Black Voice News Online - Right Brain Teachings For Black Parolees

Right Brain Teachings For Black Parolees

Wednesday, 12 September 2007

Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D.

Western education is the wrong system for struggling Black Americans because of vast differences in the system of values as well as in the Black and White USA Experiences. African ancestors of Black Americans had a common philosophy of life and pattern of thinking (the Right brain dominating the Left) but each of the 3000 tribes had its own customs. The Right brain is the vehicle for expansiveness into higher and multiple planes of existence regarding things like Love, spiritually, compassion, peace, harmony, intuition, synthesis, nonaggression, and unity. By contrast, these are un-accessible to White males in general because they have traditionally honored only their Left Brains and deliberately dishonored their Right Brains. Europeans during African American slavery shattered the slaves' African thinking structure (among others). The result was a loss of Left brain skills; the prominence of an undisciplined Right brain; subgroup philosophy of life variations; and common self-defeating customs. Coming out of slavery and going through the "ghetto tunnel" which connects the slaves' thinking pattern with that of today's struggling Blacks, the undisciplined Right brain remains as the primary and improper "tool" for making choices, decisions and solutions.

What struggling Blacks need for achieving the proper thinking "tool" is a teaching system which fashions constructive Mental Ordering -i.e. controlling the normal but "wild" portion of their Right brain; cultivating the Rational analysis and "Feeling" synthesis skills; choosing the Right brain (the Subjective) to orchestrate the Left brain; and the maintaining of all brain/mind activity within the frame of a Ma'at (love in action) philosophy of life. When I was in school the European educational system made no sense because of its isolated linear presentations which lacked the subjective and the spiritual. If we think of a subject (e.g. the human body) as a wheel and its components as the spokes of a wheel, it makes no sense to analyze one spoke and then another before seeing what the subject (e.g. body) is about. Instead, Right brain people need to see beforehand the "big picture" of the subject from a relevant human perspective and how it fits into the Universe.

Also in school I was taught the European "Sink or Swim" method-i.e. analyzing one spoke (e.g. geometry) without a word as to where it fit in the "Wheel" or how it was related to and interacted with the other math "spokes." By mid-term I was always flunking the course until I could harmoniously fit into a "big picture" all the seemingly chaotic pieces. Thereafter, although I would "swim" many Black students were frustrated and "sank." To avoid this flunking phase in medical school, when confused or overwhelmed by a subject I would go to the more concise nursing books to get the "big picture" before returning to my medical texts for details. Since it is not easy to discuss multiple inter-relationships of, say the human body, the experiential approach (e.g. dissecting the body) is a good supplement to the "big picture" approach for Right brain oriented people. In writing articles and books, I usually start with the etymological story of the word in order to give myself and the reader an idea of the source of the "seed" of the word's concept; how it got started; and why, when, where, and, in the process, what branches and synonyms resulted. By such an overview of the concepts within the word--and its path--one can keep in mind that there are more "spokes" in the subject than those discussed.

website: www.jablifeskills.com

Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D.