A Few Specific Points
by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
Winsights No. 77 (July/August 2004)
Did you know that more than a third of all reading problems, language skill problems and learning problems would simply resolve and disappear if the students affected were to invest a few hours per week in getting good at ping pong?
To learn how and why this is so, please see our article on eye-tracking. And read the report in the September 27, 2007, issue of Science Daily on latest research findings of how eye movement can affect problem-solving and cognition.
Did you know that more than a third — mostly a different third — of all reading, language and learning problems would simply resolve if the students affected got a year’s experience at track and field, or singing in the chorus or choir, or playing wind or brass in the band?
All of these events and practices, of course, they are barred from by school policies which require a certain level of school-room performance before one is allowed to participate in these “extra”-curricular activities.
Of course these problems would also be solved, not in a year but in three weeks, with a somewhat different method addressed at some of the same factors please see “Awareness and Attention Span: A Breathtaking Discovery”, with some reference also to our article, “Proposal for Rehabilitation of Stroke Patients”.
These two articles will also show you why such activities would solve more than a third of reading, language and learning problems. For a more comprehensive description of the various Project Renaissance procedures for solving reading problems and language skill difficulties, please see Improve Reading and Language Skills — notes toward an experimental or demonstration remedial program.
Did you know that use of Socratic Method, throughout history, has always, consistently, resulted in high-level intellectual performance, creative performance and genius?
Now that, through modern science, we finally know “the active ingredient” in Socratic Method — and this ingredient is missing from the version of Socratic Method practiced in law schools — there are many effective forms of the method. Most of these modern forms of Socratic Method are far easier for teachers to use than are the methods they are using now. Compare the results which current classroom methods get, with the results Socratic practice gets.
Teach yourself an entire curriculum on Socratic Method! Please see the following articles and teach yourself for free —
- “Windtunnel!!!” is an easy way to give teachers some of the basic skills they need to perform Socratically.
- WHY is Socratic Method so productive of genius and high-level performance? See the fundamental article, Feeding the Loop.
- How can you work Socratic miracle effects not on just one or two students at a time, as with traditional forms of the method, but with dozens, scores, even hundreds of students at a time, having every one of them totally involved and productive? See “Dynamic Format”
- (Of course there are certain key responsibilities bearing on the person who is being heard or who is being Socratically drawn out, if the process is to work to its fullest advantage. See “Add Depth and Richness to Every Facet of Our Mutual Lives”.
- See one of the hottest new forms of modern Socratic Method, taught as a problem-solving method, and “Effective Problem-Solving: Using What We Know”. Define “the problem” in terms of key understandings in a classroom lesson or course, and you have a powerfully accelerative and enhanced learning technique. Some of the same principle is demonstrated in the enhanced learning method of class review. To be Socratic with yourself using the same principles, try “Freenoting”.
- For a look at some of the key effects of use of Socratic Method — how this benefits not only problem-solving, learning and intellectual skills but the immune system, health, even longevity — please see “Ask Better Questions for More Than Just Better Answers”. In the same article you will see how to select and ask questions which are Socratically more potent and productive.
- See Winsights Pt. 75, “A Larger Framework to Think In” for some of the vital stakes involved.
Did you know that even relatively modest use of modern Socratic Method in classroom courses will cause average student language and reading skills to improve by one year for every 6-8 weeks of use?
Did you know that Project Renaissance has a standing offer out to schools and to individual teachers, to help them adapt and test in their own classrooms specific techniques, including some of the many modern Socratic methods?
We’ll even help teachers professionally publish their results, so long as they measure the effects before and after and are willing to report whatever results they get, using their own customary tests, and so long as these are relevant, free of too low a ceiling, and provide a reasonable basis of comparison. For more guidance on testing, please see the article, Validating Ways to Enhance Learning.
Your place of work
If the decision-makers of your profit-seeking firm were to regularly invest several hours per week – let’s say Thursday afternoons – in drawing each other out (and themselves out) in depth and detail and at length, on their subtlest and deepest awarenesses concerning the firm, its problems, its opportunities, its ways of working, its relation to customers and to the larger community….it would zoom out the top of the charts.
Your kids, your school
In your school, in your classroom, or even in just a tutorial or enrichment program, what if, as early as possible, volunteers, tutors, parents and teachers were trained and supported to draw students out in depth, at length, in detail, on their deepest and subtlest awarenesses in context of topic after topic in their studies?
What if, there, from Day One if possible, the students themselves were trained and supported to draw each other (and themselves) thoughtfully out in detail, on their respective deepest and subtlest awarenesses in context of topic after topic in their studies?
More generally
Compared to today’s world, where the majority of human beings are never meaningfully heard on ANYthing, a world filled as a result with what we see on the newscasts every night — what would the world be like if every human being were heard at length, in depth, in detail, on issue after issue of importance to him or her?
Conclusion
Event after event, situation after situation, both immediately in our own lives and in the world around us, feels out of our control, beyond our ability to do anything about. They aren’t. We have many specific ways to improve each of these situations and outcomes; you’ve seen a few of the specific tools referenced here. Shrugging these off will not change the fact that one way and another, one place or another, you can improve things, you can improve outcomes, you can make a positive difference in your own life and for those around you.
This information is not complicated or hard to figure out. It is basic. It is specific. You can test much of it for yourself, in your own experience. And in doing so, you will make a positive human difference.