Artificer Learning#1

August 3rd, 2007

This series of posts was written by myself and a friend for a Futures journal. It may be seen as a bit ‘out there’ and academic, but I do think it deals with issues that are important for education. Especially for education that deals with skills.

Critical Futures Praxis – artificing a future we can live with

Introduction
It is vital for survival in today’s complex turbulent and often incoherent world to have futurists who can collaborate on collective projects, focus on action or even validate actions towards a better world and actionists who can think of the longer-term intent of their actions and the big picture in which we, and our actions, locate.

Unfortunately “education” separates the learner from the praxis of her lived life; and classrooms separate the learner from design, production and intergenerational community life.

This short piece identifies one way to bring these futuring and actioning skill sets together.

Needed, another type of learning – critical futures praxis

Often we see thinking and doing as mutually exclusive.

There are, however, times when we put all of ourselves into what we are doing: whether building, conversing, or lovemaking. There are also times when we lose ourselves in our activity as we shape (artifice) some new gadget. At these times we are fully present in our activity; thinking and doing are united in our human ‘being’.

A pedagogy that can embrace being and doing we call Critical Futures Praxis or Artificer Learning.

It is miles away from the imitative ‘learning’ associated with much vocational, and increasingly tertiary “education”, today.

We seek a type of action learning that:

. Focuses on the learner, not only the action,
. Draws from experience yet is proactive,
. Is Comprehensive: including intelligent understanding and design of subsequent actions
. Embodies the agency of the learner; not only the structural blockages
. Is directed to the good of the persona and the good of society (integrity and ethics – a form of Phronesis* – virtuous action towards the good (of) society or Eudaimonia)
. Moves praxis from doing to making and shaping ie. prototype development

The next posts will outline (about a week apart) will outline a type of action learning that does this.

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The Water Element: kidney and bladder

August 1st, 2007

The water element in our bodies manifests physically as the kidney and bladder.

When our kidney and bladder are healthy then the water element in our body is healthy.

The water element is especially effected by cold.

We usually need to urinate more in cold weather.  The kidney channel is the only acupuncture channel that begins on the sole of our feet.  If you walk across a cold floor to get to the toilet you may find, that after walking back across it you want to go to the toilet again.

So how is your urination?  When healthy the flow of urine will be free and without any pain.  You will not be ‘caught short’ – that is find suddenly that you need to urinate urgently.

Any problem with urination will involve the kidney and/or bladder.

  •     Frequent urination.
  •     Waking frequently to urinate at night.
  •     Urine containing things it shouldn’t

- bloody
- cloudy.

This is a brief introduction to the physical aspect of the water element as it manifests in our bodies through the kidney and bladder.  We will go into more detail about the kidney and bladder later on this blog.

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The Water Element – jing

July 30th, 2007

In our bodies the water element manifests physically in the kidneys and bladder

- those organs concerned with the discharge of fluids from our body.  The kidney is the yin aspect of the water element in our bodies because it is more solid.  The bladder is the yang aspect because it is hollow.

The kidney is said to store one of the vital fluids – jing in Chinese.

This is sometimes translated as essence (though there are other translations as well).

The jing is the vitality we are born with.  Birth deformities are jing problems in acupuncture.

In general we are born with a stock of jing at birth and to maintain health we need to maintain this jing as much as possible.  In one sense aging is using up our jing.  The art of life then is to use the energy we get from outside ourselves (food and air) and not use the energy from inside ourselves.  Put as simply as possible this means not pushing ourselves to exhaustion.  Those who do this (even including elite athletes) tend not to live as long.  Major challenges to our health also draw onjing to overcome them – things such as a major illness or shock.  (Those things which age us prematurely.)

The kind of exhaustion that is to be avoided is most easily recognised by feelings of dizziness.

For men jing is lost through excessive orgasms.  This would be approximately 2 or 3 per week in winter and perhaps 3-5 per week in summer.  (Jing has a role in warming the body and so is less used for this in summer).  This leads to ‘Chinese yoga’ practises of inhibiting ejaculation at orgasm.  We will go into jing in more detail when we get to the vital fluids on this blog.

So how are you going at maintaining your jing?

  •     Do you work too hard and get exhausted (or even got to burn-out)?
  •     Do you work, or engage in sex, to the point of dizziness?
  •     Do you feel that you were born with a weak (little jing) or strong (lots of jing) constitution?
  •     Of those you know, who do you think has lots of jing?

- What do they look like, how do they move, what kind of lifestyle do they live?

  •     Of those you know, who do you think has less jing?

- What do they look like, how do they move, what kind of lifestyle do they live?

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The Five Elements

July 27th, 2007

Traditional Chinese Medicine has a quite complicated and useful medical theory.  However it is due to the subtlety with which a relatively few simple concepts are combined that makes it so impressive.

One cluster of these concepts is called “the five elements”
– whether this is a correct translation is much debated.  [Chinese characters are based on pictures and coming up with the equivalent idea in a language like English is usually tricky, and will probably always be debated.]  This post is a brief introduction to the elements.

The five elements are:

  • water,
  • wood,
  • fire,
  • earth, and,
  • metal.

These elements are present outside our body, “in nature”, and in our bodies.  Looking at these five elements in our bodies gives us a ready health check list.

  • The water element covers our ‘constitution’ – what we are born with (some people are born more healthy than others) – and can be extended to include our natural talent or gift.

It also includes our libido, urination, our lower back and our ability to hear.

  • The wood element includes: our ability to flex and flow with life, and so includes our sinews (not our muscles).

It is an especially important element for women to have in balance.  It includes our vision – both literally and metaphorically – and can lead us to become hyper if it is not controlled by paying attention to the mundane details of our daily life.

  • The fire element is our ability to see clearly and this extends as far as contemplation and meditation.

A person with enough fire is warm and clear – they aren’t scatty.  Too much fire and we can go beyond scatty to being unfocussed and manic.  With enough fire we are serene but not coldly detached.

  • When our earth element is healthy we take in easily and well the fruit of the earth.

The earth element is our nourishment.  Whatever nourishes who we are is covered by the earth element.  This is not just physical food but helpful relationships and being able to ‘digest’ intellectual ‘food’ as well.

  • The metal element is about us cutting free or letting go.

This applies to excretion and breathing.  A traditional saying is: die 10,000 times a day, ie. with each breath let go of what has happened.  Or, more specifically and on a much longer time span: don’t let the sun go down on your anger.  Are we able to not get entangled with our thoughts, feelings and relationships.  Can we move on to new things?  This is the metal element in our lives.

So here is a quick health check up:

  •     Am I looking after what I was born with (my constitution and gift)?
  •     Do I flow easily or do I get hyper?
  •     Am I warm and serene?
  •     Am I nourished?  Do I get what I need to feed me (in every sense of the word)?
  •     Can I move on to new things?

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Learning and Teaching

July 25th, 2007

This post is a book review.  If you want to know the background to my approach to education this is where to find it.

The single best book I know on classroom teaching is Eric Sotto’s When Teaching Becomes Learning: a theory and practice of teaching (Cassell Education). To give both the theory of teaching and practical guidance on how to teach all in one book is quite an achievement. EricSotto does this. He writes clearly, engagingly and personally. He writes conversationally about how he came to teaching and his struggle to find out what worked, what didn’t and why.

He presents the theory clearly and interestingly, making clear where his ideas have come from. There is an extensive bibliography where you can learn more about the theories he has used.

The big idea in this book is: the teacher’s first job is to understand how people learn.

This seems so obvious to me now. But this was the first time I had seen this stated in a book about teaching (throughout a whole course devoted to education no book we were recommended ever pointed this out). For this he draws on humanistic psychology and mounts a critique of the ‘cognitivist’ approaches that are becoming common. His critique is thorough, well reasoned and devastating.

He also deals with what (de-)motivates students.

He understands that people are naturally curious and so the problem is not motivation but what gets in the way of student’s natural curiosity. The biggest demotivator for students in classrooms is criticism from the teacher.

I find it hard to praise this book highly enough. The clearly presented theory is not left up in the air. He gives examples of good and bad teaching and even a sample lesson planner. For me this is what you know about teaching between the covers of one book.

He doesn’t however go into the varieties different styles of activities and lessons. Kevin Barry and Len King’s Beginning Teaching and Beyond is good for this. They think that what is beyond beginning teaching is research – they are academics – I think, instead, that there is a lifetime of improving and enjoying our teaching.

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yin and yang change into each other.

July 23rd, 2007

Yin and yang not only balance each other, they also follow each other: it is said that yin and yang ‘convert’ into one another.  In acupuncture this is most clearly the case in sickness, where yin and yang are extreme.  For instance: a fever will lead to shivering and being cold will lead to a fever.

The goal, from the point of view of acupuncture, is a balance that contains an easy flow that does not go to these extremes.

Exercises for reflecting on the conversion from yin to yang in your life.

  • Physical

When have you experienced hot becoming cold and cold becoming hot?
When have you experienced movement becoming rest and rest becoming activity?

  • Emotional

When have you found your receptivity giving way to assertion?
When has your assertion lead to you becoming receptivity?

  • Mental

When has your understanding of a situation changed to your taking action?
When has your action been succeeded by you moving to an understanding of the situation?

  • Spiritual

When has your receptive of spirit lead to an initiative by you?
When has an initiative you have taken led to you being receptive to spirit?

  • Summary

Do you have a preference for yin and yang throughout the different areas of your life?  If so, what are the consequences of this preference?
Do you have preferences for either yin and yang in different areas of your life?

This exercise should help you get a good sense of the balance of yin and yang in your life.  If you do the other exercises for yin and yang on this blog you will be well on your way to a thorough understanding of yin and yang.

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yin and yang flow into each other

July 20th, 2007

yin and yang are not only descriptions of particular things and types of activity.

yin and yang flow into each other.

While we can pay attention to one of the other they are not separable in real life (just as we may pay attention to what a building is made of and its shape but not separate them in real life).

yin and yang require each other. Without rest activity will cease, without activity rest is not beneficial.

Let’s look at yin and yang at the different levels of our lives: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

  • Physical

What activities that you engage in require rest? What would happen to you if you never rested?
When does rest require activity? What would happen to you if you rested and didn’t act?

  • Emotional

How does your assertion relate to your receptivity? What would happen to your life if you were only assertive? What would happen to you if you were only receptive and made not attempt to affect your situation and relationships?

  • Mental

How does finding what is the situation relate to your action in the situation? What would happen if you ignored the situation when you acted? What would happen if you ignored action and only understood the situation?

Do you have a preference for understanding or acting? What do you think the consequences of this preference are for you?

  • Spiritual

How does your receiving spirit relate to your activities?
What if you only were supported by spirit? Could this be without leading to activity?
What if you only pursued new activities – developing new disciplines and organisations? What would the consequences of this be for you?

  • Summary

Finally, do you prefer either yin and yang all the time, or do you have a preference in one area of your life and a different preference in other areas?

Looking at our lives through the lens of yin and yang can help us zero in on what is going well and where it may be helpful to change.

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yin and yang: vision and transformation

July 18th, 2007

yin and yang also exist in the spiritual dimension of our life.

What do I mean by spiritual? I mean the part of our life connected to spirit, our core – the part of us that feels ‘this is what I am here to do’ or ‘this is who I am’ or ‘when I am doing this it just flows from the core of me’. This is the part of us that can answer the question: What is the meaning of my life?

There is a yin and yang aspect to spirituality. Often, in our culture which emphasises yang, spirituality becomes seen as only yin. This can be seen to be wrong when we look at the revolutions in the way our world is seen – the revolutions in meaning. All these revolutions, whether religious or philosophical, had a new vision or understanding of what the world and people are like (yin) that was part of their revolutions in methods and organisations (yang). Without the new ways of doing things the revolutions wouldn’t have been revolutionary, they wouldn’t have affected their society in a revolutionary way. Without the new way of seeing they wouldn’t have been revolutionary, they would have just been more of the same.

As with these large movements we can also see the yin and yang in our own spiritual lives.

  • Visionary experiences are receptive (yin). They are convincing and transforming because we see something new, we feel we are in touch with something that is truly there. These experiences wouldn’t have nearly the impact on us that they do if we thought they were made by us.
  • When we are touched at our core by these spiritual experiences we are changed and act differently (yang). We may have ‘a mission’, wanting to see change in our current life-destroying way of living (at however humble a level this may be).

Reflecting on yin and yang in your spirit.

Where do you feel that you are supported by spirit? Are receptive and discover your purpose?
What experiences have you had that have transformed you? Can you distinguish the yin and yang aspects of these experiences?
Do you feel that there is an easy flow in your spirituality between the yin and the yang?

If you wish to strengthen the yin aspect of your spirituality there is now a wealth of opportunities to learn meditation and other contemplative activities such as drawing. If you wish to strengthen the yang aspect of your spirituality there are a wealth of opportunities to learn about being entrepreneurial and new ways of organising that respect people (eg. the ‘learning organisation’ phenomenon).

With this balance of, and flow between, yin and yang we can manifest a better world.

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yin and yang: knowing what is and doing

July 16th, 2007

Yin and yang are the complementary opposites that, in the philosophy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, apply to all areas of our life.

That they apply to the physical is often recognised. However, they also apply to our intellect, the mental world, as well.

Our culture, with its emphasis on taking action and making a difference, has a bias to the yang part of the yin and yang philosophy. Unfortunately this can lead to thoughtlessness and foolish actions. Creative action is essential, without it our cultures and human life on our planet will not survive. But this doesn’t mean just doing anything. We need to have some idea of what our situation is.

These are the two aspects of our mental life, knowing what is (yin) and acting (yang).
[Carl Jung called the yin 'perception' and the yang 'judgement'. The details are in his Psychological Types. The brilliant application of this to a description of personality is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.]

Reflect on the preferences you have in your intellectual life.

  • Do you have a preference for one of these sides of your thinking?
  • Are you happy just finding out what is going on? Or do you care more about making a difference with what you know?
  • Are you impatient about finding out or doing?
  • Which do you think plays a larger role in your life?
  • Where is it that you are content to just find out?
  • Where is it that you want to innovate and make a difference?

If you emphasise action and want to experience the yin aspect then Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain may be very helpful. If you prefer the just finding out what is and want to experience the yang aspect you may find it helpful to read business books about entrepreneurs – John C Lyons and Edward de Bono’s Marketing Without Money is excellent.

Do you have a guiding philosophy that explains what the world is like? (I mean ideas that explain your world and life to you, not necessarily a formal philosophy with a name that was perhaps learnt from others).
In what ways, or to who, have you made a difference (and we probably all have in one way or another)?

This is the world of our intellect viewed through the lens of yin and yang.

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yin and yang: receiving and giving

July 13th, 2007

The Chinese philosophy of yin and yang goes through all aspects of our lives, including the emtional.

Yin is receptive and inward, yang is outward and giving.  The application to our emotional life is fairly direct I think.

In our society which emphasises yang we are encouraged to be self-sufficient, which is essential.  But too much of this and we become hard and unyielding, arrogant and unable to listen or learn.  The temptation is to advocate for the other extreme (yin) – open to everything, retiring into ourselves, accepting whatever is done to us; leading to lethargy, lack of concern and an unwillingness to change life threatening situations.

Reflecting on yin and yang in our emotional lives.

  • Which are the relationships that nurture and sustain you?  Who do you receive from?  Which situations make this easier?
  • In which relationships do you give and sustain others?  Who do you give to?  Which situation make this easier?

For health to be maintained we need a balance and flow of yin and yang.

Does your receiving and giving have a flow and balance?
Do you think that you prefer one to the other?
If there is an imbalance what can you do to restore the equilibrium?

To change our patterns will take some initiative.  You may find that it is surprisingly difficult.  However it is possible to take small steps.  And with a little work we can usually find small steps that feel good to take (as long as we don’t get impatient).

If we balance the yin and yang of our emotional life we will certainly feel much better for it.

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