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cisrael's picture

thoughts on Paul's teaching

I just realized why I can't teach like Paul; not only because I don't know as much as he does, which I don't, but because he is an incredible story teller, and I have never been a good story teller. A good story has suspense, tension, ambiguity, confusion and slowly builds to the end. It requires being patient and being able to tolerate fuzziness and unclarity. I want to know how it ends. I like clarity. I'm uneasy with confusion. I never could make up stories to tell my children, but I loved reading books to them. I like things organized.

Back to this morning, I recognize that we are all storytellers. Our brains are wonderful at constructing useful realities that allow us to survive and thrive in this world. I also recognize that creativity is probably related to how good storytellers we are. I've been interested in understanding what genius is; in figuring out what intelligence is. It may well be, in this model, that genius and intelligence is a measure of the type of storyteller that we are. I wonder, then, can intelligence be taught? Can we teach kids to be better story tellers, to come up with better stories? I know the answer must be yes.

More later once my brain processes all this a bit more---

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