A Salient Example of the Knowledge-Hunger Evident in all Young People

A Note to My Readers    >>>>>     The name of Joshua Williams used in this article is a data privacy pseudonym.

 

In the course of this past week (from Sunday, 2 April through Saturday, 8 April), I had a number of particularly rewarding academic sessions. 


I've established a very strong bond with Joshua Williams, a Grade 9 student at North High School, a guy whose family attends the church and who has been coming to New Salem Tuesday Tutoring.  I have been much more selective this academic year in taking on new students for the small-group program, having devoted a full day or two each week to research and writing.  But this young man so took to my mentorship and instruction that I told him that I'd meet with him one-on-one when I could get the right time for my schedule.  Last week was spring break for the Minneapolis Public Schools, a week that for the last few years we have also taken a break in the Tuesday program.

 

This young man was so disappointed about our not meeting during break that I told him I'd clear the time to have that one-on-one academic session, and did finally get around to meeting with him on Friday, 7 April.

 

We covered some wide pathways on our two-hour academic journey, reviewing a number of algebraic skills, and very quickly thereafter settling in to read my Psychology chapter from my advanced draft for  Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.  Prior to beginning that chapter, I took Joshua through the essential defining characteristics of the subject areas of the book's focus, so that we devoted about 30 minutes to making sure that Joshua understood the essential meaning of economics, political science, literature, fine arts, biology, chemistry, and physics---  none of which he knew from his five years of attendance in the Minneapolis Public Schools.  Even in introducing the focus for the world history chapter, I went at some length in clarifying the meaning of terms prehistory, archaeology, evolutionary biology, and history.

 

Once getting to the chapter on Psychology, I introduced the essential defining qualities of the five schools of psychology on which I place most emphasis in the chapter (psychoanalytical, behaviorist, humanist, cognitive, and neuropsychological) and gave Joshua a fundamental understanding of the schools that I treat more briefly (psychometric, Gestalt, developmental, social psychology, sensation and perception, motivation, and personality).

 

Joshua was riveted.  He had never had such a head-spinning two hours of knowledge accumulation.

 

I find this time after time.  Joshua is a particularly mature young man and an especially eager receptacle for the knowledge that I possess and have elevated ability to convey.  But the thirst for knowledge is present in every young person who has come into my academic sphere for over forty years.

 

I will via my instruction and then in the gift of Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education satisfy that knowledge-hunger on the part of young people for the remainder of my days---  and I will exert tremendous pressure on putative educators at the Minneapolis Public Schools to do the same.