Zen in the Art of Archery notes

by Eugen Herrigel.

Intro by D.T. Suzuki.

[Archerly in Japan] not intended for utilitarian purposes only or for purely aesthetic enjoyments, but are meant to train the mind.

The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconscious. One has to transcend technique so art becomes an "artless art" growing out of the Unconscious.

The hitter and hit are no longer two opposing objects, but are one reality. The state of unconsciousness is realized only when, completely and rid of the self.

Zen is the "everyday mind," ... "sleeping when tired, eating when hungry."

As soon as we reflect, deliberate, and conceptualize, the original unconsciousness is lost and a thought interferes.

Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when is not calculating and thinking.  "Childlikeness" has to be restored with years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness.


Main text by E. Herrigel

• archery as a religious ritual
• the ability to be sought in spiritual exercises and whose aim consists in hitting a spiritual goal, so fundamentally the marksman aims at himself and may even succeed in hitting himself.
• For access to the art is only granted to those who are "pure" in heart, untroubled by subsidiary aims. 
• Zen cannot be apprehended by intellectual means; one knows it by not knowing it. 
• Drawing the string: only your two hands do the work, while arm and shoulders muscles remain relaxed.
• Able to draw the bow "spiritually" after a Year One of Six Year course with a kind of effortless strength. 
• Next: "loosing" of the arrow. 
• Master: "The right art is purposeless, aimless! You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen."
• "By letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind you so decisively that nothing more is left of you but a purposeless tension."
• The more one concentrates on breathing, the more the external stimuli fade into the background.
• With the breathing and rituals/ceremonies comes the "right presence of mind" -- mind or spirit is present everywhere, because it is nowhere attached to any particular place. 
• Japanese teaching model: Demonstration, example; intuition, imitation -- fundamental relationship of instructor to pupil.
• Nothing more is required of the pupil, at first, than that he should conscientiously copy what the teacher shows him. Shunning long-winded instructions and explanations, the latter contents himself with perfunctory commands and does not reckon on any questions from the pupil.
• These arts are ceremonies. 
• One danger on the road to mastery -- the danger of getting stuck in his achievement. The teacher points out that all right doing is accomplished only in a state of true selflessness, in which the doer cannot be present any longer as "himself."
• The important thing is that an inward movement is thereby initiated. He helps the pupil in the most secret and intimate way he knows: by direct transference of the spirit, "just one uses a burning candle to light others with," so the teacher transfers the spirit of the right art from heart to heart, that it may be illumined. 
• One more thing: the teacher turns him away from himself, from the Master, by exhorting him to go further than he himself has done, and to "climb on the shoulders of his teacher."
• Slipping more easily in the ceremony which sets forth the "Great Doctrine" of archery. 
• When the tension is fulfilled, the shot must fall, it must fall from the archer like snow from a bamboo leaf, before he even thinks it."
• The waiting at the highest tension ... "It" shoots.
• Weeks went by without my advancing a step. At the same time I discovered that this did not disturb me in the least. 
• "Don't ask, practice!"
• Able to distinguish the right shots from the failures. 
• the dance and the dancer are one and the same. 
• After 5 years, reached a stage where the teacher and pupil are no longer two persons, but one. 
• How does skill become "spiritual," and how does sovereign control of technique turn into master swordplay? Only by the pupil becoming purposeless and egoless. He must be taught to be detached not only from his opponent but from himself. 
• Swordplay ... more difficult and of truly decisive importance is the task of stopping the pupil from thinking and spying out how he best come at his opponent. He should clear his mind of the thought that he has to do with an opponent at all and that it is a matter of life and death. 
• This state of purposeless detachment is followed by mode of behavior like the previous stage of instinctive evasion. No time lag between evasion and action. 
• "It" takes aim and hits. 
• Perfection in the art of swordmanship is reached, according to Takuan, when the heart is troubled by no more thought of I and You, of the opponent and his sword, of one's own sword and how to wield it -- no more thought of even life and death. 
• Takuan: "All is emptiness." From this absolute emptiness comes the most wondrous unfoldment of doing.
• Years of unceasing meditation have taught him that life and death are at bottom the same.

The Kids Extra-currilular Start Dates

Em:

Fencing: Started Dec. 2011.
Archery: Dec. 2013

Ev.

Ballet/Tap: Sept. 2010
Piano:         Oct. 2012

Talent Code notes

Talent Code, Daniel Coyle.

• concept of Deep Practice: you stopped, you stumbled, struggled, figured it out. Operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes. 
• Importance of errors to learning practice. Inhibiting the sweet spot at the edge of our capabilities. 
• Practice makes myelin, myelin makes perfect. 
• Sven Anders Hedin, Scandinavia's Indiana Jones. 
• 10,000 hours of committed practice; and the 10-year rule ... "deliberate practice" and "deep practice" same thing. 
• If you have to ask whether the child possesses the rage to master, he doesn't. 
• deep practice x 10,000 hours = world-class skill. 
• Skill is insulation that wraps neural circuits and grows according to certain signals. 
• Holy Shit Effect. 
• 3 Rules of Deep Practice. 1. Chunk it Up. Absorb the whole thing (as a single coherent skill). Break it into chunks. Slow it down (It's how slow you can do it correctly.)
• Rule 2. Repeat it. Reps. Deep practice is exhausting. Shouldn't be able to do it for more than two hours. 
• Rule 3: Learn to feel it. Practicing is concentration. It's a feeling. Feeling of reaching, falling short, and reaching again. "divine dissatisfaction" - Martha Graham. Glenn Kurtz in his book, Practicing. 
• Deep practice is a seeking out a particular struggle, which involves a cycle of distinct actions: 1. Pick a target; 2. Reach for it; 3. Evaluate gap between target and reach; 4. Return to step one. 
• Ignition -- deep practice requires energy, passion, and commitment. Motivational fuel -- second element of the talent code. 
• Passion -- from outside first. Ignition is simple if/then proposition. Then part is always the same -- better get busy. 
• Safety and future belonging -- powerful primal cues. Small Wonders -- doc; and Music of the Heart -- 99 movie. About the violin kids.
• Ignition triggered by words. Either on or off. No instant gratification. 
• "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- W.B. Yeats. 
• KIPP -- knowledge is power program, charter schools. Everything is earned. 1. You belong to a group; 2. Your group is together in a strange and dangerous new world; 3. New world is shaped like a mountain, and at the top is college. 
• Every element of this world sends clear, constant signals of belonging and identity. Attention to detail. "Stopping the school." Environment for deep-practicing good behavior. Brains are muscles. More they work, the smarter they get. 
• Master Coaching. "What a coach can teach a teacher" article. Book, You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned, Gallimore and Nater. 
• Wooden's laws of learning: explanation, demonstration, imitation, correction, and repetition. 
• Piano teachers: they are teaching love ... first phase of learning to get learner involved, captivated, hooked and to get the learner to need and want more information and expertise. 
• Best coaches -- ability to locate the sweet spot on the edge of each individual student's ability, and to send the right signals to help the student reach toward the right goal, over and over. 
• 4 Virtues of Master Coaches... 1. Matrix (of knowledge and understanding and has System to teach it); 2. Perceptiveness (listening on many levels ... Now do X, compelling GPS directions ... probing, strategic impatience; do it faster, differently; small successes were not stopping points but stepping-stones. 3. Theatrical Honesty. 
• Got to make the kid an independent thinker, a problem-solver. Connect with the kid first. 
• Reading: Whole Language about ignition; Phonics about building reliable circuits, correcting errors. 
• Psychology: shyness and social skills ... have to linger in that uncomfortable area, learn to tolerate anxiety. If you practice, you can get to the level you want. Dr. Albert Ellis and cognitive-behavioral therapy. 
• according to Carol Dweck (motivation expert) ... world's parenting advice can be applied to simple rules: pay attention to what your children are fascinated by, and praise them for their effort. 

Geevie Says

Geevie the 5-year-old asked me, "Daddy, what does it feel like to be a boy?"

"I don't know. What does it feel like to be a girl?"
She said, "Like I don't like boys."

My Daily Practice and Random Thoughts

1. No Complaining.
2. No Gossiping.
3. No yelling at the kids.
4. Do 3 good deeds.

I missed out. I complained about something. First time in about 5 days.

Random thoughts:

I need to do something else, but I don't want another job. I don't want to trade one prison for another. Once upon a time, I wanted to write but for all the wrong reasons. I don't want to write for money, or fame or to impress anyone. I'll write when I can write just for myself.

Thoughts on Infinite Jest

By David Foster Wallace.

These thoughts are my own, before I read the Foreword by Dave Eggers. Before I read any critical reviews to tell me what the hell I just finished. Do I recommend it? Not really.

• Not sure why I picked this up, but I did and it's taken me over a month to finish it.
• It was a "national bestseller," which I do not doubt but but but I am curious to know what percentage of the people who helled out money for this ACTUALLY FINISHED THE DAMN THING!!??
• At the end, my thoughts "that's it???? Come on.!!!"
• Three people have told me that could not finish it.
• It's 981 pages plus 100 pages of footnotes. The footnotes have footnotes. 
• Things I knew going in: that he committed suicide a few years ago. 
• Things I knew after I started: that he played competitive junior tennis. 
• No doubt DFW was a talented writer and a smart guy to boot, perhaps even a show-off. But but but, there is no plot. No narrative per se. People have asked my What is it about? My answer: don't ask me. I do not know. There are three sets of characters, loosely related, in the near future. Lots of essays, episodes, but this is not a novel, in the strictest sense. 
• Group one: junior tennis academy run by the dysfunctional Incandenzas; Group Two: recovering addicts at halfway house; Group Three: the political/spy operatives and the Wheelchair Assassins. 
• Good bits about: the death of Network TV and advertising; Interdependence/Merger of North America; the Concavity; Subsidized Time; Teleputers and cartridges; Video phones; Cult of the train; Boston AA; competitive jr tennis and burnout.
• After the first 100 or 200 pages it's gets easier to read and it's extremely readable, but but but. It does not lead to anything. I really think he was working out all his real life issues in this book ... depression ... and ultimately he ended up "erasing his own map." 

Now I'm going to read the Foreword and maybe a couple of critical reviews from people smarter than me. 

My Chess Openings Decision Tree 3.9

As White, e4 ...
 vs ... e5 -- Ponziani.
 vs ... French e6 -- Tarrasch (3. Nd2)

 vs. Silician --- Smith Morra Gambit
 vs Scandinavian (center counter) Defense -- 2. Nf3, 3. Ng5 etc.

As Black
 vs. e4 -- Nf3 or Sicilian Hyper Acc Dragon, if I'm bored.
 vs. d4 -- 1. c3, d3 line or KID, if bored.

 vs. anything strange, default to KID.

That should about cover it for the Opening. Need to brush up on Tactics and Endgames.

Do What You Love

Well, what do I love? Let's see.

1. Reading.
2. BJJ
3. Chess
4. Making things.

Is it sad that writing didn't make the list?

Too bad, none of these pay the bills. But I know that in trying to monetize these activities will take the joy out of it and then I will no longer love doing them. But I have to eat. I have to pay the mortgage. Perhaps, I love it precisely because I can't make money at them.

Do something to pay the bills and then do more of what I love. For now, it's enough, I guess.

Brief History notes

Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilbur.

Just picked it up, and it was heavy going, but it was an important book. It's about evolution, in the widest sense of the word. Not just biological, but cultural and moral. And I'm not sure how practical it is but I'm glad I kept it and finished it. It's now over a week overdue from the library.

• biological: testostrone -- fuck it or kill it; oxytocin -- relationship hormone; induces feelings of attachment, relationship, nurturing, holding, touching. 
• holons -- all the way up, all the down. Whole/part. 
• secret impulse of evolution -- transcends and includes.
• Good news of modernity -- differentiate the Big Three; bad news -- not yet learned to integrate them; rapid advance in the "it"/location-based domain (science/empiricism). 
• Big Three of consciousness, culture and nature; but it-language is value-free, no quality; flatland -- flattened Big Three into one - science. 
• 1-2-3 fulcrum -- identify, dis-identify, integrate; or fusion, differentiation, integration; or embed, transcend, include. 
• Changing views: ladder and its basic rungs; self or the climber and its fulcrums, and the changing views. Ladder, climber, view. -- model of consciousness development. 
• On the way to global: interior transformation -- shift towards continuing decrease in egocentrism; evolution vs. egocentrism. 
• in most cases of depression -- people have false scripts or beliefs, (script pathology); keep repeating these myths/lies as if they were true. 
• The problem is most individuals you treat with universal coverage do not share your universalism. They are still egocentric or ethnocentric to the core. 
• Common lies that sabotage authenticity -- we lie about the responsiblity for our choices, preferring to see ourselves as passive victims of some outside force; we lie about the richness of the present by projecting ourselves backward in guilt and forward in anxiety.
• In place of the authentic self or actual self, we live as inauthentic self, false self. 
• Lack of meaning. Nothing is worth pursuing anymore, not because we failed but precisely because we acheived them and found them wanting. Brink of transpersonal. 
• Superconscious: observing self becoming aware of both mind and body, beginning to transcend them. The great mystics and sages say that this observing self goes straight to God, to spirit, to the very Divine. Observing Self eventually discloses its own source, which is Spirit itself, Emptiness. 
• From matter to body to mind to Spirit. 
• Find out for yourself. Perform the interior experiment, get the data, help interpret it. Common interpretation is: you are face to face with the Divine. 
• Then Who am I??? All those objects you describe when you "describe yourself" are not actually your real Self at all. List of lies, mistaken identities, list of who you are not. Who is this real Seer? Who or what is this observing Self? 
• Witness, the I-I. Aware of the individual or self but cannot itself be seen. Seer is vast Emptiness, vast Freedom. We identify the Seer with puny things that can be seen. And that is the beginning of bondage and unfreedom. Anything you can see is not it. Release from all that. 
• It is as it is; it is ever-present and unvarying. It is not an object out there, so it never enters the stream of time, of space, of birth, of death. 
• Vast Emptiness, this great Unborn, you can gain liberation from born and created, from suffering of space and time and objects. 
• Look up: Father Thomas Keating, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomin, Dalai Lama.
• Nondual: dis-identified with the Witness; moved from causal to Nondual. Seer or Witness or Self vanishes. Awareness is no longer split into seeing subject in here and seen subject out there; there is just pure seeing. Consciousness and its display are not-two. (nondual). 
• Real world not given twice. You are that, there is no you. Separate self is no where to be found. Immediate experience. Awareness itself. Bodymind drops. One Taste. 
• Nondual traditions aim not to bring about this state, bc it's impossible but simply to point it out. 
• Nondual traditions, you take a vow not to disappear into cessation, not hide out in nirvana; vow to ride the surf of samsara until all beings are caught in that surf can see that it is just a manifestation of Emptiness.
• the Ascending and Descending currents need to be integrated in the nondual Heart.
• Wisdom and Compassion: the path of Ascent from the Many to the One is the path of wisdom; Path of Descent is the path of Compassion; sees that the One actually manifests as the Many, so all forms are to be treated equally with kindness, compassion, mercy. 
• wisdom and compassion -- their union in the nondual Heart of One Taste is the source and goal and ground of genuine spirituality. 
• Ascenders and Descenders in brutal conflict. 
• brain is part of nature but the mind is not part of the brain. the mind is an I, the brain is an it. you can talk to the mind; you can look at a brain. 
• Fallacy of simple location: simply can't locate consciousness and values and meanings and morals. Ghosts in the machine. 
• Search for a more integrated vision, all-level, all-quarant vision. Not the usual Ego vs. Eco. We live in the Descended worldview. Ego-Enlightenment (science) vs. the Eco-Romantics, but they are both stuck in Flatland. 
• Ego - control nature; Eco - not control it, calculate it or dominate it but become one with it. 
• Kantian notion of the necessity of transcendence. How can you reconcile the necessity to rise above nature with a necessity to become one with it?
• Historical gridlock between Ego and Eco. 
• Spirit is the only reality. Nondual synthesis, one timeless act of self-knowledge, of Spirit directly knowing itself as Spirit, says Schelling. 
• Spirit that was present all along during the entire process of evolution, unfolding a bit each step of the way. 
• Great Idealists -- their first failure: no transpersonal practice to reproduce their insights. 
• The Net -- like all technology and Right-Hand structures are value neutral. 
• Global problems demand global consciousness. Interior growth and transcendence. 
• Need Spirit in all four quadrants, not just your own particular awareness. 
• Ecological wisdom does not consist in how to live in accord with nature, but how to get subjects to agree on how to live in accord with nature. The noble state of global care is the product of a long and laborious and difficult process of growth and transcendence. 
• We seem to want to claim the rights and not the responsilbities. We want to be a whole without being a part of anything. 
• Spectrum -- matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, to exercise it in self, culture, and nature, ie in an integrated way. 
• 
  

Climbing Out of Veronica Mars Rabbit Hole

When I read about Kickstarter and Veronica Mars movie, I thought, "hmm, modern-day Nancy Drew, strong, smart female character. I should really check it out for my 9-year-old girl."

Watching the pilot episode, I'm thinking, "Hmmn, not quite appropriate for her." But then I got sucked down the rabbit hole and 64 episodes, plus a 10-minute FBI Presentation later, here I am.

Besides Veronica, I really like the Dick character, and even Weevil, Logan and Sheriff Lamb have grown on me. And I really like the Mac the girl cool geek. Another smart girl character.

As for Veronica, she does go down some morally grey areas. But she does the right thing, mostly.

Along with Sports Night, The Wire, Friday Night Lights, Deadwood, add Veronica Mars to the list of binge-viewing that I've watched every episode of.

I'm going to miss Veronica and friends. What's next?

True Blood? Lost? Dr. Who? Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones?

Gatsby notes

I read the Great Gatsby, like everyone else, in high school, and don't remember much about it, except that Gatsby was a self-made man and I admired that. I don't remember much else. Now there's a new movie version out, but that's not why I picked it up after all these years.

I come at it from Michael Chabon and the Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Chabon said he read The Great Gatsby  and Goodbye, Columbus before he wrote his first novel. And so I read Gatsby and now I'm in the middle of  Columbus. He's right: all three books take place over a summer.

Chapter breakdown/summary of Gatsby (which might help me with my book, when I write mine):

1. Long Island, East Egg: Nick has dinner with Daisy, Tom and Jordan.

2. Tom's NY apt: Nick has dinner/party with Tom, his mistress Myrtle and her friends.

3. West Egg, Gatsby mansion: Nick at Gatsby's party, meets him for the first time.

4. NY: Gatsby takes Nick to lunch in NY; meets Wolfsheim; Jordan flashback to meeting Daisy, and why Gatsby bought the house across from Daisy. Hatches plan for tea, to bring Daisy over.

5. West Egg: tea date with Nick, Gatsby and Daisy (many scenes with three people). Tour of Gatsby's mansion.

6. Gatsby's real name and background. Then at Gatsby's: Nick comes over; finds Tom and friends over at Gatsby's.

7. East Egg, at Tom's: Daisy, Tom, Gatsby, Nick and Jordan. Decide to go into NY; Tom realizes what's going on between Daisy and JG; confrontation at NY hotel; car crash -- Myrtle dead; Daisy hit her.

8. Back at Wilson's. What happened after the accident. (breaks Nick's narrative POV, switch to omnipotent POV).

9. JB shot/furneral. Wolfsheim explains his history with JB; end of summer; Nick ties up loose ends with Jordan; leaves East.

Top Dog notes

Top Dog: Science of Winning and Losing, P. Bronson and A. Merryman

My cliffnotes on the book.

• Taking the SAT: kids taking in small venues score HIGHER.
• "N-Effect" -- the larger the N (number of participants) -- the worse the outcome for individuals. 
• Being watched: If they were learning the skill, the presence of spectators hampered performance. If they had mastered the skill, spectators improved performance.
• Stress helped the men, hurt the women.
• Women compete less: they only compete when they know they have a decent chance to win. They are better at calculating odds; men are more overconfident of their skills, take more risks. 
• Hothouse, ultra-competitive environment -- girls tend to thrive, not so for boys. If you have a girl, put her in the best school possible and with smartest peers. If you have a son, you should put them in a school with the brightest teachers, but be wary of a hypercompetetive environment. 
• Infinite games -- women survive better than men. 
• Boys socialize in groups; girls in pairs (dyad). Lesson of the dyad is that competition destroys relationships. 
• Gain-oriented vs. prevention-oriented. Playing to win vs. playing not to lose.
• In many situations, changing the framing of a task from threat to challenge is all it may take for success.
• Case against being overly positive: a bit of fantasy (positive thinking) at the onset can be productive, but must think about the obstacles will help actually achieve the goals.
• Not just practice, but at the highest levels -- requires taking control of body's physiology. From threat condition to challenge condition. Challenge situation -- body provides right about of adrenaline. 
• Despair is the other option; anger is a negative emotion that's a positive force -- motivating people to go farther. 
• Need testosterone spike to compete. But women, according to the "tend-and-befriend" theory, when women experience a stressful situation, they seek out others' companionship to alleviate the tension. So they don't get the testosterone spike. 
• Cortisol -- does not cause stress. It's the body's remedy for stress. Helps manage stress, return body back to normal. Diffuses competitive desire. 
• Oxytocin -- marking people as your in-group or out-group. Friend or foe. 
• Teamwork -- only strategies that consistently deliver results are those that focus on role clarification: who's going to do what when the pressure gets intense. Role definition by leadership before even team formed. 
• Competition breeds creative mindset. Need to nurture kids to be innovators. More than just creativity -- to have not just original ideas, but also the courage to risk rejection and put their ideas out into the world. 
• Character trait -- agency. We cultivate agency in children by allowing them freedom to make choices, and by encouraging them to trust the decisions they make. We must let them have opinions, feel their needs, and act to satisfy those needs. This also means allowing them the chance to make mistakes. 
• Highly creative adults -- they had childhoods where they learned to trust their own judgment without anyone's input. They learned to be comfortable with conflict, contradiction, and opposition. 
• That's what kids need to have: clarity and strength of vision built over time -- a brilliance that can withstand enormous pressure. 
• Need to frame competitions as a challenge, not a threat. Winning and losing are just short-term consequences to the long-term goal: improvement. 

E's Fencing

Started: Jan. 2012.

Tournaments: 2 (both in-house). Did not get out of the round robin stage.

E. Reading Update (Shakespeare)

Age: 9.3 years old.

She's read children's versions and the graphic novel of Macbeth, but now she's reading the full unabridged versions.

She finished Merchant of Venice, and just started Midsummer's Night Dream.

Yes to Shoulder Rides

E. is nine and she's still not too big where I can still give her rides on my shoulder. But she doesn't ask any more. G., her sister is five, and asks and when I'm tired or my neck is sore, I say no.

Yesterday, she asked and I said, Yes. I'm going to keep saying Yes until she stops asking. I don't know how much longer she's going to ask, so I'm going to keep giving her shoulder rides until I am no longer able.

And I also told E. she could have a ride any time she wants.

Going to have to add this to the Daddy manual.

Random notes on M. Chabon and Art of Writing

Back on a Michael Chabon kick. Read Summerland, and his short stories, Model World. Just re-read Mysteries of Pittsburgh.

Some of his descriptions, back stories of place and character are so rich, and deeply imagined or researched, I think to myself, that I could never do that and then realize that he's been writing for a while now and perhaps, when I get my 10,000 hours of writing in, perhaps then I could.

He likes to transpose his adjectives and phrases.

Currently reading his essays, Manhood for Amateurs. Next up, his stories, Werewolves in their Youth. 

Importance of place: Summerland, Pittsburgh. Of time: Summer.

What's the difference between nostalgia and sentimentality?

Are all novels an exercise in nostalgia? Not a yearning for the past, but just to remember it. Mark it.

Getting to Done

Getting to Done in 3 Steps. 

My personal productivity philosophy in a nutshell. Three steps.

1. State Goal.

2. State Next Step.

3. State Deadline for Next step.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 until Goal is achieved.


In action:

Goal:    Hawai Trip, Summer 2013. 
Next step: carve out dates.
Deadline: this Friday, March 22 or sooner.

One World Schoolhouse notes

One World Schoolhouse (Education Reimagined), Salman Khan (founder of Khan Academy).

• "Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time." -- Rabindranath Tagore.
• his early tutoring precepts: lessons should be paced to the individual student's needs, not to some arbitrary calendar; and that basic concepts needed to be deeply understood if students were to succeed at mastering more advanced ones.
• First videos: ten minutes was the right length. 
• Having established that students' attention maxed out at around 10 or 15 minutes, they still regarded it as a given that classroom sessions lasted an hour. 
• Mastery Learning: students should adequately comprehend a given concept before being expected to understand a more advanced one. 
• Carelton Washburne and the Winnetka Plan (1922) - a mastery learning curriculum.
• Mastery learning structured its curriculum not in terms of time, but in terms of certain target levels of comprehension and achievement. 
• In Washburne's system, students, with the help of self-paced exercises, proceed at varying rates toward the same level of mastery. 
• In a traditional academic model, the time allotted to learn something is fixed while the comprehension of the concept is variable. Washburne was advocating the opposite. What should be fixed is a high level of comprehension ans what should be variable is the amount of time students have to understand a concept. 
• Taking responsibility for education is education; taking responsibility for learning is learning. From the student's perspective, only by taking responsibility does true learning become possible. 
• Personal responsibility is not only undervalued but actually discouraged by the standard classroom model. 
• Standard classroom model: stressing passivity over activity; failure to maximize the brain's capacity for association learning -- achieving the deeper comprehension and more durable memory by relating something newly learned to something already known. 
• In other words, it's easier to understand and remember something if we can relate it to something else we already know. 
• The most effective way to teach would be to emphasize the flow of a subject, the chain of associations that relates one concept to the next and across subjects. 
• Artificial separation of traditional academic subjects. Need to learn the connections among subjects. 
• In my view, no subject is ever finished. No subject is sealed off from other concepts. Knowledge is continuous; ideas flow. 
• Encourage students to adopt an active stance toward their education. Active learning, owned learning, giving them the freedom to determine where and when the learning will occur. 
• Portability and self-pacing. Easy and on-going access to lessons that have come before. 
• Fresh look at basic assumptions about teaching and learning. Ask simple but crucial questions of what works, what doesn't work, and why. 
• Prussian model: system tended to stifle deeper inquiry and independent thought. 
• You have to allow students to explore the subject on their own. Today's world needs a workforce of creative, curious, and self-directed lifelong learners who are capable of conceiving and implementing novel ideas. 
• Need to adopt a more questioning and skeptical stance. 
• Schools measure out their efforts in increments of time rather in target levels of mastery. 
• Getting a 95. Not a cause for rest or celebration, should have been given a review of the 5 percent missed. Once a certain level of proficiency is obtained, learner should attempt to teach the subject to other students. Keep revisiting the core ideas through the lenses of different, active experences. 
• Hitting a wall. Most students hit it with Calculus and organic chemistry (in pre-med). 
• Because calculus is a synthesis of much that has gone before. It assumes complete mastery of algebra and trigonometry. 
• Failure to relate classroom topics to their eventual application in the real world. Those x's and y's can stand for an infinitely diverse set of phenomena and ideas. 
• Need to  get to this deeper, functional understanding, which takes time. But most students just see algebra as one more hurdle to be passed, a class rather than a gateway. 
• Creativity: creativity in general tends to be egregiously underappreciated and often selected against in our schools. Also, many educators fail to see math, science, and engineering as "creative" fields at all. 
• Homework becomes necessary because the broadcast, one-pace-fits-lecture--the very heart of our standard classroom model -- turns out to be a highly inefficient way to teach and learn. 
• Flipping the classroom -- lecture at home, homework  in class. Lectures done independently at a student's pace; problem-solving in class. 
• This kind of education available to everyone. With the use of enlightened use of technology. The promise of technology is to liberate teachers so they have more time for human interactions. 
• 10 answers right in a row. Signal of mastery? true conceptual understanding? 
• Learning by doing. Learning by having productive, mind-expanding fun. Summer camps built with emphasis on real projects that would in turn illustrate  underlying principles. 
• Best tools are built when there is open, respectful, two-way conversation between those who make the tools and those who use them. 
• about the Future: the certainty of change, coupled with the complete uncertainty as to the precise nature of the change ... What we teach is less important than how they learn to teach themselves. 
• the crucial task of education is to teach kids how to learn. To lead them to want to learn. To nurture curiosity, to encourage wonder, and to instill confidence. 
• Khan at MIT: the idea was to work effectively, naturally, and independently. Could people actually learn twice as much as was generally expected of them? 
• Khan's vision: school of the future should be built around an updated version of the one-room schoolhouse. Kids of different ages should mix. Multiteacher classrooms. 
• Why coaches are liked better than teachers: coaches are specifically and explicitly on the student's side. 
• What happens in the classroom is but preparation for real competition in the outside world. 
• Khan videos one to two hours a school day and peer tutoring. Rest of the time, students need the latitude to follow their own oblique, nonstandard paths. 
• Computer-based, self-paced mastery learning can solve many of the problems that summer vacation creates. 
• Testing: Tests tend to measure quantities of info (and sometimes knowledge) rather than quality of minds -- not to mention character. Test scores seldom identify truly notable ability. 
• I would eliminate letter grades. I would alter content of tests from year to year, incorporate an open-ended design component. It gives us a picture not just of a test-taker, but a learner. 
• Track the ability and willingness to help others. 
• Ideas of education: 1. teaching and learning; 2. socialization; 3. credentialing. Use microcredentials. Greatly help those who don't attend name-brand school. 
• What college could be like: Very basic disconnect between most students' expectations fro college -- a means to employment first and a good intellectual experience second -- and what universities believe their value is -- an intellectual and social experience first, with only secondary consideration to employment. 
• (Meaningful) internships far more valuable -- to student and employer. Rather than taking notes in lecture halls, these students will be actively learning through real-world intellectual projects. Make sure internships are challenging and intellectual; that they support a student's development. 
• Make Time for Creativity: Nearly everything about our current system rewards passivity and conformity and discourage differences and fresh thinking. 
• His imagined school -- more creativity would emerge because it would be allowed to emerge and because there would be time for this to happen. 
• Length of traditional school is a brake on creativity and the artificial chopping up of time into lessons. There should be no brick walls between one "subject" and the next. 
• No magic formula to make kids more creative; rather, it's a way to give light and space and time to the creativity that already exists in each of us. 

Soul Searching, Navel gazing questions

• Am I happy? (No)
• Am I unhappy? (No)

I'm neutral. I don't feel as anxious as I have been feeling recently.

• Do I even know what happiness feels like? (not sure).
• When was the last time I felt happy? (can't remember)
• What would happiness feel like? What would it take to make me happy? What would happiness look like? 

My Focus Rock

My rock says, "Happiness." And on the other side, I wrote, "Courage."

I know the secret to happiness. I just wished I knew the secret to courage. I need it to quit the rat race, to stop chasing shiny things. I need the courage to get off the merry-go-round, and follow my own path. Follow my dreams, my passion.

That will take courage. Come on rock. Perhaps with enough courage, happiness will follow.

Mindful Child notes

by Susan K. Greenland.

• new ABC - Attention, Balance, Compassion.
• Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, and the "mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR).
• Jack Kornfield, writer.
• Start the day tip: take 3 deep breaths before you leave the house. 
• Mindfulness, motivation, goals, purpose -- the goals are laudable, but they also attach a purpose to the practice. "There is no purpose in mediation. As soon as you assign a purpose to meditation, you've made it just another activity to try to get someplace or reach some goal." -- Dr. K-Zinn. 
• Five Whys (of motivation) -- (meditation teacher Ken McLeod) -- ask 5 whys. The aim is for the person being asked the question to discover the answer himself.
• Understanding motivation is the first step in mindfulness training. 
• To continue the practice, don't "feel like doing it" ... intention, ardency, and perseverance.
• Meditation and distraction coexist. The object is not to rid your environment of distraction but to recognize them and resist engaging. 
• Teach only what you know from direct experience.
• From early age, we live in a world that values achievement, glorifying results at the expense of process. Later, we find that there's something missing. With each accomplishment, the bar is set higher. We'd like to jump off the merry-go-round. 
• Send friendly wishes. 
• Rocking a stuffed animal to sleep with your breathing. Putting animal on your belly and breathing. 
• Hello game. Your eyes look blue. 
• Jack Zimmerman from Ojai Foundation, and the Council program. Council format and its four intentions -- speak from the heart, listen from the heart, be lean in your speech, and be spontaneous. 
• Sufi teaching called the Three Gates: ask three questions before speaking: 1. Is it true? 2. Is it necessary? Is it kind?
• View life from perspective of impermanence. Nothing lasts forever. Whatever happens -- good, bad or neutral -- things are not likely to stay that way for very long. 
• Carve out some time to be kind to yourself. Picture your own safe place. No place you have to go. Nothing you need to do. No one to please. Don't need anything other than what you have right now. There's no one else you have to be. All we're doing is resting. Nothing more and nothing less. 
• Right now we're going to be as kind, and caring, and supportive of ourselves as we are of our friends. You are complete and whole just as you are. End by sending friendly wishes to ourselves. 
• Tough to be happy when we don't recognize the beauty of our true nature. 
• from Dear Patrick, by Dr. J. Schwartz: If you can observe it and describe it, it's not you -- not the core you, the real you ... 
• The stance of the friendly observer discourages youth from overidentifying with their thoughts and emotions ... instead of "I am angry", it's "I have an angry feeling."
• "Watching the Wheels", John Lennon song. Fame and fortune can be enslaving. 
• Antidote to auto behavior. Pause and 1. reflect on your motivation (friendly or unfriendly?); 2. Actions likely to spring from that motivation make me happy or not?: 3. If not, shift gears toward a different action. 
• String around your finger: a friendly awareness of your daily routine. To pause and take in what's happening in your mind and body. 
• Bad emotions. They are visitors, and will not stay forever. By personifying emotions as visitors. 
• The Way of the Council, by Jack Zimmerman. 
• Mindfulness practice to soothe sadness: When something bad happens, acknowledge it right away, and then quickly give thanks for three things. 
• Reverse Follow the Leader Game. Follow the child. They are always the leader. The plan is for the parents to become completely and totally tuned into their children's rhythm, interests, and activities. Role reversal. What it actually feels like to be them. Practice floor time. 
• So when you meet someone whom you find difficult, think of him or her as having been your mother or father in another lifetime. Compassion and love can naturally emerge from that visualization. When working with kids who are being difficult, it is also helpful to imagine that they are your own children. 
• Decorate a rock. Focus rock. Meditation rock. 
• Dr. Paul Cummins: I don't think you teach character development intellectually, but it has to be more emotional, and experiential. Why community service is so important. That's what education is all about, not SAT scores and what college you get into. Action is the primary antidote to depression and alienation. 
• T.S. Eliot in his Four Quartets: 

                           We shall not cease from exploration
                           And the end of all our exploring
                           Will be to arrive where we started
                           And know the place for the first time.

• from the fable of the kind and gentle princess: she taught that everything, absolutely everything is bigger than you think. Everything is so big you can never truly see the whole picture. But we can see the seems, where things connect. Community service is important. The secret to happiness is being kind to other people and to yourself. 

Deschooling Reader notes

Everywhere All the Time: A New Deschooling Reader, ed. by Matt Hern. 2008.

-- **Instead of Education, John Holt.

• ... we are very unlikely to learn anything good from experiences ... not connected ... or interesting or important to us. Curiosity is never idle; it grows out of real concerns and real needs. We are even less likely to learn anything good from coerced experiences, things that others have bribed, threatened, bullied, wheedled, or tricked us into doing. From such we learn mostly anger, resentment, and above all self-contempt for having allowed ourselves to be pushed around or used by others, for not having been smart enough or strong enough to resist and refuse. 
• We learn to do something by doing.

--**Public School Nightmare, John T. Gatto.

• [our public schools has its origins in the Prussian model.] (Prussian schools purpose was not) intellectual development by socialization in obedience and subordination. 
• Prussian trained/schooled "lesser men" could not lead or revolt because they could not manage sustained or comprehensive thought. Well-schooled children cannot think critically, cannot argue effectively. 
• Control of conduct is what schools are about. 

--Learning? Yes, of course. Education? No, thanks. Aaron Fabel.

• (re: John Holt and Instead of Education) -- Education means that some A is doing something to somebody else B.
• There is no division in my life between learning, work, play, etc. All things are one. In place of "education," maybe put "living."
• Learning is like breathing. But our social environment is thoroughly polluted by education -- a designed process in which one group tries to make another group learn something, usually without their consent, because they (the educators) think it will be good for them.
• In other words, education is forced, seduced or coerced learning -- except that you can't make another person learn, which is why education doesn't work and has never worked. 

Challenging the Popular Wisdom..., Geraldine and Gus Lyn-Piluso.

• (Difference between deschooling and homeschooling -- both expose the inability of the present school system to actually "educate."
• But the deschoolers reject the present schooling system because of its inherently authoritarian nature; this staunchly anti-authoritarian critique is where deschooling parts ways with the "homeschooling" movement. Many homeschooling families reject the school system, yet maintain authoritarian family structures and in fact implement authoritarian pedagogical techniques within the home.
• Deschooling does not simply move the school to home -- it rejects the school and its authoritarian nature completely. 
• Deschooling, then is a conscious effort to de-professionalize learning by acknowledging it as a lifelong, cooperative project of questioning and discovery, thinking and rethinking. Parenting, in the deschooling family, becomes a revolutionary activity. 
• Educate -- from Latin educare, to nourish, to cause to grow. Education is the act of living and growing. Recalls John Dewey's notion of learning by doing, except in deschooling, the child -- not the teacher -- directs the process. 

From Pedagogy for Liberation to Liberation from Pedagogy, G. Esteve, M. Prakash, D. Stuchul.

• Education is the economization of learning, transforming it into the consumption of a commodity called knowledge ... 
• Since the noun "education" imposes a completely passive dependence on the system which provides education, people are substituting this noun with the verbs "to learn" and "to study." ... to reestablish the autonomous capacity to build creative relationships with others and nature, which generates knowledge, wisdom. 
• Inspired by: Gandhi, Subcomandante Marcos, Wendell Berry. 
• Paul Goodman: "Start living that way now! Whatever you would do then, do it now. When you run up against obstacles...begin to think about how to get over or around or under that obstacle, or how to push it out of the way, and your politics will be concrete and practical."

Getting Busy, Matt Hern.

• Deschooling -- not talking about doing away with schools per se, but extinguishing monopoly state schooling and compulsory education. 
• Most kids need a place to go during the day: we need to be talking about counter-institutions. 
• Create those "counter-institutions" -- commonly-held and democratically-controlled by everyday people. We can't be waiting for politicians, etc, we need to be building everyday alternatives right now, right where we live. 
• These writings represent a radical reimagining of our society. We have to take common responsibility for making alternatives to compulsory schooling commonly available -- to everyone, otherwise deschooling just becomes another brick in the wall of white privilege. 
• The basic aspects of everyday school life have emerged and continue to evolve not as a response to the needs of students, but as driven by institutional needs. Why do we demand that children fit into schools and not the other way around?
• Kids need places to gather and places to meet interested and interesting adults who care about them and their lives. 
• Start asking questions and then get working. 

Summerhill School, Zoe Readhead (daughter of A.S. Neill)

• Two elements that were essential to the founding of Summerhill: the self-government meeting and the importance of a child's emotional well-being over academic development. 
• One aim: to create a happier childhood by removing fear and coercion by adults. 
• Giving children time to develop means letting them play and play and play for as long as they want to. Only through free, imaginative play can a child develop the skills needed for adulthood. 
• Neill constantly stressed the innate goodness of children and urged us to have patience and trust that they would learn these things for themselves. 

History of Albany Free School and Community, Chris Mercoglinao (Making it Up as We Go Along, etc)

• Free School's basic operating strategy: Do it first, ask permission later. 
• Lesson learned from Jon Kozol -- importance of freeing the school from becoming tuition-dependent, by developing some sort of business. 

No Destination (auto-bio of Satish Kumar)

Democratic Education in Israel, C. Balme and D. Bennis

• Institute's visioning process -- consider where they have been, where they are now (mapping of strengths, weaknesses and growth areas) and where they want to be. 
• Honech -- adult advisor for each student. 
• Three approaches to learning: 1. classes offered by staff, attendance optional; 2. Learning centers - classes taught by students; 3. Self-directed learning. 
• "Pluralistic learning" -- educational approach that recognizes the equal right of every individual to express his uniqueness regarding goals and ways of learning. -- core of democratic learning. 
• School parliament. 
• New democratic schools should: respect the human rights of the child and include democratic processes in the school; be different from every other democratic school that already exists. 

School for Today, Mimsy Sadofsky (Starting a Sudbury School, Pursuit of Happiness)

• Play is the most serious pursuit at Subbury Valley. 
• Even the six-year-olds know that they, only they, are responsible for their education. 
• Simple freedom for their children to develop according to their own timetables and their own desires. 

Windsor House (Vancouver), M. Hughes, J. Carrico

• "Non-coercive" education. -- it is based on trust, and the conviction that people of all ages have a right to self-determination. 

"Waldorf Education" ? 

Purple Thistle Center, D. Mckellar

• Learning is like breathing when we care. 
• Traditional schooling fails us because mandatory curriculum is counterintuitive. It's easier than adults think to be a resource rather than a tyrant in the classroom, but it takes heart. 

Rebuilding Learning Communities in Mail, C. Toure.

• Paulo Freire and his theory of Popular Education (not just for elites). People should be in charge of their liberation. 
• Popular education demands that learning content be relevant to the learner, then it becomes meaningful and fun. 
• General assumption of education is that the students are simply recipients, who come to school to take knowledge from a person who knows more or better. Popular education is about problem posing with students. 

Doing Something Very Different, S. Sheffer

• kids' enthusiasm, their interest in learning. 
• (in school) that's what I always used to feel like, like we were in there as punishment.
• Teach Your Own, Freedom and Beyond, John Holt.
• Deschooled scociety, a society in which learning is not separated from but joined to, part of the rest of life. 
• Homeschoolers understand the value of teachers, but they are less likely to understand why it's necessary to learn from people who are only teachers and/or to learn only from those teachers who are assigned to them. 
• These families demonstrate what it means to create a useful structure rather than to labor under an externally imposed one. 
• Teachers, help, schedules, organization --  these are not school things in themselves. They are school things when someone assigns the teachers, tells the teachers what to teach, gives the students no say in the matter, makes the help compulsory, imposes the schedule according to institutional rather than individual needs. 
• Holt's future tour guide wouldn't understand the need for grades and other external motivators. In a world where everyone learns all the time, people are learning on their own steam, for their own reasons, and they don't need the promise or threat of grades to make them learn or to tell them how they did. 
• Young people are capable of deciding what is important or necessary, and once they have decided, they are capable of working much harder than we imagine. 
• John Holt: "The trick is to find ways to put your strongest ideals into practice in daily life."

Play, Practice, and the Deschooling of Music, Mark Douglas.

• How do you deschool music? Stop thinking about music as a thing to learn and start thinking about as a thing to do. 
• Play the instrument as much as possible. 
• Encourage playing and making as opposed to practicing and working on. If you practice you aren't really doing it. You are always in preparation for whey you're really going to do it. 
• Resistance to practice sets in. 
• The child will surely find ways to regain control of the experience and most of these ways produce anxiety for the parents.
• A child should never, under any circumstances, be forced to play -- even if it seems like a waste of money. 
• Like language, a child will learn to talk. She will learn to play. Same faith in musical language, given an unjudging environment. 
• The best way to learn music is to play it, play it, and make it with your family and friends. 

Homeschooling as a Single Parent, H. Knox.

• All one issue -- support. 
• Wouldn't it be easier for me to use the free baby-sitting service the public schools have provided for me?

The Root of Education, P. Farenga.

• One can view the history of education as an ongoing struggle between those who feel education is something to be done for someone and those who feel it is something people do for themselves. 
• We school our children in a most undemocratic manner. 
• That is why we need to deschool society -- to do away with the attitude that children and adults can not be trusted to discover and discipline their minds and bodies in their own ways. 
• As Ivar Berg noted in Education and Jobs: The Great Training Robbery: The need for education feeds upon itself. This conceptual shift moves the primary responsibility for learning away from children and their parents and places it in the hands of external authorities. 

Lunch at the Westin, R. Westheimer

• But she has the opportunity now to experience and revel in other ways of knowing, I cannot teach her these 'other ways' because they aren't my own. But I can, we can grant her the privilege of living them herself.