For 150 years, schools have
succeeded in one thing. They have succeeded in blocking every
meaningful positive reform that has been proposed, allowing in
only window-dressing changes to palliate public pressures that
were upon them at the time. Some of those reforms "did everything
right" in how one should go about advancing their cause. Several
represented benefits likely as great as those offered by our Modern Maieutic Socratic Method. What makes us think
that our (Project Renaissance's) new thrust with Modern Maieutic
Socratic Method can do any better?
Here is this one point, where the war will
be won or lost.
Indeed, we can start winning it today.
Other reforms have
required expensive professional skills, experience,
training, often expensive equipment, expensive materials, and have
demanded scarce attention and time from teachers.
In contrast, besides all the benefits—immediately felt and actual
—experienced by the students, there are all the benefits—both immediately felt and actual—which are experienced by the teachers. The teachers like this modern
maieutic Socratic experience so well that the teachers' labor union for
their city has endorsed this reform in teaching method!
Productively applying some forms of Modern Socratic Method is wondrously EASIER on and for the teacher than what teachers are doing now. Moreover, teachers
don't have to abandon what they are doing now, nor do they have to
abandon hard-won skills and experience they have built with their
currently used methods. Instead, some of these forms of Modern
Socratic Method provide profound respite to teachers in mid-lesson,
allowing them to regroup their forces and focus and to execute, by
their own preferred methods, the remainder of their current
lesson far more effectively than they otherwise could have.
—And to be not harried but instead fresh and flushed with success
and confidence heading into the next class session.
Modern Maieutic Socratic Method also allows
teachers the opportunity to casually observe their own students in action.
The easy kind of observation which gives them a far clearer picture of how
their students are receiving and handling current lesson content than can be
obtained through all that clutter of paperwork ordinarily used in
most classrooms. This provides another form of respite for and saving of the teacher's
attention.
This respite-to-the-teacher aspect
is unique to what we are offering in Modern Maieutic Socratic Method. The Cooperative
Education movement, closely comparable in some respects, offers some
really fine teaching methods and, as another form of Modern Socratic
Method, is the method closest in nature to what we offer.
However, good as it is in most regards, Cooperative Education requires years of study to
master, and considerable special skills and attention by the teacher. Also
by all reports received thus far, students by our Socratic forms more
immediately go to deep levels of understanding in whatever topic is involved—though
admittedly that might be more a function of the individual teachers
presently using one form of such a method as compared to the other. Time and
testing can determine the answer to that question.
We will "win this war" to get
better methods used in classrooms, where all other meaningful reform efforts this
past century lost it, if and as we find
ways to make this information real enough to teachers
for them to try it—that our Modern
Maieutic Socratic Method is how a teacher can find immediate relief,
respite, and opportunity to regroup his or her thoughts in the midst of
classroom and school-related pressures... and that this method
is also a keen opportunity to immediately observe his or her students in action,
grappling with the current information being taught to them. What are all the ways to make it
overwhelmingly REAL to teachers how much easier, wholesome, human, and
restorative this method is than what they have been doing?
Make that point and we can
almost but not quite relegate the remarkable
excellence of our student outcomes to parentheses amd still gain
acceptance. Such excellence of outcomes has not been the deciding
factor in acceptance of methods. The responses—and comfort— of those
who serve in the trenches, our classroom teachers, will determine which
methods advance and which join the scores of other reform efforts
in the present limbo of forgotten breakthrough
techniques.
If teachers start looking at this on their own
motivation, the war is won. If the teachers do not find personal motivation,
or find their way TO personal
motivation through all the confusions and bitter bickering
now burdening them,
no matter how excellent our outcomes are, the war will be lost the same
way it was lost by each of the other many worthy reforms
which could not make their way through the schools the past hundred or
so years.
Conversely, alert individuals who are both
bright and well-positioned may spot this unique aspect in what we propose, and
identify a winning ticket. We could see this method adopted with sudden surprising
speed, and will need to prepare for this eventuality, both in terms of
availability and of quality control.
Correspondingly, once the doors are opened for
one meaningful positive reform, several or many others may also be able to
enter and flourish. The next few years could become an astonishingly positive
period in the history of our schools.
We cannot follow the same strategy
for reform as was pursued by dozens of other programs and methodologies, some
of them indeed truly excellent but all of them defeated by the
unresponsiveness of the already-burdened survival-desperate teacher so reluctant to
take on yet another load of methods and concerns and attention-absorbers. Sociotectonics sees education about to break in a high-Richter quake.
The system appears to be breaking down, or negentropically
breaking upward a la Ilya Prigogene, and this is our opportunity to help
make it do the latter.
By itself, a well-tended professional reform isn't going to make it through. We MUST go the route of a popular mass movement. We will play our cards for the well-tended professional reform as well,
but we have to do what it takes to create a massive popular movement, first
among teachers and
then also among parents and communities as they
see something positive
finally starting to happen.
For education, there are other great developments
besides our own—Some needed features of education by Year 2020 which are
not yet widely found in our deeply lagging schools
How much can your own mind and
vision add to what is listed here?
This catalog is only a seed-starter for your own
further perceptions as we
attempt to explore toward a more hopeful future
—a future where our
schools, after 100 years of totally resisting and
defeating any meaningful
reform (as distinct from stylistic, trivial and
window-dressing “reforms”),
have finally made the adjustments in our schooling
which will make our
society, culture and civilization once again viable and
this time truly human.
Here are a few of those features, not widely
found in our schools today
but which must be quite soon if we are to make it into
a truly human future:
1. Modern Maieutic Socratic Method, techniques for “drawing
forth” into the focus of consciousness one’s subtler awarenesses,
where they can be made readier use of.
A. Source—
B. Status: Development is underway but
the field is still new. Major
texts and training programs are already readily
available. The student body
of the first school
to use Win Wenger's version of these techniques, on
average is, according to tests, gaining substantially better than four years
per year in academic achievement.The eightfold
increase in rate of gain
recorded in one especially enjoyable and
stimulating class is expected to
become the new norm for average performance.
C. Characterization: The Project
Renaissance based methods have
pursued development not only of greater
effectiveness and depth of
understandings, but of simplicity and ease of use in teaching
and learning.
Some of the techniques can be learned and applied to advantage, literally
in mere seconds. This simplicity, immediacy
and ease of use may be the
means to finally achieve overdue reform throughout the
educational system.
Presently our new book, 3
Easy Tactics To Use In Your Classroom is the
leading example of this drive to utterly useful
simplicity.
2. Projective Screen Techniques use external visualization
with “points
of resonance in the environment,” to detect and
develop subtle internal
attitudes and awareness
A. Examples:
B. Status: wide-open, virtually
untouched for development, professions
and careers to be made.
C. Distinction: Modern Socratic-type
methods, and indeed most of
our learning methods (as well as are our Creative
Problem-Solving and
creativity-evoking methods), are ways to get at subtler
awarenesses to
bring those awarenesses into useful focus. These types
of method
differ in that the modern Socratic is more
directly verbal while Projective
Screening orients around external
visual perceptions.
3. Spontaneous Inner Imagery, as distinct from
directed visualizations,
is probably the most sensitive of all methods for reaching,
detecting,
and working with one’s subtlest and deepest
awarenesses, whether for
creativity-related and problem-solving purposes or
for educational ones.
A complete curriculum of instructions how to learn,
perform and teach
ImageStreaming (the main form which works with this
spontaneous
inner imagery, is contained in this cluster of interlinked
articles:
A. Source: Nearly all of this has
developed from the work of Win
Wenger and Project Renaissance, and is embodied in
various texts,
audio courses, web site exhibits and training
programs, as offered by
Project
Renaissance and, from New York State, the Center for
Modern Socratic Innovation.
B. Status:— developed in tandem with and
almost as well as is
modern maieutic Socratic method, but this field is
still new, wide
open for further development, and there are
professional careers to be
made in this context.
4. Train Basic Skills via Computer Games. An
initial example is
Brainware
Safari, which uses a well-designed sequence of
computer games to
train up each of forty-one basic cognitive skills.
Mathematical “times tables,” grammar, language and
second-language skills, indeed everything now done as a drill
in school, can
and will soon be organized into such computer games and
developed
with ease and entertainment instead of drudgery.
Computer software
is infinitely replicable and is therefore headed
toward inexpensiveness
and universal availability. The computer can be
infinitely patient, and it attunes readily to individual and changing
differences, conserving the
work of teachers toward more human uses in
education.
A. Most important, BrainWare
Safari-like softwares can make it not
only feasible but easy to train up invaluable skills
now beyond reach of schools and educational systems.
Examples:
- Mozart-like
internal musical skills and, to varying levels,
- Musical
performance skills.
- The best
forms of Fast Math.
- Repairing or enriching key
aspects of human development.
B. Sources: Brainware Safari and Lumosity
C. Status—wide open, virtually
untouched, and with practically a
universe-full of computer programming and gaming skills already
developed and ready to pour into this application.
Professions and
fortunes to be made in this context also.
5. Neurophysiological Development, Repair and Enrichment.
Where
most of the above relates to improvement in the
information contents
and programming of the human brain, this topic
addresses how to
improve the basic equipment with which we perceive and
think. The
recent surge of scientific studies in brain
plasticity has finally given
overdue “permission” for researchers, clinicians,
educators, and
high-achievement coaches to think about how to
elevate “intelligence”
in all its forms and to an apparently limitless
extent.
A. Initial Source: Glenn Doman's Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, in
Philadelphia.
B. Status: Well-developed within
certain sectors of application.
This field is otherwise virtually untouched,
wide open for far-ranging
developments.
C. Further significance: Our experience
of being human,
necessarily involves as much of
our intelligence as is available, not
only intellectual but in all dimensions.
A main basis for discriminating against some
people, and in favor
of some exclusive ingroup, has been the assumption that
some
people are not intelligent and there is nothing which
can be done
about that. Thus it is held that there are some
sectors of life to which
they must not be admitted because they will only
stumble around and make messes.
It is increasingly apparent that, like "deliberate
creativity", "intelligence" in all its forms can be learned and
built and,
so to speak, “earned” by deliberate practice.
This excuse for
discriminating, against any group of people, on
the assumption that
certain innate traits are necessarily inborn
and unchangeable, has
finally crumbled now that brain plasticity is so widely
recognized,
though the significance of that in all quarters
has not yet apparently
penetrated most people's thinking.
6. Application of Modern Socratic Technique to Distance
Learning.
Already, contemporary electronics and the Internet
have brought us
the circumstance where the best lessons on any
subject or topic,
developed anywhere on the planet, can
be disseminated everywhere
on the planet to everyone on the planet.
Combine this implication with this further
one stemming from
recent experiments where homeless street children, in
every
instance where the raw equipment was made
available to them,
quickly taught themselves and each other how to
get onto and
browse the Internet! We believe you can see much of the
near-immediate future of education just in this combination
of two very
powerful implications.
A. Face-to-face live interaction. The one key missing ingredient in distance learning, however, has been live interaction with other
participants in the lesson or class,
especially with a re-processing
of the lesson contents to induce Socratic interchanges.
Learners
need to interact with each other— and if possible
with the instructor—on a face-to-face live basis, for all the
reasons that they need to
interact with the content material in order to
actively learn and
assimilate it. Further, the face-to-face interaction
and shared
reactions both liminal and subliminal, provide
entire dimensions of context for the learning. All human learning is in and through
context.
Also, the face-to-face
interactions and shared reactions provide
a ratification process for what is being
learned. Ratification is
needed at two levels—one’'s peers, and the
authoritative instructor
or facilitator. Without these factors involved in
the process, it is
much harder for the various learnings
to 'take.' A very basic principle here should be incorporated into distance learning
programs: Interrupt the best existing recorded
lessons in every
subject at key points, with Socratic challenges and
questions,
cueing students (face-to-face, two or three of them per
computer
terminal,) to focus on and articulate and develop their
key
awarenesses relative to that point in the lesson. All
students
should be in the presence of and have at
least one other student face-to-face, or be with a small group of co-learners, to
whom to articulate their responses to such provoking
or evoking
questions, and to hear out and interact with the
responses of their peer(s).
B. Organizing such facilitation. While
the interactions with
the original professor or teacher are usually mostly
only one-way,
from the instructor to the student,
any reasonably competent facilitator who can follow simple
instructions, whether or not he knows the subject
at hand himself, and can induce students in his presence into a depth of
understanding in the subject almost as great as if
they were in an
intensive small-group seminar directly with a
highly expert
instructor.
Thus, two new services will emerge on the
education scene,
each with almost the impact of the internet
itself. One service
organizes and preps or “Socratizes” the
best available distance-
learned lessons. The other—and it can be the
same organization
providing it—organizes students into face-to-face
groups, each student working from his own or a shared computer terminal,
and providing those groups a facilitator with
general facilitation skills to nurture the best-quality exchanges among those students.
C. Status. The lessons exist but as yet
are not prepped in this
fashion. Effective methods for Socratic facilitation
have been
simplified and made more effective. This
combination, however,
is as yet untouched, and is wide open for
development.
D. Sources are, as with Modern
Maieutic Socratic Learning—Project Renaissance; the Center for Modern
Socratic Innovation;
the widespread abundance of CPS programs and
techniques;
and Cooperative Learning.
The free lessons from M.I.T. have gained some
fame, and
lessons of varying quality are available from many
institutions of
learning from all over, thousands of sources.
7. Function-Boosters. Are there performance-boosters for
intelligence, thinking and perceiving, which
are counterpart to
steroids used and misused to boost physical strength
and
performance? The answer is, yes.— And like steroids,
there are
a variety, some with harmful side-effects, also
affecting different people differently, also whose use raises serious ethical
questions, also increasingly difficult to enforce
strictures
against their use.. This is the one sector we
definitely do not
recommend for immediate application, but in this
listing of
breakthrough features which must characterize the
near future of education, it is definitely one which is in great need of
research, including research to clarify
our choices. This may
also be the sector with the highest potential of
promise for the
future of humanity.
8. Other methods and applications. Any
one of these may prove to be as revolutionary as the above
are likely to be.
- Eye training,
developed from behavioral or developmental
optometry and
ophthalmology - how smoothly our eyes track and
work together controls how readily we access different
kinds of
information.
- Held-breath underwater swimming
increases respiratory
capacity, the ability to sustain and work through a
thought or
perception, attention span and awareness span, and
through
boosting circulation to the brain, improving the
physical condition
of the brain itself.
- Entrainment of various
brain functions and brain states
can facilitate learning. Learning can be much
better tailored to
meet widely differing individual student
needs, intelligences and
characteristics.
A. Sources:
(1) For eye training, Developmental
Optometry.
(2) For held-breath underwater
swimming, Project
Renaissance
(3) For
entrainment functions, various meditations and the
sound-and-light machines.
(4) For brain
states, various meditations and Suggestopedia
(5) Also revisit
the classical works of neurophysiologist Donald O. Hebb, whose studies of how the brain
and nervous
system learn makes up much of the basic knowledge of
the fields
of psychology and educational psychology today. Very
little of
those (or of other classical findings) has yet
found its way into
classroom application but a little ingenuity in
this area could itself
have immense consequences.
9. Improved Content of Learning, as distinct from
improved
methods of teaching and learning.
A. Examples from a much larger field—
(1) General Systems Theory
and Chaos Theory,
especially
effective for developing an understanding of
dynamics which
applies in every subject and topic—a ready-made, easy
recognition
basis that in effect constitutes a highly
accelerated learning method for those subjects and topics.
(2) Teaching
Reading, Math, etc. to babies, through
parents and older siblings, and through a network
of volunteers
trained to work with babies and toddlers in
families' homes and
to make highly visible the child being competent with
his tutor.
(3) As young as possible, induce the child
to go meta to
his own thoughts and perceptions,
stimulating, enriching and
accelerating his emergence and development.
(4) From as early as possible, a
solid and exploratory
grounding in the Epistemological Continuum and in
other key
branches of philosophical inquiry. Branches
whose universal
questions relate to and provide highly retrievable
conscious
"sticking points" for more elements of experience
throughout
life.
(5) Quick math,
easily accounting for the range of
concrete mathematical operations.
(6) A vocabulary for
emotions and feelings, and
techniques for emotional relief and self-control such
as the
Calm-Breathing
Patterns, from as young an age as possible.
(7)
Such basic social vistas as that afforded by non-zero-sum
game theory.
(8) Some various methods for
creatively solving problems,
including one's own problems, and including
the community’s.
(9) Restoring music and the arts
as being crucial in the
curriculum to supporting and redeveloping key intellectual skills
and brain functions.
(10) Restoring playground recess and
more systematized
forms of phys-ed such as yoga or Tai Chi to
the curriculum,
moderate physical exercises which improve intellectual
function as well as health, and which also support
other
functions and values.
This working brief is adapted
from proceedings of the 2010
Double Festival, 18th annual conference of Project
Renaissance,
coinciding with the publication release of Win Wenger’s
new book
3
Easy Tactics for Use in Your Classroom—Teach Smarter, Not
Harder. This briefing implements the
strategy described in
the opening of this paper, whereby a reform of
classroom methods which yield great results with students is also bringing respite
and reward to teachers as well, and which is immediately and easily
implemented by a wide range of teachers. This boon to
teachers should lead to much broader use in schools and classrooms than
occurred with other positive reform movements which did great
things for students—but which were opposed by teachers who
felt distracted, harried and overworked and who saw such reforms
primarily in terms of being yet more extra work burden on
them.
If this strategy succeeds, progress and
spreading success in
our schools should also enable other worthy additional
reform
methods and programs to come into play. Using even
just a few
of these together in various synergistic combinations
should
lead to some very nice positive outcomes well
beyond reach
of any single methodology working alone, and an education
system fit for a fully human future.
We would like to hear from
representatives of some of these
other breakthrough methods and intended reforms, to
explore
areas of possible cooperation including that of how we
might
help toward creating easy-tactics versions and
strategies for
their own methods—a way how their resource, like
ours, may
be enabled to serve the needs of many more students and
teachers than presently are being reached. The
job to be
done is larger than all of us put together: we'd best
make a
start on it.
From where you are and
from what you know, what can you
do to bring such a future nearer?
