Interest Archives

Becoming Nobody

Online chess. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It is a stretch to say that I like losing but I consider myself game. Gamey? Gamer. Willing. Much more willing to lose than not to play. Grow or at least have the experience. That will pave the way one pebble at a time.

So often you will hear in a conversation or read in a blog or social media outlet that someone considers themselves a “lifelong learner.” I wonder what they are learning? In my informal survey of these statements, it is typically a statement about one’s willingness to improve or change their current skills. Is that not what everyone does or is expected to do? Formally, I would enjoy gaining more information about genuine levels of objective growth and change rather than anecdotes about life-changing events and decisions that “really moved (institution X) forward.

As one who enjoys martial arts, I look at all areas of my life to reveal my training partner. It changes by day and by context but the function is the same. By working together, each one has the goal of improving their skill and they cannot do it alone. Regardless of your training partner, you can only have one competitor. Self. Choose how much practice takes place, quality of food, level of hydration, and intensity of work. Make the decision to be present. Aware.

Before I step onto the mats I determine my attitude and I am sure that it influences who obliges when I offer to pair up for a session of training. So many would love to say that “any given Sunday” I may win a match or lose a match; have an up day or a down day. That is not the case. My training session begins the night before when I decide to get a decent night’s sleep and moves forward with decisions throughout the day. There are not many decisions to be made. There is one. Then another one.

Me and Relson — Mugging for the camera with Relson Gracie

Watching the documentary “Bobby Fischer Against the World,” I heard David Shenk saying that there were 40,000 moves on a chess board after the first move. If you know anything about chess, you know that this is inaccurate. From both a mathematical standpoint as we as a meaningful standpoint, it is inaccurate. The only one with thousands of moves before them in a chess match is a fool.

Every decision made through the day determines an analog success or failure on the mat that evening. However you may score it. We all score it somehow. That is how we measure growth. I will not pretend to be one of the “all for fun” types. I will not claim to be a technician or analyst of the game but I know this–there are necessary and sufficient conditions in order to achieve growth and most of them depend on me.

Become nobody. Be humble. Serve. Give. Leave your ego at the door. I will take it one step further…maybe several steps. Those decisions that you make all week determine the type of training partner you will be for someone and reciprocally, they will then be for you. Rather than simply preparing yourself to respond and react, prepare yourself to be your best for someone else.

Pedagogy and its Discontents pt.2, Lead me where?

“It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement–that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.”

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Let us not make any bones about the situation. The teacher is at the front of the room and hold the keys. There are places that students cannot go. There are places that students can go. There are places that students may only go if the teacher takes them there. Say what? This is the 21st century. This classroom is flipped. We are unlearning. Delearning. Relearning. It is our new pedagogy. You can’t front on that.

Or can you, Biz? Will you front on that? Is it the content, the context, or the process that is of value in the classroom? Some mix of the three, perhaps. Maybe, even, a fourth entity–the interaction of them all. In the same way that you may not separate nature and nurture, it is unlikely that you may separate the content from the context or either of them from the process that brings them to light. Further, it is unlikely that by explicitly valuing one part of the mix that a teacher or student will be sure to have the desired influence over those components.

Do you follow? If I, as a teacher or student make explicit statements of value, the reaction of students may be to value or devalue or, perhaps, to have no change in their valuation of the component. Some rebel while some draw near. It depends on how that serves their needs for safety, belonging, esteem, or actualization. Remember Maslow? Not to oversimplify, but if you have ever tried to teach a hungry student, you are probably missing more than my point.

Getting back to the matter at hand, students respond to the content, context, and process–along with the demonstrated valuations by the instructor in a given manner. They may follow, rebel, or have no change in their value of the experience. The teacher, assessing the response, may ‘course-correct’ mid-stream-of-thought BUT what may happen is not entirely predictable! Change on the part of the teacher–either re-emphasis, over-emphasis, or a decreased emphasis–may result in a different overall response.

The most significant (read risky) overall response may be an overarching loss of interest should the instructor effectively abandon ship on the premise or the beliefs that were held at first. Any teacher still holding the torch of pedagogy as a method of a priori distribution of information should probably have a widow’s walk built and learn a new lament. The kids are alright.

“And yet, in making any general judgement of this sort, we are indanger of forgetting how variegated the human world and its mental life are.”

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Early Expertise: Gumming up the Works

As parents, teachers, and mentors we have a strong influence on children. In their pre-adolescent years, parents are the single most significant influence on the lives of their children. Beyond that, there are competing influences of teachers and friends. Once adolescence kicks in, we all lose out to peer influence. It is arguable about whether parents can retain or regain that ground but we know what we know based on research, experience, and fairly legitimate wisdom.

All that being said to set the stage for how we, as adults, can shipwreck the development of Expertise.

While the development of Expert level skills must begin at interest, the identification of that interest is a genuine challenge. I have used the example of my daughter and her knack for spotting airplanes. We were looking at pictures with her and one of those was an airplane. Very soon afterwards, we were driving south of the city and she saw an airplane departing from the airport. It was low enough to be seen out of the side windows of the car in the distance. She yelled, “Airplane! There’s an airplane!” and we were delighted that she made that connection from picture to real life and that she remember the name. All very commonplace in the life of a young child, right?

Let us take a simplistic approach to make a point. What if we thought that her recognition of that airplane was based on an inner love of airplanes? What if we then decided to take a turn off the highway and watch airplanes take-off and land for a few hours that day? What if we purchased toy airplanes, constructed paper airplanes, and rented movie after movie about airplanes?

The likely outcome: Our daughter would think that we had a deep love and value of airplanes. She would probably like airplanes because we like airplanes so much. We spent all that time together doing things and talking about airplanes. She might even start initiating activities that revolved around airplanes which would have an entirely new influence.

Let us be extreme.

Cut to 20 years later and she is piloting a jumbo jet across the wide Atlantic. She deplanes. She sits in Baile Átha Cliath airport eating her lunch and complaining that she does not really like flying but it is a job and pays well with decent benefits. She is, like many others, a competent pilot. Why not an Expert? She was never really interested.

So, what happened?

Deliberately on purpose

Deliberate. Purposive. On purpose. On accident.

Our first mentors and coaches are our parents. They determine, from our first days, our exposure to the world. They curate our experiences. They vary our inputs. Our caretakers ensure our stimulation and absence of stimulation. All of this activity rushes to the senses unmitigated and without preference by our nervous system. There is no internal discrimination between sound and noise.

From a cognitive standpoint, we are open–a stormdrain. A waterfall.

It is easy to see every movement of the child as an instinctual motion of comfort or need. After that, it is easy to see how activity is Hebbian: developmental, appropriate, necessary, and purpose-driven. It is in our genetic code to repeat, practice, and perfect–to prepare ourselves to engage with a world that demands engagement.

Typical of most situations, caretakers return to work after the honeymoon period that follows childbirth. Emotions do not diminish but practicality of employ and schedule returns and the rhythmicity of life begins to influence the habitudes of the young. Arranging time for play is the most important thing that can occur in this period as it is play that prepares the young mind for the confounds of the ‘real’ world. In the same way that young cats at the zoo or the wild wrestle, stalk, and bite to prepare for the hunt, our offspring require experience and exploration. Whether you believe that it is age-driven, chemically driven, a function of input capacity, or a mix of them all, you likely mediate their experiences (or at least you should) based on those beliefs. Why would you not?

Look at a seed about to be planted into the ground and see the plant that it will become. If you have never placed a bean into a styrofoam cup on your kitchen window, I advise it. Become accustomed to small seeds becoming full grown entities. Look at that small scratch on the hood of your car. Become accustomed to the development of that scratch into a rusted line and eventually a hole. Get used to the fact that working with your hands produces calluses, deformations of those once straight fingers, knurled scars that tell stories over time; get used to it all.

Get used to the idea that every activity in which a child engages–and with whom they engage in it–grows to become a developed portion of who they are. Some of these skills and behaviors will thankfully become automatic. Consider the ability of the vestibular system to right itself through a triple failsafe system of canals of the inner ear, vision, and musculature. This is a skill that may be taken for granted in the adult but was practiced and refined over and again in so many ways that looked nothing like walking.

That is to say: One did not become a competent walker by walking.

Every engagement or failure to engage shapes the habits and decisions of the person that will be. In some ways it is like trying to operate a tropical fish tank without any tools or measures. Haphazardly managing pH levels. Hoping that the food is enough. Wondering if the water is too warm. Thinking that maybe we should have bought the book. Reconsidering the addition or subtraction of variables that caused some of the residents to quicken, slow, lean, or gulp float.

It is all practice. It all shapes and it all sets us on the path toward becoming.
How actively will we engage in this system?
It does happen without us. It will happen without us.
It does not guarantee Expertise or even competence.