I hadn't written here for a long time until I decided today to use this blog to host some of my reflections for an on-line course I'm taking.  I'd like to start writing more again.  So I'll add a thought that excited me this morning.

Why should mindfulness-type meditation practices help a person better control their emotional reactivity?  Help a person be more compassionate and patient?

Reading a book of dialogs between Paul Ekman and the Dalai Lama, I came across an answer that seems obvious to me now, but I'd never recognized.  Most mindfulness meditation practices are about becoming consciously aware of a largely automatic process (breathing, walking, etc).  Emotional reactions are another similarly automatic process, and one that can be interrupted when it is recognized.

I would argue further that compassion and patience are innate qualities, but often derailed by emotional reaction or excessive mental activity, either of which can be attenuated by the light of mindfulness.

Learning Creative Learning - Week #2 Reflections

For anyone wondering what this is, I'm taking an MOOC on Learning Creative Learning and am using my blog as a place to post some of my discussion for the class.

I'm enjoying the course.  It's made me feel excited - that the world is in a very critical time of transformation and that anyone can sieze the opportunity to shape and contribute to the world we're moving towards.

I don't feel I have anything too interesting to offer on my "Gears of Childhood" (lego, programming, stochastic modelling), so will instead reflect on the article in general, together with the week's other readings.

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I felt a little uncomfortable with Papert's assertion that "Anything is easy if you can assimilate it to your collection of models."  He, of course, acknowledges that learning of new models is an important part of the picture, but it still sounds like a case of "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."  I feel that being able to open one's mind to new ways of contextualizing knowledge is an essential part of learning.  Trying to fit every new piece of knowledge into one's extant ways of thinking seems very limiting.

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The relationship between formal and informal learning is very interesting.  Ito considers two paths: placing more value on and providing more support for informal learning, or making formal learning more flexible.  It would be interesting to discuss whether or not there is any fundamental difference between these two approaches.

Ultimately, education cannot be isolated from its cultural and especially economic context. Education has many roles beyond the "pure" sense of discovery and learning: socialization, recognition of capability, sorting into appropriate roles in society, etc...

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One thought: maybe a formal education should really be about learning to learn, along with the "soft" skills necessary to apply one's capabilities.  Informal education can take care of much of the actual "content" and "skills" of education.

Having some experience hiring staff for positions that do involve some technical skills, I have found, again and again, that hiring candidates because they possess these technical skills is a mistake.  The hires that work out well have particular "meta-capabilities": attention to detail, self-discipline, a sense of leadership (more an ability to take ownership of their work domain), and an ability to learn quickly.

More than once, my success in a work situation has hinged, not on any skills I possessed in advance of the work, but my ability to learn the necessary skills quickly.

The world is changing.  Perhaps to quickly for education to "keep up."  Maybe the ability to learn dynamically is the real educational currency of our age.