If you concentrate on one thing?

I've been concentrating on this Crunchie bar for 10 whole minutes but my Jedi mind powers have failed. So i'm going to say no.

MW
 
Genes control just about everything about us.

that's not strictly true.


Genes give you a base but there are so many things that affect you afterwards (including things that only affect you because of specific genes you have, but someone who also had those genes might have never encountered and so be very different).


for example various hormone levels and combinations in the womb are thought to alter brain the brain development of the child.
 
You've got to have a bit of natural ability I think, but I suppose is you put in 100% effort for years and years you probably could be good at anything you do lol
 
I agree that a good base is necessary. In children. The problems start in secondary education with rapidly developing teens. It's supposed to prepare us for the world of work. All it really prepares us for is that we're going to be told what to do by people we think are ********* for the rest of our lives. Spoon feeding rhetoric to adolescents whose brains are all over the place due to hormonal changes.

I'm guessing you haven't been to a school in the past 10+ years?
 
Do you believe that if you concentrate on one area of interest, for example music or something car related like mechanic or automotive engineer, that you will succeed?

Basically if you have any skill/interest/passion, no matter how uncommon it is, can you take it further if you focus entirely on it and earn £££.

Completely depends on yourself as an individual, I've always had a very keen interest in music, I can play a few, read music, constantly have my mp3 player with me so if I was to do a degree in something relating to that I'd give it my best shot and most likley have a good chance of succeeding.

However I enjoy maths as well, yet I'm terrible at Sudoku and can't concentrate for too long in some aspects, so if I was to further my education in that, even though I'd have an interest, I don't think I could take it far.
 
Theres no such thing as natural ability. How does anyone have a natural ability for cooking, football, chess, hacking or or the million other things we do now.

Of course there is, people have a natural affinity for all sorts of things including those things you mention. You can learn anything to some degree or another, however without a natural affinity or the required ability you will never truly succeed at everything regardless of how much work you put in.

Sometimes if you can't sing, you just can't sing and no matter how many lessons you have you still won't be able to sing.
 
Theres no such thing as natural ability. How does anyone have a natural ability for cooking, football, chess, hacking or or the million other things we do now.

Wow, seriously? The human brain is clearly and demonstrably the most varied part of our bodies and fundamentally decides if we are good at music, maths, people skills (?) or any number of little things.

Look at school and the maths problems you'd scratch your head at for hours while the maths nerds at the back would giggle and say how easy it was (it was, for them - they hit their wall eventually though).

How about stroke victims (or other brain damage) which changes their personality completely - going from accountants to artists overnight?

Then there's physical ability - sadly we are not all born equal, we are flawed in so many ways and these will hold many people back from sporting excellence. How many promising young footballers have been written off because they simply can't stay free of injuries?

Still don't get it? Ask ten of your mates if they can see magic eye pictures, the ones who can't have different abilities to the ones who can.
 
Pretty much. But what's changed?

everything you said isn't really true any more.

you don't learn by rote and aren't plied with any rhetoric.


It may be that i focused on the scientific subjects where you were strongly encouraged to find the answer yourself not simply learn it all of by heart, and also taught how to find it they gave you the tools to learn for yourself rather than just a from memory collection of answers for a test.


Maybe i just had good teachers though.


Also our school was built around the 40-50s times as a hospital with no bars on the windows :p



edit: English was **** though our teachers were terrible we learnt to answer questions and annoyingly not the basis of language as i would have liked (as you can see my sentence structure is terrible as we were never really taught about it :().
 
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Maybe i just had good teachers though.

I think that has more to do with it. I focused on English and enjoyed it. Despite my English teachers reputation as a battle axe. Everyone will have a subject that they excel in which makes doing it enjoyable. Maths I'm awful at. Sitting in maths the only thing I was good at was counting the minutes down on the clock on the wall.

Learning by rote and governmental approved rhetoric is still how it's done though. It's not until further education beyond secondary that people enjoy the true freedom of learning for the sake of learning.
 
that's not strictly true.


Genes give you a base but there are so many things that affect you afterwards (including things that only affect you because of specific genes you have, but someone who also had those genes might have never encountered and so be very different).


for example various hormone levels and combinations in the womb are thought to alter brain the brain development of the child.


Fair enough. Yes, I 'forgot' about environmental factors.

But my point is that genes determine so much about us that it's ridiculous to suggest that natural ability doesn't exist.
 
Theres no such thing as natural ability. How does anyone have a natural ability for cooking, football, chess, hacking or or the million other things we do now.

There is a genetic basis for many advantages, and often these advantages can be applied to specific events and lead to mastery of the action with repeating and training.
 
Do you believe that if you concentrate on one area of interest, for example music or something car related like mechanic or automotive engineer, that you will succeed?

Basically if you have any skill/interest/passion, no matter how uncommon it is, can you take it further if you focus entirely on it and earn £££.

Yes.
The difficulty (IMO) is in finding out what that is, mostly through trying different things out and changing one's mind.
 
you don't learn by rote and aren't plied with any rhetoric.
.

I can tell you they do. I worked in a school for quite a few years not that long ago and I can tell you they teach exactly what the kids need to know to pass exams. During my time there it only got worse right down to focusing on past papers rather than actual learning. This is probably why GCSE results are so high (that and they *have* got easier)

What's worse than the above is how competition and failure are no longer taught/encouraged. Thus leads to generations of kids that have not be taught how to learn only memorise and generations of kids that think they can do whatever they wish and will never fail.

Then the real world bites them. Hard.
 
Do you believe that if you concentrate on one area of interest, for example music or something car related like mechanic or automotive engineer, that you will succeed?

Basically if you have any skill/interest/passion, no matter how uncommon it is, can you take it further if you focus entirely on it and earn £££.

It would depend how popular it was and how much uuuuppphhhhh you have with people. You have to be strict with your own rules and not get side tracked if you no what I mean.

You have to be creative and do something that catches people eye and be self developed as much as possible.
 
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Do you mean A Levels? :p

Nope because they are as bad as GCSEs. I'm talking about work & life as an adult in general. Goddess help them if they're all in tears and suicidal because they didn't get 3 A* grades in ****ing General Studies because I have no idea how they expect the put up with the ****storm that is life.
 
Nope because they are as bad as GCSEs. I'm talking about work & life as an adult in general. Goddess help them if they're all in tears and suicidal because they didn't get 3 A* grades in ****ing General Studies because I have no idea how they expect the put up with the ****storm that is life.

Even 10+ years ago when I was at secondary school, the focus was getting you through GCSE. The careers advice classes I barely remember as they were 30 minutes long and so few.
 
Huh. When I was doing my GCSEs it seemed like the teacher was focusing more on getting the rest of the class to shut up. I'd've loved to have been taught 'for the exam'. :p
 
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