pam sorooshian

Wes Beach sent this to the HomeSchool Assocation of Caifornia (HSC)
email list and I thought people on this list would enjoy and appreciate
it, too:


"Human learning, [Seymour] Sarason [psychologist at Yale] argues, will
proceed without respect to any predictions of normative measures of
'intelligence' so long as several fundamental and comparatively simple
conditions are met. Of these, the most important is that all students
learn best and most quickly when self-interest orients and drives the
search for information, understanding, and skill. This is equally true
of infants, young children, adolescents, and younger and older adults,
and it applies equally, without respect to assessments of mental
capacity. What this means, if Sarason is right, is that any student
who chose spontaneously and voluntarily, on the basis of his or her own
inclinations and experience, to become a brain surgeon could probably
prepare adequately to enter that career by the age of twenty if those
in a position to support that ambition provided the necessary
assistance or at least did not stand in the way."

--from The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human
Culture, by Frank R. Wilson.