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Date:         Mon, 4 Jan 1993 00:34:22 GMT
From:         rljackson@ATTMAIL.COM
Subject:      re: personal effectiveness

[from Ray Jackson (930103.0445 MST)]

Bill Powers (930103) on Dag Forssell (930103) --
>Your long discussion of prescriptive principles has a lot of
>interesting points in it, but it makes me feel a bit the way I
>did in grade school when people were always giving me
>descriptions of how I should be.

Prescriptions for behavior or definitions of what one should be
thinking cannot help but be flawed; especially as they are
interpreted through a wide range of individual paradigms. Yet, when
you are educating a group of individuals you must have a starting
point of descriptions or definitions for them to see something
tangible so they can begin to construct meaning. The degree to which
these "starting points" are concrete and irrefutable is always
elusive, but the instruction has to begin with something.

Something I think that comes through very well in Dag's (and Ed's)
work is the sense of educating, influencing, and helping the
individual understand everything they need to know to make responsible
choices about control. I remember back during the influence-
manipulation discussions that Rick made a comment to the effect that
the teacher is a suggestor, a person to help clarify the big picture.
The nature of PCT is enabling someone (or yourself) to see the big
picture.

Dag Forssell (930103)
>I am interested in any suggestion on how a teacher can draw the
>attention of people to this (academic, irrelevant) theory by
>indicating what may be in it for them.

My wife is a fan of classic horror pictures (not the ax-in-the-head
kind, the real suspenseful ones). The other night, we settled in to
watch The Haunting, and I was interested in the character that "didn't
believe" in ghosts; everything had a "reasonable" explanation --
within his non-supernatural paradigm. The cold spot in the house had a
draft, the loud noises at night were due to subterranean waters, etc..
Eventually, though, watching the phenomena and the impact on others
made him realize that he needed to stretch his inadequate mindset to
find answers for the questions which were raised.

PCT represents a new way of looking at things for most people, and I
think Dag has done an excellent job of describing, in a
very broad way, what PCT can offer in terms of personal and
interpersonal effectiveness. Primarily,I feel that most people are
going to apply these principles to others before they look at
themselves... it's always more interesting to find out what makes
other people tick than to look into ourselves; but, through these
observations, students vicariously create new internal reference
standards and the error signal helps them to understand their own
systems. The introspection increases as they try to make further sense
of the behavior of others.

>I think your post indicates success rather than
>failure with this approach since you ask pertinent questions.

Exactly; that is all we can ask of any student, and it (the error
signal for learning) should be what we wish to foster in them.

Keep up the good work,
Ray

********************************************************************
Ray L. Jackson                                 rljackson@attmail.com
3613 W. Saragosa St.
Chandler, AZ 85226
Home: 602-963-6474
Pager: 602-244-3252 #2545
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