The Colander of the Mind

It's time for another Sunday Favorites , hosted by Chari at Happy to Design. I have said it before ,but I will repeat it: I love this idea! Go visit her for all of the wonderful , easy details.

I have never forgotten the wisdom of a statement that my oldest daughter made to me.

It was a reference to being alone with one's thoughts.

By the way, is that a good thing for you, or a not so good thing?

It's funny the items that stay in one's mind, forever, and the thoughts and ideas that simply disappear.

We all have the 'I will never forgets' and the 'I'd just as soon forget that' battle going on.

Negative thoughts seem to have extra staying power- they seem to be born that way- attached to little heat seeking magnets that latch on when good thoughts are struggling to grow and flourish.

Positive thoughts can be more fleeting, more ethereal- maybe they have wings- spiritual wings-which would make sense.

You have to work at hanging on to these. But it's worth it , right?

I have decided to call this elusive condition , this in and out box of thinking, 'colander of the mind'.

That makes me laugh , and laughing is positive thinking at its finest.

We Are All Smart

On NPR radio this morning , guests were discussing if the new journalistic trend to grab readers' interest with lists of 'the best' songs, art, books, etc. has weakened real critical analysis of the arts.

I admit to reading the lists of books that celebrities have selected as their favorites in Oprah magazine each month. Oprah magazine is in itself a list.

Of:

All The Things Women My Age Worry About, Fear, or Regret and How To Erase Those Feelings. Good Luck With That.

Back to NPR radio and my drive down 23rd Street.

One of the Yahoo gurus , a guest on the program who apparently creates these lists, believes it is a way to relate to the masses, to engage the reader, the listener, the art observer and to move away from the opinions of the culturally/intellectually elite. (I am paraphrasing liberally.)

Example: I can apparently, according to my daughters, when I am unable to remember the titles of songs, look at celebrity songlists on ITunes to get ideas. My IPod can then be just like Justin Timberlake's. Fun for me- scary for him.

I see this as saying , I don't need to read, listen, observe to create my own opinions, I'll just borrow yours. And so I have, and I have enjoyed doing so.

This is my version of intellectual plagiarism.

The teacher in me, however, might call this Cliff Notes for the busy thinker.

I almost had a wreck when he explained his rationale.

There has been talk of late , criticism in fact, about the intellectually elite. In my English Language and Composition class , my AP students and I would have discussed the faulty reasoning, the fallacy in this type of argument/criticism.

At home, when I was growing up, we might have quite simply called this bad manners (as in not discussing someone's money, politics, religious beliefs, body size, age, or intelligence ).

I would have expected my AP students to identify the fallacy in criticizing someone's sense of his own intellect . The punchline created by this type of thinking is actually"I am not smart."

When we all are.
Today's world seems to promote the idea that there are no wrong answers, so we get a little irritated when people are supremely confident that their answer is right.

Higher Level Thinking Skills: A Contradiction in Terms

As a high school English teacher for over thirty years, I was conditioned- as were my peers- to do whatever it took, use whatever trick, concept, trend, or tap dance necessary, to get my students to think. Once that was accomplished- according to whatever rubric of the day was being promoted- we were then supposed to categorize the level of our students' thinking:
high? low?

On the side of fairness, it is important to note that the original purpose behind this regimen was student based: to encourage students to go beyond the literal (ie. the girl's dress was red) to the figurative, the personal, the metaphorical (ie. the dress symbolizes...).

In retirement, I have had the opportunity to engage in thinking about thinking- particularly my own. In the world of education, the business of metacognition has very specific purposes. In the world of my thinking it looks something like this:

Me: "Why did I walk into this room?"
Me: "What was I looking for?"
Me: "I have so many books I want to read."
Me: "Do I really have to put on makeup today?
Me: "If one sugar free popsicle is 0 points , why do multiple popsicles have points?"

High? Low?