Everyday our children spread their dreams beneath our feet.  (paraphrased from Sir Ken Robinson's TedTalk, referring to a poem by William Yeats.)

"A three year old is not half a six year old."  Both of these comments are from Sir Ken Robinson's 1010 Ted Talk.  Eighteen minutes and he can say so much.  This is definitely a talk worth watching.  I claim that we (most of us) understand what Sir Ken is saying. People from all economic sectors, races, cultures, understand his words and concepts.

How is it then that we are so slow to embrace the unknown? As Sir Ken emphasizes as he quotes Abraham Lincoln:  "we must rise with the occasion, not to it." That implies that we are all in this together. We are going into the unknown with each other, supporting each other, having the resources to seek together.  This is what a revolution is all about.  Let's get back in touch with real, vital, life-giving education.

Sir Ken Robinson says it all with humor and seriousness.  Let's undergo this revolution together student by student ... dream by dream.  I think it is time for a Slow Education movement. 

"If you did not do what you did today, for example, the entire world would be in some way different.

Your acts ripple outward in ways that you do not understand, interacting with the experience of others, and hence, forming world events. The most famous and the most anonymous person are connected through such a fabric, and an action seemingly small and innocuous can end up changing history."

Jane Roberts
The Nature of the Psyche: It's human Expression, 1979

This is a quote I have used so many times. I think about it often ... but more or less as an abstract.  Lately, I find myself trying to sense the ripples I have sent outwards because of my smallest and largest thoughts and actions.  This statement has become personal.  I can remember being in 8th grade the first time I thought about my actions in the world.  That was 60 years ago! I wonder what my balance is for changing history ... for the better or for the worse?

I think of Buckminister Fuller who asked himself if one human being could make a difference. He documented his life calling himself, Guinea Pig Bucky.  It's interesting to appraise another's life.  Bucky's life was as full of "failures" as it was of success.  How do events ripple out? How do they get woven into the larger fabric?

I think of my Mom's Mom. She was always there for my brothers and me and our friends.  We spent summers with my grandparents and she worked tirelessly to make things work for us while never hesitating to scold and teach.  Yes, she lives still. She is part of my fabric.

I recall several things that have helped me understand how non-linear actions are ... how things I have done ripple out and perturb the universe in strange and delightful ways.  In 1972, I created the Learning Exchange in Kansas City Missouri.  I left the Exchange and the city in 1979 believing I had completed a cycle and that the Exchange was in good hands. In 1997, I was invited to return to KC and help celebrate 25 years of success with the Exchange.  I got a call from a reporter asking if she could interview me while I was in the city.  As we sat and talked over coffee she told me her story: One of the premier programs that I started just before leaving was Exchange City, a program for 5th graders to come to know the workings of a city. Students would come from all over the city to take part in running a town for a few days. Students would vie for being Mayor, or banker, doctor, baker, etc.  This young women interviewing me told me her Exchange City story. She wanted to be Mayor or banker but was not selected to be either. In fact, she got her last choice ... that of being a reporter.  Now here she was 15 years after her City experience interviewing me as a reporter. She said that week in Exchange City changed her life.  What part did I play in that? I was long gone before she entered the program.  Ripples ...

"In all things be generous"

I missed most of the popular TV shows of the 90's and early 2000's because of work and other interests.  Recently, I have been downloading some West Wing and ER segments from iTunes.  In one ER, Mark Greene, one of the surgeons was dying with brain cancer.  Mark was not yet 40 years old.  His last words to his young rebellious daughter were to be generous in all things ... with love, and exploration, with feelings, and giving... with life.  Such a wise gift to a young daughter! Although his daughter, Rachael, is a made-up character, I can't help but wonder how this affected her life going forward. 

I'm not sure I have ever thought about being generous in all directions. To live life to the fullest invites all  emotions to be transparent and expressed.  I sometimes hear that a person is too generous with their time or money.  What does this mean? If we are generous in all things, does this mean spoiling our planet, doing whatever we wanted?

Generous is one of the words I believe needs to be re-membered and made new.  I have a list of other words as well.  Health, wealth, and happy are but a few.  Each of these words demands new definition for the paradigm we hope to attract. Health is more than sickness and wealth is more than not being poor.  The concept of happy has been challenged lately. What does it mean?

"The average working week was now twenty hours … but those twenty hours were no sinecure. There was little work left of a routine, mechanical nature. Men's minds were too valuable to waste on tasks that a few thousand transistors, some photoelectric cells, and a cubic meter of printed circuits could perform. There were factories that ran for weeks without being visited by a single human being. Men were needed for trouble-shooting, for making decisions, for planning new enterprises. The robots did the rest.

The existence of so much leisure would have created tremendous problems a century before. Education had overcome most of these, for a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom. The general standard of culture was at a level  which would have once seemed fantastic. There was no evidence that the intelligence of the human race had improved, but for the first time everyone was given the fullest opportunity of using what brain he had…

People could indulge in such whims, because they had both the time and the money. The abolition of armed forces had at once doubled the world's effective wealthy, and increased production had done the rest. As a result, it was difficult to compare the standard of living of twenty-first century man with that of any of his predecessors. Everything was so cheap that the necessities of life were provided free, provided as a public service by the community, as the roads, water, street lighting, and drainage had once been. A man could travel anywhere he pleased, eat whatever food he fancied without handing over any money. He had earned the right to do this by being a productive member of the community.

There were, of course, some drones, but the number of people sufficiently strong-willed to indulge in a life of complete idleness is much smaller than is generally supposed. Supporting such parasites was considerably less of a burden than providing for the armies of ticket collectors, shop assistants, bank clerks, stockbrokers, and so forth, whose main function, when one took the global point of view, was to transfer items from one ledger to another." Arthur Clarke, Childhood's End, 1956

I think of this quote often wishing to make it so. Some people read this and scoff at the notion claiming that people would simply be lazy living in a socialist state. Human nature they say is to be idle and corrupt.  But I don't think so. I believe that the society that Clarke sets forth is extremely interesting in that it unfolds a world where real ingenuity and meaning is realized. Work becomes an advocation where many skills and talents are recognized. People progress through the years learning more and more.  Work can be selected for the psychological and emotional needs of the individual. Easy work that allows the mind to relax and renew; stimulating work that challenges every part of the body; family years; etc. 

When I read the news today and hear of all the people out of work, the mortgages falling into disarray; people walking away from all they thought was secure just a year ago my mind starts to play with scenarios.  Could it be the ending of our childhood? It is scary, not just for others, but for me as well. Yet, I wonder, could we actually be in the becoming of our singularity moment where the world changes so dramatically ... for the better?

I find myself creating a vision of There, somewhat like in Clarke's novel and then asking myself, given today's falling apart, is it possible to to wayfind our way through apparent disaster and into the phoenix of a radically new world? Somehow I think so.  Drexler's Engines of Creation; Ray Kurtweil's work; and many others provide glimpses into a "perhaps" sense that this could be true. 

"The new life needs to be inspired with the realization that it has all kinds of new advantages that have been gained through great dedications of unknown, unsung heroes of intellectual exploration and great intuitively faithful integrities of people groping in the dark. Unless the new life is highly appreciative of those who have gone before, it won't be able to take effective advantage of its heritage. It will not be as regenerated and inspired as it might be if it appreciated the comprehensive love invested in that heritage."  R. Buckminister Fuller, 1963

In an age where information seems to be doubling every few days - where one innovation stands on the shoulders of another that is just a few days old - it is difficult to see the future, to find what matters.  Every system seems to be falling apart; Our political, financial and  corporate leadership are failing the ordinary citizen, too busy taking care of each other's business. 

Then an article like this shows up in the news and there is hope again. Two paragraphs in the article define a radical shift in how humans define themselves. It is interesting that we need science to know and give legitimacy to our feelings, our sense of self.

If human nature is as the Enlightenment philosophers claimed, then we are likely doomed. It is impossible to imagine how we might create a sustainable global economy and restore the biosphere to health if each and every one of us is, at the core of our biology, an autonomous agent and a self-centered and materialistic being.

Recent discoveries in brain science and child development, however, are forcing us to rethink these long-held shibboleths about human nature. Biologists and cognitive neuroscientists are discovering mirror-neurons--the so-called empathy neurons--that allow human beings and other species to feel and experience another's situation as if it were one's own. We are, it appears, the most social of animals and seek intimate participation and companionship with our fellows.

I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.   Oliver Wendell Holmes, Former US Supreme Court Justice

It used to be that most people hated the SCAN process. They just felt we should get down to business and get results.  Today, far more participants enjoy this process of reaching out; reaching beyond the known for new possibilities. They see the value in looking at a problem from many different vantage points.  Many realize the art of Play as well.  Still for some people SCAN is difficult and probably will always be, even though they come to recognize its usefulness and integrity to good results.  Each of us have different thinking patterns and a truly great group process accounts for all kinds of thinkers, knowing that aspects of going from SCAN to FOCUS to ACT will be frustrating at some time or another to a majority of participants. 

But I truly love it when someone who really did not like the process comes up after we are done and says, "We got really good results. But surely we could have cut out the first day and a half and done the work in half a day."  Well, you see, they don't understand what Oliver Wendal Holmes was trying to convey.  True simplicity comes after you have climbed that hill of complexity.  We are not after simple answers that have been gotten by cutting out most of the things that cannot be seen up front.  Simple answers and answers with simplicity are two very different things. 

David Bohm's ideas about play are so important. When will schools, conferences, and all too many workshops stop pounding play out of process? It is vital to our ability to survive and thrive. 

If science always insists that a new order must be immediately fruitful, or that it has some new predictive power, then creativity will be blocked. New thoughts generally arise with a play of the mind, and the failure to appreciate this is actually one of the major blocks to creativity. Thought is generally considered to be a sober and weighty business. But here it is being suggested that creative play is an essential element in forming new hypotheses and ideas. Indeed, thought which tries to avoid play is in fact playing false with itself. Play, it appears, is the very essence of thought.