Fuller_on learning

Again in his series of lectures, Buckminster Fuller deals with our way of learning or more precise the way our ability of learning and ultimately our IQ is developed. Fuller himself quotes Professor Bloom of Chicago University and his book "Stability and Change in Human Characteristics". According to Dr.Bloom and neurophysiologists there are built in "alarm-clocks", which go off at unique moments, which put "capabilities" progressively in operation in the new life. At the age of four, 50% of the childs capability to improve it's  IQ capabilities either have been expended or protected. Teaching does not add capability. Teaching can either gratify or frustrate capabilities, and usually they get badly damaged. Usually the IQ is affected by what happens in the first four years. Between four and eight the next 30% of capability to self-improve is brought into operation. At the age of 17 finally, the potential capability has reached it's 100%. 

Fuller comments how ironic it is that, at his time, 3 billion $ was appropriated by the United States Government for higher education, where the most probable self-improvement is 0%. On that basis he believed that the educational system needed soon to be reformed on a completely different strategy, to deal with facts such as these presented by Dr.Bloom .

Dr.Bloom goes on to explain that from birth to four years there are clearly three defined factors which govern the inauguraton of capability to improve IQ. Factor number one is trust. Human young stay helpless longer than any other living species. If the new life has it's utter trust in its parents violated then it is pretty sure to be a dropout. The next two factors are autonomy and initiative, which more or less go together. You do not know how to tell the young life to stand up-it just stands by itself when ready. The initiative is innate. 

_from the essay "Prevailing Conditions in the Arts"_