Do you have a Sadhu in your life?

The Parable of the Sadhu has been a required case study in ethics for many b-school students. I had to study ethics at some point in my educational background  and was introduced to the story.

The case goes something like this: A Wall Street money dude goes to Himalayas to climb his mountain and runs into an old "Sadhu" on the ice pack in near death condition. A Sadhu is a spiritual person who shuns clothing and complicated ways and practices meditation and yoga. So the climbing party puts some clothing on the Sadhu and passes him off to the Japanese climbers, who then pass him off again after giving him some tea. Eventually the Wall Street dude's buddy takes the Sadhu down to a better elevation and points him in the direction of safety. No one wanted to stop and help because they were on their own difficult  journey. Wall Street guy gets haunted later when back in New York about his greedy selfish actions.

I think the actual case is now owned by Harvard Business Review and so if you want real knowledge of The Parable of the Sadhu, you have to pay them for it.

Thinking -we can still do for free.

 

 

Of course there is a method to my madness, I have a Sadhu right now I am tripping over. Someone in my summer exercise class is getting increasingly forgetful. No, not like losing the keys, or forgetting where you left your glasses, this is real forgetfulness. You see the rest of my community of friends take the class all year round, and I take during the summer only. So I can see the decline from year to year where my friends cannot.

 

What do I do? Does she have family? I met her mom at exercise class last Christmas, so she must have family. What if I intervene and upset her natural routine of getting on the community bus and spending the day exercising? What if she wanders away from the facility when it is dangerously hot or freezing? Lately she can loose her way back to her exercise chair spot. It's a real possibility. 

 

This Sadhu of mine is haunting me. Ethical decisions are difficult to make. So many would say it's not your business, stay out. Or that's HIPPA privacy territory, you cannot discuss medical conditions of people. And the most frequent of them all----it's not your responsibility.

 

Who are we accountable to if not to our fellow human beings? Since when do we need to be assigned responsibility? I thought that was a birth right. You take care of those in need. Don't you?

 

Do you see the person holding the cup out or do you blindly look past the ruffled disheveled person asking for help? Do you rationalize that they must have tons of disability income or social security? Do you reason that you paid your social security taxes and that took care of your responsibility? Can you actually look into the eyes of the beggar?

 

 

 

 

I am beginning to think we all have a Sadhu somewhere in our lives, but we are so keen on getting to where we are going that we don't see the Sadhu. Where is this temporary trip on earth taking you?

 

Momma said

My momma said "If you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

love

 

 

 

 

 

everyone.

Blind Faith

Besides a nice restaurant in Evanston, what do we mean by blind faith. What is faith? I am not just speaking of the religious experience.  What do we believe in that we cannot see, yet we have faith. If I begin reflecting on this word, I know that faith in Spanish is two simple letters: "fe."  Can a word so simple have such deep meaning and wonder?

Is faith something we can rely upon and trust? Do we have faith in the monetary system? I heard a politician once say in defense of his monetary indiscretions, that he had no faith in the monetary system. I wondered why I should have any faith in the political system. In ancient Greece, faith translated to mean: trusted, reliable, of firm persuasion, to be counted on at all times, loyal.

Have you ever embarked on a project that was blazing new ground and you were not sure you could do it? But you relied upon faith to get you through the project. Faith that other people would behave appropriately. Faith that the system would support your project. Faith that decisions made would be the correct ones and when not that they would be recognized and changeable to correct ones. Faith that people will be flexible and adaptable to change that a new project brings. Blind faith.

Placing your faith in other humans can be a risky thing. We have faith that people will embrace diversity in people, yet we are constantly disappointed in the news just about everyday. Faith is sticking to the belief regardless of the disappointment around you. Faith is trusting bankers even after they caused the mortgage meltdown.

There is a story in archeology that when they dug up the city of Pompeii, they found people cowered in basements and hiding in rooftops, but only the Roman soldier was buried in the hot gaseous ash standing guard at his post. Faith is a consistency in your character. It borders on stubbornness and it is hard to tell the difference. Acting with faith is for other humans, things, ideas, and stubbornness is just an all about me attitude.

Faith is what Steve Jobs and Bill Gates relied upon when they quit their jobs at Hewlett Packard after getting turned down to develop personal computers. Faith is what launched FedEx and DHL into the standard of shipping today. Faith is at the core of many Black Swan events.

Things can never be right 100% of the time. Faith gets us through the failures of man. (collectively speaking men and women)  According to Robert Strand, an author of Nine Fruits of the Spirit, if things were right 99.9% of the time there would be:

• 2 unsafe landings at O'Hare every day
• 16,000 pieces of lost mail every hour
• 500 incorrect surgeries every week
• 50 babies dropped on the delivery floor every day
• and 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions every year

I have often wondered if the waitress at the restaurant was just picking on me when the order came incorrect. Somehow even with disappointments and failures we maintain a faith is systems that all will turn out well. The stronger our faith in a spiritual being , or faith is God, (whatever your choosing) the more we should be able to see that the incorrect meal that waitress delivered was meant for us. That a higher spiritual being caused us to miss that plane. If we truly have faith in our lives there is a surprising release of negative energy from failed expectations.

Accepting faith actions from others, and acting faithfully toward others is the balance of living in blind faith. What do you believe in that you cannot see yet trust?

+TmC

East is East and West is West

And never the twain shall meet. My 7th grade teacher used to say that in class, often enough that it is still ingrained in my head. What did she mean by that? Are there things that are just so polar opposite that they are not destined to ever "meet"?

I began to wonder about the topic of politics and science. The pope has written about the sciences and behaviors of man. Politicians have espoused their opinions on the sciences and behaviors of man. Looks like these two camps are a twain that shall not meet. So it got me thinking about the two.

According to Merriam Webster online dictionary, today's definition of politics is the theory and practice of influencing people, often characterized by artful (manipulative) and dishonest practices. Key word here is influencing people. The definition of science is systematic examination, intellectual practice of thorough examination and observation to obtain an organized body of knowledge. So politics is creating thoughts for people to believe and science is gathering facts on nature and the behavior of man.

 This is not the first time the church has stepped in on science. Back in 1616 the church interrogated and banished Galileo for his views on the earth revolving around the sun. In the middle ages science was stunted by the views of the pope at the time. Galileo never the less went about attempting to influence people to accept his theory and got thrown in jail.

Getting back to the twain that shall never meet. Did the church, via the Pope Francis, just use science of the climate and earth to issue a plea to maintain this planet as a sustainable living environment? Sounds like the positions that were once shunned, such as scientific methods, theories and observations of facts, are now changing from east to west.

 Did our politics change direction? When science is eliminated from textbooks in elementary schools and replaced with religious beliefs, I think it has come full circle. It is a shame how much science is being stripped from education by the power of influence, misrepresentation and artful manipulation. When my child came home and said that the high school teacher is not using the textbook to teach and he has handouts for all the lessons, I wondered what was wrong with the text and what was on his handouts. So I looked at both. The introduction page of the science textbook stated "that science is not truth and students who have religious beliefs may not agree with science. Further that not all scientific theory is presented in this textbook because of religious beliefs." So like it's ok to flunk science if you have religious beliefs?

 What we hear in the news is just a tip of the iceberg. That old Pareto rule of 80/20 is at it again. The Meta-trend of science vs religion will create another dark ages, possibly. But just like in politics, there are opposing twain's of thought, one religious camp (Pope Francis) espoused science to illustrate the harm to humans, and the other religious camp espouses letting religion trump beliefs that man is doing harm. East is east and west is west, the twain shall never meet.
-Tmc

Changing your perspective.

Look at one thing today from the opposite perspective. Instead of looking at the lawn care guy, stand in his perspective and look through his perspective. Instead of talking to the waitress, stand in her perspective and listen through her perspective.

Informal Teaching: What are you teaching?

I talked about informal learning in my last blog. We learn more informally than formally. Informal learning transpires in everyday life events, work, conversations and collaboration of people.

The natural accountant in me thinks about debits and credits all the time. Wait, wait, don't run and hide this is not about teaching you accounting. But let me put forth just this one lesson from accounting: for every debit there is a credit.  This is really not an unusual idea. The Chinese have a philosophy called the Yin and the Yang. That is contrasting forces complement each other.  One needs the other. A debit is not complete without the credit, a yin is not complete without the yang.

So it is with learning. If we learn informally, that is with out the structure of a formal place of learning like a school or college, who is the teacher? We have teachers roles clearly defined in formal learning process. They organize the learning activities, provide material to achieve outcomes of intended consequences, and measure it.  If you are at university you can look up teachers in a database to determine if you want to take their class, or not. So it is clear we know the teachers of our formal learning experiences. Who is the teacher of your informal learning experiences?

Informal learning has it good side and bad side. We can learn good character from good teachers of character or we can acquire bad character from our informal teachers. For example, just about everyone agrees that racism is bad. Yet people learn racism to this day. There is no Racism 101 offered at universities that formally teach people to be racist (far as I know, so help me God). It is part of that 80% of informal learning. Someone teaches it to others, some collaborate with others in the workplace to teach and learn the ways, some see demonstrations and model the example when they learn racism. Funny all those examples sound just like philosophies of teaching (Pratt).

How we know if we are informally learning good or bad is a function of critical thinking and mindfulness. Simply asking questions and being aware of what you are learning.

I was at a Pastoral Migratoria meeting one day. The US Senate was still debating immigration reform. Someone mentioned a negative comment from an opponent of immigration reform. In my past, I have come to despise a few of these opposition leaders. Mere mention of the name John Boehner conjured up negative emotions, rejecting all his policies and perspectives. But this time I hear a voice say " He is opportunity for prayer." I turned to see Elena Segura, from the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese. My friends around me said "yes, she says that often."

I recognized this as an informal learning experience. What a wonderful perspective it is to think of the "enemy" as one in need of prayer. All the lessons from the Bible streamed into the critical thinking, Love thy neighbor, love thy enemy, love conquers all, love never fails. I am not one of those people that pulls chapter and verse out of my hat, but I recognized the teaching. Opportunities for prayer seemed to embody the spirit of love and hope that through prayer that person will come to see mercy and treat humanity with mercy. That day Elena was my teacher. I have used the 'opportunities for prayer' many times since then.

Now when someone does something disagreeable, like lying or misrepresenting the truth, I just respond with they are an opportunity for prayer. And the best prayer for that opportunity, in my opinion, is the Lords Prayer.

 

What will you teach today?

Informal Learning from an Online MOOC

It's summertime officially. Yea, we can go out to play. My memories of summertime involved lots of play time in a vacant lot next to our house. We organized our own games and sometimes played neighborhood legacy games. We taught each other the rules and strategies of games like kick the can, flashlight tag, and SPUD.

What actually was transpiring was informal learning.

Through my research I discovered that we learn 70% to 80% of our knowledge via informal learning. We learn 20% to 30% in classrooms, schools, and universities. Wow, that's a lot of learning going on over the summertime. But it is so much fun, how could we be learning?

Informal learning is intrinsically motivated. We do it because we want to do it. Makes a big difference is how deep we learn. We might be able to remember games of SPUD learned 30 to 40 years ago, but fail to remember our third grade math teacher's lesson plan. Often if we are intrinsically motivated we will remember what we learned longer. (For the record Sister Matilda was my third grade teacher and I will never forget that ruler she used to rap our knuckles)

Wondering about what you would like to wonder about more this summer?

There are plenty of MOOCs online. MOOC stands for Massive Online Open Course. A popular course may have students from all over the world, have hundreds even thousands taking the course. Some course are taken at your own speed, some are guided over 8 to 10 weeks. There is usually no credit given for the course, but you can pay extra for a certificate that you completed the course. A nice thing to hang on your wall. At the end of the course you know what you know. You use what you learned in your life or in your job. Or perhaps you just take a course out of curiosity about something. MOOCs can help you become a smarter person who when tested in the formal school earns better grades and higher credentials.

There are plenty of offerings available online for FREE. Kahn Academy has a great math section. They do a good job determining what you need to learn and what level of math you are competent. Coursera has a number of offerings from prestigious universities all over the world. I will be taking a course to help me get better organized called Get Organized: How to be a Together Teacher.  EDx is a joint effort between Harvard University and MIT. I took Leaders of Learning last summer and was really impressed. This summer I plan to take Introduction to Data Wise: A Collaborative Process to Improve Teaching and Learning. It is weird to take it alone, since it is all about getting a team of teachers together to use data correctly to improve instruction. Data is a new horizon and I will be getting new data tools for analysis at work. So this course could benefit my instruction and the institution. EDx is also offering a course called Design and Development of Games for Learning. This sounds interesting if you want to create an application to present a learning game for your students. Udacity is another source for engaging online courses in the area of programming, data development and computer science.

Open Courseware is online courses mostly for free from the top universities. You could take a history class at Yale or a class in Managing Refugee Healthcare from John Hopkins University. You could invent a money making smartphone app in a free online course from MIT.

What will you find to learn informally this summer?