A ballpoint pen has 200 characteristics, I have read somewhere. The statement was in a discussion of careful analysis, thought and invention used to improve manufacturing and other processes. Who cares how many characteristics a pen has? The point of the statement is to emphasize that any subject, any process, any idea has many details and corners that can be explored. Our minds seem to be summative. We don't have the capacity to keep lots of details in mind for very long. As Ornstein says, we think of issues in connection with danger to us, our loved ones and our plans, hopes, goals. We notice in terms of recency (what was that?), vividness (Look at that!), comparison (My goodness, that is little!), and significance (This changes everything!). But when we pause and apply our minds more deeply, our ability to question, remember, associate and Google, we find much more detail, much more to question, to experiment with.
You could say we are entering the world of research. Little kids learn about graphing data. Elementary school children learn and apply methods of careful experimentation and thought.
Once, I attended a presentation by Renzulli and Reis, the well-known University of Connecticut teachers of gifted and talented educators, those who specialize in teaching very bright young children. (Such kids often have as much trouble in school as those with what we more usually think of as disabilities.) They told about a gifted/talented 2rd grader who was very sad to lose a good friend in a car accident. The 2nd grader applied his brain to the question of what happened to his friend and why. Reading and inquiry turned up the information that his friend's auto accident took place in the area of some bars and it might have been caused by a drunk driver. With the help and support of his teacher and principal, he acquired data from the police on times and location of accidents. Locating the sites on a map, he showed that a preponderance of accidents took place late at night in the town's bar area. The police checked and found that several of the drinking places were staying open later than allowed by law, giving the customers more time to drink. More of them got drunk and created car accidents. Better enforcement of the laws on closing time and traffic laws in the area dropped the number of accidents.
That boy's parents, his teachers, the city administration and the police all had the same data but didn't explore it as thoroughly and with the same depth and imagination as the 2nd grader. There are lots of characteristics of accidents, deaths, and every other phenomenon in our lives and we are increasingly able to study them and their hundreds of variables and properties.
