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email: wordgems@gmail.com
Wayne
Becker’s Scholastic Mentoring reading *
writing *
speaking *
thinking * creating achieving
your life goals through the communication arts
I once flew across the country just to hear one man speak!
This
was no business conference, no required meeting. I just wanted to
hear his ideas. I was not disappointed. Though this happened many years ago, his research, his thoughts, still move me today. Imagine a room filled with eager listeners… all chairs filled… people lined up, standing, along the sides of the room, crowding each other at the back… everyone, straining to hear, reaching out for, hanging on to... each word spoken!
I know a man whose writing skills are so effective that simply by asking the right questions; by stirring certain desires; by creating certain mental imagery; in a 60-second infomercial, he can raise over $100,000!
Nearly 40 years ago, when I
attended college in England, one of my instructors, ever assaulting us
with wry British understatements, would warn us about banal and
ineffective writing. His eyes would twinkle and, turning a common
proverb on its head, would jab us: “Once you put it down, you’ll never pick it
up!” You might not buy infomercial time, but virtually anytime you write anything - except for a signature on a check - you will have far fewer than 60 seconds to arrest attention.
There is a writer I know who helped a girl modify an online dating profile. She had lamented, in the past year, she’d had only two responses. With words ... mere words … he repackaged her, recreated her image.
A month later, she told him that she’d been so overwhelmed with so many responses… that she shut down her site!
If you are a speaker, you have just a few seconds to command the attention of your audience before they tune you out; if you are a writer, you have mere seconds to justify your existence to an unforgiving readership. In order to be granted audience before discriminating listeners and readers, you will need to address certain universal themes, certain universal questions, that all thinking people wonder about - if you can do that, then, as one of my teachers of old put it... they'll come running! But, before you will be able to move audiences to action... with mere words... you, yourself, must become a wordsmith.
Can you read? Many people say they
can. But… when you read, are you picking up the author’s original meaning? or is the printed page, for you, a kind of Rorschach Test revealing more of your own mental state than the author’s intended message?
Why do people argue over what might appear to be straight-forward text of business agreements, wills, and employment contracts? Why do the Holy Books of various religions spawn thousands of competing sects, each claiming to base its beliefs on the same documents? All of this relates to the games people play. But, for our purposes here, I want you to think about this: The printed page was not meant to be a challenge for you to see how many creative interpretations might be made of it. Unless you become a reader, in the highest sense of that word, as William James chided, such effort, for you, will become nothing more than an exercise of “rearranging one’s prejudices.” Reading, as an honest effort, is a tool of discovery and self-development. Those who become world-class readers can become anything they want to in this world - just ask Abraham Lincoln, that rough man from Kentucky, who learned to read - with the best of them - and then changed the world. The communication arts, skillfully executed, will take you not only to the top of your field, but also, and much more importantly, to a better understanding of yourself.
This line from an old song instructs us. Think about it. The people we admire most in history were more than political, military, or religious figures… Lincoln, Churchill, JFK, Reagan, Gandhi, MacArthur, Thatcher, Martin Luther King, and others… Before any of these led nations, armies, or philosophical movements, each learned how to move individual hearts… with mere words. All of these notables of history were excellent communicators. Without exception, they began as voracious readers, effective writers, motivating speakers, and, most importantly, undergirding all of this, clear-headed thinkers.
The communication arts are not just for those planning a run for Congress or the big promotion. You cannot rise to the heights in any field without first learning how to effectively communicate your ideas. You have never witnessed a CEO of a major corporation write as though he’d missed English class. You have never heard of any leading scientist, theologian, mathematician, economist, doctor, musician… who was not also a most effective purveyor of ideas. Words represent thoughts. The more words you know, the more likely you will be to formulate, manipulate, and express ideas! Words come first. Actions follow.
Scholastic mentoring… different than tutoring
Yes, words come first, actions follow. But it’s a little more complicated than that, isn’t it? Edison once said that to be a great inventor one needs “a good imagination and a pile of junk.” I think it’s similar with becoming a great communicator. The “pile of junk,” the elemental building blocks of thought, for the effective communicator, might be a large vocabulary and an ample reservoir of information. But even this much does not take us far enough. We intuitively know that success in life is more than becoming a walking encyclopedia. As Warren Buffett once commented: If learning about the stock market’s “history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.” There’s a place for tutoring… a place for learning about this rule, that formula; this method, that procedure. But tutoring alone will not take you to the top of your career. You cannot be tutored to become the next Warren Buffett, or the next Edison… in other words, you cannot be tutored to make the next break-through discovery in your chosen field. Tutoring will help you learn the basics, to plow the same field walked by another. The pursuit of excellence, in any branch of learning, however, is a most creative process. What Buffett or Edison did was for them. They creatively employed their own set of talents and fulfilled a destiny tailored for them. Your path will be different. There is no one like you in the entire universe. And the quest for you is not to become Buffett or Edison… but to become yourself… such progression, and the resultant, naturally-flowing accomplishment, can be just as grand as any success story ever told.
Training: for the
slave…
Dr. Mortimer Adler helped me to understand the true meaning of the term “liberal arts education.” He explained that the ancient Greeks drew a distinction between education and training. Education was for a free person! Training was for a slave! A free person required a "liberal" education; that is, education that would prepare him or her for "liberty," a life of freedom; as such, education primarily meant learning how to think; acquiring wisdom; gaining understanding, of how life and society worked, so that one might take one’s place as an independent decision-maker in the world. But, a slave was given mere training. A slave was not offered information for his own development, but for the benefit and pleasure of another. A slave was not taught how to think or make decisions, but only to unquestioningly perform certain limited functions; such as, milking cows, picking grapes, and repairing fences. Tutoring is more like training. There is place for training. But training will not take the success-minded person to where he or she wants to go. Scholastic mentoring is more like education… education in the classical sense of the term.
Consider the etymology of "education," a Latin word literally meaning, "to draw out." The "duc" root of "education" is also found in the word "ductile," which, when applied to metal, might refer to an ability to be drawn out, shaped, into wire. Why is education a “drawing out”? Today many commonly view education as a filling of an empty head with knowledge. The ancients would have laughed at this notion. Think of it this way. You, within your own Essential Being, your True Self, possess a vast array of unexpressed talent, virtue, and ability. True education will “draw out” these aptitudes and capacities. Plato viewed learning as a form of remembering that which had become hidden within one's True Self. In the Meno, Plato, writing of Socrates, famously illustrated this precept with an uneducated slave-boy who intuitively understood certain things about mathematics, even without formal instruction!
The wonder of you!
Your human potential is vast, an uncharted far country. We live in a world that attempts to minimize that essential worth and goodness. All around us are the power-brokers of life who attempt to convince you that you are no good, inept, defective; and, therefore, dependent upon them to make life work. Many of us buy into this propaganda because we do not grasp the glory and wonder of our own inherent capacities. True education will “draw out,” from deep within oneself, and into view of one’s own consciousness, that which we truly are, and might become. When you catch a glimpse of your own grand potential, you will never again covet the success of another, or daydream about being someone else; instead, you will thrill to “live in The Mystery” of your own unfolding destiny and future.
What is a teacher?
If education is a drawing out of oneself, then a teacher will be one who is aligned with such mystical process. Actually, there are different kinds of teaching - this is so because there are different kinds of learning. Consider the following:
“How primitive!”
A phrase often used in the old Star Trek series. It could be used to describe much of what passes for education in a typical classroom. To earn an A, in most cases, a student is required to do little more than recognize terminology; fill in a blank; employ the right formula; repeat the rule; choose among four given answers; match the elements of two columns… To succeed here, all one needs is a good memory. And just how valuable is that in this day of the google-search? Yes, how primitive. How low-level. It comes close to the classic mindless instruction of a slave, mere training! It is the kind of activity featured in column one of the chart above: the teacher tells, lectures; the student memorizes, repeats. Allow me to restate: There is a place for didactic instruction, for telling-memorizing… for tutoring… but it all can become a problem when we do not move beyond, what should be, mere introductory phases of intellectual development. When we take up permanent residence in the nursery; when we refuse to remove the training wheels; it all becomes a serious problem. Higher levels of teaching and learning, of cognitive development, have little to do with memory work… and everything to do with entering a most creative process… that of becoming the unique person you were meant to be… by which exalted status you might offer to the world your own special contributions… unique contributions… available only from you!
"No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical!" Niels Bohr to Albert Einstein
I’d like to give you a humorous example of what I’m talking about. I always laugh when I think of a story about Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962), Danish physicist, Nobel Laureate, an early proponent of quantum mechanics. Sir Ernest Rutherford (1871 - 1937), another Nobel Prize winner, once Bohr’s professor, recounts an experience with a certain “difficult” student: Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score... I read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer." The student had answered: "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope [which is] the height of the building." The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he hadn't written anything. I asked him if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on. In the next minute, he dashed off his answer, which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula x = 0.5 * a * t 2, calculate the height of the building." At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and gave the student almost full credit. While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were. "Well,” said the student, “there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building."
"Yes,” said the student, “there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units. A very direct method.” "Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g [gravity] at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated.” "On this same tack, you could take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession.” "Finally,” he concluded, “there are many other ways of solving the problem. Probably the best,” he said, “is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door [offering him] a fine barometer as a gift if he will tell you the height of the building.” At this point, I asked the student if he really did know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think. The name of the student was Niels Bohr.
How funny - especially the “fine gift” to the janitor in the basement. Bohr reminds us that frequently there are multiple answers to any given problem. Students are often encouraged to memorize and repeat an answer, as if it were "the answer," one dropped from heaven. This kind of mindless formulism exists in every aspect of society, with academia as no exception. And only the education of a free person will supply the vision to even recognize this lack of imagination to be a problem.
You may be well-read and knowledgeable; but unless that information gathered is properly processed and skillfully executed, you will not advance well. Our world is not usually led by info-geeks, those who know the most, but by those few who most effectively communicate their ideas, and shape others, for better or worse, to their purposes. There are five areas, vital to your success, which I hope to discuss with you.
Please click on each icon for more information:
Please click on each icon for more information:
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email: wordgems@gmail.com |
