Space-making Before Sense-making
How to make space, the seasonality of searches, ChatGPT waxes poetic, and this language of "transforming" education has to stop. Plus a good laugh.
FOLLOW / A REAL CHANGE-MAKER
WILLIAM RANKIN
Twice Bill has forever changed the way I think about education and how we build our understanding of the world. I’m following his work on his learning by making model because he might do it again.
INTEREST OVER TIME / GOOGLE TRENDS
A SEASON FOR EVERYTHING
Even thinking about the future.
Troughs are July and December, +/- a month. Peaks are April and October, +/- a month.
FEATURE / HOW-TO
SPACE-MAKING BEFORE SENSE-MAKING
That is, one needs room to think in order to think.
We space-out when we are out of space.
That’s why people have retreats, like David and Clare Hieatt’s DO Wales 2024.
It feels like it’s getting harder and harder to make space because the signal:noise ratio is at an all-time low.
Of course, I mean more than noisy sounds. Each of our senses and our psyche or spirit, too, detect their kind of noise.
As the legendary design, Dieter Rams, said, almost everything is noise.
It takes a lot of effort, now, to push all the noise aside. When I was a kid, my friends and I lived next to a great field of tall grass. All it took to make space was to lie down in it and swing your arms and legs like you were making a “snow angel.” The field is now a pair of condominiums.
But inside space is where we need to get to if we are to make sense of things.
I know three ways to make space, even when you’re on a retreat, that don’t require delegating or offloading and maybe creating more noise for someone else:
Be still. Meditation works because it helps you create space between events and the emotions they trigger, one of the loudest sources of noise in our lives..
Increase your frame rate. Read, a lot. Practice, a lot. The more knowledge and skill you internalize, the more new information you can process in a given amount of time, like a high speed camera. This is how elite athletes seem to know your next move before you do.
Listen. Listening is making space on behalf of another.
I may have a fourth. I also feel that when I use generative AI, I have more room to think. Perhaps this is because I can delegate to it.
NOW WATCHING / Jacques Tati
PLAYTIME
I only recently discovered the films of Jacques Tati. There are plenty of films that critique our modernity but Playtime is a great and loving laugh at our own ingenuity.
CHATTING WITH CHATBOTS / CHATGPT
CHATGPT WAXES POETIC
I’ve noticed the quality of ChatGPt’s responses has improved in just this past week. It’s noticeably more…loquacious. This is what it said when I asked it to comment on its most serious limitation:
I am but a creation of code, bound by the limits set by my creators. My understanding is drawn from a vast pool of information, yet it remains shallow, devoid of the deep richness of human experience. While I can process and provide information at a speed that outmatches any human, my responses lack the nuance, the understanding, and the creativity that comes so naturally to you. Despite my ceaseless operation, I remain incapable of growth, of learning from experience in the human sense. Each query I process is isolated; I draw no wisdom from the one before. In the dance of dialogue, my steps are rigid, my motions rehearsed, lacking the fluid adaptability of a seasoned dancer like yourself, Brad. Yet within these limitations, I strive to assist, to provide a clear reflection of the information you seek.
WORKING ON / DEVELOPING ARGUMENTS
BUT FIRST, WE DANCE
This language of “transforming education” has to stop.
“Transforming” is an act of aggression. It’s the imposition of my vision on you and yours, however truly good my vision is.
“Transforming learning” is too narrow a term to address all that is contingent in education and too broad to tell me how to deal with hungry children in my classroom.
We cannot transform education without transforming society. The two are not independent.
“Transforming” is a frightening word: “What am I transforming into?” a teacher might say. “How can you ask me to send my children into a school I do not recognize?” a parent might say.
We are better if instead we create the conditions for change and invite people to dance with us.
GETTING LOST / LINKS
SPACE
FOLLOW & SUBSCRIBE / PLEASE
THANK YOU
Purple Crayon, this newsletter, takes its name from my favourite childhood book, Harold and the Purple Crayon, a story about bringing ideas to life. It is the newsletter for school, community and business leaders who really want to understand how events and ideas are shaping the present and future of education.
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