Learning Strategies:
Solving the Riddles of Self
(21 slides)
creatively compiled by dr. michael farnworth
A Personal Journal is necessary if you are to engage the
lessons in such a way to initiate growth and insight.
The most important ideas will come to you as you
interact with the ideas from the lessons, book and
movie.
Your reactions, thoughts, introspections and feelings
will be your guides through the materials so I hope you
take them seriously.
When can you throw a rock into a pond and not make
any ripples?
When it is frozen…
Let that riddle be the metaphor for this learning experience.
You will be in charge of the learning. You will decide what you
think about and if you are ready to set the stage for inner
change.
This material about your most important and intimate
relationship can be dismissed or underestimated but not without
unintended consequences.
Some one once said:
That the danger of lectures is they create the illusion of
teaching for teachers and the illusion of learning for
students.
Learning is not being lectured to but rather invites a
dialogue of give and take.
The trigger man
• I will play the role of the trigger man. I will invite
you to think thoughts, feel feelings, see new
paradigms, and explore your life and history with
the materials, paradigms and ideas we will cover
in these lessons.
• My job is to invite you into yourself through
introspection and contemplation. It is this
educational journey which is the adventure.
• Your job is to trigger me with your questions,
introspections and challenges for more clarity of
ideas.
“It seems to me that anything that can be taught to
another is relatively inconsequential and has little
to no significant influence on behavior. I have come
to feel that the only learning which significantly
influences behavior is self discovered, self
appropriated learning.
Carl Rodgers
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B.F. Skinner
The most profound lessons in life are those
that you will learn about yourself.
The root word of education is educe which means to
bring out of.
Education is not a pouring of information into the
heads of people but rather a stimulation for things to
emerge.
We have been put to sleep by our cultural training. And this
unconscious traditions has chained us to ideas and behaviors that are
often time dysfunctional and hurtful to our self and others. The goal of
these lessons are to awaken us from the slumber.
“How can we realize the shackles placed on us by tradition: For if we can recognize
them, then we can break them.”
Franz Boaz
Two foundational ideas in your learning strategy learning:
#1. Understanding versus agreement.
#2. 1st and 2nd order of change.
1st part:
Understanding versus agreement
• Understanding is demanding while
agreement/disagreement is easy.
• Learning stops when agreement/
disagreement rears its head.
• Understanding takes time, study and
pondering and many of us want to
shortcut the process!
Too many enjoy the comfort of opinion
without the discomfort of thought!
Many opinions are just parroted ideas that
they have heard or read but have never really
paid the price to own.
For every 10,000 people who agree with
E=mc2 there are probably 10 who actually
understand it.
Please understand you will be invited to seriously
engage the learning process and that cannot be
done if you think you already know.
When understanding is achieved then a judgment
can be made– to do so before is to short circuit the
whole learning process.
2nd Part: First order change
• This is the kind of change that seems like
change but nothing really changes. Kind of like
rearranging the furniture in a room things look
different but not really.
• 1st order change is superficial and surface
changes. It is the kind of change that fulfills
the French saying: The more things changethe more they remain the same.
Second order change
• Second order change is the kind of change that is
profound and of a deeper order. It is the kind of
change that would require a remodeling of the
house, instead of rearranging the furniture.
• 2nd order change requires a different way of
seeing things and of behaving. It requires
different paradigms to live in.
These lessons will attempt to invite 2nd order change
If a person spends their whole life looking outside of themselves for
the answers then the only thing that really changes are the roles,
appearances and circumstances.
If a person looks inside for the answers then the nature of the
person can be effected. This inner change is the deep and
profound 2nd order change that Life invites us to make.
That is why self introspection, confrontation and exploration are so
important.
I end with an Old Franciscan Blessing:
“May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial
relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of
people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection,
starvation and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them, and
to turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a
difference in this work, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.”
the end