Because much of the content of education is not cognitively natural, the process of mastering it may not always be easy and pleasant, notwithstanding the mantra that learning is fun. Children may be innately motivated to make friends, acquire status, hone motor skills, and explore the physical world, but they are not necessarily motivated to adapt their cognitive faculties to unnatural tasks like formal mathematics. A family, peer group, and culture that ascribe high status to school achievement may be needed to give a child the motive to persevere toward effortful feats of learning whose rewards are apparent only over the long term.

~ Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker Blank Slate Education Learning Pedagogy Self Improvement Tabula Rasa The Blank Slate

Education is neither writing on a blank slate nor allowing the child's nobility to come into flower. Rather, education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to go to school to learn to walk, talk, recognize objects, or remember the personalities of their friends, even though these tasks are much harder than reading, adding, or remembering dates in history. They do have to go to school to learn written language, arithmetic, and science, because those bodies of knowledge and skill were invented too recently for any species-wide knack for them to have evolved.

~ Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker Blank Slate Education Learning Self Improvement Tabula Rasa The Blank Slate

The mind of a baby is a tabula rasa, society writes information on his mind.

~ Debasish Mridha

Debasish Mridha Blank Slate Debasish Mridha Debasish Mridha M D Inspirational Philosophy Quotes Tabula Rasa The Mind Of A Baby

One of the strangest things is the act of creation.You are faced with a blank slate—a page, a canvas, a block of stone or wood, a silent musical instr

~ Vera Nazarian

Vera Nazarian Act Of Creation Birth Blank Blank Slate Create Creating Creation Creative Creativity Creator Divine Form Issue Make Maker Making Shape

My future was a blank slate and only I could write on it.

~ Carter Quinn

Carter Quinn Blank Slate Future

...this cryptic game of hide-and-seek is what makes it one of the greatest historical mysteries. So many of the symbols can be interpreted in so many different ways, there's always the possibility that all we're really looking at is a blank slate onto which anything can be read.

~ Brad Meltzer

Brad Meltzer Blank Slate Clues Conspiracies Conspiracy Conspiracy Theories Conspiracy Theory Critical Thinking Cryptic Following Clues Hide And Seek Interpretation Interpreting Literature Mysteries Mystery Possibilities Projecting Reading Into Everything Reading Into Things Symbolism Symbology Symbology Transference Symbols

I’ve often wondered how the term “'New Atheism”' gained such currency. It is a misnomer. There is nothing new about nonbelief. All of us, without exception, are born knowing nothing of God or gods, and acquire notions of religion solely through interaction with others – or, most often, indoctrination by others, an indoctrination usually commencing well before we can reason. Our primal state is, thus, one of nonbelief. The New Atheists (most prominently Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens) have, in essence, done nothing more than try to bring us back to our senses, to return us to a pure and innate mental clarity.

~ Jeffrey Tayler

Jeffrey Tayler Atheism Atheists Blank Slate Christopher Hitchens Clarity Dawkins Harris Hitchens Indoctrination Knowledge Mental Clarity Misnomer New Atheism New Atheists Nonbelief Reason Religion Richard Dawkins Sam Harris