Thursday, April 20, 2006

Understanding Generative Thinking Part 2 (or, How To Teach Without Lesson Planning)

One of the really great things about teaching generative thinking is that it doesn't require a lesson plan. (See Part 1 of this series if you haven't already.)

It doesn't require a lesson plan, because you start out by telling the audience that they just have to accept what you say as a valid point of view, and they aren't allowed to question it or debate. This makes it so you can get paid to pontificate, philosophise, and otherwise b.s. your audience about whatever your opinion is on anything you want. They will just sit there and try to make sense of whatever drivel falls out of your mouth, knowing that they can't question or debate it.

When you are done talking, nobody will dare say anything, because what they want to say is, "What in the crap are you talking about?" But only you are allowed to say such things. Either that, or they are expecting you to continue, because they expect you to make a point. But you don't really have a point, other than to talk about whatever enters your head. So you can sit there in silence for a while. After a while, you can say, "You people are not thinking loud enough." What this really means is, "Someone make a comment, so I can philosophise about it."

Now you might be wondering, "But what happens if someone expresses an idea that I don't want to talk about, or asks a question that I don't know the answer to?" Ah, my young Padowan. Fear not! It is at this point that you pull out some of your key phrases, like, "You don't have to understand it. Understanding is the booby prize," or, "You need to remember to listen and speak for, not listen and speak about." This last one is very key, since nobody in the room knows the difference between the two, and you never explain it to them. And since it is against the rules to try to understand or question it, they have to just accept it.
Another technique at this point is to begin the insults. For example, say, "I can't believe how insistent you guys are at getting off topic." This will let the audience know that the comment was not appropriate. They may not know what the topic is, but they know that the last comment was NOT the topic.

What they haven't learned yet is that the topic is whatever YOU want to talk about. The comment was on something that you don't want to talk about. Obviously that makes it off topic.


You might believe this to be made up, but I swear this actually happened. After coming back from a break, the instructor leads off the discussion basically by asking, "What have you guys been thinking about what we've been learning?" You might assume this is intended to be a 10-minute segue into the topic at hand, but no - this WAS the topic at hand, apparently, as we discussed apparently whatever the instructor wanted to talk about for over one hour. Then someone made a comment or asked some sort of question. The response came back, "You know, I cannot believe how devoted you guys are to getting the conversation off topic. We are trying to head somewhere, but you guys are bound and determined to dive down ratholes and spin on off-topic conversations."

To which we replied: "How can we go off topic when we don't know what we are even talking about or what we are trying to achieve?"

As best we could tell, it was off-topic if it was about something the instructor didn't want to talk about.


So again, this is a powerful tool. You could get paid to train people without actually teaching them anything. For example, you could make up a bunch of stuff about how similar the world economy is to a Chia Pet, or why gravity is a farce. If anyone disagrees with you, you can reprimand them for not listening to your point of view and accepting it as valid for you. If they ask a question about it, you can remind them that understanding is not the purpose. And if you get tired of talking about it, you can just be silent, and wait for them to say something. If they bring up something you want to talk about, you can talk about it. You are even welcome to disagree, if you like; as you'll remember, you don't have to follow your own rules. Or, if it is something you don't want to talk about, you can just claim that it is off-topic.

This way you can talk about whatever you want and get paid for it.