Verbal Thinking

October 16, 2018 By B. Baylis 4 Comments

American Higher Education Has Lost Its Lodestar!

This post has been very difficult to write and has required multiple drafts. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

American Higher Education (AHE) has lost its lodestar. This post has been a lot harder to write than I thought it would be. At first, I was extremely excited to write this post. However, as I began to compose it, I immediately hit a number of roadblocks.

The first roadblock related to the way I process thoughts and ideas. As many of you know, almost a decade ago two traumatic brain incidents drastically changed my life. After a burst aneurysm caused the implosion of a benign meningioma attached to my right temporal lobe, I started having trouble finding words. I found myself fighting a case of oral aphasia.

Nine months later, I experienced four tonic-clonic seizures within a thirty-minute timespan. When I awoke from a four-day coma, I found myself no longer thinking in terms of words. I was now processing thoughts and ideas in terms of pictures. Words became my second language. Visual images were now my first language. This meant that in order to communicate with people, I had to translate back and forth between pictures and words.

My mind was overflowing with pictures that spoke to this issue of American higher education. However, translating those visuals into words was much more difficult and slower than usual. If I was able to compose other posts, why had this particular post become so problematic?

During my struggles with this post, I had a eureka moment. In the deep recesses of my mind, I found a perfect word, LODESTAR, that covered four aspects of the topic I wanted to address.

First of all, a lodestar is a fixed point of reference, which can be used to describe the position or motion of one object relative to another object.

There have been dramatic changes in both American higher education and society during the past century. AHE needs a lodestar to position itself in relation to American society.

Secondly, as a fixed point, a lodestar can be used as the foundation of a guidance system to help individuals get from one point to another, particularly when they are lost. AHE has lost its way. It needs a GPS.

It is wandering aimlessly from one crisis to the next. Headline after headline decries its loss of effectiveness in serving the needs of American society, its declining support in public circles, and its strident and stubborn insularity.

In article after article, questions are raised about the declining confidence of American society in higher education, and the seeming indifference of AHE to the external demands for change. The internal conflicts among the primary actors within AHE are laid bare to the public, exposing all to criticism and contempt.

Comparisons between education for life and career education are plentiful. The philosophical and theoretical bases for liberal and professional education are made public for everyone to pick a side.

In analysis after analysis critics and proponents explore hypotheses about the rising cost of higher education, the short and long-term effects of the staggering debt load that students and institutions are accumulating, the commercialization of higher education, and the adjunctification of the faculty.

Thirdly, lodestars are models of propriety. They live by fixed values and principles, no matter what the cost to them or their institutions. Currently, it seems that every week brings another scandal to light in American higher education. No segment of AHE has escaped unscathed.

Finally, a lodestar is an inspirational leader. I challenge you to name one individual in educational circles today who inspires others to follow him or her.

Individual campuses may have local lodestars. However, where are the likes of Ernie Boyer, Lee Shulman, John Dewey, Mortimer Adler, Maria Montessori, Paulo Freire, Bertrand Russell, Maxine Greene, B. F. Skinner, James Conant, and Martin Buber? At this junction of time, the enterprise of American higher education has no one individual who stands out ahead of the rest of the field.

As I was pulling my thoughts together for this post, a political/media circus in America made the term lodestar a laughing matter and a joke. How could I seriously use it in this post about American higher education? I decided that I could use it, and must use it because it is the right word to use.

Having settled on the inclusion of the word lodestar, there were still two major stumbling blocks with respect to this post. The first related to the format I have used in all my recent posts. After I translated the pictures in my head into words, I took another step. Since I am not an artist and can’t draw an intelligible sketch of anything, I went and found free pictures that would duplicate as closely as possible the visions in my head. I did this to help my readers understand my thought processes.

In this case, I drew a complete blank. I found nothing that came close to communicating my thoughts. Thus, I have no visual robes to wrap around my verbal thoughts. I decided to go ahead and present the unadorned thoughts to my readers. I do have one question for my readers: Which style do you prefer? The verbal thoughts augmented with pictures, or the naked thoughts by themselves? Please tell me in the comment in the box below. I will use this rough survey to help me determine how I will proceed with my future posts. The second stumbling block was the 1,000-word limit. This will require multiple posts on this topic which will follow in future weeks.

In my next post, scheduled for publication on Tuesday, October 23, I return to my roots as a mathematician and an institutional researcher. I will introduce a new Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that I developed. I call it the Admissions Multiplier Effect. I believe it provides important information that is not otherwise available and should be featured on the dashboard of every institution of higher education.

March 13, 2017 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Education’s Big Lie, Part IV: Human Arenas Where Words Often Play Second Fiddle

I am WORDS! I am the Concert Master, and First Chair, First Violin! When it comes to thinking, I play second fiddle to NO ONE. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

In my most recent post of this series, Education’s Big Lie, Part III: Visual Thinkers in the Spotlight, I highlighted three visual thinkers for whom words were not their initial line of attack when they tackled problems. Their minds focused immediately on images. Each of these individuals had very different reasons than the others for the use of images in their thought processes.

Leonardo da Vinci was an artist and inventor. He saw things. When facing a new problem, he would imagine a machine and a process that he envisioned solving this problem. The next thing he would do was to draw sketches of the machines and the processes that he saw in his mind. Although the pictures were quite vivid in his mind, he still had to put pen or chalk to paper to get a firmer grasp on the solution. Many of his sketches contain very few words. The words were secondary to Leonardo.

Albert Einstein was a scientist and mathematician, and a twentieth-century Renaissance man. He was a humanitarian, philosopher, and serious pianist and violinist. Einstein approached problems via his highly developed and practiced intuition. He had a feeling for problems and their proper solutions. He had insights into the physical world that no one else could envision. After satisfying himself that the mathematics and physics of a given solution worked, Einstein would turn to the task of finding words to describe his discovery “when he found the time.”

Temple Grandin is a scientist and outspoken advocate for animal welfare and accommodations for challenged children and adults. She came to those positions naturally since she grew up as a severely autistic child. She knows firsthand the challenges such children and adults face. Oliver Sacks, the world renown neurologist wrote in the forward of Grandin’s book Thinking in Pictures that her first book Emergence: Labeled Autistic was “unprecedented because there had never before been an inside narrative of autism.” Sacks is also the acclaimed author of the bestseller Awakenings, which is an autobiographic novel of a fictional, American physician, Dr. Macolm Slayer’s use of L-dopa in a ward of catatonic patients who awaken after years in a vegetative state. This novel was used as the basis for the 1993 film of the same name starring Robin Williams. An encounter with the automatically opening door at a store led Grandin during her adolescent years to the conclusion that she thought in terms of pictures instead of words. She claimed that this ability helped her in redesigning and making the cattle chutes of slaughterhouses more humane. She came up with her design by transversing the chutes at the eye level of cattle, seeing what they saw and felt. Calmer cattle at the time of their slaughter was better for the cattle and people. More relaxed cattle produced more tender beef for consumers.

Sports announcers, music, food, fashion, art and film critics make their living using words to describe, praise and criticize performances, films and other works of art. However, a critique is not the same as experiencing the film or the work of art with one’s own eyes and ears. Even the artists themselves may have difficulty in using words to fully describe their works of art. We speak and write about the genius and talent that Michelangelo displayed in his painting of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling. However, no words will take one’s breath away like the actual experience of seeing it does.

In the field of culinary arts, I find it ironic that I must use words to make my point. How many of you have heard the expression: “The proof is in the pudding!”? Chefs can use words to describe their creations. Culinary critics use words to praise or pan culinary dishes. However, the real test of the worth of a dish is in its visual appeal, aroma, consistency, and taste. When we eat, we use the whole cadre our senses of sight, smell, touch, temperature, and taste. One of the finer points by which we judge a creme brulee is the crunch, or sound the caramelized sugar topping makes when we break it with our spoon. A second judging criterium is the texture of the custard under the caramelized sugar topping. The popularity of cooking contests on television like Iron Chef America, Chopped, Beat Bobby Flay, and Worst Cooks in America and many others have spawned similar contests in a myriad of different settings. The phenomenon has spread even to the U.S. armed services.

On athletic playing fields, the ingenuity of individuals cannot be fully realized through verbal descriptions of their feats. The images of one example immediately come to my mind. Unfortunately, I didn’t witness this play. I have to rely on the memory and storytelling ability of my Babe Ruth League coach The scene is from Jackie Robinson’s early days playing second base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jackie was known for his hitting and his speed and bravado on the basepaths. However, Jackie also used his speed to great advantage playing defense in the field. On one particular play, a batter hit a ground ball up through the middle of the infield. Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese both broke for the ball. With Jackie’s superior speed he was able to dive for the ball and flag it down in the outfield grass. However, there was no time to get up, turn his body and throw the batter out at first base. Seemingly without thinking, Jackie flipped the ball out of his glove to the approaching shortstop Pee Wee Reese, who caught it in his bare hand and threw it to first base to get the batter out. Although I am pleased with this verbal description of the play, it doesn’t really do justice to the play. It was unheard of when it first occurred. Later it became a standard weapon in the arsenal of defensive plays for middle infielders. When I played shortstop in Babe Ruth League, our coach would have us practice this play several times each week for the one time in our careers when it might be appropriate to use it.

Jackie Robinson swinging a bat in a Dodger’s uniform 1954. Published in LOOK, v. 19, no. 4, 1955 Feb. 22, p. 78. The photograph is by Bob Sandberg, Look photographer. This work has been released into the public domain by its copyright holder, Cowles Communications, Inc. This applies worldwide.

In the performing arts, one can describe theatrical scenes like the chandelier scene in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. However, a verbal description is not the same experience that one gets when one is actually sitting in an orchestra seat of a live performance. The verbal description does not raise the goosebumps on one’s arms that appear when a magical-like spotlight illuminates the chandelier hanging over your head, just before it begins a rapid descent to crash on the stage, or hearing the eerie organ music and haunting off-stage voice of the mysterious phantom singing:

You will curse the day you did not do All that the Phantom asked of you!

GO!

In the introductory post of this series on Education’s Big Lie, I criticized Education for buying into the philosophical position that “One size fits all.” In researching this series I came across an article, the title of which I thought was right on! The article I Think in Pictures, You Teach in Words: The GIfted Visual Spacial Learner was written by Lesley Sword and published by Talent Development Resources. Lesley Sword is the Director of Gifted & Creative Services Australia, a consultant who specializes in the psychology of the gifted and has worked with gifted people of all ages. Sword’s article dealt witha portion of the problem I see in education. That portion is the problem of serving the gifted students. Two other problems with education are it underserves the disadvantaged and underprepared students, and how it ignores the students in the middle. In Part V and VI of this series, I will speak to how education ignores or underserves the gifted students. In later posts, I will deal with the other problematic areas.

March 8, 2017 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Education’s Big Lie, Part III: Visual Thinkers in the Spotlight

Throughout history, some of the greatest minds, artists, scientists, and inventors of humanity have been visual thinkers. Some of them realized this and talked openly about their thinking style. In the case of others, we must deduce their primary thinking patterns from the evidence that they left behind concerning their thought processes. In the presentation of my case, I would like to call three witnesses.

My first witness is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci. Leonardo was born in 1452 and died in 1519. Even though only 15 of his paintings have survived, for centuries Leonardo has been considered one of the greatest painters who ever lived. He was also a superior sculptor, mathematician, engineer, scientist, botanist, anatomist, and musician. He has been labeled the archetypical Renaissance man.

Since we can’t ask Leonardo any questions in person and he never spoke directly about his thinking processes, we must rely on his personal notes that have been preserved in codices for his testimony. The following example is a page from one such codex.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketch of his intricate design for water wheels and screws to be used in an irrigation system. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This image is in the public domain because it is a faithful reproduction of a work created by an author who died in 1519.

Leonardo’s codices are dominated by sketches with writing intermittently spaced throughout the work. This seems to indicate that Leonardo’s creative process began with visual images of his paintings and inventions. I have no further questions of this witness.

For my next witness, I would like to call Albert Einstein. Einstein was born in 1879 and died in 1955. He was a world famous physicist known for his work on relativity theory and quantum physics. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics. Time Magazine named him the Person of the Century on December 31, 1999. In the introduction to their article, they described Einstein as “… the embodiment of pure intellect, the bumbling professor with the German accent, a comic cliche in a thousand films. Instantly recognizable, like Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp, Albert Einstein’s shaggy-haired visage was as familiar to ordinary people as to the matrons who fluttered about him in salons from Berlin to Hollywood. Yet he was unfathomably profound — the genius among geniuses who discovered, merely by thinking about it, that the universe was not as it seemed.”

Einstein may be best known for his famous equation: E = mc². This equation indicates that mass and energy are two sides of the same coin. They are directly related to each other via a natural constant which is the speed of light squared.

Since Einstein is dead, we are no longer able to ask him about his thought processes. However, many times during his lifetime, he was asked what was the secret to his genius. The answer that I found most enlightening came from a private conversation with an unnamed friend. Alice Calaprice later included snippets from this conversation in her book, The Expanded Quotable Einstein. Consider the following example: “All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration…. At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason…Imagination is more important than knowledge”

The most direct answer to whether Einstein was a visual or verbal thinker came from the professor himself. His answer to this question was referenced in Abraham Pais’ book Subtle is the Lord: The Life and the Science of Albert Einstein. At a physics conference in 1922, Einstein told the audience that he used images to solve his problems, and only later he sometimes found the words to explain those solutions. I believe this indicates that Einstein was primarily a visual thinker.

For my third witness, I call Temple Grandin to the stand. She is still very much alive. Grandin has a Ph.D. in animal science from the University of Illinois and is a professor at Colorado State University. She is a very vocal spokesperson for visual thinking, so I am sure that Grandin agrees with this position. After growing up with autism, Grandin became a highly functional and accomplished adult. She is the author of six books, including the national bestsellers Thinking in Pictures and Animals in Translation. In the publicity blurbs for Thinking in Pictures, Grandin stated, “Rigid academic and social expectations could wind up stifling a mind that while it might struggle to conjugate a verb could one day take us to distant stars.” Temple delivered a February 2010 TED talk entitled The World Needs All Kinds of Minds.

In the first post, Education’s Big Lie, Part I: Introduction , of this series, I began with an example where words failed children. However, we know that words not only fail children. They often fail adults with physical and mental challenges, to which I can well attest. At times, words can also be insufficient for well-functioning adults. In my next post, Education’s Big Lie, Part IV: Human Arenas Where Words Often Play Second Fiddle, I will deal with a number of areas where words can easily be in second or third place to other means of expressions.

February 25, 2017 By B. Baylis 1 Comment

Education’s Big Lie, Part II: We Can Think without Words

As I noted at the end of Education’s Big Lie, Part I: Introduction, I have learned that we can think without words. However, in much of today’s world, particularly those parts of it touching the education enterprise, communicating without words is much more difficult, if not next to impossible. Although as the following giggleBites cartoon illustrates communicating with words can have its own drawbacks.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Cartoosh, author of the cartoon. Wikimedia has received an e-mail confirming that the copyright holder has approved publication and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.This correspondence has been reviewed by an OTRS member and stored in its permission archive.

One thing that the above cartoon brought forcefully to my attention is that the expression “A picture is worth a thousand words” implies “words” are the basis of value. Pictures and ideas are valued in terms of words. Have you ever heard anyone ask how much of a picture does one word equal? In any exchange of objects of value using two different currencies, one of those currencies is considered dominant. The transaction is then conducted in that currency. In education, we tend to try to force the exchange of ideas in the currency of words. We almost never let pictures speak for themselves. We have to “explain them.”

“Let me explain this idea to you.” Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

If words are our basis for the exchange of ideas, then we must have a storehouse of words to express our ideas. Aphasia is an insidious deficiency in that it steals one’s words, the basis of exchange, but not the ideas, the real objects of value. Ideas are locked inside one’s head with no easy way to communicate them.

I have managed to deal with my aphasia because of the verbal proficiency that I built up over my 60-year love affair with words. The filing cabinets in my head are filled with words. After the TBI’s, I still had a treasure trove of words in my memory which I found I could access intermittently.

Finding the right words. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

However, even with my experience and confidence with words, many times I felt words were playing “Hide and Seek” with me. Can you imagine how difficult it is for children who don’t have the same experience or comfort with words? The ideas are right there in front of the children, but they can’t find the words to express them. It’s like the “Where’s Waldo Game?” Waldo is hidden in plain sight. Let’s play “Where’s Waldo” with the dead leaf mantis in the following picture.

Can you find the bug? Somewhere in this picture is a Dead leaf mantis (Deroplatys desiccata). The picture was taken at Bugworld in the Bristol Zoo, Bristol, England. If this mantis is alarmed it lies motionless on the rainforest floor, disappearing among the real dead leaves. It eats other animals up to the size of small lizards. From the island of Madagascar, Africa. This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Arpingstone. This applies worldwide.

Having gone through my trials, I can empathize with children who must be completely bewildered when confronted with what must seem like nonsense to them. For the past eight years, it has been a constant, uphill battle for me to attempt to do the things that were second nature to me prior to the TBI’s. Even putting together these simple essays has been an exhausting task. At times, it has been an almost overwhelming chore. I have to visualize my thoughts. I must then translate those pictures into appropriate words and coherent sentences. The images that I intersperse in my posts represent the starting points of where I begin my thinking. Since I am retired, living on a fixed income, my drawing ability leaves much to be desired, I must find public domain or royalty free pictures which mirror the figures that I am seeing in my mind. I must then struggle to translate those images into words.

Where did our classrooms and education go astray? If we want to measure a child’s creativity, imagination, intelligence, curiosity, ingenuity, reasoning, and problem-solving I propose we go back and watch children play. The first picture that comes to my mind is the baby in a medical insurance television advertisement that rolls over from his back to his stomach. The baby then reaches for and grabs a soft, cloth ball. The baby then plays with the ball, feeling it, squeezing it and trying to taste it. The baby has no words to describe what he is doing. No words are spoken about what the baby is doing, but curiosity is clearly visible in the baby’s eyes and actions.

Give a one-year-old child a few crayons and the back of a paper placemat in a restaurant and watch creativity and imagination come to the fore. Give five-year-old children a new toy like a little red wagon and watch them play out interactive stories. Give six-year-old children a set of Legos and watch them build houses and monsters. Give seven-year-old children jigsaw puzzles and watch them develop problem-solving skills. In most of these situations, words are seldom to be found.

The artist was 1 year 10 months when this was drawn. Soft crayon on paper. Uploaded by the child’s parent. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Since our society has dictated that our culture is passed along from generation to generation via the media of books and verbal stories, I realize that language, words, and verbal thinking must eventually come into play in education. However, I do not believe we must necessarily equate the mental characteristics of creativity, imagination, intelligence, curiosity, ingenuity, reasoning, and problem-solving with verbal thinking and verbal proficiency. I would argue that I am not alone in this position.

For more than 200 hundred years, the New York City Harbor was the first port of call for people and goods entering the United States on the east coast. It didn’t matter whether it was a military or civilian ship. It didn’t matter whether it was driven by wind or steam. It didn’t matter whether it was large or small. It headed for New York City first. For almost 1500 years, words have been the first port of call in the generation of ideas.

New York City Harbor from the Brooklyn Bridge 1893. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The image is in public domain because it was published prior to 1923.

In a number of areas outside of education, words are not the first port of call for the devotees of certain pursuits. Additionally, there have been a few brave individuals in areas dominated by words that have taken the very courageous step of coming out of the shadows and admitting that they are visual thinkers. In my next post in this series, Education’s Big Lie, Part III: Visual Thinkers in the Spotlight, I highlight a number of these individuals.

February 16, 2017 By B. Baylis 2 Comments

Education’s Big Lie, Part I: Introduction

I don’t know how to say it any clearer. I have come to the shocking conclusion that the enterprise of American education is doing society a huge disservice by propagating and perpetuating a big lie. Please do not misinterpret what I am attempting to say in this essay. I am firmly convinced that education is immensely valuable. Paraphrasing a credit card commercial campaign, it is “priceless.” For more than 65 years, my life has revolved around faith, education, and family. I am fully committed to the concept of an appropriate education for everyone. However, I am also very certain that education, as it is currently conceived and generally defined, doesn’t and can’t serve everyone equally well. To paraphrase a television commercial for a particular internet service, “Education that doesn’t serve everyone, doesn’t serve anyone.” The simplest statement of Education’s Big Lie is Procrustes’s aphorism “one size fits all.”

Caricature from 19th century German satirical magazine “Berliner Wespen” (Berlin Wasps) – Title: Procrustes. Caption: Bismarck: As I see, Lady Liberty is somewhat too large – we want to change this immediately to her contention. (He chops away her legs.) – Inscription on bed: Socialist Law. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; in Public Domain

By “one size fits all” I am surprisingly not referring to either standardized testing or the Common Core. Both of these educational fads have their good and bad points. I will explicate my views on each of them in later posts. For this post, I return to a fuller statement of my understanding of the Big Lie plaguing the American educational enterprise. The reality to which I am referring is that the American educational enterprise has pigeon-holed the mental characteristics of creativity, imagination, intelligence, curiosity, ingenuity, reasoning, and problem-solving primarily if not exclusively to the verbal region of the human brain. The Big Lie equates these characteristics with one’s facility with words. Many if not most of the instruments used to measure these mental characteristics are primarily verbally based. To improve their abilities in the areas delineated above, students are instructed to read, write, and speak more.

So many books, so little time! Illustration courtesy of Presenter Media

If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again! Draft; after draft! Illustration courtesy of Presenter Media

Why? Why did the teacher call on me? I don’t know the answer! Image courtesy of Presenter Media

This solution may work for many and possibly the majority of students. However, the problem with this remedy is that for a significant number of students words are more like enemies than friends. Words are at the crux of my argument against education. Ideas are considered the coin of the realm in education. For centuries in education, we have been indoctrinated to believe that ideas are formulated almost exclusively through words. After ideas are formed, we must then use words to express those ideas, either in written or oral form. We are taught that to think properly we must use a process that is based in and undergirded by the use of words. This process is commonly known as verbal thinking. I grew up with that mindset. In this mindset, words are the cornerstone upon which we build our ideas.

Ideas are built upon a foundation of words, phrases, and sentences. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

This was the way I was taught. It is the way most of our American society has been taught for hundreds of years. I am going out on a limb now and say that this is not the only way we think or must think. It took two traumatic brain incidents (TBI’s) in 2009 to convince me that there are other ways to think. The first TBI was the implosion of a benign meningioma due to the explosion of the artery which was feeding it. This TBI left me with a mild case of aphasia. As a verbal thinker, I found it difficult to think when I couldn’t find my beloved words.

The second TBI was a series of four tonic-clonic seizures within 30 minutes that left me in a coma for three days. When I woke up, I knew immediately something was different. I found myself no longer going directly to words to make sense of what was going on around me. I saw pictures. At first, I wasn’t certain what had happened. As I reflected on what was happening, I remember several articles that I had read that were written by stroke survivors. I was having the same experiences that they had encountered. I had become a visual thinker.

After 60 years of being a poster child for verbal thinking, words were now my second thought language, Although I was thinking in terms of pictures, I found that it was necessary for me to use words to communicate my ideas. This was extremely frustrating at times. I attempted to describe my feelings in a 2010 blog posting entitled Words Are More Like Cats Than Dogs.

Sometimes corraling words can be harder than herding cats. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

Where am I going with this argument? For centuries in educational circles, words have been king.

I am WORD! I have the final say. You must listen to me! Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

A recent Google+ posting The Importance of Imagination by Elaine Roberts, a former colleague, induced me to write this series of posts. In her posting, Roberts described a situation that led her to an epiphany and two points of clarity. The situation grew out of an attempt by a teacher to test or evaluate the creativity of a class of sixth graders. This teachers’ attempt was not a standardized test. It was a writing assignment. Most educators would label this assignment as an authentic assessment instrument. The teacher gave the children the following set of instructions:

Okay. Students, your assignment is very simple. Just write me a story about anything. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

What do I imagine some of the students heard? “Blah, Blah, Blah!”

Blah, Blah,Blah. I don’t understand what this teacher wants us to do. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

Even though they had previously been given a template to use in writing stories, what were the first thoughts of some students about constructing a story? I think they probably drew a blank.

“The teacher wants us to write a story. What am I going to do? How can I write a story? I don’t know what to write about.” Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

Taking literary license with this scenario, what did I imagine this student wanted to turn into the teacher? Simply, a blank piece of paper.

How can I write anything, if I don’t know what I should be writing about? Image courtesy of Presenter Media

What do I think the teacher’s response to a blank piece of paper woul be? Most likely, he would have said to himself, “What is wrong with this student? The wiring in his head must be all tangled up.” Now the shoe is on the other foot. The teacher doesn’t know what the student is trying to say.

“What’s up with this mixed up student? The instructions were so easy. How could not understand them? How could you turn in a blank piece of paper?” Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

With respect to the spread of the Big Lie, I readily admit that my hands are not entirely clean. Prior to 2009, as I noted above, I could have been considered a poster child for verbal thinking and verbal learning. In all of my recollections of my earliest childhood, I was constantly immersed in books and words. At the age of five, I won a Sunday School contest for being the first primary student (Grades K through 6) during the new church year to recite 100 selected verses by memory.

Yipee! I did it. I was the first to recite all 100 verses by memory.

As an academic professional, I made my living off words. Even as a mathematician, my training, and education were dominated by words. As an instructor, I constantly fed my students words.

“Okay class, who can explain Zorn’s Lemma and what is it’s relationship to the Well-Ordering Principle?” Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

As an administrator, I used words to defend positions and try to persuade colleagues to follow my lead.

Colleagues, I know the message I bring to you today at this faculty meeting will not be pleasant to hear. I want you to know that it is hard for me to have to deliver it to you. However, we are facing a huge budget deficit. I have two proposed solutions. Neither of them will be without pain. But I am bringing them to you today, to get your reactions and suggestions.” Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

With what I have written so far, I should probably call it quits for this first post in this series. If I haven’t done enough to damage my image and credibility within the higher education community, I invite you to stay tuned for additional posts. Although it has been difficult at times, I have learned that we can think without words. In fact, I have subtitled Part II of the series Education’s Big Lie, “We Can Think without Words.” Even though we give lip service to the idea that “A picture is worth a thousand words”, in much of today’s world, particularly those parts of it touching the education enterprise, the most difficult aspect of working with thoughts and ideas is trying to communicate them without words.

October 26, 2015 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Visual Story Board for Manuscript Title, Part V – Student Version

Image from GraphicStock. Used with permission

This post is the last in a series on the development of the title of the manuscript, An Explorer’s Guide to Biblical Life Planning: Student Version, on which I am currently working. By working, I mean interacting with my computer. This process is not as straight forward as it was prior to 2009. I am still generating ideas in my head. After my most serious bout with seizures in December, 2009, the ideas have almost always been in the form of visual images. Since I am not an artist, the coins in the realm of communications are words, I must translate the pictures I see into words.

This translation is a multi-step process. I first do a very rough draft in my head. I then mull over that draft several times before sitting down at my keyboard and inputting a more refined rough draft into the memory banks of my computer. I print out a copy of my work so that I can review it away from that machine that beckons me to investigate all the wonderful new reports on education, sports, world events, food and cars that it has to offer.

I usually leave my office, taking the hard copy of my document to review later. I have found if I try to edit the material immediately, I do not find problems or alternative ways of expressing my ideas. I am too invested in what I have just committed to my computer. I must wait minutes, hours or even days before I can truly edit my own work.

Why do I need the printed paper copy of a document to edit? There are several reasons. The first reason is that I am not a digital native. I will admit that, although I consider myself fairly fluent in digitalese, I am still a digital immigrant. In addition, the aging process has taken away some of my reaction time. Even spoken or hand written communications take much longer now than just 7 years ago.

Aging and other health concerns have also caused changes in how I do things. My middle range vision, i.e., computer screens, is deteriorating. If I enlarge the screen type font large enough to easily read it, some documents will not fit on the screen. In addition, the lines of type do not always run straight across the page for me. I get mixed up as to which line I am reading. With my changing vision, I have had to go to two pairs of glasses. One pair for distance vision and up-close “book” reading, and one pair for middle range (computer screen) and reading distance. I tried trifocals, but I couldn’t use them. They gave me severe headaches. Exchanging glasses has quickly become a pain, especially when I forget where I put the other pair of glasses.

This post concentrates on the phrase Student Version. With this phrase I am attempting to identify the target audience of the book. It is intended for mid-to late-adolescents. This phrase actually comes directly in verbal form from my pre-Traumatic Brain Incident days. As far back as 1990, colleges were looking for ways of addressing those traditional “college-age” individuals whom they were trying to attract to come to their institutions. Colleges had to walk something of a tightrope in addressing these individuals. Officially, in the eyes of the law, most of these individuals were not adults. They were still children in the eyes of many of their parents. Many parents were financially responsible for these individuals. Parents also wanted to protect “their children” from the harsh realities of the real world for as long as they could. The “children” were getting ready to leave the nest. They wanted to be on their own as much as possible. So as not to offend the parents or the young people, colleges started using the term “student.” This gave the young folks a sense of freedom, while still not completely off-putting the parents. In the ’90s at college recruitment or orientation days, we talked to parents about “their students.” When we addressed the prospective students, we used the term “students” to give them a sense of maturation. The term may not have completely satisfied everyone in either group. However, it didn’t disgust them either.

As these prospective students engaged in the college selection and preparation processes, there was one question that kept surfacing:

That’s the primary reason for writing this book. I wanted to help prospective students and their parents answer the questions that arise naturally in the processes of selecting, applying to and preparing for college or careers. This book is addressed to the students. I am also working on a second volume, addressed to the parents. I am intending to call it An Explorer’s Guide to Biblical Life Planning: PG Version. The abbreviation PG stands for Parental Guidance. This is not the parental guidance that the movies rating system suggests. The book is intended to provide guidance to parents as their students navigate their paths to college or a career. The PG Verision will contain all the material in the Student Version, but it will contain additional information. The added bonus material is meant to help guide the parents as they work with their students. I will encourage families to work through the common parts of the books together.