that they informed each other. Education wasn’t just something you did in a classroom to earn grades. It was something you lived.
  • There is a big difference between a culture that encourages engagement with the world and one that encourages developing one’s own superiority.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Though educators are fond of saying you learn from failure, with today’s stakes, the best students know you cannot really afford to fail. You can’t even afford minor missteps. That is one of the lessons of 1 percent education: 1 percenters must always succeed.
  • Finally, a culture that rewards big personal accomplishments over smaller social ones threatens to create a cohort of narcissists.
  • In the end, 1 percent education is as much a vision of life as it is a standard of academic achievement — a recrudescence of social Darwinism disguised as meritocracy. Where the gap at the country’s best schools was once about money — who could afford to attend? — now there is the pretense that it is mostly about intelligence and skill. Many 99 percenters are awed by the accomplishments of 1 percenters, especially as the gap between rich and poor in SAT scores and college completion widens.
  • The danger isn’t just that people who are born on third base wind up thinking they hit a triple; the danger is that everyone else thinks those folks hit triples. One percent education perpetuates a psychology of social imbalance that is the very antitheses of John Dewey’s dream.
  • John Burk on 22 Jan 12
     
    So how do you introduce these ideas to a leading private school? 
John Burk

Guitar Zero: A Neuroscientist Debunks the Myth of "Music Instinct" | Brain Pickings - 0 views

www.brainpickings.org/...guitar-zero-gary-marcus

deliberate_practice metacognition

shared by John Burk on 15 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • If critical periods aren’t quite so firm as people once believed, a world of possibility emerges for the many adults who harbor secret dreams — whether to learn a language, to become a pastry chef, or to pilot a small plane. And quests like these, no matter how quixotic they may seem, and whether they succeed in the end or not, could bring unanticipated benefits, not just for their ultimate goals but of the journey itself. Exercising our brains helps maintain them, by preserving plasticity (the capacity of the nervous system to learn new thing), warding off degeneration, and literally keeping the blood flowing. Beyond the potential benefits for our brains, there are benefits for our emotional well-being, too. There may be no better way to achieve lasting happiness — as opposed to mere fleeting pleasure — than pursuing a goal that helps us broaden our horizons.”
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