Glen,
Also a good point. We see evidence of "evocativeness" being many-to-one
all the time - for example when a YouTube video or a popular song goes
viral. Rumor-mongering is also an example. It even happens sometimes on
this alias. So I stand corrected. Engaging advanced students to go 1-1
is also a great idea.
Grant
On 6/26/13 6:15 PM, glen wrote:
Grant Holland wrote at 06/26/2013 09:11 AM:
If one wants to "teach" someone else, the most productive route is to
attempt to *evoke* elements that are already in that persons internal
mental construct - rather than to directly try to alter it. You've got
to try to entice its "guardian" (the learner) actually do the altering.
After all, "educe" (the root of "education") means to "pull from out of"
more than it means to "introduce into".
Excellent point. I find myself resorting to this way of thinking more
and more, especially in the context of giving presentations. There's
never quite enough time to slog through the rhetoric it would require
even _if_ a guided tour would work. (I've found that such guided tours
don't work unless the audience is willing to play along ... which is
rare.) The best I can do is say things so that the resistance between
what I think they already think and what I'm trying to get them to
think, is minimized. ;-)
Of course, "educement" requires mostly a 1-1 relationship between
"student" and "facilitator" - like mentoring, apprenticeship and
tutoring. Unfortunately, such an approach is not scalable. If we want to
indoctrinate the masses, these kinds of personal relationships between
"student" and "teacher" don't scale to that volume.
I'm not sure I agree with this part. Of course, quantitatively, I'd
have to. But qualitatively, it's reasonable to imagine taking advantage
of logistic infection. If I can infect 2 people, and they each infect 2
people, etc. That may not scale _fast_ enough (given the length of a
professional lifetime, say, 20-30 years). But at least we can talk
about the speed of the spread. And I think we might even be able to
achieve some sort of logistic growth with serial tutelage, depending on
the domain. Yeah, perhaps stone masonry requires an entire professional
lifetime for an infection to take hold. But surely other domains take
less time. We can't all be as infectious as Richard Feynman, of course.
But surely some of it scales, right?
What we need are more people to embrace themselves as "advanced
students" with a responsibility to serially engage, 1-1, other students.
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