MAC - Week 2 Comment 1 Brian Thomas

Brian's Post

Week 2 Reading - A Revelation

I think the thing that I learned most from the first two chapters of this book was something about myself. This “thing” is something that I’ve had to deal with throughout this course and upon reflection, throughout my entire life. I’m talking about the types of books that speak to me and the type that I really cannot in any way relate to.Unfortunately, this book seems to be of the latter. I would classify it as more of a philosophical get-in-touch-with-your-inner-self type book. After finished up the first couple chapters, I felt a rush of all the books I’d read come back to me – those I enjoyed and those I did not (regardless of the genre or content). As an individual with a severe case of concrete logical-mathematical thinking, I realize that my brain has a particularly hard time processing text that is deeply philosophical, yet reading a physics, chemistry, or calculus text is relatively easy. As is reading any manual on whatever the topic. And I find some of the statements in the book particularly hard for my brain to accept. Take this passage on p.20 for example: “The pie is enormous, and if you take a slice, the pie is whole again.” (Zander, 2000) Now, as we all know, if you subtract a part from the whole, as long as the part is > 0, you no longer have the whole, as is insinuated by the authors.

Poor mathematics aside, the awareness of my own strengths and weaknesses in reading opened my eyes to the difficulties that some student may have in reading such texts as I enjoy, and quite truthfully, this was my greatest take-away from the first couple chapters.

So, that aside, I do see the value of thinking outside the box, as explained in the text. Another part of the text that resonated with me was the part about scarcity thinking. I believe as Americans, we have really fallen into that mind-set and try to accumulate as much as we possibly can, without much regard for those that have little to nothing.

Moving into chapter three was fearful (because it was much longer than the infinitely long previous two chapters combined) but I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed the authors take on “giving an A” and thought at length about what kind of effect that would have on a student population I might be working with next year.

Ironically, I didn’t really start to get into the text myself until I watched the TED talk (which I had seen a couple years ago) and remembered how much I enjoyed watching Ben Zander. And at that point, I decided to give the book an A, and have enjoyed it much more ever since.

(image from the cover of The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander)

My Response

    I appreciate you discerning certain types of books.  A scripture in the Bible says “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16).  This means the life we live and the words by which we live must be closely monitored.  When studying the Bible with new converts, I often ask “which is more important? Life or Doctrine?”  Of course, it is sort of a trick question because both are equally important, much like the wings on a plane.  Reading the Art of Possibility provided little in the way of direction, so I can see your frustration.  It certainly offers insightful ideas from a couple of very intelligent and wise authors, but ultimately, we have to make sense of it all and base our decisions based on their “practices”.  

For myself, I appreciate the quote about the shoe salesman in Africa.  Sometimes changing our perspective can certainly provide solutions to complex problems.  Perhaps the logical/mathematical part of you can see it as a social experiment, like some sort of AR Project with people.  What’s more important, that as educator’s, we are in a position to change the thinking of our students. I already gave my students the speech about the shoe salesman in Africa to help them get a different perspective on their homework.  Will they do their homework now?  Maybe it affected 1 person.  For that reason, it was worth the effort.