Choosing Perspectives Over Perceptions!

A Cognizant Approach on Understanding Intrinsic Differences of Perspectives!

Patrick Hall

• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781644163689
• eBook ISBN: 9781644163696
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Patrick T. Hall's informative Choosing Perspectives over Perceptions walks readers through a landscape of terminology that will shed light on the reason why one's social perceptions should give way to a refocusing on perspectives. In the global world of today, perspectives emerge from a variety of diverse factors including religion, education, the use and misuse of power, and social and cultural diversity.While reading this book, these factors and the way in which they interact with perception will become clearer. The social crises that we face today will only be overcome when we are able to begin harmonizing our strengths. When we are able to judge ourselves with the same critical eye that we judge others and when we can see each other for our actions rather than our reputations, we will be able to rise up with more strength and faith than ever to confront the work ahead of us. Perspectives within and divergences towards others have established a standard norm of assumptions that has prematurely birthed perceptions, prejudices, and political scrutiny without veracity into reality!

Section 1

An EPIC Paradigm!

Past and Contemporary Education

Everything that we do as Homo sapiens, since the beginning of time, has been conducted over a process of education, from institutional training to self-nurturing to one’s own adaptation from society because of our cognitive abilities and the accumulation of information that we have acquired through one or a combination of the abovementioned. Nevertheless, the process of learning has to be carefully and subjectively acknowledged as it produces stimulus of thoughts derived from the dispensation of the information presented. The reason why it’s so critically important is because these perceptions, added with beliefs, turns into characteristics of knowledge within individuals. We all have the genetic and anatomical makeup of tissues, bones, and organs, etc. Some organs are more vital than others, such as the brain and the heart. Needless to say; without either one of these essential organs, life as we know it today would not exist. What’s even more fascinating about these two particular organs is that they are responsible for actions related to our thinking, assessments, and emotional instincts. They are the survival mechanism of our being. So it’s fair to say that these two organs have a major impact on how we interact with people or how we perceive things as a method of building knowledge and perceptions.

Another major benefit of the brain, other than providing balance, coordination, and stability, is it allows us to develop our own perspectives on things we encounter from activities and/or experiences. Having this preference to establish viewpoints based off of factors in today’s society is profoundly beneficial in establishing creativity and originality.

With creativeness and innovation, skepticism and resentment arise in others frequently, which is reasonable as they also bring about some form of imagination and ingenuity. But what happens when dissimilarities so immense, on issues within a world of both multicultural differences and the normality of customs, begin to meet head on?

The lack of understanding and acceptance in one’s perspectives have gone so far beyond our own control that we have recognized it as a way of life or sometimes brushed it off as a mental state of denial. Furthermore, we have accredited certain differences to one of the following practices in religion, education, or systemic political / economical ideologies. These factors have become so ideal that they are surely destined to take us on an overwhelming and unforeseeable future which will continue to widen the gap of human unification.

In the preface, I spoke about my concept on what I call an EPIC paradigm of what we are facing as a nation of people. Here we will examine the E factor, which is education and the broad range of ideologies it produces. Education is undoubtedly the backbone of future achievements. More importantly, it’s the learning characteristics and techniques within education itself that affords us the benefit of true knowledge. Things explained or expressed in bias or personal views have a tendency to become fact, depending on the majority. Having a perspective and practicing established views and principles are a given right afforded over decades of sacrifice and contributions. These perspectives often lead down the road to perceptions as it compliments a wide range of opinions and self-assertion. But we must be cautious about the scheme of education and the process of learning. Education, as described, is a process through which a society passes on the knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to another. Learning, on the other hand, is the ability to search out, and often acquire, truths, new skills, and a certain fulfillment of knowledge from the procedure of knowing. It is my sincere hope that those that take the time to read this book do so with a level of understanding and a fair amount of openness to possibilities.

Everyone dreams, and everyone have that what-if moment. In fact, I consistently say the best time to know yourself is when you’re by yourself. Have you ever experienced time alone where you find yourself asking unconscious questions? Such as, what am I going to eat today, or what do I want to do today, or did I forget to turn off the stove before I left home while simultaneously looking up and to the right as if the answer is there? Don’t be dismayed—you’re not crazy. In fact, you’re activating what I call the true inner-self, that second you which many frequently get to experience. That is because we live in a society now where views on interdependence have often been decreased but very much so needed as a form of survival. But we must be conscious that sometimes, that outer presentation of ourselves has a way of challenging our true inner-self, meaning, reflecting ourselves as someone we wish to be as opposed to who we are.

As a young kid, I would often have imaginations of what being rich felt like (of course not having the full understanding of what rich meant). It was that fantasy of excitement that I could ponder temporarily. Growing up during this young age, had me basing riches off of factors such as “what you have or don’t have” compared to that of my local neighborhood friends. Education in my school was not focused much on topics of multiculturalism, advanced scientific innovation, investments in stock markets, or the importance of entrepreneurship. Instead, learning things such as how Christopher Columbus discovered America or learning about all the previous presidents (saying to myself as a young child, Why does none of these men look like me?), or learning about the great pioneers during and after the Revolutionary War that changed our world, and of course, there was black history and common heroic figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, or Harriet Tubman.

Education, and the lack thereof, was the deciding factor if you were going to be someone successful or just an average individual. Education was the key to all unlocked doors, as it would seem. Little, did I know that the learning aspects of it was something totally different. It would be the process in developing skills and creativity to position yourself to be the next Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Will Smith, or Oprah Winfrey—normal people, just like you and I, that have seized the opportunity and advanced their skills and talents to a new level, determined and persistent to make the world a better place and turn their ideas and products into reality. It’s the ability to seize an opportunity while staying connected to this ever-growing conflictual society.

In an effort to understand just how important education really is, we can compare other countries and their realm of learning. In 2015, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conducted a study on the performance of students around the globe. Using the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, exam as a method in examining mathematics, reading, and science, they measured teenaged students in seventy-two countries. Unfortunately, in these fields, the United States did not meet the OECD standards in math, placing forty-first, however meeting the standard in both reading (twenty-fourth) and science (twenty-fifth). Countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan were leading the pack in these three areas. Having spent over eight years in Asia, and over six years in Europe, I can understand why they are at the top of the list. Their education systems are operated on a year-round process, usually involving both morning and evening sessions. Students prepare for school at the peak of sunrise and complete their typical school day with a one- or two-hour personal tutor session. Furthermore, the majority of the Asian school systems focus on broader and more global topics much sooner than that of the U.S. topics, ranging from learning two or more languages, international dealings, and/or digital innovation. Much could be blamed on the fact that the United States has a larger population, which increases the percentage in low-performing students because of socioeconomic status. But how is this so when countries like Vietnam or Latvia whose poverty is much worse off than the United States have a much higher ranking in education than the United States? Is it that our difficulty within the United States lies on the fact that our education remains focused exclusively on external materialistic values (Lama, Tutu, and Abrams 2016)?

It’s irrefutable that the U.S. education system should focus much more attention to providing our educators the tools and resources to dig deeper into more international and current issues that are on the rise with diversity. As I mentioned, education is the most important asset to our youths who are becoming tomorrow’s leaders, yet the individuals (teachers) responsible for this are compensated at a very low and unacceptable wage. Although much progress has been made in annual increases, an article in 2016 by a company named Niche, founded by Luke Skurman in 2002, combines rigorous analysis with authentic reviews to highlight the best places to live and go to school. Niche, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recently released their 2016 survey and analysis, which has determined the starting pay salaries for educators in both public and private institutions. Salaries ranged from $27,000 (Montana) to $51,000 (D.C. and New Jersey) with private schools having a higher difference of about $10,000 to $13,000 annually. How is it that individuals with such high demand for their expertise could be subjected to such low-salary restitution? There should not exist complex inherent motivating factors to those responsible for preparing our youths for every profession within the United States. That’s not to suggest that the self-determination theory (SDT) is not applied. It’s obviously present as educators continue to press forwarded in their profession even with a lack of resources. Doing so exemplifies commitment and dedication and a high level of intrinsic motivation. Philosophers such as Dworkin (1988) strongly emphasize autonomy motivation, which is a direct reflection of intrinsic motivation. I can think of maybe a few professions where people engage as an activity because they find it interesting, and our educators are doing this wholly with self-motivation. There is not one job that an individual currently have or had in the past where they did not have an initial contact with an educator first.

As a professor for the University of Maryland, University Colleges, I teach in the realm of information technology (IT), the most complex and advanced field where staying up to date is not an option. It’s a very high-demanding field, and more importantly, it’s an area where learning is continuous because of both expected and unexpected changes. As an IT professional for over fifteen years, I can say that this new digital age in information technology infrastructure is critical in today’s learning arena and is practiced by countries globally twenty-four hours a day. Unfortunately, with all the perseverance and awareness in this IT capacity, the United States is ranked fifth in 2016 out of 148 countries by the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) with the following countries leading the world: Finland, Singapore, Sweden, Netherlands, and Norway. Much can be the blame for such low ratings, such as, qualified personnel and scarce resources and the focus on significances of what is and what isn’t determined as a priority. Needless to say, these deficits and undermining the important role of U.S. educators ultimately have led to false perceptions by others of who we really are as a society within the United States.

I can attest to the fact that my type of learning and indulgence as a young kid was not focused on much future endeavors. In fact, just being privy to completely unopened textbooks was out of the ordinary. Being a step behind on topics I previously mentioned placed myself and others in a race just to comprehend the basics, even much so while having a disadvantage because of past economic issues, social constraint, or the lack of governmental resources. I think some misguided history has played a major role in our lack of learning. There has to be more emphasis on finding solutions that would alter undefined perceptions of our educational system by strengthening assets that would change our educational perspectives for teachers and administrators with strong support of government officials.

A Brief Return to History

When education is not presented on a universal scale and is left up to one’s acuity, that will be developed from a lack of understanding or misinterpretation. And as we know, the misconception of things frequently from biased perceptions will create complications. If you are one who enjoyed the late ’80s as I did, then you could probably remember the commercial on television where the caption would say, “Reading is Fundamental.” How true this is now more than ever. It allows for the comprehension of perspectives to become clearer and more digestible, even if one agrees or disagrees with it. For example, history classes and textbooks during my junior high years expressed horrific and inhuman treatments that were articulated during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Some in fact so cruel and deep in inhumation that they were either discarded or modified for ease of attraction and acceptance.

Although I can certainly appreciate history and why some events may have been purposely ignored, deleted, or altered from history existence for the purpose of trying to build a brighter and more acceptable future, nevertheless, we must now take residency as to why. These actions were, in some cases, an effort to minimize or eliminate such events that had taken place. That today would be considered as callous. In other cases, it may have been to bring awareness to individuals creations or inventions that may have been falsely claimed by someone else, thereby placing a temporary Band-Aid over a permanent, everlasting wound. There has to be an acknowledgment and acceptance of the past if we are to prevent the same mistakes in the future. We have reached a point in society where truth and righteousness, although however rigid, are now challenged with tarnish and repercussions, contributing too much of the world’s greatest challenges we now face today. Education is undoubtedly the key to many doors of success, but true learning is the knowledge needed to address such challenges.

We can no longer be susceptible to harsh feelings and blind ourselves to reality. Opportunities, resources, and determination have allowed us to highlight and correct such tarnished or false edification, away from days when diversity was not in high awareness as it is today. As I grew older, I began to realize the prominence of education and how history was so critically important, but even more important was discovering the truth behind the history. Exposing the truth about horrific incidents involving slavery and illegal violation of civil and constitutional rights, etc. America, for too long, has not given much credit to non-white pioneers who were other than white that helped shaped this great country. Internal flaws and prejudice such as these are what keep us out of the top rankings of education. We have to deal with unnecessary issues that many other countries do not, thereby applying resources and support to agendas such as injustice as opposed to youth innovation and international studie...

Table of contents

• An EPIC Paradigm!
• Transitioning into a New Era
• Confronting the Problem
• Modern-Day Oppression
• Democracy in Disguise!