Reasoning Skills

                Reasoning skills are part of our everyday lives.  It is imperative for children to be taught these things at a young age for many reasons.  Children’s minds are like sponges, they are going to soak up everything when they are young.  Wouldn’t you want your child to soak up essential material that they can use in future scenarios throughout life?  Making sound decisions and logical judgments I would think would be at the top of every parent’s list for their children in early onset learning.

                Basic reasoning skills are broken down into four major building blocks.  These skills include storage, retrieval, matching, and finally execution skills.  Looking at these skills one at a time help us really grasp the concept of reasoning skills in a whole. 

                Storage skills are defined as the ability to transfer information into long term memory and back out again.  This is where new things learned are understood and also placed in combination of things already learned.  These skills are particularly helpful in future years as a student while learning new and revised information, and combining this new information with already known information.

                Matching skills is just that.  It helps the learner determine and break down new information and how to place it with similar information in long term memory.  There are five different types of matching skills that touch on different ways matching is executed throughout the brain. 

                Retrieval skills are very similar to storage skills in where it helps determine how to transfer and how to retrieve or “remember” set information. 

                And finally we have execution skills which deal primarily in coordinating other skills taught and how to structure or build new thinking patterns.  This will also come in handy in future scenarios such as furthering education and learning job skills. 

                Clearly, learning basic reasoning skills at an early age will help anyone achieve long term goals, and starting children out early in the process where they still have many years of schooling ahead will benefit greatly from this lesson.  Many examples and further information about basic reasoning skills are found in this external website.  Reasoning Information  I am also including an image showing the different branches for each of the four basic reasoning building blocks to indicate which skill sets have more steps to them and what those steps are.   That image is seen below.

                In closing, I find that basic reasoning skills are definitely needed for children’s success in their day to day lives.  I think these skills should be taught in school, and I believe they already are.  Children need to have all the ammunition they can to succeed in today’s world, and getting these basic building blocks taught at an early age is crucial.  It’s a great idea that I fully support.

                 

Shop til you drop

            Is it patriotic to shop?  I would definitely say so.  It just makes logical sense.  The more you spend, the more the economy goes up.  The economy goes up, more jobs are required.  The more jobs that are required, the less unemployment there is.  The chain effect goes on and on, but before we get too carried away in the dreams of spending, let’s take a closer look.

            In my opinion, yes, it is patriotic to shop.  But there are so many other variables that have to be seen.  It’s not as clear cut and to the point as that.  Simply, yes it makes logical sense, but what about all those companies that are outsourcing (getting their required and finished products from over seas)?  Are we really just helping out foreign countries when we go shopping?

            Almost everything these days are coming with little gold tags saying “Made in China” or scratch China and insert some other country that’s not ours.  I go shopping a lot.  I’m almost a shopaholic.  I always joke about it with my parents and friends.  When they call and ask what I’m doing, I always say “I’m giving the economy a boost.”  They all know what I mean, and laugh along with me. 

            One of my favorite stores is American Eagle Outfitters.  I pretty much buy everything from there.  It’s a one stop shop for me when it comes to my attire.  Lately, I’ve been paying a little more attention to the tags on the clothes I buy.  Almost all of the tags for my shirts say “Made in Vietnam”.  I was kind of shocked.  Surely I didn’t think that everything I buy was made right here in the U.S.  but it did catch me a little off guard. 

            Clearly, it would make more sense to buy all American made items and shop at American companies but sometimes that’s just not feasible.  It would certainly help the United States more but there might not be an American company for all of our shopping needs.  What do you do when this problem occurs?  The answer is it is impossible.  You’re going to have to shop where you know you can get what you need.

            So the real question is, even if you are a shopaholic, and think you’re doing good by spending, are we really?  Is it really helping us if we are buying products from overseas?  The company may be American, but what if the products aren’t.  These are the questions that I’ve been thinking about lately. 

            In closing, my answer still stands.  I think it is patriotic to a certain degree to shop because we are putting money back into the economy.  Clearly, if everyone hoards all their money, and buries it in the back yard, that’s not going to help anyone.  Like an old quote I’ve always remembered, “You have to spend money to make money.” I find total truth in.   My answer is yes, it is patriotic to shop in today’s times.