12. Academics: Explore the Context as well as the information

We sample the creative and performing arts, literature, history, science, mathematics, philosophy, religion, anthropology, archeology, drama, and psychology. This means, whatever the field of study, we make use of primary sources whenever possible and investigate the work and thinking of geniuses rather than rely on politically correct textbooks and other sources that eliminate passion, controversy, and dissent. By relying on original, creative sources we learn both the context and the information.

Certain personality types, especially those cognitive types that live almost completely in their head and are cut off from emotion and intuition, do well academically in any school. They live in a black-and-white factual universe, so a fact-based education is their cup of tea. Textbooks, replete with data, engage their mind and satisfy a need.

Another type, relentlessly driven to be good and win approval, will walk through fire to win a teacher’s or parent’s favor and applause. They will suffer the “slings and arrows of outrageous” education to win acclaim. Education for them is not a pleasure, but a grim series of tests and auditions for a place in the sun. They often also succeed academically.

But for the majority of students, academic success depends upon whether or not classes and educational projects make sense to them or are intrinsically enjoyable. If studies have meaning or provide insights into their lives, they are welcomed.

The majority of students, nevertheless, require a simple, reliable frame of reference about the world to succeed academically. They need the Context for the information that they are being taught. To learn arithmetic, without the context of how numbers work, is a walk in the dark. To learn historical dates and facts without the context of a particular historical period is not to learn ideology, not history, to be ingested without thinking. What were the burnings issues of the times? What were the yearnings, insecurities, and new discoveries of the period?

If one learns the historical background and context of an accurate historical novel, one learns many of the details of history while reading fiction. There is a transfer of living information when the images of the author align with the imagination of the reader.

The presentation of traditional sciences is ironic because we are taught the scientific method in every science we study, but we rarely or never are given the opportunity to do original experiments of our own. Mostly we memorize scientific dogma in the form of facts. When we carry out experiments we are told what the result “should be.” If our results differ from what we “should have gotten,” we change the results. This is the teaching of dogma and goes against the grain of genuine science, which is open ended exploration.

Knowing the scientific method can have both importance and relevance, especially if the student proactively carries on research to answer questions that has meaning for him or her. It is necessary to follow up our original experiment by refining our thesis, and applying the scientific method again and again. If doing science and thinking scientifically is not a part of our life, science is simply dead, useless dogma that clogs our minds.

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Today many people lack imagination, because television helps makes imagination irrelevant; its images already pictures everything for us. Yet a developed Imagination is necessary to visualize the many aspects of reality that are invisible as well as to see what is possible and to visualize our hopes and dreams. Without Imagination we see a world impoverished, ruled by dogma, authorities, and convention.

And so our teaching methods must engage imagination and our curriculum mast present works of great imagination.

Authentic academics must also teach and elucidate the power of language. To teach students to always interpret things literally is to teach them to be functionally deaf and dumb.

The creative partner of Imagination is Figurative Language. It is the language that speaks to our soul. It is the language of poetry, of metaphor and simile. It is the language of powerful symbols, of impelling images that carry deep unconscious and conscious meaning.

Figurative Language conveys meaning in many other ways; Personification (a type of metaphor in which human qualities are attributed to objects, ideas, or animals; Apostrophe (a figure of speech in which something absent or dead is addressed as if it were present and alive; Synecdoche (using a part to represent the whole); Parables and Allegories (stories with a second, hidden meaning); Hyperbole (deliberate overstatement);Understatement (deliberate underemphasis), and Irony (deliberately meaning the opposite of the literal).

We learn Figurative Language though a thousand striking examples of poetry, short stories, essays, and novels. We master Figurative Language by writing figuratively as well as literally. We can truly beliterate when we have a command of Figurative Language.

From my point of view, the most crucial subject matter of academics, the main investigations to be explored and experienced, should be The Nature of Mankind. Knowing the nature of ourselves and exploring the nature of others, illuminates our relationship to everything else. Without a certain amount of self-knowledge man become disconnected from the natural world and its mysteries.

What are man’s untapped potentials? How can they be developed or released? How can we evolve consciously so as to expand our framework of reality, become united with Nature, and find happiness?

What our deepest needs? How do we fulfill them?

How can we understand the conditions that brought us here into this world at this time? Who are we? What are our multifaceted aspects? How do we come into conscious awareness of them?

How can we understand our personality? How were we programmed by our society? How do we get the freedom to choose our own programming? How do we co-create the fulfillment of our deepest desires.

Academics ought to play a significant role in knowing ourselves as well as our world. We cannot truly understand anything without critical thinking, figurative thinking, and imagination.