William Buxton wrote:
> So I think I'll stick by my guns here. If it's fat and fuzzy, it needs
> work.
Hi Bill,
My initial reaction is to agree but then I think the point for me is that
most of the short sentences that I experience on the internet and internet
lists are so hopelessly "over-simple" as to constitute an "in" language
by the speakers. Like the jokes in the prison which have been told so
many times that they simply number them and avoid telling the jokes by
announcing the numbers. For that to work you need a captive long-term
audience.
NAMES AS TRIGGERS:
In music pedagogy we have one of those "Golden Triads" (Warfield) that
goes: Preparation/Presentation/Implementation.
--It sometimes takes years of Preparation(controlled experience) before
the simplicity of the Presentation can be spoken successfully.
--If the "Preparation" was correct then it provides the experience
necessary to accept the Presentation as a synthesis symbol(name) for the
process being learned.
--Once the symbol has been "Presented" then the symbol(name) becomes a
trigger for the use of the knowledge that has been learned through
non-verbal experience.
--Using the "Presented symbol" as a trigger enables a successful
Implementation or application of the process to a completely new version
of the problem.
If they aren't successful then you either didn't prepare them well or you
missed the timing of the presentation.
My Elders put it this way:
"You are responsible for your audience's understanding. If they didn't
understand, then you either 1.)did not evaluate them well(if it was a
workshop audience, etc.) or 2) did not prepare them well(if they were
regular students). There is little teaching in telling. All education
and communication comes from a correct meeting of experience. The words
(presented symbols) you use are aids to help the audience remember what
they already know from experience (preparation)."
John Dewey used to call this correct use of verbal triggers by a teacher,
coach, lecturer or supervisor a "readiness point." I prefer to call it
"knowing how and when to give something a name."
FAT AND FUZZY:
As for fat and fuzzy it sounds like the description of a seal, an animal
equipped to use the fat to stay warm and the fuzz to glide through the
water with little friction. Fat and fuzzy is a paradigm for cold wet
environments. The opposite is a paradigm for warm, plentiful
environments. The environment I work in has a distinctly high level of
theoretical inexperience by consumers (cold) and a great number of
drownings (97% unemployment by college trained graduates).
Only those with the ability to reduce the language to the correct amount
survive. So maybe I would substitute the word "correct." Those who
survive in the arts are not "hired hands" thinking hours but are people
who will work until the product is "bottom line correct" while being
"ready" means being not only "correct" but aesthetically perfect.
OTHER PURPOSES:
After all of this, there is another purpose to the use of many words as
being more efficient than less. That is to provide a knowledge
deficient adult audience, with the feeling of comfort (trust) in your
knowledge while you carefully teach them on the level that they are able
to hear.
Words in that context are the pillows that protect the travelers from
being cut to death on the walls of difficult knowledge. These travelers
in a foreign land are reduced to the vulnerability of children and are
easily driven into a violent "culture shock" if they are shorn of their
protection. It is up to the teacher, writer or lecturer to provide a safe
environment for such work to take place.
This IMHO is the root of the National Endowment of the Art's failure to
include the conservatives and fundamentalist Christians in their excellent
program. They have not failed with their projects but with the ability to
provide the protective "context" through which the quality of their work
would be experienced. They needed teachers not academics, philosophers,
ministers or actors.
IN CONCLUSION:
There are many problems involved in what you have brought up.
1.) The problem of developing common experience.
2.) The problem of knowledge authority & leadership acceptance.
3.) The problem of verbal touching and leadership trust.
4.) The problem of fear associated with knowledge deficient adult
audiences (students)
5.) Applied to teams: the problem of common language (pro-active and
re-active)
6.) The problem of decreasing (external to the product) competitive
scripts
7.) The problem of developing an intuitive shared leadership for the
project being explored.
Well Bill,
You people on this list always make me think and reflect. I used to write
seven pages this is less than two. Maybe I'm learning my subject better
or........... either way, thanks and feel free to question, add to or cut
away anything that bothers you. The performers bad dream is that no one
understood; the composer's nightmare is that everyone understood and
thought it was banal.
Regards
Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Chamber Opera of New York, Inc.
mcore@idt.net
--Ray Evans Harrell <mcore@IDT.NET>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>