Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision

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Our thinking is mysterious to us. I ask my wife my mother’s question—“What are you thinking?”—all the time, and on one level it’s easy to answer: we can spend all day talking to each other, sharing our thoughts. But on another it’s unanswerable. Simply by expressing our thoughts, we change them. To describe our thinking is to domesticate it. This is why communicating with other people is both hard and interesting, and why knowing your own mind can be such a difficult, diverting task. American Psychological Association. (n.d.). APA Dictionary of Psychology. American Psychological Association. https://dictionary.apa.org critical thinking cannot escape being a form of indoctrination. 5. The Process of Thinking Critically In the age of social media, when consuming online information, it is imperative that we think critically. When presented with information, we must be wary of the source of the information, its objectivity and its potential impact on readers/viewers, before we form an opinion on the matter. If we were to place blind faith in all of the information coming our way, without questioning its authenticity and intention, we would fail to be critical thinkers and instead become victims of confirmation bias. I’m sure a lot of people would agree that we live in strange times. But do they have to be so strange that Area 51 is making headlines? And what’s this about fish the look like aliens. September’s Words in the News explain all.

After the American revolution he moved to France, where he served in the national convention and helped to draft the first constitution of the French Republic- despite not speaking French. He published the book Agrarian Justice, which re-introduced the idea of the basic income to western thought. He also defended the French Revolution against Burke in the book The Rights of Man, in which he also proposed a state funded old age pension. There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.- from The Study of Negro Problems UNDERSTANDING A NATIONAL AND GLOBAL RED SCARE/RED SUMMER THROUGH THE LOCAL INVENTION OF SOLIDARITIES. Reading this description a few years ago, I felt at last that I had a term that described my mind: it’s not “empty”; my thoughts are just unsymbolized. But Hurlburt’s work suggests that it’s a mistake to ascribe to oneself a definitive cast of thought. Most people, he’s found, don’t actually know how they think; asked to describe their minds pre-beeper, they are often wildly off the mark about what they’ll report post-beeper. They’re prone to make “faux generalizations”—groundless assertions about how they think. It’s easy for me to assume that most of my thinking is unsymbolized. But how closely have I examined it? In truth, the textures of our minds are subtle and variable. There’s a reason James Joyce needed eighteen chapters to describe the mind in “Ulysses.” Even within a single head, thinking takes many forms. Thinking about American Workers in the 1920s | International Labor and Working-Class History | Cambridge CoreAfter the Tucson conference, Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel published a book together, “Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic.” The book is a dialogue built around eighteen moments in the mind of a beeper-wearing recent college graduate named Melanie. Hurlburt believes that it’s possible to figure out what’s happened in Melanie’s head. Schwitzgebel thinks that a lot of what we say about what happens in our minds is intrinsically untrustworthy, because, in a sense, thinking is too dreamlike to be described. Ultimately, he suspects that “we may be fairly similar inside, though we answer questions about our experience differently.” Perceptual thinking is the simplest form of thinking that primarily utilities our perception – interpretation of the information absorbed by our senses – to create thoughts. It is also alternatively known as concrete thinking because our thoughts reflect our perception of concrete objects, exact interpretations or the literal meaning of language rather than applying other concepts or ideas to decipher the same information. The three primary elements of thought are – concepts, signs/symbols, and brain functions. Concepts are ideas and notions that arise in the mind when we are presented with objects or information. For example, if we were to hear the word “dog”, we would not only think of the animal but also the concepts that the animal represents (loyalty, protection, etc.). Signs and symbols also represent and often substitute actual objects or ideas. A red traffic signal, a danger sign, songs, flags, etc. act as signs/symbols that convey information to our brains. Lastly, and most importantly, the brain is the organ that performs the act of thinking. Objects, language, signs and symbols in our environment, once registered by our sensory organs, are interpreted in the brain to create thoughts. He formalized the concept of Learning-by-doing and founded The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools to experiment in progressive education. By viewing education as the means for learning how to live, he developed methods for interactive learning and a well-rounded curriculum. Problem based learning and experimental learning today owe large debts to his thought. A secular humanist, he was one of the signatorieson the first humanist manifesto.

Joseph W. Polisi: I would hope that musical educational institutions of higher learning around the globe will nurture, not only a complete musician, but also a complete human being. What I mean by that is that today's musician and those in the future should be individuals who will use their art to enhance the quality of life for those audience members who experience the art of music in the time ahead. Today's musician must be proactive in allowing our global society to understand the rich historical and cultural elements of what the musical experience is. These musicians should be both leaders and teachers who take a responsibility to bring the best of artistic experiences, presented in traditional and nontraditional venues, to audiences throughout the world.

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Please list any fees and grants from, employment by, consultancy for, shared ownership in or any close relationship with, at any time over the preceding 36 months, any organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the response. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work. This pertains to all the authors of the piece, their spouses or partners. During my tenure, we created new programs in jazz and historical performance, and invested in the infrastructure of the school, creating a residence hall, and adding new space for the 21st-century curriculum.

Melanie was standing in the bathroom and looking around, trying to make up a shopping list in her head. At the moment of the beep she had a mental image of a white pad of paper (the same writing tablet that she uses to write shopping lists) and of her hand writing the word “conditioner.” Her hand in the image was in motion, and she could see the letters coming out from the tip of the pen. At the precise moment of the beep, the letter “d” (the fourth letter in “conditioner”) was coming out.Philosopher, psychologist, and founder of a highly successful experimental school, Dewey is one of the most influential philosophers you have never heard of. Joseph W. Polisi: There is no question that China is already a major international center for the teaching and performance of Western classical music, and this phenomenon will only grow in the time ahead. I have always seen the Tianjin Juilliard School as a catalyst to develop new educational and performing initiatives in China and beyond. Tianjin Juilliard School is well-positioned to function in this way, and we look forward to substantive interaction with our sister Conservatory's in China, in East Asia, and around the world.