A Penny For Your Thoughts

Tweet I have just finished reading "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown. Once again, he has given me a great read and has also sparked my curiosity. He has caused me to think about things of which I already had a little knowledge. But he has also motivated me to learn many new things as well.

Each of his books has forced me to stretch my mind. In "Digital Fortress," I found myself wanting to learn more about cryptography. "Deception Point" left me wondering about scientific trickery and political cover-ups. After reading "Angels & Demons," I wanted to read more about the Swiss Guard and the Vatican. And of course, "The Da Vinci Code" led me to learn more about Opus Dei and The Priory of Sion and left me questioning just what was fact and what was fiction.

"The Lost Symbol" has had a similar effect. While I've enjoyed learning more about freemasonry than I ever thought I would, it is the Noetic Science that I find the most interesting. I'm still learning more about it, but the part of the book where Katherine Solomon was been able to weigh the human soul left me filled with wonder. I want to know more about this.

The idea of the human soul having mass started me to think about the weight of a human thought. Thoughts are caused by electrochemical processes in the brain. This means there should be energy involved and therefore mass. If a thought has mass, what would it weigh?

I started checking and could find no information on this. So, let's say a human thought uses one electron and therefore has the mass of one electron. If I convert the mass of one electron from kilograms to pounds and then calculate the number of electrons in one pound, I get a 5 followed by 29 zeros. So if each thought uses one electron, then there are 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 electrons (and therefore the same number of thoughts) in a pound. If each thought costs one penny, then you multiply by $0.01.

As it turns out, when someone says "A Penny For Your Thoughts," we're talking about 5 octillion dollars per pound of thoughts. I'm pretty sure I have had at least a pound of thoughts for which I'd like to be paid. So far, no one has offered.

This is what a great book should do. It should make you think, it should make you study, it should make you want to know more than you do, to be smarter than you are, and to question what you currently know and what you are about to learn. And while I'll never get $5 octillion for a pound of my thoughts, it's still a great thing to think about.

This is why our children should read. Reading is not just for enjoyment, but it's for learning, for questioning, for wondering, for curiosity. If it's also fun, then all the better.

And there's another thought!

Curiosity

Tweet I spent time yesterday with my family celebrating my mother's 78th birthday. My nephew's son was there. He is three years old and, I might add, the cutest child ever. He was so involved, so excited, so curious, and so wanting to eat cake, that we all spent a good deal of our time watching him and enjoying his antics.

He watched Spongebob. He climbed on chairs. He stuck his fingers in the cake. He wanted to look at the gifts and cards. He drew pictures. He was interested in everything...sometimes all at once. He made us laugh ... alot!

When I got home, I started to think about some of the students I had taught. By the time they were in high school, it seemed as if all the joy had left their lives. They were no longer involved, no longer excited about anything, no longer curious. I always wondered what had happened in their lives to make then so uninterested, unappreciative, unmotivated, and cynical at such an early age. Was it some teacher, parent, classmate, or event that sucked the joy from their lives? I never knew for sure.

I do know that every child starts out with a wonderful curiosity that leads to experiences and learning. But somewhere along the line, this curiosity can disappear. I had students who absolutely felt no sense of wonder for anything. Trying to teach a child like this is practically impossible. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get the student interested. I couldn't seem to make them curious. I couldn't make them care.

I found a wonderful quote by Dr. Bruce Perry. "Curiosity dimmed is a future denied." It made me think of all the students whose future's were denied because I (and others) could not inspire or motivate them.

Also, in the article by Dr. Bruce Perry, he states that adults squelch a child's curiosity through fear, disapproval, and absence. He also states that "the less-curious child will make fewer new friends, join fewer social groups, read fewer books, and take fewer hikes."

At some point in time, these uninterested, unmotivated students have had their curiosity crushed. We need to take special care not to let this happen. All children should be encouraged to explore ideas, objects, and activities mentally and physically. They should also be guided so that their exploration is appropriate and safe.

I hope that my nephew's son always keeps his curiosity and enthusiasm. It will be the adults in his life who determine that.

Additional information: "Curiosity: The Fuel of Development" by Dr. Bruce Perry, http://teacher.scholastic.com/professional/bruceperry/curiosity.htm