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Join John Rush in a captivating discussion with author and former principal Richard Giordano, as they explore the evolving landscape of education. Delve into the subtle shift from traditional teaching methods to a culture driven by unions and programmed curriculum. Richard shares his insights on the importance of teaching students not just information, but the skill of learning itself, a crucial tool for students at every stage.
SPEAKER 05 :
This is Rush to Reason.
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You are going to shut your damn yapper and listen for a change because I got you pegged, sweetheart. You want to take the easy way out because you’re scared. And you’re scared because if you try and fail, there’s only you to blame. Let me break this down for you. Life is scary. Get used to it. There are no magical fixes. With your host, John Rush.
SPEAKER 13 :
My advice to you is to do what your parents did. Get a job first.
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Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
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Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush. Presented by Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, hour number two, Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Thanks so much for tuning in. We appreciate it today. And again, don’t forget, if anything you are looking for, a replay of a show, something along those lines, always go to the website, RushToReason.com. You can find everything you want there. Our guest this hour, for the full hour, we’ve got Richard Giordano with us. He’s been with us in the past, actually many times. Richard’s an author. He’s done a lot of things in regards to the whole school system and how to learn. And we thought with school starting now, for a lot of you, for some cases, that was either… Gosh, either sometime late last week or this week, depending upon the school district you’re in or even a private school. A lot of them are started back up and you guys are raring to go. Richard’s a pass. I shouldn’t say X because it’s always, you know, once a principal, always a principal, I guess you could say. But pass principal, I should say, Richard. Is that right? That’s correct. All right. What did I miss? What else have you done I missed?
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, I’ve been working, trying to get some airtime, so to speak, with public schools, because the program that I identify in the first book, Supercharged Learning, is learning how to learn, which is what I wanted to bring to you today. Again, like you said, beginning of the school year, it’s a good time to broach this topic. But I had one occasion when I was able to spend a couple of hours with the school district south of here, a couple of board members and their CEO, and they’ve got some things going on right now that preclude
SPEAKER 08 :
active involvement but i’m looking forward to perhaps a time when that would occur really quick in the school system itself i’ll throw something at you because i don’t know we’ve ever really said this and if we have it’s been a while back so people listening wouldn’t remember we can say it again anyway so when do you feel like the school systems itself in this case the public school system changed and didn’t focus as much on teaching kids how to learn in other words we’re going to program them differently when did that occur
SPEAKER 12 :
You know, I don’t know that there’s a point in time, John. When I look back on my career in education, which started in 1964—I’m dating myself now, graduated Michigan State University and started teaching in Illinois, suburbs of Chicago— More or less, I would say rather than a point in time, I’ve seen a gradual slip, actually since not long after I started teaching.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. I don’t know that I can disagree with you in that one. I don’t think there was an exact on this date. No, I think it was just slowly it just started to move in that direction. And now I will say this. I think over the past… decade or two, but I would say really the last decade, it’s gotten really bad.
SPEAKER 12 :
It has. But one of the things I think is kind of important that I just thought of as we’re talking about this is that correlated to the slippage in that which you just mentioned was the increase and the rise of the union movement in the public schools. When I started, that was kind of in its inception. And that has, I think, had a huge impact because we’ve gone from what’s good for kids to what’s good for teachers.
SPEAKER 08 :
I cannot disagree with you on that at all. And that, again, in the past couple of decades especially has done nothing to me. I’ve been on air for 11 years. years now, Richard, and watch it progress even in the past 11 years. And it was getting that way much prior to that a decade earlier. But in these last 10, 11 years, it’s done nothing but continue to go downhill.
SPEAKER 12 :
Sure, and just ask yourself, one of the organizations that I know is near and dear to your heart is the CHSAA. And just think of how they have transitioned. Pardon the expression transition, but that certainly is.
SPEAKER 08 :
It is what it is. Good term.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, they have really transitioned, and it hasn’t been a good one.
SPEAKER 08 :
No, and again, I saw the progression of that even happening when my kids were playing sports, and this would have been, gosh, 2010 and earlier. The youngest one graduated high school 2010, so even that decade prior, I could see the shift in chess and what was going on at that time, and we’re some 20 years later now.
SPEAKER 12 :
Absolutely. One of the other things that really isn’t the topic for my agenda, but I think it’s something that we really need to be. No, go ahead.
SPEAKER 08 :
We’ve got time. Talk about it.
SPEAKER 12 :
That’s fine. Just touched upon is this whole issue now that’s transitioning education, artificial intelligence. And I know you have some opinions on that.
SPEAKER 08 :
I do.
SPEAKER 12 :
I certainly do. And whether it’s artificial general intelligence or artificial super intelligence, it’s all about numbers. It’s all about math. And it is definitely not about humanity and morality.
SPEAKER 08 :
Correct. I agree. And my position on this, and I’m going to hold this position because I feel like there’s been so many things. I’m glad Richard brought that up because I wanted to talk about this today. I had a client of mine today that we were having this exact same discussion on. And it’s true in industry. with AI in general. It’s going to be true in industry. It’s going to be true in the spiritual realm end of things, the church world. It’s going to be true in education. It’s going to be true across the board. And what I mean to say here, and I think there’s a lot of conservatives, Christian conservatives and folk out there that are sort of, you know, they’re using their finger in the cross method when it comes to AI saying, I want nothing to do with it. It’s all of the devil. You know, stay away, stay away, bad, bad, bad. Now, by the way, I’m not disagreeing with some of those statements, Here’s the caveat. It will be if you stay away from it. This is one of those examples whereby, and I talk about this a lot and I’m going to continue to, the church has been absent and Christians have been absent so many times throughout history when changes in culture came and we sort of said, bad, bad, bad, let’s stay away from it. Rather than being involved in affecting it and having a different outcome from it, we led it to its own course, if you would. Well said. This time around, we cannot do that. If we are going to have any say at all and help shape and control what happens with AI, we have to be extremely, if not more involved than the other side does, because right now what AI is doing is it’s learning. Yes, I know that sounds weird, but the machines are learning. And I know that’s a weird concept for some, but we can help, quote-unquote, train them if we stay involved in it. And when it gives the wrong answer, for example, you literally tell it, that’s not the right answer. This is the correct answer. We have the ability to have input into it. We cannot be absent this time, Richard.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah. Well, one of the things that I think – I don’t like the term, but I’ll use it here because you’re talking proactive – You’re talking engagement. There you go. You have agency. Use the agency. You know, John, I wouldn’t mind this artificial intelligence issue so much if we viewed it from the context of an algorithmic support system as opposed to a singularity where it becomes the human. It can’t become the human. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 03 :
Absolutely.
SPEAKER 12 :
You’ll hear people talking about the people like – that are involved in developing the algorithms, they want to become God. But that’s contradictory, because if you really understand theologically who God is, you’ll recognize you can’t replicate.
SPEAKER 08 :
Absolutely. No, and this is where I like your terminology. Of course, you’re a lot smarter than I, so your terminology is better. But yeah, we have to be engaged. Those of you listening, you can’t just poo-poo this, run the other direction, bury your head in the sand and hope that we have a good outcome. If we do that, I can already tell you the outcome won’t be good.
SPEAKER 12 :
No, but I can tell you something else from the inside, having been in school administration for as many years as I was. You will find two things about school administrators. And I’m going to kind of – this is going to sound exceedingly cynical. That’s all right. Trust me. It was based on experience and more recent experience in Boulder County, which I know you know about. But – What you’re going to find in public schooling is administrators are very quick to jump on something that’s new and flashy and exciting. It may be, pardon me, BS, but it does get a lot of play. The other thing is they’re very averse and looking over their shoulders a lot of times when they could do something that really is critically important and highly moral in this age we’re in right now. And one of the things that really bothers me about artificial intelligence, we did a show on this a few years ago, on the issue of morality. Morality, basically, fundamentally, there are some theological implications. However, morality is basically a distinction between right and wrong. And you are moral, you are immoral, where you do the wrong things, or you’re amoral. And amoral, I think, is what’s really coming into play now with artificial intelligence. It does not distinguish between right and wrong.
SPEAKER 08 :
That’s right. It’s neither. That’s right.
SPEAKER 12 :
Now, it slips into immoral, quite frankly, but it is definitely not controlled by the context of morality.
SPEAKER 08 :
I agree. I agree. And that’s where my position is. We have to, quote, unquote, teach it those things, which, again, these are learning, quote, unquote, machines that have that ability. We have to be engaged or they won’t.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, you can replicate that. algorithms and mathematics, you cannot replicate morality. You have it or you do not.
SPEAKER 08 :
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. So again, we’re going to go through some things today. Those of you that have maybe just sent some kids back to school or you’ve got grandkids even going back to school, we’re going to go through a few things today on how to learn. In other words, how to teach your kids to learn, not how to receive information, but how to learn, because those are two different things. Right, Richard?
SPEAKER 12 :
That’s correct. And if I may add one more thing to the issue of AI before we depart that venue, you will hear those who are advocating for artificial intelligence in the schools that our students will have an AI buddy. But keep in mind, parents, keep in mind, grandparents, everybody out there, an AI buddy will not be a moral buddy. It will be an it will be an amoral buddy.
SPEAKER 08 :
Good point. Good point, Richard. All right, we’ll come right back. Listen up. We’ve got Al Smith, who did a recent interview. He is our go-to guy when it comes to the financial end of things, getting you to retirement, helping you stay there. Talk to Al today. Call him, by the way. Just go to klzradio.com to find him.
SPEAKER 10 :
CJ with KLZ. And again, I am with Al Smith from Golden Eagle Financial. Al, we talk a lot about how relational you are with your clients. Why don’t you take us through what an initial visit might look like, whether that’s in the office or over a Zoom call or whatever that is. What does that look and feel like for one of your clients?
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, first we kind of get to know one another a little bit, have a little bit of small talk. And once we move slightly beyond that, I often ask a question, what is your and your spouse’s greatest concerns as you move into toward retirement?
SPEAKER 10 :
What do you think people’s main fear is when they come to see you and how do you help to quell that with them?
SPEAKER 14 :
Many of the people who come in have been listening to me on the radio for years. And often there is some event that the reason they want to talk to me, maybe they have concerns about taxes. It may be they’re concerned about the volatility of the stock market. And so by asking them about their concerns, we can zero in specifically on Because usually people have something on the back of their minds as the reason that they came in rather than having a cookie cutter form that I complete for everybody. I try and dive in more specifically to what is an individual or a couple’s primary concern that brought them in the office.
SPEAKER 10 :
We love that relational aspect and we love Al Smith from Golden Eagle Financial. Al, why don’t you tell folks how to get in touch with you for that meeting?
SPEAKER 14 :
Easy way, 303-744-1128. If you’re driving, you can reach me through KLZ. KLZ has all my contact information. And once you reach out to them, they will reach out to me and I will contact you by phone or email so that we can have that conversation, whether it’s on a Zoom or a long phone conversation or here at the office.
SPEAKER 10 :
Excellent, Al. Thanks for joining us. Of course, you can find Al on klzradio.com slash money. Al, thank you so much.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, thank you, TJ. Look forward to our next conversation.
SPEAKER 04 :
Putting reason into your afternoon drive. This is John Rush.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, we are back again. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Richard Giordano with us today, author of Supercharged Learning and Ineptude, Conformity, and Obfuscation. You got it.
SPEAKER 12 :
You got the word right.
SPEAKER 08 :
I’m learning. I’m doing better.
SPEAKER 12 :
That always triggers you.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right. Let’s talk about this whole idea of we want our kids to be able to learn. And you and I have talked about this in the past. Be able to learn and then be able to, as they go on into life, whether it be the next grade, whether it be college, whether it be that job. whether it be learning how to do something at home, for example. How do you figure things out? How do you learn so that you can apply those things down the road without having somebody over the top of you telling you what to do? Because we kind of have the system today of, oh, this is the answer, Richard. Memorize this, remember this, and that’s learning. No, it’s not. That’s remembering stuff. That’s not learning, and it’s not learning to learn. No.
SPEAKER 12 :
It’s interesting, John, because, and I want to give credit where credit is due here at the very outset. Over 30 years ago, when I was with the Boulder Valley Schools, I attended a workshop conducted by Dr. Robert Marzano, who wrote a program called Tactics for Thinking. Now, that would be considered antiquated today, but that’s what really got me started. And it was several years after that that I finally engaged that process. I changed it around to meet what I thought were better perspectives, not critical now, just different. And that’s what originated the book Supercharged Learning. I piloted what I had learned from Dr. Marzano with the changes I had made. into a program which I think you’ll remember that I worked with university athletes across the country. I was at Notre Dame working with their incoming varsity full scholarship football players, Indiana football players, Central Michigan. I started working with players from all sports, male and female. And that got me interested more and more. I did more reading and research, which then generated the idea for the book, Supercharged Learning. And the book is all about learning how to learn. And more recently, I surveyed a couple of dozen schools, both in the metro Denver area and in different parts of the state. And not surprisingly, this will not surprise you, I don’t think, not one of them had any program to teach students how to learn. Schools generally shovel information.
SPEAKER 08 :
And the student is just expected… Shuffle the information, test on the information. If they pass it, they’re good to go.
SPEAKER 12 :
Exactly. Am I right? Exactly. But no one bothers to stop and say, look, this is how you do it. And so learning how to learn is what supercharged learning is all about. I incorporate athletics because athletics is a powerful, powerful movement today. There was a book written many years ago called Mentally Tough by Dr. James Lohr and Peter McLaughlin. And it’s Mentally Tough. And the subtitle is The Principles of Winning at Sports Applied to Winning at Business. Well, supercharged learning has the same context except the principles of winning at sports applied to winning at learning. And there are so many things that are parallelist. And it’s a perfect connecting point because we’re so athletically oriented these days. True. Everybody’s playing sports or being active. I mean, particularly in Colorado, but pretty much across the country.
SPEAKER 08 :
No, you’re right. That’s very true. A lot of kids will start playing at a very young age.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah. And so my purpose in trying to get to schools is to get them to have a program, have a class program. And the school district I just talked to, one of the questions the board members asked is if I thought it should be at the secondary level. And no, it should start at the very beginning. Because this kind of a program, that which I describe in the book, can be graded by age. And there are certain things you would do with high school students, certain analogies, certain associations that you wouldn’t use for elementary students.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, so give us an example of a – let’s just – we’ll start with that junior high kid because that’s kind of the middle of the road. We’re not talking young. We’re not talking – they’re not in their later teens. They’re in those mid-teens, if you would. It’s still a crucial time for them to know how to learn and how to figure things out. Sure. probably, I almost would say, Richard, one of the key times. These kids are going through all sorts of changes in their life. They’re trying to figure things out. And maybe there’s a correlation here, maybe there’s not. Bear with me here. But you wonder sometimes… That’s an age where kids really do struggle. Their body is changing. There’s a lot of things happening. They’re trying to figure out who they are. Some kids develop faster than others. That can have an impact mentally on kids. And I think you add on top of that, Richard, the simple fact that They don’t even know how to learn and even learn about themselves. Now what they’re doing is taking all of this stuff that now is also shoveled at them like, well, are you really a boy or are you really a girl? Maybe that’s part of the problem is you don’t know who you are. And I’m trying to be very nice and serious here. But these kids are struggling at that time. They don’t know how to learn back to your whole idea and why you’re here today. So they don’t have any grounding in how do I determine if what I’m being told is right, wrong, or otherwise. Am I on track?
SPEAKER 12 :
I think you are on track. But I think one of the solutions to that is a strong family that has a mother and a father who set the standards. In those kinds of homes, I don’t think you’re going to find too many of these children who are wondering what their sex is.
SPEAKER 08 :
I would agree with that. Yeah.
SPEAKER 12 :
So that’s the precursor, so to speak.
SPEAKER 08 :
I would agree. Now, although I will say this, I do think that even in those types of homes, your whole premise of teaching kids how to figure things out, how to learn, how to critically think is really probably the right word for me to use as an employer. I know how… how big of a deal that is for me, but getting kids even at that age to learn how to critically think, well, now they can start deciphering from themselves. They can dovetail into what mom and dad, in this case, have been teaching them, but now they’re solidifying that even on their own, saying, okay, I can figure these things out on my own. I’ve got a brain. I can decipher things. Right. And this is going to sound a little bit bombastic, perhaps.
SPEAKER 12 :
But I need to say that what’s resident in this book, Supercharged Learning, and I’ve learned a lot from tapping into a lot of sources like Dr. Marzano and many others, but in that book is the absolute central kernel of how everyone learns. There’s a lot that goes beyond that, but what I would like to suggest today is is that what I call a process called synergistic thinking in the book is something that if you learn how to do that, you will be able to, just what you said, figure things out. Now, there are a lot of other things that need to be taught in the schools. There’s a whole list of issues that need to be addressed, not the least of which is a concept called evaluation of evidence and then examination of value. If there’s one thing that’s happening today, it’s that kids are being driven by their emotions. And what they need to do is put a stop sign in front of themselves, their hands up and say, stop. I need to think about this, not emote about this.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, man, Richard. And now we’ve got adults even for generations that we could apply this to because, again, going back to what we opened up the show about, this hour about, talking about when did this change happen. start to come about and when did it start to morph? Folks listening, please, we’re not talking about a single young generation here. This whole lack of being able to decipher and learn and be unemotional about things and look at things factually and so on, this has been going on now for multiple generations, Richard, not just one.
SPEAKER 12 :
And it has impacted people. You and I know people who are emotionally based and and not data-based, thinking-based. And they are ostensibly adults. True. So there isn’t, as you suggest, an age category in which this plays.
SPEAKER 08 :
No, everything we’re talking about today, we’re focusing on school-age kids just because school has started and so on. But really, Richard, anybody out there listening, you could apply this to pretty much anyone. And I think for me, Richard, given what I do here, in fact that I’m a business owner, have been my whole adult life and in a way have had to learn how to do certain things, otherwise you wouldn’t stay in business because that’s an area where you really have to morph and learn and adapt and know your market and there’s all sorts of things that are coinciding with that that if you don’t do, you’re not going to stay in business. So for me, it was almost a have to. I didn’t have any choice but to know how to learn certain things and take some of the emotions out of things, especially when you’re trying to make financial decisions and growth decisions and things along those lines. But I also know that sitting in this chair for the past decade plus, man alive, Richard, I have learned a ton from a lot of different people that I’ve had face-to-face talks with, like you. I’ve had phone interviews with and so on. I mean, I am very fortunate to be able to learn from a lot of different people and have a lot of information that I can now decipher was that real or not. You know, what that person just said, you know, can I determine that that was actually factual or not and have that ability to do so because I get to talk to and have the privilege, I look at it as a privilege, to talk to a lot of different people throughout the year.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, well, one of the things you were describing, I think, when you were talking about your business experiences and how you need to comport yourself in that venue, the term accountability. Right. And one of the aspects of what I call the atomic structure of synergistic thinking is what’s called a responsibility frame. And that’s one of the things that I think that is sorely lacking in so many kids today that it’s the dog ate my homework phenomenology. And that is where parents have to basically conform their children to a framework and a way of thinking, not how to think. No, not what to think. Excuse me, I misspoke.
SPEAKER 08 :
How to think.
SPEAKER 12 :
But how to think. And that’s what supercharged learning is about. And it basically has some fundamental parts to it that are associated with the humanity, the human genome. I talk about the human genome, the genome study, which mapped the human genome. Interestingly enough, Francis Collins, who’s been in the limelight for what he’s done with COVID. Right. A bad guy. He was the head of the genome study. So it’s so many things are not black and white. A guy that does some really good stuff can do some really bad stuff.
SPEAKER 08 :
Absolutely. Yeah. Good point. Finding that all the time. Okay, so we’ve got parents out there that are listening now, parents, grandparents, and they’re thinking, okay, guys, this is great. I get it. My kid needs to, I need to learn how to learn. Okay, Richard, how do we do that? How does that get started? What’s the process?
SPEAKER 12 :
It gets started by actually showing students how to do things in a learning context. And again, the synergistic thinking concept in the book is basically the structure of an atom, right? where the center of the atom, in an atom you have protons and neutrons in the center in the nucleus, and the concentric electron rings, if there’s a proton in the nucleus, there’s an electron in one of the concentric rings. If you picture an atomic structure, the nucleus of learning is analogy and association.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 12 :
Basically, there are some things we learn as standalone, but largely the way we learn things is by associating them with or analogy with other things. That’s a powerful, powerful tool. In addition to that, learning is physical, visual, emotional. It’s not linguistic. We get the information through either reading, phonemic, or reading is orthographic, or phonemic, which is linguistically speaking. But we learn because of our human behavior. Built-in traits, the physical, visual, and emotional. And so if we can apply those and wrap those around what we’re trying to learn, you’re going to learn things. And the concept that I put forward in the book, it’s not vulgar, but I call it making up crap. And crap is defined as things that are silly, absurd, no foundation in reality. They’re just nutty things. And it’s so perfectly aligned with where children are today because they’re just naturally zany. When I work with the university athletes, they were basically just freshmen out of high school. I know those kind of people. And they’re wacky. Pardon the expression. No, I get it. They’re crazy as well.
SPEAKER 08 :
I get it. Yeah, I get it.
SPEAKER 12 :
So if you can do that, and one of the, let me give you a strategy. Do you remember when I first came on the show? Gosh, it’s been about seven years now, I think. You and Dan were running the shop. Do you remember that I gave you the name of a structure? Hippocampus. You know? Now, that’s been seven years, John. Yes. You should have forgotten that.
SPEAKER 08 :
How can I forget that?
SPEAKER 12 :
Why can’t you?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, because we did so much that day that I can pretty much even visualize the conversations and what we were doing that day, the fun we were having. And I can even see the expressions on Dan’s face even still today. I know. Yeah, I did too. As we were going through all of that. So it was fun, it was enjoyable, and it’s just one of those memorable things.
SPEAKER 12 :
But you learn something about the morphology of the brain in a technical term that you wouldn’t have known. Very true. You know, another example. Some of these things that I’m talking about now, now I’m going to date myself again. All right. Some of the things that I’ve learned, I learned in high school. What I’m going to talk about now is something I learned 67 years ago. Now, just as you can’t forget hippocampus, which is the name of the structure in the brain that’s associated with learning and remembering, two little seahorse-type objects on the side of the cerebral hemispheres. When I was in high school, a gentleman who was a teacher, a very young man, as I remember, his name was Maloney. And he taught biology, and it was my favorite subject. And he introduced me to some things that I would never have known about, which to this day have now germinated in terms of the things that I’m talking about and doing. But let me put that aside for a moment and tell you now. There was a time in the south side of Chicago. It was an Italian-American area. And that’s where I grew up, on the south side of Chicago. It was a Christian Reformed Dutch, but then the Dagos moved in, and there went the neighborhood. So it was an Italian-American area. And there was a man there who started a restaurant. And his name was Carmine, and he had an Italian last name. And he had an Italian restaurant, but there’s still Christian Reformed Dutch people there. And the Italians and the Christian Reformed Dutch, they were okay, but they weren’t buddies. And Carmine basically started this restaurant. And the thing about the restaurant that was so interesting is that it wasn’t so much famous for the food, but Carmine brought from the old country a proprietary recipe for salt. He called it Italian salt. And it seasoned all of the foods that he put together. And ironically, Carmine’s restaurant, he called it a cafe. Now, Carmine changed his last name to become a little bit more integrated in the community. He didn’t use his Italian last name. His first name was Carmine. His last name was Costanzo. But he didn’t want to use that because he wanted to fit in. So he changed his name to Hopkins. Okay. So Carmine Hopkins had this cafe, which was really famous not for the food but for the salt. Gotcha. So it was kind of, you know, now let me back away from that for a second and just tell you that that story is very important if you happen to be a botanist or a biologist. And you’re talking about plant science because especially green plants. Green plants carry on a process called photosynthesis, which is the taking of nutrients and water from the soil and through the use of sunlight, photosynthetically, they create simple sugars, which is food for the plant. Okay. Okay. Now, that process requires certain elements, basic fundamental elements from the periodic table of the elements in chemistry. There are 13 of them. It would be hard to remember all of those. But if you remember Carmine, C, people called him C. They didn’t want to call him Carmine. They called him C. He was called C. So if you think of C. Hopkins had a cafe which had really good salt. Therein you have the entire formula for photosynthesis. Wow. Because what you have is you have carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, potassium, iodine, nitrogen, sulfur. And then you have magnesium, mighty good, mighty good salt, Mg, mighty good salt, magnesium, And then you have salt, sodium and chlorine, NaCl. You have all 13 elements. Now, you remember hippocampus from seven years ago. I remember Mr. Maloney telling us about C. Hopkins Cafe and it’s mighty good salt. And he drove the system home because he made, at that time, There was a movie going around called Lady and the Tramp.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 12 :
And there’s a cute little scene in there, a very, very dear scene, where Lady and the Tramp are eating spaghetti and they get the same piece.
SPEAKER 08 :
That’s right. Remember that?
SPEAKER 12 :
Yes, I do. And their noses touch. That’s right. Well, Carmine, the guy that owns the restaurant is right there. He’s a big, heavy-set guy, Italian guy with a big mustache. Mr. Maloney made us think that that was Carmine. Yeah. So we had a visual image of what it was. Now, if you’re not a chemist and you’re not in biology, I mean, you’re not going to need to know that. But if you are in that area, you would need to know it, and you could lock it in immediately and easily.
SPEAKER 08 :
Makes sense.
SPEAKER 12 :
Let me give you another easy one that Mr. Maloney just slipped in on us once in a while. When you’re shaving in the morning, John, and you’re looking in the mirror, you’re probably not looking at yourself saying, gee, I really need to know the bones of my jaw and what they are. No. Do you know what they are?
SPEAKER 08 :
No, I do not.
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, there are two of them. You probably know the term mandible, right? But Mr. Maloney wasn’t satisfied with just knowing the word mandible. He wanted us to know that’s the bottom jaw. He wanted us to know what the top jaw was called, and that’s called the maxilla. And the way he did that is he said, you’re going to remember this because Max, he’s a big guy. He’s always on top. Now, I’ve never forgotten that. That’s 65 years ago. Now, when you’re in the morning shaving, you don’t need to know that. You don’t say to your wife, you know, honey, I think what I want to learn today is the name is the bones of the mouth. You don’t do that. But now you’re not going to forget it.
SPEAKER 08 :
But you can apply that to learning other things.
SPEAKER 12 :
You can apply that to learning… You can apply that to learning in the social studies, in history, in geography, in philosophy. There are all kinds of things.
SPEAKER 08 :
Great point. Great point. All right. We’re teaching kids and ourselves how to learn with Richard. We’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere. MahiCoin is next. I keep saying this a lot, and I mean it. If you’ve got a collection of… things around the house. In some cases, you may have been purposely collecting or you may have just acquired some things through the years. But bottom line, you want to know what they’re worth. You may want to turn them into cash. David Gonzalez can help you with all of that. 720-370-3400.
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SPEAKER 08 :
And we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Thank you so much, by the way, for joining us. We were talking about learning, how to not only learn, you know, how to get our kids to learn, but this applies to adults as well. Richard Giordano with us, and we’ve had Richard on many times in the past. And big topic, because reality is we’ve just been talking about it in that last segment. generations of adults that unfortunately, Richard, and I can say this as an employer, they don’t know how to learn. They’ve never sat down. And it’s not because they’re dumb. I want to make sure I’m very clear on that. This is not an IQ or anything along those lines issue. This is simply they’ve never sat with anybody And or had to learn things on their own. They’ve always had information fed to them. In a lot of cases, been tested on the memorization of that information fed to them, but had no idea how to learn. And I want to give a quick example and tell me if I’m on the right track or not. There are, I believe, certain people that do really well taking tests because they can memorize most anything. And if they memorize it, they can go through, they know what the test says and so on. On the same token, there are people that can do really well at tests that might not even know the information, but because they know how test questions are written, and how to decipher where are the dumb answers, let’s throw those out, and typically on multiple choice, which is what a lot of tests are, you can usually get down to one or two correct answers, and then through deciphering which one of these is the most common one that I should be putting down, most good test takers, and you can tell I am one, you can pretty much pass a test without even ever going through that class just by doing what I just said. Am I right or wrong?
SPEAKER 12 :
No, you’re spot on, John. You’re exactly spot on. One thing I want to go back a little bit just so that people don’t, get the wrong impression. The thesis in the book, I mentioned it, the tactic is making up crap. And in full disclosure, that story about the restaurant and Carmine, it’s all made up. It didn’t happen. I made it up. It’s like Garrison Keillor on one of his radio shows says, Lake Wobegon doesn’t exist. I made it up.
SPEAKER 08 :
Right. It’s just something that your mind will now trigger off of to remember that from that point forward.
SPEAKER 12 :
Because it’s nonsense. It’s silliness. It didn’t happen. And yet, it’s just like the hippocampus. I mean, you got that.
SPEAKER 08 :
You still remember it.
SPEAKER 12 :
And the issue, too, about learning how to learn, you’re right. There’s nothing about intrinsic ability that prevents anyone from learning. Anyone can learn if they use the principles in this book and a lot more. I agree. One of the things, one of the great powers in the nucleus of the learning process, the atomic structure of the learning process that I’ve described, is analogy. When I was a younger man and I was going to go to Michigan State graduate school, I had to take two examinations. One was the graduate record exam, and the other was what was at that time called the Miller analogies test. They don’t give that anymore. But analogies have the greatest correlation with success in school. Those who are very adroit at analogies are going to be more successful in learning because it’s the association of this thing to that thing that makes the difference.
SPEAKER 08 :
I never, I mean, I would have, now that you say that makes total sense, I don’t know that I would ever guess that on the front side though, but it makes total sense.
SPEAKER 12 :
But the reason people had to take a Miller analogies test, which was just dozens and dozens and dozens of analogies over a period of, I think, I think the test was four hours. And they started easy and they progressively got harder. And the extent to which you were successful in that was a good barometer of how you were going to do at a university level. And one of the things that’s really important is you’ve touched upon it. is when we sit in a classroom as a kindergartner all the way up to the junior high, through the high school, and then in college, what happens is the information that’s shoveled at you becomes more complex. And if you don’t have the ability to handle it, to manage it, you’re going to have some difficulties.
SPEAKER 08 :
You won’t. You just won’t. You won’t. You’ll fail.
SPEAKER 12 :
And this process, which I describe in the book, and again, it is the kernel of the way it all happens. There’s a great deal after that. But if you can master the techniques that I point out in the book, and they are very easy to master because they’re human. I talk about the human genome and squeezing all the juice out of it. That’s what you can do if you start to use your physical, visual, emotional abilities that are brought to you either through verbally or reading.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, in these last five minutes or so that we have left, and time flies, we’ll have Richard back because some of you listening are probably thinking, man, I need more of this. How do I do that? And that’s going to be my next question for you, Richard. There’s people out there listening. They’re thinking, okay, I’ve got to get on track either myself. I’ve got to get my kids on track. I want them to be good learners. I don’t want them to just be absorbing information, regurgitating that, spitting it back out, not ever knowing how to learn. So how do they make this happen? Maybe they’re in a situation where there’s nobody at that school doing what you and I are talking about. How do they do this? How do they make it happen?
SPEAKER 12 :
Well, one of the most interesting things— Outside of buying the book, by the way. Yeah, of course. One of the things that really they can do, and they can do it better than any teacher their child will ever have, is predicated upon the fact that they know their child better than anybody. They know all the nuances. They know all the goofy things. They know all their characteristics. All of those can be used as associative learning strategies. You can attach things. Give me an example. My late aunt, I won’t name her out of respect, but my late aunt was rather peculiar in And on one occasion, the family was gathered around the breakfast table, and she had a banana. And she took the banana, and instead of eating the banana, she started to mash it so that it would be easier to digest. Now, everybody noticed that, and they looked at each other, and some of us couldn’t stop smiling, but we didn’t say anything. That ant and that phenomenon can be used for me to attach some kind of a learning curve. kernel to true all the kinds of things that parents know is about know about their kids they can engage those the wacky things about their kids the serious things the things they’ve done the people they’ve known the things they’ve seen how they behave all of those are attachment points good point association points good point so no teacher is going to be able to do that better than a parent okay we have a call coming in let’s get a comment from dan dan go ahead
SPEAKER 06 :
So I think what you’re talking about, and I do this, people know me as a dad joke, and they don’t know how I can remember all my dad jokes.
SPEAKER 08 :
You have some good ones, by the way.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes. So the reason why I do that, so we’ll have a conversation, and it will just pop into my head, and I include it in the conversation, and people are like, well, you have such good delivery. But what I do is I have little mental hooks that I use to remember these dad jokes. And what you’re saying, it sounds like on the learning, do you put little hooks on what the subject is and then you can remember it? Is that what you’re saying?
SPEAKER 12 :
You know, you’ve just characterized it perfectly, Dan. That’s exactly what I’m saying.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay, because that’s… And then we all learn different, too. You know, I had three kids. We homeschooled. And my youngest… learn different than my middle one, learn different than my older one. And my middle one was not a school person. They hated school, and they were not good at school. But yet, he is really smart. I mean, he works… He’s more of a hands-on person. So he works on jet engines now. So… And when I was talking to him about jet engines, he said, they’re really simple. To him, they are. But that’s the way he learned. That’s the way his brain works.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, that’s right.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
So where my other ones were more book learning. My youngest one is electrical engineer, and then my oldest is linguistic. But it’s how their brain is wired, and they learn differently. Mm-hmm. And it’s amazing to see that difference. So probably they just learned how to learn with different methods. And do you discuss that in your book?
SPEAKER 12 :
Yes, I do. And in fact, Dan, you’re nailing a couple of topics here spot on. Because the difference in the learners that you’re describing, I talk about in the book. I mean, some people are highly visual. Some are highly tactile, physical. Some are highly emotional learners. But if you know your kids, I mean, you’re describing them quite adroitly, quite well, and you’re identifying exactly the kind of thing we’re talking about.
SPEAKER 08 :
And the difference is, and you know this, Dan, as well as a lot of you listening, the public school system doesn’t account for anything you just said. It’s all one. They’re all the same.
SPEAKER 06 :
One size fits all. It’s a boilerplate method of teaching, which, I mean, I was not good in school at all. I mean, I… My sister was a straight-A student. I was a B to C average student. And you talked about it, John, taking tests. I passed the CPA exam, and at the time that I took it, it was four parts over two days, 16 hours of testing.
SPEAKER 08 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 06 :
And I wanted to pass all four. on one sitting, I missed it by two points. I was disappointed in myself, but at the same time, I, I learned, used different methods to learn because it was a, a lot of information to have to remember.
SPEAKER 08 :
Absolutely.
SPEAKER 06 :
You know.
SPEAKER 08 :
Good stuff, Dan. I got to run top hour break. I appreciate you though. Thank you very much solidifying this. Richard, we’ll have you back, but in the meantime, how do folks get the books?
SPEAKER 12 :
Uh, it’s on Amazon. Both of the books are on Amazon and, uh, Like I said, I think that the book on teacher evaluation is the more serious, more digging in the weeds stuff. But that’s a powerful book, too. But the supercharged learning, I think, is something that you can help yourself learn. You can help your kids learn, your grandchildren. It’s kind of a book that helps anybody who wants to get the strategies and the tactics as to how to do it. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 08 :
I’ll put those links in our show notes for later tonight as well. Richard, as always, I appreciate you very much. Cub Creek Union Air Conditioning coming up next, folks. Any issues at all with your air conditioning, give them a call today. Find them at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 04 :
Now back to Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, about a minute left or so is all. I’ll squeeze in our question of the day here before we close things out. Again, I want to say a special thanks to Richard for joining us today. I did appreciate that. We’ll have him back. Always great stuff with Richard. And if you want to know how to get your kids to learn and learn properly and be able to learn on their own, get his book. I mean that seriously. Yesterday, impossible question, where did the term car come from? It is the Latin term for carus. It came from the Latin word carus, which means wheeled wagon. So there’s your answer to yesterday’s impossible question. Today’s impossible question of the day. What is the first movie to make $1 billion? What was the first movie to make $1 billion? This would be a question for Charlie or Andy. Maybe you could have taken a shot at it, but this is not in my wheelhouse. And Charlie just guessed correctly, which I will not give you the answer because go to our – Facebook page, answer that question there. All right, Jersey Joe should be joining us here in just a few minutes. We’ll get through the top of the hour, come back, have another full hour coming your way. This is Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 1 :
I’m a rich guy
