Social Dreams and Blogs
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 02/14/2009 - 09:32Years ago, I worked with an organizational consultant who was steeped in the Group Relations tradition, and through her, I developed an interest in the work of Wilfred Bion, Tavistock and many aspects of psychology and group dynamics. One area that particularly caught my attention was the work of Gordon Lawrence and others in Social Dreaming.
The idea is to share a dream in a social context, and instead of focusing on the interpretation of the dream, focus on the free associations to the dream to gain insight into social situations. It is with this in mind that I share three dreams that I had last night.
Only a snippet of the first dream remains. In this dream, I was participating in some sort of group and the group leader asked why I was not sharing anything. My reaction was that my thoughts were not well formed enough to be shared. Yet as I thought about the dream, I realized what really matters is sharing the not yet well-formed thoughts so that people could work together and we could all form even better thoughts.
To a certain extent, this is part of my philosophy of blogging. I perhaps do it best when I write about technology. I describe a project I’ve been working on, what works, what doesn’t, and then ask other people to share their experiences. Sometimes people share their experiences via comments, emails or instant messages and when this happens usually both of us learn more.
The same thing should happen, perhaps, for politics, education, and for that matter anything else that interests us. Yet this is very different from the dominant model. Newspapers, politicians and educators seem to believe they have to get it right the first time. They need to be the ‘sage on the stage’ and tell everyone what to think, instead of sharing information and encouraging people to think and to share their own thoughts. Perhaps the Internet will help change this model.
Yet this sort of change could have massive results, and it takes me to my second dream. In this dream, I am near a river that has been flooding. Coming down the stream are all kinds of object from the flood. Much of it household objects. I gather these objects out of the stream to repair and use. Another person owns some sort of market on the side of the river and is retrieving objects to barter or sell. I work out a deal with this person to gain access to the river across his property if I help bring in additional objects from the river for him. From this, I get to choose the five best objects that he has.
The final dream was also a water related dream. Instead of a river, I am at the shore of an ocean. There is a storm and the surf is high. Some people are out playing in the ocean. Off to the right there is a small cove, where the surf is not as high that seems fairly safe. Straight ahead is the expanse of the sea and the surf is rougher. People are playing in this surf as well, and at times people get pulled out to sea. Some get rescued, others do not. During this, a bright golden sandbar emerges going out into the sea, and some people go very far out on the sandbar playing safely. I know they are safe as long as the sandbar is there, but I know that the sandbar could easily shift and they could all be in peril.
Unlike the first dream, to which I have some clear reactions, my reactions to these later two dreams are less clear. What comes to your mind when you read these dreams? I’m perhaps more interested in related dreams, songs or movies that it makes you think of, or other things going on in our society, then I am in interpretations about what it might mean, but I welcome all comments.
Years ago, I worked with an organizational consultant who was steeped in the Group Relations tradition, and through her, I developed an interest in the work of Wilfred Bion, Tavistock and many aspects of psychology and group dynamics. One area that particularly caught my attention was the work of Gordon Lawrence and others in Social Dreaming.
The idea is to share a dream in a social context, and instead of focusing on the interpretation of the dream, focus on the free associations to the dream to gain insight into social situations. It is with this in mind that I share three dreams that I had last night.
Only a snippet of the first dream remains. In this dream, I was participating in some sort of group and the group leader asked why I was not sharing anything. My reaction was that my thoughts were not well formed enough to be shared. Yet as I thought about it, I realized what really matters is sharing the not yet well formed thoughts so that people could work together and we could all form even better thoughts.
To a certain extent, this is part of my philosophy of blogging. I perhaps do it best when I write about technology. I describe a project I’ve been working on, what works, what doesn’t and ask other people to share their experiences. Sometimes people share their experiences via comments, emails or instant messages and when this happens usually both of us learn more.
The same thing should happen, perhaps, for politics, education, and for that matter anything that interests us. Yet this is very different from the dominant model. Newspapers, politicians and educators have to get it right the first time. They need to be the ‘sage on the stage’ and tell everyone what to think, instead of encouraging people how to think and to share their thoughts. Perhaps the Internet will help change this model.
Yet this sort of change could have massive results, and it takes me to my second dream. In this dream, I am near a river that has been flooding. Coming down the stream are all kinds of object from the flood. Much of it household objects. I gather these objects out of the stream to repair and use. Another person owns some sort of market on the side of the river and is retrieving objects to barter or sell. I work out a deal with this person to gain access to the river across his property if I help bring in additional objects from the river for him. From this, I get to choose the five best objects that he has.
The final dream was also a water related dream. Instead of a river, I am at the shore of an ocean. There is a storm and the surf is high. Some people are out playing in the ocean. Off to the right there is a small cove, where the surf is not as high that seems fairly safe. Straight ahead is the expanse of the sea and the surf is rougher. People are playing in this surf as well, and at times people get pulled out to sea. Some get rescued, others do not. During this, a sandbar emerges going out into the sea, and some people go very far out on the sandbar playing safely. I know they are safe as long as the sandbar is there, but I know that the sandbar could easily shift and they could all be in peril.
Unlike the first dream, to which I have some clear reactions, my reactions to these later two dreams are less clear. What comes to your mind when you read these dreams? I’m perhaps more interested in related dreams, songs or movies that it makes you think of, or other things going on in our society, then I am in interpretations about what it might mean, but I welcome all comments.
#yelc09 – Joel Klein
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 14:30Joel Klein, Chancellor, New York City Department of Education provided the opening keynote address at the Yale Education Leadership Conference laid out the issue very concisely. He started off by quipping that the reason he is so controversial is that he’s too old not to be, and then proceeded to hit his three points. We have a crisis, we don’t have to, and “If we keep having the same dialog we’ve been having, we’re not going to be able to change it”.
He illustrated the crisis by asking how many people would be willing to allow him to place their children into any of the schools in New York City. No one would. The message is clear, that not every school in New York City, or New Haven, or many other places is good enough. He noted that only about 33% of the schools in New York City are schools where principals would be willing to place their own kids, and that is up from 20% when he started.
He spoke about the detrimental effect that skin color, poverty and zip code have on educational opportunities. By eighth grade black students from poor communities are typically already two to three grade levels behind their more affluent white counterparts. He noted that on top of this, U.S. achievement is falling behind achievement in other countries, producing a double achievement gap for the poor and people of color.
With this, he went to his second point. It doesn’t have to be this way. Too often, people suggest that you cannot fix education until you address the issue of poverty. Many people believe that the reason children fail to achieve is because of the effect poverty has on their lives. Klein suggests that it is actually the other way around. You will cannot fix the issue of poverty until you address the issue of education.
His key areas of focus to address the issue of education center around accountability, leadership and choice. He acknowledged issues measuring success. No measurement is perfect, but we need to go with the best we can get.
We all know about what a positive factor parental involvement is on education. He pointed that the starting point of all parental involvement is the choice about which school we send our children to. Those that can afford it chose to live in communities with good school districts or send our children to private schools. Yet for those who cannot afford it, there is little to no choice about which schools their children attend. Providing this basic level of choice is an important first step in increasing parental involvement.
With this, he ended off by calling those of us who are fortunate enough to get our kids a good education, to become ‘educational warriors’, voices for the voiceless, those who don’t have the opportunity to get a good education. It provided a great framework for the rest of the conference and he was given a standing ovation.
#yelc09 - Yale Education Leadership Conference – Prologue
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/13/2009 - 11:47The Grand Ballroom at The Omni Hotel slowly fills up during registration and breakfast at the 2009 Yale Education Leadership Conference. A glance at the registration table looks like around four hundred people have registered. There are six members of the press. Five in the traditional media including the New York Times and NPR, and the one lone blogger.
At registration, I see Mayor Finch of Bridgeport. I want to get a word in about the economic stimulus package and what projects he thinks are most important to his city. However, we both are rushing in other directions and don’t really get a chance to talk. That can wait for a follow-up email.
The attendees are seem to be fairly well mixed in terms of age and gender, although it does seem to be slightly skewed to twenty-somethings. Just about everyone is well dressed and almost all of the men are wearing suits. Many people seem to know one another from other conferences.
I fire up the laptop and find that there is no apparent open WiFi. However, as I look around, I don’t see any other laptops. One person has a blackberry. I don’t know if they use Twitter or if anyone else will Twitter the conference. Without WiFi my twittering will be a bit curtailed. My thumbs just aren’t that fast on the cellphone. I will be using the hashtag, #yelc09.
Along with the lack of WiFi there aren’t many outlets, and my power cord crosses an area where people walk. Just about everyone manages to trip over it. The room continues to fill up and soon New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein will present the opening keynote. Hopefully, I can slip out and get a WiFi connection and put up a post or two during lunch time.
Stimulus Watch
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/12/2009 - 19:20Last Saturday, I attended an Organizing for America discussion about President Obama’s Economic Recovery Plan. During a lively discussion, we talked about how we could make sure that the best projects get selected and that they get done in as effect a manner as possible. In my blog post, A Stimulating Discussion, I asked:
Can volunteers from Organizing for America and other groups gather and discuss projects that would be most beneficial for our country? Can they make these discussions available online so everyone can participate?
Well, a group of people have created a website called Stimulus Watch. The website lists 18,750 ‘shovel ready’ projects from the U.S. Conference of Mayors. You can use the website to find projects in the cities near where you live, comment on them and vote on them.
There are a few things I dislike about the site. You vote simply on whether a project is ‘critical’ or not. ‘Critical’ is a poor choice of words. Personally, I probably would not call any of the projects ‘critical’. ‘Important’, ‘beneficial’, or other words might work much better. In addition, it does not seem like it should be black or white. It isn’t ‘critical’ or ‘not critical’, the real question is how beneficial do people think a project is. A scale of one to five would probably make much more sense.
Beyond that, the voting appears to be anonymous. I’m not sure what is done to make sure that the system is not being gamed by people with certain political agendas.
The other thing I would like to see is ability to get other projects added. I’m sure that there are plenty of other projects from Connecticut, besides those from the fifteen cities participating in the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
In spite of the shortcomings of the project, please, take a look at some of the projects, and a little information and vote. We should get good discussions going about different projects.
