In 2014 when I took my diagrams from September of that year to the classroom, I sort of knew the elephant in the classroom was the machines of computers and the internet. I used the student's computers or Chromebooks as one example that proved that bigger, faster, stronger, and smarter were better than smaller, slower, weaker, and unintelligent for mental health. Does any student ever ask for a smaller hard drive, a slower internet service, a weaker wi-fi signal, or a unintelligent phone? I think in writing in the past to the larger audience, I have not addressed the elephant in the room as effectively as when I spoke of my materials in the classroom. In writing this post, I want to address the positives and the negatives of the elephant in the room.
The machine as understanding
When it comes to big, computers can do much bigger things than previously in an even smaller size. A laptop today dwarfs the bigness of past computers in what load of data it can handle and operations it can perform. The internet's numbers are incredible. Look how many hits can happen in less than seconds for an internet search. These numbers put your neighbor's volumes in a library to shame in some cases. So while the quality of information may suffer, the sheer number of sources is enormous. The students know this. The adults cry foul due to lack of quality. While I agree that quality is important alongside of quantity, the combined bigness is staggering after factoring in quality.
The negative though in understanding is the quality part. It is a problem. When I did research on mental health and on high end scholarship for discovering the meanings of words in a biblical text, I found that the best quality research was not always accessible on line. I had to go off line and submit an inter-library loan request to find a lot of primary materials. The internet though often did alert me to the places to go. It still has a quality than my old-fashioned research efforts could not touch for size! So can the internet be bigger in quality? Yes, it can. Can my Bible program called BibleWorks be of higher quality. Yes, it can. It probably will be in the future
The machine as inspiring
The speed of an internet search engine is inspiring. It shows off speed like the fastest man or woman cannot touch. It probably sets new world records for speed every day! The problem is that many don't understand the speed part.
People are not seeing how the shift from water to wind to sound to light to electricity has changed the speed of life. These different means brought us boats, then cars, then planes, then lasers, and then the internet. People don't know that the speed of electricity when it comes to signal speed is in trillions of kilometers per hour. No boat or water can touch that speed! Not even light can touch it as only millions of miles per hour.
That jump from the speed of light to the speed of electricity is incredible. It is inspiring. Think of how you can call the person standing next to you in the same room and the signal can travel from your phone to a cell phone tower to a satellite and to their phone in a second or less. I can't run that fast!! Hence the weakness of inspiring speed.
The negative though is that some people let this part of the elephant in the room bother them. They try to match it's faster by going faster too. The problem is that while our minds can do things in a split second, our bodies consist of a lot more than a mind - there is bodily strength, a soul for connecting, and a heart for counting. Our selves are made up of more than electricity, we also have water, wind, sound, and light to deal with as well. They operate at a diverse # of speeds. A human needs a variable speed control to match up with real life. One speed - like that of electricity will not cut it.
On the most serious level, the elephant in the room may be the major contributor to why manic-depression and anxiety are on the rise while psychology seems to have contributed on this topic some great insight. I think the elephant speaks louder than text after text on mental health that does not recognize the machine leading to us living too fast (or in rebellion against machines - too slow). The machine has exposed a weakness in our thinking, the literature does not address well.
I used to think that Aesop's Fable of the Tortoise and the Hare with the moral of "slow and steady" was at least an elephant in the room. Maybe as a kitten. Likewise, I thought all the psychological literature on slow down to fight manic-depression and anxiety might be a mouse in room. I now know they are no longer very large. The machine in the room dominates. It says fast is better than slow, but its lesson can lead to everyone trying to make all things like the electronics of our day.
The machine as motivating
The machine can make things that used to be difficult, easy. I think of how difficult it used to be to make a negative of a photo and get it to a friend. Now, I can turn to my printer with its scanner and take photos from the early 1900s and share them on Facebook with many of my family members. I can easily find out if my library has a book I am looking for or I can go to WorldCat and find books and information on them that took weeks and months previously as I waited for the library to find things for me.
This motivates us to do things that are now easier than before. It can make the once difficult easy. I don't understand why sometimes it makes things more difficult instead. Well actually I do.
The weakness of machines is that the inventors or techies think that strong is the same as big. No. Let me say it again. No. Strength is not another kind of big. It is instead flexibility. It sees the yoga master as the strongest man in the world. I think the strongest man competitions should be called the biggest man competitions! But back to computers. They lack flexibility, sometimes making the once easy now more difficult. Go figure!
Still, at the end of the day, they overall contribute flexibility, the ability to do the once impossible. Yeah, baby! I'm motivated!
The machine as captivating
Walk into any room of people and machines called computers, tablets, and cell phones and you'll see people captivated by the machines. If some of the people are of a certain kind - a celebrity of some kind, then the people might still be captivated by people. The machines show us the previously unseen. Teachers can do the same, but sometimes they lose sight of their unique place in the world of training the mind to be captivated. Science captivates by showing the previously unknown.
People are captivated by the smart person who puts old wine in old wine skins - that hot rod Lincoln and new wine in new wine skins - new software in new hardware. It is taking the concealed and making it revealed. It is taking the once hidden and making it known. Our machines - the electronics - can do just that. So can great teachers and parents.
The problem is when the teachers and people only pay attention to the old and not the new. They try to put the new into the old or the old into new. They can't see. They are blind. People who can see usually don't follow the blind.
The problem is that computers and the internet are also blind. They can be used for seeing or for blinding. They can focus attention and captivate for good reasons or they can distract us from the bigger things in life. Can we see? Can we prevent distractions and know to see what matters most? Can we see what machines help us see and what they blind us to seeing?
Conclusion
So the elephant in the room of machines and electronics must be treated with respect. It can be seen as understanding, inspiring, motivating, and captivating. You have to respect anything or anyone that does those things. There is no point in trying to ignore something so big, so fast, a little strong, and scientifically smart.
You can try to say that small is better, slow is better, weak is better and unintelligent is better; but you will lose. The lessons are elementary, really. Every child knows that big, fast, strong, and smart is better. Why else do they look up to the adults? Why don't you agree with artificial intelligence and put natural intelligence back into that mind of yours? It feels good doesn't it. Don't ignore the elephant, see it. Now that you see it, you are back in charge of your decisions.
Sincerely,
Jon
Showing posts with label communicate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communicate. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Friday, November 20, 2015
Communication Basics: When Excess Means Too Much of a Good Thing
There are many good things that can be destroyed by excess. An apple is a good thing, but a diet of only apples is not. Protein is a good thing, but just hamburgers at McDonald's for one's entire diet is not! You get the point. Well, I want you to get to point about a set of excesses in the case of mental health and not just physical health.
My book on mental health, Mental Health for Everyone, deals a lot with excesses and how to beat the problem of excess. It deals with it through the principle of intervals. One gets bigger, faster, stronger, and smarter little by little, moment by moment, step by step, and bit by bit. The attainments that are every child's dream - to become bigger, faster, stronger, and smarter, don't occur overnight except in fairy tales but they can begin that night. So my approach in this piece will be to get at the basics of defeating excesses!
Let's bulldoze them down together, shall we? There are four major sets of excesses. They are:
1) expert excess or amateur excess
2) manic depression excess or procrastination-sleep excess
3) easy street excess or difficulty street excess
4) know everything excess and know nothing excess
You probably have not heard of some of these under these names, but I would guess everyone has experienced these excesses whether it be at school, at work, at play, or at a religious gathering.
Let's deal with each one, one at a time, starting with the first one. As I deal with each I will be more specific about each generalized grouping.
Expert excess I call "expertitis". It has a close cousin, a fellow excess, called "amateuritis". They both fail to lift a light weight more than previous lifts that is necessary to get bigger. Excess expertise fastens too heavy a load on people's backs. Excess amateurism fastens too light of a load on people's backs. They both look foolish, yet day after day the king doesn't realize he's wearing no clothes! We want people's minds to grow into a greater understanding - it is just that it has to happen little by light to remain light so that people reach a bigger understanding. The excesses make understanding smaller. We need to change this in terms of quantity and quality from both excesses.
Manic-depression excess is what it sounds like. It is both too high and too low. It goes outside actual human limitations. It has a close cousin, a fellow excess, called procrastination-slowness. The latter pair is my own creation. Isn't it ironic that on the internet I can plenty of articles on manic-depression and on bipolar that are sicknesses, but I could not find an article on what is its healthy opposite nor on its close cousin of excess? I had to go to other sources than psychology for a serious concern about being a procrastinator or being too slow - a slow poke. You find this in the business world primarily. This is interesting because the success of high technology has led us into a steady diet of fast and steady. Also interesting is that a child's fairy tale has taken hold in psychological circles. It is part of Aesop's fables and it is called, The Tortoise and the Hare. This story's fabled moral is a steady diet of "slow and steady wins the race". Not according to the internet and the rest of technology! The excesses of both stories - Aesop's and the internet's - are woven into too much of our thinking. We are people that should be fast and variable - able to rest, sprint, run, or walk depending on the distance and time. We aren't doing this! We need to break free in terms of placement and timing from both excesses.
Easy excess can be called easy street. Difficult excess, its close cousin, can be called difficult street. When it comes to increments it should be easy, but this should not lead to an avoidance of difficulty. Eventually in our jobs over time, we can handle more difficult processes than we could at first. If we try to master everything in the beginning, it all becomes difficult and then some even quit. In other cases, employees can be with a company for years and never master the harder parts of a job. It should be that we are moving from easy to easy step by step, but not all in one step and not with the end goal that we cannot master hard things. The greats make the difficult look easy. Look at your greatest musical artists and at your best athletes - they make even the difficult look easy - so it is both and not excess! We need to free ourselves from the popular approaches to methods and purposes where we too one day can make the difficult look easy.
The I know everything mentality and its close cousin, I know nothing mentality are both dangerous. We have got people who run around claiming to know what they don't know. I see this a lot with predictions of the future. Some things you can know about tomorrow given that certain conditions remain constant, but you don't know that they necessarily will. There are people who claim to know the end of the earth. I thought we we human beings who don't know everything? Having said that though, we also like to play at knowing nothing. Really? You really don't know. Some of this play borders on pathetic. If we've had teachers, we ought to know some things as do others, we ought to know things others don't, we ought to not know things others do know, and there ought to be things neither person knows; but this last category is only one of four - not the whole deal. We need to be learning new things in terms of things and kinds and not just be stuck with two old bad cousins.
It is time to close up this discussion. The point in all of it is to be healthy by avoiding excess. This article for example can only be so long. We need to avoid the excesses of experts and amateurs and step up our understanding little by little. We need to avoid the excesses of the Manic -Depression and the Procrastination-Slow and step up our inspiring moment by moment. We need to avoid the excesses of Easy Street and Difficult Street (it might be also called Baker Street with the difficult hero, Sherlock Holmes, in room 212B). We also need to avoid the excesses of know-it-all and know-it-not at all and develop the captivating bit by bit If you avoid the communication of this article, then please be sure it is not because of one of these excesses. Improve your ability to listen and then speak - to communicate - through excess avoidance. We need to change excesses, break from excesses, free ourselves from excesses, and discover some new things. Remember too many apples is not a good thing for your diet. Your mind has a healthy diet too! Get mental health and then get happy!
Sincerely,
Jon
My book on mental health, Mental Health for Everyone, deals a lot with excesses and how to beat the problem of excess. It deals with it through the principle of intervals. One gets bigger, faster, stronger, and smarter little by little, moment by moment, step by step, and bit by bit. The attainments that are every child's dream - to become bigger, faster, stronger, and smarter, don't occur overnight except in fairy tales but they can begin that night. So my approach in this piece will be to get at the basics of defeating excesses!
Let's bulldoze them down together, shall we? There are four major sets of excesses. They are:
1) expert excess or amateur excess
2) manic depression excess or procrastination-sleep excess
3) easy street excess or difficulty street excess
4) know everything excess and know nothing excess
You probably have not heard of some of these under these names, but I would guess everyone has experienced these excesses whether it be at school, at work, at play, or at a religious gathering.
Let's deal with each one, one at a time, starting with the first one. As I deal with each I will be more specific about each generalized grouping.
Expert excess I call "expertitis". It has a close cousin, a fellow excess, called "amateuritis". They both fail to lift a light weight more than previous lifts that is necessary to get bigger. Excess expertise fastens too heavy a load on people's backs. Excess amateurism fastens too light of a load on people's backs. They both look foolish, yet day after day the king doesn't realize he's wearing no clothes! We want people's minds to grow into a greater understanding - it is just that it has to happen little by light to remain light so that people reach a bigger understanding. The excesses make understanding smaller. We need to change this in terms of quantity and quality from both excesses.
Manic-depression excess is what it sounds like. It is both too high and too low. It goes outside actual human limitations. It has a close cousin, a fellow excess, called procrastination-slowness. The latter pair is my own creation. Isn't it ironic that on the internet I can plenty of articles on manic-depression and on bipolar that are sicknesses, but I could not find an article on what is its healthy opposite nor on its close cousin of excess? I had to go to other sources than psychology for a serious concern about being a procrastinator or being too slow - a slow poke. You find this in the business world primarily. This is interesting because the success of high technology has led us into a steady diet of fast and steady. Also interesting is that a child's fairy tale has taken hold in psychological circles. It is part of Aesop's fables and it is called, The Tortoise and the Hare. This story's fabled moral is a steady diet of "slow and steady wins the race". Not according to the internet and the rest of technology! The excesses of both stories - Aesop's and the internet's - are woven into too much of our thinking. We are people that should be fast and variable - able to rest, sprint, run, or walk depending on the distance and time. We aren't doing this! We need to break free in terms of placement and timing from both excesses.
Easy excess can be called easy street. Difficult excess, its close cousin, can be called difficult street. When it comes to increments it should be easy, but this should not lead to an avoidance of difficulty. Eventually in our jobs over time, we can handle more difficult processes than we could at first. If we try to master everything in the beginning, it all becomes difficult and then some even quit. In other cases, employees can be with a company for years and never master the harder parts of a job. It should be that we are moving from easy to easy step by step, but not all in one step and not with the end goal that we cannot master hard things. The greats make the difficult look easy. Look at your greatest musical artists and at your best athletes - they make even the difficult look easy - so it is both and not excess! We need to free ourselves from the popular approaches to methods and purposes where we too one day can make the difficult look easy.
The I know everything mentality and its close cousin, I know nothing mentality are both dangerous. We have got people who run around claiming to know what they don't know. I see this a lot with predictions of the future. Some things you can know about tomorrow given that certain conditions remain constant, but you don't know that they necessarily will. There are people who claim to know the end of the earth. I thought we we human beings who don't know everything? Having said that though, we also like to play at knowing nothing. Really? You really don't know. Some of this play borders on pathetic. If we've had teachers, we ought to know some things as do others, we ought to know things others don't, we ought to not know things others do know, and there ought to be things neither person knows; but this last category is only one of four - not the whole deal. We need to be learning new things in terms of things and kinds and not just be stuck with two old bad cousins.
It is time to close up this discussion. The point in all of it is to be healthy by avoiding excess. This article for example can only be so long. We need to avoid the excesses of experts and amateurs and step up our understanding little by little. We need to avoid the excesses of the Manic -Depression and the Procrastination-Slow and step up our inspiring moment by moment. We need to avoid the excesses of Easy Street and Difficult Street (it might be also called Baker Street with the difficult hero, Sherlock Holmes, in room 212B). We also need to avoid the excesses of know-it-all and know-it-not at all and develop the captivating bit by bit If you avoid the communication of this article, then please be sure it is not because of one of these excesses. Improve your ability to listen and then speak - to communicate - through excess avoidance. We need to change excesses, break from excesses, free ourselves from excesses, and discover some new things. Remember too many apples is not a good thing for your diet. Your mind has a healthy diet too! Get mental health and then get happy!
Sincerely,
Jon
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Communication: Its Importance as an Action
I ran across a quote recently that I could not pass up as a post on this blog. It is from Stephen R. Covey. It reads: "Communication (human and divine) is the most important single activity of man". This quote is an important one to ponder.
The quote is found in Covey's early book titled The Spiritual Roots of Human Relations. It is a fascinating read from the standpoint of understanding Covey's own roots for his later 7 Habits and The 8th Habit.
I am not endorsing all aspects of this book, but simply putting forward ideas from him that I do agree with. His idea that communication as an activity that is very important has exciting implications, if true and if it can be proven. For myself, I choose to ponder his idea and keep my eyes open for evidence of this idea.
Sincerely,
Jon
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Communication Basics: Combining the Strengths of Rhetoric, Grammar and Logic
There are many angles from which to explain the strength of my idea on communication basics. One of the angles is from that of classic rhetoric, grammar and logic. From this angle the strength of the method I use is that it combines the strengths of rhetoric, grammar and logic; rather than depending on primarily grammar.
Contemporary schooling has turned the basics of classic education into the 3 R's of reading, writing and arithmetic. In classic education the big 3 were rhetoric, grammar and logic. When I studied linguistics in college I now realize that the greatest gain I experienced came from combing rhetoric, grammar and logic. Yet it is the renewed use of rhetoric that was the real source of greatest insight.
Classic rhetoric recognized four classes of meaning plus the whole that unites them. I have simplified those four classes or categories down to amount, relationship, action and thing. This is not discovered in reading or writing classes that rely mainly on grammar. Likewise, logic is no longer taught as essentially logic, but is now mathematical logic and so is taught indirectly through mathematics.
So what all of this boils down to is using a method that does not set aside the insights of classic rhetoric, that does not exalt grammar too much and that does not ignore the logic of mathematics. That is what my linguistics professors in college handed on to me as a legacy. I thank them very deeply for their insights and for the experience of excitement rather than boredom as I approach language.
Sincerely,
Jon
Contemporary schooling has turned the basics of classic education into the 3 R's of reading, writing and arithmetic. In classic education the big 3 were rhetoric, grammar and logic. When I studied linguistics in college I now realize that the greatest gain I experienced came from combing rhetoric, grammar and logic. Yet it is the renewed use of rhetoric that was the real source of greatest insight.
Classic rhetoric recognized four classes of meaning plus the whole that unites them. I have simplified those four classes or categories down to amount, relationship, action and thing. This is not discovered in reading or writing classes that rely mainly on grammar. Likewise, logic is no longer taught as essentially logic, but is now mathematical logic and so is taught indirectly through mathematics.
So what all of this boils down to is using a method that does not set aside the insights of classic rhetoric, that does not exalt grammar too much and that does not ignore the logic of mathematics. That is what my linguistics professors in college handed on to me as a legacy. I thank them very deeply for their insights and for the experience of excitement rather than boredom as I approach language.
Sincerely,
Jon
Friday, May 28, 2010
Communication Taught from Simple to Complex
I was taught the K.I.S.S. principle long ago in coaching. It is also important for communication and in particular in teaching people how to define words by other words.
My favorite example of this recently is the relationship between the Golden Rule and the 2nd Greatest Commandment from the Bible. One reads: "Do for others what you would have them do for you." The second reads: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
I think you can go along way toward defining the words of the second from the first set of the first. It would look like this:
"Love" means "do for" (at its least)
"Your" means "you" (at its least)
"neighbor" means "other" (at its least)
"as" means "what you would have them (others) do for you (in contrast to others)"
"yourself" means "you" (at its least)
Sometimes in teaching communication we need to remember the rule that it is good to keep things simple initially and only later move people up to a higher level. I hope this example demonstrates to you the rule of K.I.S.S.
Sincerely,
Jon
My favorite example of this recently is the relationship between the Golden Rule and the 2nd Greatest Commandment from the Bible. One reads: "Do for others what you would have them do for you." The second reads: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
I think you can go along way toward defining the words of the second from the first set of the first. It would look like this:
"Love" means "do for" (at its least)
"Your" means "you" (at its least)
"neighbor" means "other" (at its least)
"as" means "what you would have them (others) do for you (in contrast to others)"
"yourself" means "you" (at its least)
Sometimes in teaching communication we need to remember the rule that it is good to keep things simple initially and only later move people up to a higher level. I hope this example demonstrates to you the rule of K.I.S.S.
Sincerely,
Jon
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Communication is Hidden in Plain View
Hidden (from me) in Plain View (of others)
In the game of hide and seek it is difficult to hide yourself in plain view of the person doing the seeking. The goal, after all is said and done, is to hide and not be found. Yet in the game of communication, where we want people to discover our meaning and we want to be plain, it is too often the case that our meaning is hidden from the person seeking the meaning. The goal, after all is said and done, is for our plain meaning to be found. Our meaning is not to be hidden. It is not to be a game of hide and seek. If it becomes that, then people get tired of communicating, just like they would get tired of a prolonged game of hide and seek. Sometimes in hide and seek, you just tell the person hiding to come out and that it is safe, rather than continue to try to find them. I think too often in the teaching of communicating, our method has hidden things in plain view.
Let me explain. Some things are hidden from me that are in plain view of others, or vice versa. The question for communication is: What makes things plain and what makes things hidden? Or more to the point: Why are so many things hidden from us in communication? Or in the Christian context, why so many interpretations of the same text in the Bible?
I think there is an explanation, one at least hinted at by my professor in college, Dr. Don Larson. He used to say he was mad. What was he mad about? He was upset about the stark contrast between learning at home and studying in school. He called the first learning and the second studying. He wasn’t against either one, but he felt the balance of the two had been lost in schools. He saw the dominance of studying over learning as harmful and he was trying hard to bring back a balance by re-inserting learning into schools with a focus on studying.
I want to take this a step further. I want you to do an experiment for me following in the tradition of the studying you have done in school. I want you to find a few things for me in the place you are right now within 2 seconds. The rule is that you cannot find words, but only things. If you do find words, then you are cheating and in school that means a zero for your score. Find for me a noun. Your two seconds are up. The result, if you followed my rules strictly, is that you found none.
If you want, you can go a little further. I want you to find an adjective. Next, I want you to find a conjunction. Finally, find a verb. Your next 6 seconds are up. The result, if you followed my rules strictly, is that you still found none of them. Don’t feel silly, if you thought you found one. I know now that you will never try to find these things again, unless you are allowed to look for words.
Now I want you to do another experiment for me following the same set of rules and you must find them within 2 seconds. Again, the rule is that you cannot find words, but only things. Again, please do not cheat. Find for me a thing. Your two seconds are up. The result, if you followed my rules strictly, is that you found at least one thing. If you are in your office, it might be a light or obviously your computer.
If you want, you can go a little further. I want you to find an amount. Next, I want you to find a relationship. Finally, find an action. Your six seconds are up. I would imagine you got 2-3 more right. If you are in your office, you could have found one phone, a cord connected to your computer and the light shining in your window. Don’t feel silly, if you didn’t get them all. I know on the next try you would get all four without breaking a sweat.
These two experiments are meant to demonstrate one main thing. The most important thing is to notice that in the first experiment, the words I used hid from you things. They did not take you directly to them. These are categories of words, not things. Also noticeable is that in the second experiment, the words I used were plain to you, when it came to things. Well, at least now that I gave you some examples. These are categories for things and not just classifications for words.
The problem is seen at its height, when we try to teach language in school whether it is native or foreign to us. The typical approach in the United States is that in about the 5th or 6th grade, we teach a thing called grammar through the parts of speech. This is meant to help us with at least two elements of communication, reading and writing. The one problem I am trying to point out here, is that the method is about words and studying, not things and learning.
In total, I think there are at least five weaknesses in our grammatical method in the United States: (1) it follows a one-dimensional approach to language versus a multi (five)-dimensional approach to language, (2) it has too great of an information load for our brains with eight parts of speech versus having an information load of only four to five things in a set, (3) it deals with later development of language skill rather than earlier development of language skill, (4) it focuses on words and study, a grammar of words, rather than on learning and things, a classification of things and words or word uses and (5) it makes things hidden rather than plain. We need to bring the things we need out in the open. It is this last problem that I am dealing with here.
The problem is that words have become more important than things as education has expanded into universal education in places like the United States. We need instead to keep words and things side by side. We need to teach and study alongside of know and learn. In our earliest development as children, we were concerned with needs related to the things that would satisfy our basic needs. We also though needed to relate to parents for what we needed. So we used some rather simple ways to get what we needed like food for our stomach. I’ve seen crying work effectively. Later we studied words with our parents, who also taught us those words, in the context of things we needed.
In the approach I take to communication, one of the great advantages it has is that it is plain, because it applies to things and words. It ties together both learning and studying. In a chart form of categories , it appears like this:
Communication (Whole)
1. Amount (Part)
2. Relationship (Part)
3. Action (Part)
4. Thing (Part)
When I first studied this method of learning communication, there was a problem with it. It was that a few items were not plain on the thing level. In place of amount, they had the concept of attribute, which I think is harder to find in the world of things. In place of action, they had the concept of event, which I think is also harder to find in the world of things because of its limitations in the realm of things. They both seem to apply better in the realm of words.
Because these words apply better to things than the words of grammar, I think they enhance our ability to make things plain. I know for me personally, this has been a major benefit. Recently, I took an online course and I aced the final exam. If I remember correctly, this may be the first time I didn’t get a single answer wrong on a final. The reason, I recall, for not getting every answer right on a final exam previously is, that I would typically misread at least one question. What this method has done for me is to make things plain or clear. If I get stumped, then I can go back to basic things to put words into a plain context.
Let’s go back to the earlier questions and look at some answers. The first question for communication was: What makes things plain and what makes things hidden? An answer is that grammar hides things, because it is only about word categories and not about thing categories. Or more to the point of the first question: Why are so many things hidden from us in communication? An answer is that it is because we rely on a method that favors words over things, rather than joining them together like two sides of a coin. Or applying the second question in the Christian context: Why so many interpretations of the same text in the Bible? An answer is that too often our method is limited to language, words and their rules and does not look enough at the things in the context. Again, because the questions asked are often only about language and not about things, things are hidden that otherwise could be plain.
So using categories of things and words has helped make things hidden from me in plain view of the communicator, to become plain also for me. I want the same thing to be available to others, including yourself. We need to work from categories of things, not just categories of words. Remember our earlier experiment. We need to change education in the direction that my linguistics professor, Dr. Donald Larson, wanted to take it. Things are in plain view, if only we will change our basic approach to communication and talk about things and not just words. Is the thing I'm saying plain and not just my words?
Sincerely,
Jon
In the game of hide and seek it is difficult to hide yourself in plain view of the person doing the seeking. The goal, after all is said and done, is to hide and not be found. Yet in the game of communication, where we want people to discover our meaning and we want to be plain, it is too often the case that our meaning is hidden from the person seeking the meaning. The goal, after all is said and done, is for our plain meaning to be found. Our meaning is not to be hidden. It is not to be a game of hide and seek. If it becomes that, then people get tired of communicating, just like they would get tired of a prolonged game of hide and seek. Sometimes in hide and seek, you just tell the person hiding to come out and that it is safe, rather than continue to try to find them. I think too often in the teaching of communicating, our method has hidden things in plain view.
Let me explain. Some things are hidden from me that are in plain view of others, or vice versa. The question for communication is: What makes things plain and what makes things hidden? Or more to the point: Why are so many things hidden from us in communication? Or in the Christian context, why so many interpretations of the same text in the Bible?
I think there is an explanation, one at least hinted at by my professor in college, Dr. Don Larson. He used to say he was mad. What was he mad about? He was upset about the stark contrast between learning at home and studying in school. He called the first learning and the second studying. He wasn’t against either one, but he felt the balance of the two had been lost in schools. He saw the dominance of studying over learning as harmful and he was trying hard to bring back a balance by re-inserting learning into schools with a focus on studying.
I want to take this a step further. I want you to do an experiment for me following in the tradition of the studying you have done in school. I want you to find a few things for me in the place you are right now within 2 seconds. The rule is that you cannot find words, but only things. If you do find words, then you are cheating and in school that means a zero for your score. Find for me a noun. Your two seconds are up. The result, if you followed my rules strictly, is that you found none.
If you want, you can go a little further. I want you to find an adjective. Next, I want you to find a conjunction. Finally, find a verb. Your next 6 seconds are up. The result, if you followed my rules strictly, is that you still found none of them. Don’t feel silly, if you thought you found one. I know now that you will never try to find these things again, unless you are allowed to look for words.
Now I want you to do another experiment for me following the same set of rules and you must find them within 2 seconds. Again, the rule is that you cannot find words, but only things. Again, please do not cheat. Find for me a thing. Your two seconds are up. The result, if you followed my rules strictly, is that you found at least one thing. If you are in your office, it might be a light or obviously your computer.
If you want, you can go a little further. I want you to find an amount. Next, I want you to find a relationship. Finally, find an action. Your six seconds are up. I would imagine you got 2-3 more right. If you are in your office, you could have found one phone, a cord connected to your computer and the light shining in your window. Don’t feel silly, if you didn’t get them all. I know on the next try you would get all four without breaking a sweat.
These two experiments are meant to demonstrate one main thing. The most important thing is to notice that in the first experiment, the words I used hid from you things. They did not take you directly to them. These are categories of words, not things. Also noticeable is that in the second experiment, the words I used were plain to you, when it came to things. Well, at least now that I gave you some examples. These are categories for things and not just classifications for words.
The problem is seen at its height, when we try to teach language in school whether it is native or foreign to us. The typical approach in the United States is that in about the 5th or 6th grade, we teach a thing called grammar through the parts of speech. This is meant to help us with at least two elements of communication, reading and writing. The one problem I am trying to point out here, is that the method is about words and studying, not things and learning.
In total, I think there are at least five weaknesses in our grammatical method in the United States: (1) it follows a one-dimensional approach to language versus a multi (five)-dimensional approach to language, (2) it has too great of an information load for our brains with eight parts of speech versus having an information load of only four to five things in a set, (3) it deals with later development of language skill rather than earlier development of language skill, (4) it focuses on words and study, a grammar of words, rather than on learning and things, a classification of things and words or word uses and (5) it makes things hidden rather than plain. We need to bring the things we need out in the open. It is this last problem that I am dealing with here.
The problem is that words have become more important than things as education has expanded into universal education in places like the United States. We need instead to keep words and things side by side. We need to teach and study alongside of know and learn. In our earliest development as children, we were concerned with needs related to the things that would satisfy our basic needs. We also though needed to relate to parents for what we needed. So we used some rather simple ways to get what we needed like food for our stomach. I’ve seen crying work effectively. Later we studied words with our parents, who also taught us those words, in the context of things we needed.
In the approach I take to communication, one of the great advantages it has is that it is plain, because it applies to things and words. It ties together both learning and studying. In a chart form of categories , it appears like this:
Communication (Whole)
1. Amount (Part)
2. Relationship (Part)
3. Action (Part)
4. Thing (Part)
When I first studied this method of learning communication, there was a problem with it. It was that a few items were not plain on the thing level. In place of amount, they had the concept of attribute, which I think is harder to find in the world of things. In place of action, they had the concept of event, which I think is also harder to find in the world of things because of its limitations in the realm of things. They both seem to apply better in the realm of words.
Because these words apply better to things than the words of grammar, I think they enhance our ability to make things plain. I know for me personally, this has been a major benefit. Recently, I took an online course and I aced the final exam. If I remember correctly, this may be the first time I didn’t get a single answer wrong on a final. The reason, I recall, for not getting every answer right on a final exam previously is, that I would typically misread at least one question. What this method has done for me is to make things plain or clear. If I get stumped, then I can go back to basic things to put words into a plain context.
Let’s go back to the earlier questions and look at some answers. The first question for communication was: What makes things plain and what makes things hidden? An answer is that grammar hides things, because it is only about word categories and not about thing categories. Or more to the point of the first question: Why are so many things hidden from us in communication? An answer is that it is because we rely on a method that favors words over things, rather than joining them together like two sides of a coin. Or applying the second question in the Christian context: Why so many interpretations of the same text in the Bible? An answer is that too often our method is limited to language, words and their rules and does not look enough at the things in the context. Again, because the questions asked are often only about language and not about things, things are hidden that otherwise could be plain.
So using categories of things and words has helped make things hidden from me in plain view of the communicator, to become plain also for me. I want the same thing to be available to others, including yourself. We need to work from categories of things, not just categories of words. Remember our earlier experiment. We need to change education in the direction that my linguistics professor, Dr. Donald Larson, wanted to take it. Things are in plain view, if only we will change our basic approach to communication and talk about things and not just words. Is the thing I'm saying plain and not just my words?
Sincerely,
Jon
Friday, February 26, 2010
Communication Basics: The Education Gap
You know how it is. There are some who achieve educationally and there are those who don't. There are also those who no longer care. In the end, there must be an explanation for this achievement gap in education.
For me, the secret to success in the traditional educational system in the United States is to realize the importance that words play in the system. It is modelled after the Greek system of education more than any other model. This system focuses on words over things.
This is both a strength and a weakness. This means that we can through our system of education, become experts in words. This is its strength. This also means that we can through our system of education, become failures at real life. This is its weakness. This is because we lose a sense of balance between words and reality. The secret is to maximize the strength while minimizing the weakness at the same time. Those who no longer care usually gave up trying to do this a long time ago.
My writing on this blog will focus on the basics of communication as found in using words. It doesn't mean that we won't ever talk about things, but dealing with things is better done through another means than words alone, even concrete ones.
I will be introducing a way of communication that I think is basic to meaning and talking about the things we all need. I will do my best to add something every month. So please stop back and check in every once in while. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Jon
For me, the secret to success in the traditional educational system in the United States is to realize the importance that words play in the system. It is modelled after the Greek system of education more than any other model. This system focuses on words over things.
This is both a strength and a weakness. This means that we can through our system of education, become experts in words. This is its strength. This also means that we can through our system of education, become failures at real life. This is its weakness. This is because we lose a sense of balance between words and reality. The secret is to maximize the strength while minimizing the weakness at the same time. Those who no longer care usually gave up trying to do this a long time ago.
My writing on this blog will focus on the basics of communication as found in using words. It doesn't mean that we won't ever talk about things, but dealing with things is better done through another means than words alone, even concrete ones.
I will be introducing a way of communication that I think is basic to meaning and talking about the things we all need. I will do my best to add something every month. So please stop back and check in every once in while. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Jon
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