Re: [LogoForum] Improving skills...

Dear Bob,
*
Sorry about my whitewater, but it is just my style. I publish poetry,
as well we develop children's software, and*so the balance
between*creativity in language*as an intrinsically valuable pursuit in
itself, and more concrete, analytical, more convergent modes of
goal-oriented thought is of some concern to me. Having spent 10 years
as a public school computer teacher working with Navajo and Hopi
students, and conversant with the value of how oral and written
traditions interface,*I have come to choose regard visualization as*the
equal of*thinking, and seek their coordination, rather than the
subordination of one to another.
*
These two realms of activity, as I see them,*are in constant, ongoing,
welcome*dialogue with each other, and* so, to make a long story short,
I see a clearly-cut hierarchy of focus which ou need both in order to
embrace: Dream, the*"touchless activity"*at the top, then imagination,
then more concrete thought, and finally the formulation of goals and
strageties and accountabilities at the bottom. And as an author, I feel
that our educational system has failed in its ability to inspire
children to think, precisely because schools, following the convenience
of factory models, have prematurely and ruthlessly cut off the
vibrant*connection between thinking and dreaming, prematurely cut it
short during the years from five to adolescence. And so, by the time
most children mature into the age of* life where they are expected to
deal with relationships in cause-effect contexts, the realm which
scientific and technological focus requires, they have done so AT THE
EXPENSE of, rather than within a dialogue with Imagination.
*
In normal process writing, the process of imagination is given short
schrift, yet nonetheless is acknowledged as the activity of
"Brainstorming" or in Papert's adaptation, which I take to be more
powerful, "Mindstorming", where the goal is not activity, but rather
the creation of words, notions, ideas which are open-ended, pregnant
with energy and possibility and wonder.
*
What I had in mind as a solution for the problem of strengthening the
power*of thinking and of analytical activity, was to complement that
convergent impulse with an equal impulse of divergent thought.
Fantasia, as the 19th century German romantic poets and philosophers
and composers used to regard it, is the very opposite of the grounding
we find so necessary to anchor imagination into concrete harness. To
ignore this systole-diastole process,*to neglect*aspiring to achieve a
balance, an ongoing*elastic dialogue between*the creative and the
goal-focused dimensions of life, is to guarantee the breakdown not only
of an educational system and ultimately of civilization itself.
*
You may think these thoughts, this whitewater of ours
totally,*irrelevent to a discussion of a strategy-based, skill-based
approach which considers thinking as some kind of hermetic activity,
divorced from, aloof from, immune to a consideration of a more
wide-angled perspective which includes talking about thinking in
relationship to feeling, willing,*dreaming, imagination, and further,
which regards those activities*as*somehow notions which can be
justifiably off'd, excluded, exiled from, as it were*from any
responsible consideration of how to educate, or, more importantly, how
people learn,*and*thus ascribe to a world view which implicitly
regards*wonder and mystery as adversarial impediments, thorns*to a
perfectly crystalline, mechanistic,*classical, still-life*formulation
of*what*priorities of activity ought to be present in the classroom or
in human dialogue. But this is an aweless world in which to be
encapsulated, a boring, a downsized, utterly artless*conception of the
Man-Cosmos relationship, a midlife crisis in the making.*
*
But Truth to tell, there is a wide-spread phobia which*repels and
villifies acknowledging the importance*of subjectively-arising notions
and talents (imagination, inspiration, intuition, for starters) in the
voicing of priorities for education, culture and world affairs, and in
particular in discussions of what is thinking and how may it be kindled
and expanded and perfected.
*
All*I was suggesting, and will continue to invite as food for
thought,*is that Imagination enhances, rather then destroys or
distracts thought processes, and that these two dimensions, when
brought into a balanced dialogue, facility and potentiate the keening
up and the perfection of thinking.............
*
warm regards,
Harvey

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Gorman
Sent: Aug 14, 2004 7:31 PM
To: LogoForum@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [LogoForum] Improving skills...

At 01:28 PM 8/14/2004, Harvey Bornfield wrote:

So here's a prophetic Thor-sourced flash of lightning or two wherewith
to consider thinking.


<very long snip of 935 multi-syllabic words, but no coherent message or
meaning that I could detect>

I'm assuming, a dangerous thing to do, that you have some benevolent,
or at least non-malicious intent for writing them. Perhaps it is my
naivety, but in over 50 years as a cryptographer, making and breaking
coded messages to find their hidden message, I have never ran into the
cacophony of seemingly random words you string together. It strikes me
that you've taken the dictionary, and stripped it of all words less
than 6 letters. Then, the remaining words are 'shaken, but not stirred'.

To illustrate my confusion...
In the first 15 words, reproduced above. I am unable to find any
correlation, or even connection between any of them and my topic,
Improving skills...

Language, has the dual purpose of both clarifying and concealing
meaning.
My own very specific background leads me to trying always to add
clarity to a discussion. You seem to find it more important to add
confusion than clarity. Perhaps, and I'm only speculating, you have a
past experience, that led you believe that it is more important to
confuse than to clarify.

Perhaps, we are in parallel universes.
I wish you well in yours, and remain comfortable in my own.

Bob

'I am only one; but I am still one.
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.
I will not refuse to do the something I can do.'
-- Helen Keller


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