Bloom's Taxonomy

One of the first things I remember learning about educational theory is Bloom's Taxonomy - that learning and cognitive function is arranged in a hierarchy, from recall through synthesis and evaluation. While the Wikipedia article has a graphic of an inverted pyramid, Bloom really looked at it as a line.

The point is, at one point, I like to think I was a higher-level thinker. Not only was I able to remember and apply, I was able to analyze and synthesize information in order to evaluate it. For a while there, I was kind of smart in at least a few areas. Granted, there were often times I couldn't locate my car keys, but that is beside the point.

Now, so often it feels like I'm struggling with remembering and applying.

I know that a lot has to do with the language issues and cultural differences. And I know that because I'm able to communicate on such a limited basis with most of the adults around me, I'm viewed as being kind of slow-witted, in addition to the whole being both a woman and a foreigner here which means that so many of my opinions and ideas are worthless. So basically, I feel like all my critical thinking skills are caught up in figuring out bus and train timetables, race calendars, and deciphering nutritional information.

And really, I understand that in some ways, that really is higher-level thinking - I'm going from a different alphabet, sounding out words, deciphering meaning because even though I can read the word, most of the time I have no freaking clue what it means. Just figuring basic stuff out does take some higher-level thought, though I really don't want to tell you how long it took me to figure out that "bu-lan" was "bran" flakes (in my defense, there was another word in front of it. It probably means "flakes".)

Anyway, I'm just saying that often I don't feel very smart anymore. This may be the massive amount of Survivor I watched this weekend (Don't judge me!) or just being more than a little tired of my not-too-intellectually-challenging teaching schedule.