The Politics of Education . What is a "war of ideas"? There is no single answer to the question but one thing it must be is education. Ideas need to be taught to people; there is no other way to transmit them. Somehow people need to learn what they do not know. And to state the obvious, "education" has to be understood broadly; far more is involved than classroom lectures or any other kind of formal instruction. . Advertising can be education, campaign speeches can also be education, as can videos, jokes, stories, dramatizations, written text, websites, blogs, radio shows, and much else. The point is that ideas are shared with people and they learn something new. The crucial question is simply: How effective are you at doing so? And: Are your ideas the best ideas? . Unfortunately, many people take the view that once something has been communicated to others that is "education." This is necessary, of course, but it is far from sufficient. There must be encouragement, reinforcement, feedback if at all possible, and engagement -reaching a point where someone understands a new idea sufficiently to want to work with it on their own for their own purposes. And there needs to be repetition so that learning sticks. . But even the communication part of the equation is often misunderstood. Communication is useless unless it is well written or well spoken, it must be clear and easy to understand. This means that it is necessary to work on one's writing style, or speaking style, or maybe visual arts style, enough to gain basic skills at writing, speaking, or such things as drawing, photography or TV production. And, by the way, just because you have a camera or camera-phone and point it at someone and can take pictures this does not mean that you have skills as a photographer. You need to study photography to get good at it, just as you need to actually spend some time in study of writing, etc., to gain the skills you most need. . You think you have all the skills you need simply because you want to write or take photographs? You don't. No-one should discourage you from enthusiastic early efforts along these lines, they can be valuable like nothing else, but it has to be understood that you still have a mountain to climb. You need to study your craft in oder to gain proficiency at it. And you need to practice, practice, practice. . You also need to encourage people you are trying to teach lessons to and provide reinforcement whenever possible. You need to provide them with feedback even if you get little feedback from them in return. After all, in any social environment people will show resistance to new ideas. They need to be convinced that your ideas are superior to the ideas they already have. You need to persuade them that there are better ideas, more useful ideas, and ideas that actually express truths they do not now understand. This takes time but unless you take the necessary time to be encouraging your efforts will be wasted. . We are not talking about graduate computer science students or aspiring doctors in med school or wannabe attorneys in law school. Most people, well in excess of 90%, won't want to learn, or, even if they do, may find it difficult, especially when an idea really is new and, therefore, is unfamiliar by definition. To repeat the point,, saying something once and "that should be sufficient" is stupid. You need to provide rewards, congratulations for partly understanding something, approval when deserved, kind words now and then, expressions of sympathy for others' difficulties, and so forth. All of which also takes time. There is no getting around this requirement. Shortcuts are seen by others for what they are: Your lack of commitment to doing something right. . If you are going to do something do it right, this is axiomatic to everything else . There are some exceptions to these rules but even what seems to be the most obvious exception, military boot camp, is actually highly structured -through encouragement and reinforcement- so that raw recruits become full fledged soldiers. But, needless to say, some military behaviors, yelling, commanding others to obey, demanding deference, are entirely out of place in non-military contexts and almost always are counter-productive by causing resentment and creating motives for revenge or non-compliance. The military is a different world and usually does not translate into the non-military sphere. The great value of the military is that it can teach people to think strategically but that is a separate subject. . A war of ideas is not "just like" a war of bullets except that no-one gets killed. We are not trying to force people to do anything, we are trying to persuade them to change their thinking, maybe change their values, and after that what they do -their actions in the world- is their decision to make. . In ideal circumstances feedback should be part of the process. Often this is not possible, and when it is not, all anyone can do is make the best of the situation. Provide your own feedback as best you can. But this can only be possible when you are honest with yourself to a fault. Any pretense that you don't make mistakes would be pure nonsense -not to mention some kind of psychological problem. You need to get into the habit of asking yourself: What did I do wrong? We all make mistakes and you need to get good at recognizing the mistakes you make and correcting them with no-one needing to tell you. . What is pathetic have been the claims of a number of past presidents that they are an "education president." They supposedly demonstrate this by visiting public schools and signing executive orders and maybe supporting legislation. After all, what else could education be? . Much else, and if you don't study education you will never know what else. . The objective has to be engagement, inspiring new ideas in others that they then make their own and use for their own purposes. If they really are going to use the new ideas you are offering, it is vital to make it clear that these ideas are, in fact, useful. Explaining usefulness needs to also be part of the equation. . All of this is what Radical Centrists need to be doing to win the war of ideas. The role any of us play may be that of a teacher but it could just as well be that of an advertising executive, marketer, salesman, promoter, TV producer, publisher, journalist, press secretary, entertainer, author, or still other occupations. And often a combination of these things. In any case to succeed we also need to get good at what we do as people who believe in new ideas -precisely because we think our ideas are better than any other ideas in the political marketplace. . . . Billy Rojas . June 25, 2016 . -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[RC] The Politics of Education
BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community Sun, 26 Jun 2016 11:46:21 -0700
