THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION
THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION Changing Perception to Action: The Beginning of Mind The great end of life is not knowledge, but action. -Thomas Henry Huxley It was a basketball game with our archrival. The game had been tense and close, and now it was in overtime. We were ahead by one point with only 30 seconds to go, so our best player began to dribble the ball, stalling for time. As the seconds ticked down, players from the other team surrounded him, reaching and pressing close, trying desperately to steal the ball. Both our hero and the ball seemed to disappear among a tangle of legs and arms. Then suddenly he reappeared, dribbling low and fast, free and clear as the buzzer went off to end the game. I was just starting my first year in junior high and had never seen anything like that game. I slept poorly that night as I replayed this dra- matic moment over and over in my mind. I had a ball of my own and had spent hours learning to shoot, but I had never paid attention to dribbling. So the next day, early in the morning, I went to our basement and began to bounce the ball on the cement floor. Visualizing my hero, I had great confidence that I could mimic his skills. Of course, the ball immediately bounced off my foot and into the corner. As I tried over and over, I realized slowly that my remembered image was not enough. I would have to practice. And practice I did. For days! But I was disappointed with my prog- ress. I made mistakes over and over. In a way, I was practicing my 27
28 FROM BRAIN TO MIND mistakes. Then one day I had an idea. Maybe I could watch myself in a mirror. Then I could see my mistakes and correct them. And it worked! I began to improve rapidly. Eventually my parents had had enough. They were tired of the incessant "thump, thump, thump" in the basement. "Aren’t you bored?" my mother shouted down to me. "No!" I shouted back. "Come down and see what I can do!" So she did. But after a few minutes, she just shook her head and went back upstairs. And I kept on dribbling. It was second nature. I had mastered dribbling, and I enjoyed it. I never got bored, even though everyone else did! A s I said in chapter 1, not all of my stories are about schooling. But they are about education. Sometimes they are about experiences that I had when I was of school age and going to school, but still they had nothing to do with school. This is true of my dribbling story. I have used this story here because it seems to have lessons about discov- ery and action, which are important features of learning at the very early stages of mental development. I discovered new things, tried to mimic them, encountered difficulties, met them with new actions, and ultimately mas- tered a new skill, without any formal program or teaching. The timing of this learning experience was not predetermined or planned in any way. Things just happened. Action in Experiential Learning The way our mind develops is through use of the raw capacities of our brain. We try things out and learn from errors. Without trying there will be no progress in the journey toward mind. Experiential learning centers on action. It is action that makes it so powerful. We learn by doing; doing is the experience! As previously discussed, neuroscientist Richard Thompson wrote, "The purpose of the brain is to produce behavior." He goes on to say that behavior is action: "[Virtually all behavior consists of movements resulting from the actions of the skeletal muscles." Action is where the rubber hits the road. Just gathering sensory information or processing that information is of little value without action. We can produce clever ideas, but they are not useful if
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