Subject: Re: Childwrite Project Date: Sat, 04 Apr 1998 01:36:43 -0800 From:John McPherson To: "Win Wenger, Ph.D." CC: John McPherson , tice@writeme.com, e7750010@tsai.es, Frank@gerryts.demon.co.uk, GeoNelson@aol.com, jheflin@mail.portup.com, kuene@cts.com, anakin@dur.mindspring.com, mcole@napanet.net, tazz4@ix.netcom.com, mjoyner@botree.com, RickAshby@aol.com, straveca@erols.com, Swcgluck@aol.com WW wrote: > > --A project which, on the fiction-producing level at least, might be > termed "Stories With A Point, For Sharp Kids." (...and thence the > ducking by yours truly of flying objects...) Good one! <;-> > If we broaden this project, as well we might, beyond the strict > perview of Project Renaissance, LSC, and GS, I'd have an excuse to > publish as part of it those two stories of mine [...] > we improve our chances of finding allies and resources In the spirit of renaissance and integratedness, I'd be in favor of broadening the project. > Along the way, because I think that in some form the publishing of > pointed stories for kids is going to be part of what we do whatever > else develops [...] > We may need to publish under the names of several DIFFERENT > projects. That frees us to address the controversial areas as we > should, but doesn't cost all our work all the publics which get > put off by some one or another controversial publication and/or > identification. It seems to me there are at least two major groups of stories forming: those which offer ideas and solutions to problems which aren't yet popular, well-known, or accepted, but which are good and are worthy of propagation, and those which attempt to teach particular ways of possibly getting new ideas and solutions to problems. The two stories posted by Win, the stories suggested by Chris Turner, the stories "The First Thanksgiving", "The Little Red Hen", "Capitalist Kids", have all been of the first kind, it seems to me ... and I think they're worthwhile and probably have a place in the project (as I understand it). To the extent that they paint compelling visual pictures, they may help set the stage for the second kind of story ... perhaps making "type 2 stories" more a matter of _style_, how they are written, than any particular content. An idea occurs to me: wouldn't a genuine type-2 story _require_ that the child him-/her-self would do at least some of the writing (and visualizing)? But this is kind-of what's been started with the Merlin interactive story page ... with the twist that it wouldn't be _we_ who write the stories, but _the kids_. So, perhaps a number of stories or web pages could be initiated (and perhaps "guided" in some ways by participating TAs?), and then kids invited to help write them? But perhaps they'll need much more context that such a free-wheeling open-ended approach would offer ... In any event, I do think the type-1 stories are important and may prove good vehicles to teach kids what we think they'd benefit from learning: practice in visualizing, basic principles of general-semantics, systems-theory, information-theory, etc., basic concepts in personal finance, economics, ethics and politics, responsible pursuit of happiness, etc. I'm not sure how we'd decide which "type-1 lessons" should be included directly in ChildWrite and which should be handled as separate projects. I gather that Chris' suggestion of teaching responsible sex would be one of the more controversial, and perhaps that might go in a "Topics for Young Teens" web page. I suppose another page might be "Alternative Spirituality for Kids", where Max might post some of his Buddhist stories. Wendy's story, "Capitalist Kids", and perhaps the others, "The First Thanksgiving" and "The Little Red Hen", might go on a page called something like "Making money is so easy even adults can do it :-)" Other than that, maybe the main ChildWrite page might have different sections for different groups of kids: mostly pictures and animations for pre-schoolers, simple text and outlandish fantasy for the pre-teen schoolers, more sophisticated stories with embedded thinking games for the teens, etc. Oh ... for type-2 pre-schooler "stories", perhaps a paint program can be set up for each participant to draw on and then "save" the drawing on the web page as one of the contributions in a growing thread of illustrated story-making. > Possibility: what principle or "law" in whichever of these three > fields - Einsteinian, PhotoReading, or Korzybskian - do you feel > uncertain of your own understanding in? Remember the old adage of if > you want to really understand something, teach it to a 10-year-old? I avail myself now and then of a similar opportunity. The "introduction to g.s." companion list to mine is an excellent place for me to hammer out explanations of those topics I'm less than lucidly-clear on. Just today I worked on the formulations of "structure is the sole content of knowledge", "no object is in absolute isolation", "the principle of non-elementalism: recognizing that it's impossible physically to split apart many things that we so easily do with words (e.g., 'mind' and 'body')". While I don't think there are any 10-year-olds on the list, I try to keep in mind that most there know very little about g.s., epistemology, etc. As I get clear enough to be able to explain g.s. to them, I become more able, perhaps, to be teach 10-year-olds ... > --Or a 3-year-old? Maybe there's a point you'd like to understand > better--consult your own image stream and inner flows and see if you > can make a terrific story for kids from it. Oy! I'm afraid my tendency has been to go the other way with it ... towards greater complexity and integratedness, understandings built on understandings in an attempt to take it as far as I can go with it. On the other hand, I do have a tendency to get overly-intellectual with it and my actual _practice_ of it on the non-verbal levels of experience has been lagging ... > Some of this discussion reminds me of what I think has stalled > General Semantics over the years. While critical evaluation and > formal criteria are essential somewhere along the line and much of > the contribution of GS provides that where it was missing, it is a > very different phase than is the creative process itself in its > initial stages. It occurs to me that GS is bigger than the use I and others have made of it. It certainly seems easy to use it to analyze written text (what others have written), and perhaps many of us succumb to the temptation to spend much of our g.s.-related efforts doing largely that. But ... Korzybski continually pointed out that human beings actually live our lives on the "silent" (word-less) levels of existence, and that one of the goals of practicing the discipline is to continually relate all those high order abstractions, words upon words, etc., back down to these non-verbal realms where the real differences and improvements are made. Another major application is to spend significant amounts of energy-effort on observing the objects of our study word-lessly, noticing features, details, and structures, fixing them with flexible labelling, then gathering our observations / descriptions and drawing further abstractions from there, forming 'theories' and 'knowledge' from the ground up ... a data driven approach. Sometimes this practice might allow us to see past previous mis-conceptions which otherwise block our view because we "expect to see what we already know (that isn't so)". So ... both of these non-verbal-criticism applications of g.s. may very well aid the creative process. > Let me point to my suggestions toward the > end of my other reply message for this morning, let ideas come > first and develop them, THEN see how they fit with our criteria > (shades of Alex Osborn!). Yes, I can do that :-). It may be that a number of people recognize that they themselves have believed a few things that they later dropped because of their study of g.s. ... and that they may have developed a distrust of the "junk" in their own heads which they now realize is "wrong", yet is still in there ready to bubble out uncritically if they don't keep a tight rein on it. One of the common patterns I see in g.s. writings is how someone realized he (or someone else) was or had been doing something "stupid" or "false to facts", then had a realization inspired by applying g.s., and then hurried to tell everyone else about it. Some have gone so far as to become "skeptics", making sure that everything said (by anyone, including themselves) checks out with known scientific findings. Some, perhaps myself included, have been all too ready to pounce when see that someone has said something not quite accurate. I would not at all be surprised to learn that a number of people may have been turned off to g.s. because of the verbal hyper-criticism too many of us may have developed through the linguistic sensitivity we've achieved in our study and application of general-semantics. It may be that this could be simply remedied by setting aside as much time for silent word-less observation as we do for reading and word-based analysis! (and for combined word-image activities such as image-streaming, etc. :-) John