Encounter at the Void of Problem Based Learning
Visionaries Taste Inspiration
The academic part of High School bored me nearly to death. I had excellent teachers. They could teach and they connected well with their students, including me. The problem for me was the pace of learning and the simplicity of the content. For example, in World History, we were tested on the content presented in the textbook. I really did not need to sit there and be lectured to about the same stuff I read at home the previous evening. I got it!
Every class followed the same pattern, except, of course, the biology labs. I had to be there to do the experiments with my lab partner. She was really good and did all the “heavy lifting” such as the dissections. She insisted on doing everything. So, I just stood there and supervised: “Cut it; don’t tear it apart. Weigh it; don’t throw it up at the ceiling.” Labs were great. My lab partner was smart, ambitious, and very cute. We got along fine as long as I let her do all the work. At the end of the semester, when friends asked me what I learned in lab, I always told them that I learned how to work well with a motivated female who likes what she is doing. I also told them that I enjoyed partnering with attractive females on interesting projects much more than sitting in class lectures about stuff I could read at home in a few minutes. One other thing high school taught me: There had to be a better way to get an education so you can actually learn and retain something interesting without boring yourself to death while unnecessarily sitting in a classroom.
I had these insights during my sophomore year. As a result, I quit attending class and showed up only for the exams. I managed to do more than good enough to graduate. I remember my Geometry teacher asking me after one test: “Ray, how do you miss all the classes and only show up for the exams and then do so well?” I simply told him the truth: “Mr. Bowers, I can read and follow the solutions in the book. The same ones you demonstrate in class. If I need your help, I would come and ask for help.”
This was my pattern back then. I was a self-directed, independent, adult learner. I just did not know it. Everyone else thought I was a truant. Thankfully my mother negotiated with the powers-that-be back then to let me receive my diploma if I passed all of my senior year finals. I did and then moved on. I got my diploma and kissed the high school goodbye. I never wanted to see the halls of a school again. College was not for me, so I thought. I could not imagine putting myself through four more years of boredom. No thank you. There had to be a better way to get an education. I had places to go and things to do. School only got in the way.
Unfortunately, the lack of college really got in the way. Ever since high school, I worked diligently to discover more responsive approaches to learning. I actually enjoyed the insights that sprang into my mind, and learning new stuff was a wonderful bonus. Eventually learning to say “yes” to college with wisdom, I dedicated my life to the pursuit of rapid learning. Using the emerging technologies of that time, I designed simple ways of assisting people with problem solving as a consultant, friend, mentor, coach and human being. Strangely, though, I had to work very hard to make things seem so simple. You can quote me: “Simple is hard.”
In college, I excelled in ignorance. Every class reminded me of that. No matter how much I learned, what I did not know was always more than what I did know. I was forward living but backward thinking. I knew only the past but my life was always looking towards the future. There are no facts about the future. There are only educated imaginings. All I knew came down to one idea: I wanted to change the future of problem solving and leverage this change to improve the speed and quality of learning.
In college, before registering for a course, I interviewed my professors so I could select compatible people to guide me through this part of my life. Not wishing to repeat my high school experience, I took a direct approach by delivering personal proposals. I proposed my own learning plans to complete the required coursework early, take oral exams, and if I passed, I could spend the remaining months on projects of my choice with the professor’s assistance. Many agreed; some did not. I avoided those people.
“The game was afoot.” My name is Raymond Newkirk. Like SherIock Holmes, I had realized that: “It is my business to know what other people do not know.” I also realized that human wisdom is finite and human ignorance is infinite. I really had a lot to learn. I had already learned that overcoming ignorance is an endless process. It is called life. Human beings spend their lives solving problems. Life throws it at us and we spend our lives throwing it back, be it in a much different form than when we got it. Problems and solutions, this is the territory of human life. So I set about doing something about it. I now wanted to close the gap between problems and their solutions and leverage this new process to improve the speed, quality, and retention of learning. I wanted to build the first ever Applied Intuitive Solutions™ Platform to change how the world solves problems. It had to be a Rapid Solution Platform, and RSP. I had encountered the void of Problem Based Learning and had not yet realized it.
The Newkirk Axiom
Success is Spelled “TEAM”. Never Forget It.
How many people do you personally know who deliberately want to do a bad job? How many people do you know who want to do a poorer job today than yesterday? How many people do you know who actually plan to enjoy a life of deep mediocrity? How many people are you close to who actually plan to do the minimum, slide by, expend little effort, never learn anything new, never correct their mistakes, or objectively desire to use the lowest common denominator as their standard for life? How many people do you know who actually want to be more miserable today than they were yesterday?
It probably will not shock you to say that everyone answers these questions the same way: They do not know anyone like this, nor would they ever have a close association with anyone like this. The answer is 100 percent, no one knows anyone like this. Do people like this really exist? Think about it. There are people all around us that go into the office every day and just slide by. They do no not want to change anything; they just want to get the day over with so that they can go home and do exactly what they did they day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, and so on.
A number of these people go out of their ways to keep from learning anything new. These people resist any kind of emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and even physical growth. They become resentful whenever they have to make any kind of effort that may require them to think more or differently about something than they did yesterday. You name it, any subject at all from astronomy to zoology, and they do not want to think about it. Just let them alone to do their jobs just as they did the day before, just as they already know them. They are perfect as they are. They do not deviate from their routine, and never thank anyone for forcing them to improve procedures or question their approach to doing their jobs in the workplace. Interestingly many of these kinds of people fill the management ranks of the world's largest organization. You can find them at General Motors, no kidding. You can find them in every government organization in existence, from California to China, from India to the Philippines, from Washington, D.C. to the Vatican.
If you stop to think about it, you do know people like this and you are indeed close to people like this. Your challenge in life is to see to it that you do not become one of these kinds of people. It will not happen to you over night through some glorious anti-life plan. Rather you will simply fall into this state of life through avoidance of your surroundings, resistance to your emotional alarms, passive hope that life will remain forever the same even if it is painful, or through habitual indifference to your long term well-being. What a mess!
You see, when you think about the questions in this light, you have to be more honest about your situation. You may not want to admit that you are close to people mentioned in the first paragraph. After all it is beneath you, right? However, when you think about the situation at work, you get a more emotionally charged view about the questions in the opening paragraph. Here you have to be more honest about it with yourself. Of course everyone knows a few jerks at work who should have been fired ages ago. They just never realize that these jerks may be them. And even great employees get fired eventually in most places, no matter what.
So let us review these questions again and be more honest with the answers. Now we have to face reality with a more determined mind-set. A good way out of this mess is by adopting the Newkirk Axiom as a guide. If you wisely and rigorously follow this Axiom, you indeed will never become one of these kinds of people. Now is a great time to dig yourself out of the rut you may have dug for yourself. Whether in the workplace or on the home-front, you can indeed make something better every day, and making things only a little better counts for something big in the long run.
The Newkirk Axiom
It is the responsibility of every corporate director, executive, manager, and employee to do a better job every day to make the enterprise more successful every day. Going in every morning and committing oneself to doing better than the previous day requires an extraordinary way of thinking informed by a specific kind of powerful knowledge. The only way anyone is ever going be able to meet such a commitment is by knowing more each day about the stuff that really matters. The only way anyone is going to know more about the stuff that really matters is if somebody shares this knowledge. Learning it all by oneself has never happened, and never will. If anyone could do this, it would take too long. In success, time still matters.