Our Intelligence is learnt or can it be passed on through the generations.

How our world turned homogenous and became cities? Why do we all end up the same, no matter how hard we try to be different? Do you know when we take photos of homes around the world, we can categorise them into low, middle or high income families by the things captured in the photos as they look roughly the same around the world, no matter which country we are in? If you compare a wealthy person in a developing country with one in New York, or China or Russia, their house will look pretty similar. So what exactly is happening? Why are we all heading in the same direction? Are we all tied together with a common intelligence? Is it passed down through the generations, genetically. Or is it passed down by learning?

This write up is just for us to have a good think over this. Let’s ask questions, lots of it. And have a good thought of who we are as humans. Are we even more collective than who we think we are?

Case for genetically passing on our intelligence through the generations. Bobby McFerrin has quite a solid case here. Watch this, and have a try to sing along to his session explaining the Pentatonic But he does it without saying the obvious. Let’s learn a Pentatonic Scale, and even though not all of us are musically inclined, I am pretty sure you will see what I mean when you are done watching this video. Is music inside us? Naturally tuning into the frequencies and have a common understanding without the need for explanation or music classes. (full video here: https://youtu.be/S0kCUss0g9Q)

Looking from Bobby McFerrin’s perspective and wisdom, we are not only talking about just intelligence being passed down the generations, but knowledge and the information that is found in our brains from birth. Is that possible? There is something happening here. It transcends all geographical boundaries, ages and sexes. Did they just learn a pentatonic scale on the fly, or was it hidden in our subconscious, coded into our brain even before we were born? Is it possible, we have it in us, without our knowledge? Or, maybe on a different thought, information passed on from Bobby McFerrin to us with music as the language and not in English? Can we converse in music? And if so, how? It is accepted that music conveys feelings and ideas. Some music makes us feel happy, sad and so on. In movies, it can be used to highlight scenes, horror movies does this the best, adding another layer to scare us. So there definitely is a language there. But what about as a commutation tool? Can we talk in the language of music?

This is something we have been trying to use in our Math classes as well, dealing with the subconscious knowledge. Can we wake up hidden Mathematical concepts that is passed through the generations? Can we pass on our knowledge without using words. but through Mathematical concepts and its language? Is there a higher form of education we are not even aware of? For example, we have students struggling in school because they do not understand the teacher, why? I can bet that the teacher teaches it as well as any other teacher, so why is there a communication breakdown? Is there something more to teaching than just teaching? Why is it students learn better with a certain teacher than another? Again, let me stress, I think most educators (95% from our experience) teaches to a level where students should be able to do their Math examinations sufficiently well, but how is it some stick and some just slide? The teaching method is sound, the information passed on proper, but somehow, there is a missing component that stops short for these students to perform. We have students that fail in the hands of certain educators, and we do manage to turn the same students around and have them attain distinctions in their examinations. Of course, some do not do well in our hands as well. But let’s say, we have above 90% improvement rate where majority of them does a lot better in 3-6 months of our classes. We can definitely say we try our best, but that does not diminish the fact that their teachers are, as well, trying their best too. So why that difference in marked performance?

Ok back to the subconsious, I believe we have a way that we can get information across in a higher form than we are capable of now. A new way of education other than just what we have been doing in classes of verbal communication and textbooks to pass on knowledge. Let’s have a look at Daniel Tammet, a high functioning savant. He sees Mathematics in shapes, colours and textures. He does that to language too. I, myself listens to music and see colours for certain scales, not all, but some. That is quite common in musicians actually. So I think there is definitely something here as well.

He can learn a new language in 1 week. Icelandic in this video, which is a very difficult language to learn.

He might be an extreme case of what I am saying, learning in a different way than the accepted norm, but he is proof that there is a better way to do what we do in education. In our Math tuition centres, we get our students to understand Mathematical concepts in everyday life so that they see it in a “normal” application form and helps them to see the connection of concept to proof of us. We also try to teach using psychological methods. Engaging the subconscious to learn without realising they are getting better. We seed a thought in them and let it grow. Or sometimes, we challenge their ideas and get them to think a bit more about it. Try not only to teach normally and challenge the norm, because that is the perspiration part, instead, try to inspire. As they say, “1% inspiration, 99%perspiration.” But without that 1%, its impossible to make us do more because we don’t want to do it to begin with.

Again, do we think our intelligence can be genetically passed on? I think so. It might still be hidden from us, but we are definitely connected to the past generations and to each other. There might come a day where we can understand this better, but till that day comes, we are still trying our best to figure out a better education to our kids and pass on our knowledge the best way possible.

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