Five Theses Regarding Erroneous Perceptions of Psychology

A sample from the ink blot test.

I’ve decided that I want to talk about erroneous perceptions of psychology (as I brought up in my previous post about hot spots in psychology). There are a lot of things that the public thinks about psychology that, while catchy and interesting, aren’t important to the practice of psychology today. One example might be Rorschach ink blot tests. This test was created by a psychologist to see if individuals with schizophrenia would view things differently than a person without schizophrenia. It has now entered the public sphere as something we use to tell us interesting things about people’s personalities, but they are totally invalid and unreliable tests. I feel like when we take things like this out of context, or attempt to boil a complicated issue like personality into a small number of discrete types, we turn psychology into something close to astrology.

I hope to talk about why it is important that we try harder as a society to understand the nuances of topics within psychology because the more we know about psychology the more useful it can be. I think about how much stigma was associated with mental health treatments in the 50s and 60s, how people who went to see a psychologist were “crazy” or you can even watch episodes of Cheers (a show from the 1980s) and listen to them talk about sending Diane to the “loony-bin”. Today I think we are much better about helping people with mental health issues, but I think that as the public continues to really understand things about psychology rather than just picking out interesting tidbits we can see psychology more like a science and less like a mystical art, and people will be better able to use it to get better.

Validating Vernaculars: Five Theses

Each student uses letters like these to shape his or her thoughts. Should English 
educators punish them just because their letters are arranged differently?

Over the last two weeks, I have written about some of the trending topics of English education and linked them to historical and communication contexts. Today, I'm taking one of those topics—validating the many vernaculars and dialects spoken by students—and composing five claims to drive my argument.

First, a brief review. English education has largely focused on instructing students in the traditional dialect of American English, grading on "correctness" rather than actual comprehension and engagement. Researchers are now finding that when teachers accept the individual vernaculars of their students and focus on comprehension, student grades and standardized test scores rise.

5 Theses regarding Computational Thinking

From printing words on a paper to
3D Design and printing, we've come
a very long way.

My recent posts have been focused on hot spots in the computer science field that I have felt warranted further study and discussion. This post however, will address a much broader, and perhaps more relevant topic: Computational thinking, and the history of it's development. Computational Thinking is a mindset based in “input to output” patterns. I have developed five theses to introduce relevant points of discussion. These range in topics, from the history of Computational thinking, to it's importance in society and education today. Hopefully, these ideas will grow into a well articulated argument, showing that the historical development of computational thinking is also the history of human development.

5 Theses for The Failure of Forced Equality

I discussed the principle of The Failure of Forced Equality on my second and third blog posts. I have been discussing the failure of forced economic equality, which is exemplified in the tried and tired economic theories of socialism and communism. Many principles of socialism and communism are derived from the works of Karl Marx, who advocated for the public ownership of production as a way for the working class to rise. Unfortunately, the practice of Marx’s concepts in history in various socialist and communist regimes have failed and have produced untold suffering among the human race. Therefore, I aim to raise many above the dark labyrinths of failed feel-good Marxist policies to the safe and clear ideological highland of limited government intervention in economies.

5 Theses on Potential of Music Therapy

Of all the debated issues in psychology, I would like dive a little deeper into the idea of nature vs. nurture. My personal experience and academic study has led me to the conclusion that human psychological development is strongly influenced by both nature (i.e. genetic and personality factors) and nurture (i.e. experience and exposure to ideas). There are certainly natural tendencies that every person is born with. The things a person does and learns has a tremendous impact on their development, however. 

This is what has fueled my interest in music therapy. It has already shown great promise for people recovering from trauma–particularly neurological trauma. By my own observation, I would argue that the use of music is of great benefit to a person at any time, not only following trauma.

Freedom of the Press: 5 Thesis

A Coffeehouse Disscussion

Introduction

Life as a writer in American Society has never been easy unless you make it. There is history of writers living in Grub Street in the 19th century as "hack writers." A hack writer is one that is paid to write low quality, rushed articles or books very quickly. These writers were paid per word so, as you can imagine, what these hack writers produced was of low quality. There wasn't much freedom in what they were writing at the time because they were writing to survive. The passion in writing that is needed in order for writing to inspire or to change the perspective of others was probably lessened in this process. What was the point in writing if it did not inspire? Can words just be words and where did these writings take us?  

Previous Posts: Hotspots in Journalism Revising Hotspots in Journalism