Wow Doc.
I can see how my comments about destroying misconceptions could be
misinterpreted. Perhaps I need to destroy the notion that you seem to have
inferred from my first post.
While acknowledging historic abuses of "education", I'm not talking about
brainwashing, coercion or manipulation. I'm not talking about
socio-psychological manipulation or water torture designed to break down a
person's resistance to a particular dogma and to insert a preferred
"truth".
I'm simply talking about teaching basic concepts, and the realization that
people bring to the teaching/learning encounter a set of ideas ---
sometimes far removed from empirical evidence.
However, I do think your post raises some interesting questions by
suggesting that nothing at all can really be known. As you wrote...
> I also don't know what a true idea is. I have a general idea
>that all of my ideas can be true if I work to make them so. I also
>suspect that the conceptions that you identify as misconceptions might be
>a true idea. imagine that!
If truth is in the mind of the beholder, abandon all teaching and
learning. There is no use for it, because any and every notion (even
mutually exclusive notions) are true, or could be true if we assume a
different reality. In fact, if nothing can be known as true --- and by
definition, no idea can be "more true" than another idea --- we have
ourselves in quite a mess, don't we. In fact, I would suggest that in the
land of "what I say is true", we are all gods. And to paraphrase the
western movie axiom: " This town ain't big enough for the 4.5 billion of
us."
Even our own founding fathers (USA) held some truths to be self-evident.
And Doc, if there is no truth, why waste your time writing to the LO ?
Grace & Peace,
Scott Ott
scottott@mailexcite.com
http://visitweb.com/scottott
--"Scott Ott" <SOTT@nkcsd.k12.mo.us>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>