1. I focus on facilitation of self-learning, not didactic lecturing. I don’t know it all, I have epistemological humility, so I focus on fanning the flames of your curiosity while adding the fuel of new skills and fascinating material that extends and supplements what you already know.
You have a complex lattice work of experiences and ideas to build upon and navigate
2. I believe useful education builds a strongly connected lattice work or web within our minds. Our life-long task is to expand and strengthen our webs of knowledge.
3. My mission is to nurture your native brilliance, period. You have what you need; reaching higher is a matter of intentional practice.
4. No prerequisites beyond your committed curiosity. We start where you are and move as quickly as you can with grace and ease (plus a little work).
5. My goal is to develop your inner-autodidact (self-motivated learner), not make you into a scholar.
6. No canned content mechanically run through. Structures, road-maps, thoughtful preparation, yes. But every session is tailored to what’s next for you, right now.
7. As we move through material, I keep in mind the basics that most of us missed in school; the Trivium – the classical approach to education based on:
- Grammar
- Logic
- Rhetoric
We don’t drill heavily on these (unless you want to!) but instead we look for natural opportunities to fill gaps in understanding as we progress through more immediately relevant material. For instance, we usually start a word list as we read and simply note the part of speech along with the definition. This often leads into deeper discussions and understandings of grammar. We may also spend extra time looking at the construction (grammar) of challenging sentences or at the structure of an thought process (logic) or document (rhetoric).
8. I focus on the interplay between:
- Memory and
Giambattista Vico's book The Scienza Nuova summarized in a drawing (graphical loci) which gives our mind an easy way to recall all the main points of this complex 400 page book.
- Imagination
Of course, learning requires that we remember things.
Our recall depends upon how firmly and complexly we’ve linked a new idea to the vast latticework of knowledge we already have in our minds. What if we consciously pursued an expanded and reinforced (added knowledge, connections, and recall) latticework for ourselves? Where might that take us personally? Professionally?
Imagination lets us freely travel the backroads of our latticework.
For efficiency, our minds travel the same old routes again and again. While this habit is efficient, it is often not very effective especially as our challenges evolve. I am reminded of Einstein’s definition of insanity -doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
If we want different results for ourselves, our children, our businesses, we need to stop thinking the same old ways; we need to consciously pursue an expanded latticework of knowledge that we can consciously use to imaginatively travel new paths to new thoughts, fresh decisions, and evolutionary actions.
9. Absolutely no judgement. Our focus is on learning now, not what did or did not happen in the past. Onward!
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I’d love to discuss your interests.
Learn more about the pedagogical ideas (on learning to learn) I find interesting
“Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people.” – Henry Miller