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Preparing a mind for a true education
By Jon Rappoport
I've written a number of articles about the extreme value of logic for children and adults.
In my collection, The Matrix Revealed, I include my basic
beginning logic course. And in my collection, Power Outside The Matrix, I
include a long, more advanced section, Analyzing Information in the Age
of Disinformation.
Here I want to discuss some of the favorable preconditions for studying logic.
The person should, in early childhood education, have done
reading and arithmetic the old-fashioned way. That means step-by-step
accumulation of skills.
For example: arithmetic should take up addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division in that order. In each case, simple short
numbers would be used; then longer numbers. This introduces the student
to firmly grounded procedures, which he practices over and over. There
are many exercises; their purpose is to leave no doubt in his mind that
he can execute the procedures properly. He becomes used to the idea that
following a routine leads to the correct result.
The "new math" and Common Core around-the-barn methods are
absolutely out. Forbidden. They are designed to cause trouble and
confuse. They dissociate the natural connections between numbers and
things. They deploy superfluous abstract processes. They do not ground
the student.
Reading should sensibly begin with the alphabet. The student
learns the alphabet. In sections, he eventually memorizes the whole
sequence from A to Z. He learns to print the letters. He is introduced
to very simple words. He learns to pronounce them. Under the teacher's
guidance, he begins to read from a primer. Step by step, reading becomes
doable.
Reading and arithmetic do not explicitly teach logic, but they do teach processes that embody logic.
I can still remember an early demonstration of addition: 18
plus 16. The teacher was showing us the "carrying" method. Write 16
below 18. Add 8 and 6. You get 14. Write down 4 and carry the 1. Now add
1 and 1, and then add the carried 1: You have 3. You get a sum of 34.
Now look at two groups of marbles on a table. Count the first group: 18.
Count the second group: 16. Now count all the marbles: 34. Now look
back at the addition of 18 and 16 on the piece of paper in front of you:
18 plus 16 equals 34. Magic. We had just been shown a way to arrive at
the correct answer without "counting all the marbles." We were
introduced to method, process. We could use this method over and over,
with any numbers. It was new, it was good, it was reliable.
This is the sort of preparation that clears the way, in later
years, for the study of logic---if logic is taught. Of course, it isn't
taught. It's missing from the curriculum, because logic makes minds
independent and strong and virtually impossible to control.
Now imagine we had learned arithmetic according to the "new
math" or Common Core tactics. Confusion at the outset. Many unnecessary
steps. An attempt to divorce the world of numbers from the world of
things. If, later, we had been introduced to logic, it would have seemed
like scrambled eggs, because our minds were already scrambled.
Now here is the bigger picture:
Learn logic. Learn systems. Learn them well. Learn them step
by step. Become immersed in systems. Then learn about the power of
imagination, where all systems are off the table. Use your imagination
to the fullest. Then become able to travel back and forth between logic
and imagination. Logic is a map of the way physical reality works.
Imagination is a force that exceeds What Already Is and invents new
realities without limit.
This was my guide in putting together my three Matrix
collections: power of logic, power of imagination. Back and forth. The
ability to travel from one to the other, at will. That's why I included
over 50 imagination exercises in Exit From The Matrix.
These are the two great foundations of a true education:
logic and imagination. They are prime, in any era, in any society, in
any conditions.
In the history of education, this has rarely, if ever, been stated succinctly.
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