PhiloMadrid meeting on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 29th January: Patience (2) + NEWS

Dear Friends,

I will start with the News item: I propose to move the meeting to
Tuesdays starting on the 15th February 2023. I am thinking of starting
at 20:00hr (8:00pm) until 21:30hr (9:30pm). In the meantime maybe you
can send me your feedback and any suggestions. Anyway we'll see how this
experiment goes.

As many of you made it clear it would be nice to meet again in person,
hence if we have Sunday/Saturday free we can occasionally organise some
events when the weather gets better.

In the meantime this Sunday we are continuing with Patience.

This Sunday we are discussing: Patience (2) - Patience: What is the
point of being patient?

The topic was proposed by Cristina including the sub heading. Way back
in April 2020 we briefly discussed Patience but very briefly, hence
Patience (2). In my short essay for our topic today I briefly discuss
some necessary and sufficient conditions relevant for patience.

Patience (2)
https://www.philomadrid.com/2023/01/patience-2.html

NEWS
--Oscar's book is now available from Oscar himself:
"Toranzo, 88 ilustraciones y coplillas" by Oscar at €35
https://www.philomadrid.com/2022/09/toranzo-88-ilustraciones-y-coplillas-by.html
If you need more details please let me know and I'll put you in touch
with Oscar.

--It is with great sadness that I have learnt Julian Martelli passed
away early in October this year, 2022. Julian was very active during our
meetings in Molly Malone and participation was always respected by all.
Christine kindly wants to share with us a photo of Julian with her and
friends. You can find the FaceBook link below.

I also include a link for our visit to Toledo in 2008 when Julian came
with us on the day trip.

Julian
https://www.philomadrid.com/2022/11/julian.html

--Jorge has kindly sent us the link to his book which is available for
Free Distribution at:
Evolution of Thought and its Influence on Society and Technology
https://www.adneli.com/store


Please let me know whether you need the Skype link, thanks.


Best and take care
Lawrence


telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
http://www.philomadrid.com



PhiloMadrid meeting on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 29th January: Patience (2) + NEWS

PhiloMadrid meeting on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 22nd January: Patience (2)

Dear Friends,

This Sunday we are discussing: Patience (2) - Patience: What is the
point of being patient?

The topic was proposed by Cristina including the sub heading. Way back
in April 2020 we briefly discussed Patience but very briefly, hence
Patience (2). In my short essay for our topic today I briefly discuss
some necessary and sufficient conditions relevant for patience.

Patience (2)
https://www.philomadrid.com/2023/01/patience-2.html

NEWS
--Oscar's book is now available from Oscar himself:
"Toranzo, 88 ilustraciones y coplillas" by Oscar at €35
https://www.philomadrid.com/2022/09/toranzo-88-ilustraciones-y-coplillas-by.html
If you need more details please let me know and I'll put you in touch
with Oscar.

--It is with great sadness that I have learnt Julian Martelli passed
away early in October this year, 2022. Julian was very active during our
meetings in Molly Malone and participation was always respected by all.
Christine kindly wants to share with us a photo of Julian with her and
friends. You can find the FaceBook link below.

I also include a link for our visit to Toledo in 2008 when Julian came
with us on the day trip.

Julian
https://www.philomadrid.com/2022/11/julian.html

--Jorge has kindly sent us the link to his book which is available for
Free Distribution at:
Evolution of Thought and its Influence on Society and Technology
https://www.adneli.com/store


Please let me know whether you need the Skype link, thanks.


Best and take care
Lawrence


telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
http://www.philomadrid.com



PhiloMadrid meeting on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 22nd January: Patience (2)

Patience (2)

 

Patience (2)

Patience: What is the point of being patient?

Topic by Cristina

Essay by Lawrence

 

 

Patience is considered one of the seven virtues, although patience does not seem to have a high status value as some of the other virtues ((1) humility, (2) charity, (3) chastity, (4) gratitude, (5) temperance, (6) patience, and (7) diligence see Encyclopaedia Britannica). I mean no one has been made a saint or knighted for being patient although I suspect many mothers and pet owners would qualify with flying colours.

 

But the sub heading of our topic “What is the point of being patient?” is an invitation to consider whether patience has any value; maybe any value at all. A lot depends on what we mean by patience and more specifically under what conditions should we be patient.

 

Indeed the conditions of the situation are key for our interpretation of patience: how patient should we be? This requires two things from us, the first is that we recognise the “natural” process of the situation and the second is that we are aware, as much as possible, what the process involves before we arrive at a desired process. By “natural” I mean the necessary conditions required for something to happen or bring to fruition. For example a “3-minute egg” (boiled egg) requires three minutes cooking in sufficient boiling water that covers the whole egg. Complaining about how long it is taking to get the egg ready would immediately suggest that one does not know what three minutes are and how long they are. But most important of all, not knowing that to boil an egg requires putting it in boiling water suggests that we are not aware of the “natural” process of boiling an egg. We have all seen those photos of people trying to put petrol in the all electric car: enough said.

 

One can, however, have all the patience in the world but if after the said time the egg is still not cooked, then that should suggest something has gone wrong. In this case the natural process of the three minute egg was not met and most certainly we are not fully aware of the process of making a three minute egg. But in many situations we might not know what the process is for what we are trying to achieve. And sometime we’re not within the light cone of something that has gone wrong with the process of boiling a three minute egg.

 

But just because we do not know what the process for a certain outcome is, we might have a good idea of what that process might involve. Very few people have a detailed knowledge of how to get an airplane ready with passengers and then go on its way. Our patience is tested when we are not given any information about why we are experiencing long delays with our flight. Having relevant information about an uncomfortable situation might pacify and mitigate any impatience we might be experiencing.

 

On a flight we were taking from a European country, the departure was delayed because of fog: it was foggy and people took it in their stride. On the way to the runway the captain told us that he was delayed in the traffic because of the thick fog on the roads. Things happen.

 

On the other hand, a recent journey to the north of the country from the capital we were told that we had to get off the train half way because of engineering problems on the line and that we’ll be taken to our destination by coach. After waiting one and a half hours for the coach and no coached appeared, we discovered that the engineering problem happened during early in the night long before we were anywhere near our platform to depart on our journey.

 

People were, justifiably, not too patient waiting for the coaches to arrive. The reasonable question everyone was asking was why the coaches haven’t arrived given how long the train company knew about the problem. Everyone was blaming bad management, which was quite a reasonable thing to do. If truth be told many coach drivers were already on holiday for an extended long weekend and very few coaches were available at shortish notice.

 

In effect, information mitigates against losing our patience is a sufficient factor to control ourselves as already mentioned. One side effect of losing our patience is that we might become too emotional and lose control of the situation, which might be dangerous for all concerned. On the other extreme there is no point of being patient in some situations. The question is not whether we are reasonable or not to be impatient but what to do in the situation. The best option is probably to walk away from the situation itself. And if we cannot just walk away today we are lucky to have social media where we can vent our frustration and calm our emotions.

 

This brings me to the importance of patience in this day and age of the internet and mobile telephone communications. Those of us who know what a dial up telephone is or a typewriter is never had to remember PIN numbers, ID password or installation processes. Today installing applications on our mobile phone or dealing with error codes on our PC requires a level of patience probably never intended by evolution and the selection process. But this is also the age when we need to be cognisant of some technological dexterity. But is it worth it?

 

Lawrence

 

telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813

Email: philomadrid@gmail.com

http://www.philomadrid.com

 

PhiloMadrid meeting on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 22nd January: Patience (2)

 

 

PhiloMadrid meeting on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 15th January: Repeating to Learn

Dear friends,

This Sunday we are discussing: Repeating to Learn

The topic was proposed by Ana and in my short essay I consider some key
issues on what is really a question on how to learn:

Repeating to Learn
https://www.philomadrid.com/2023/01/repeating-to-learn.html

NEWS
--Oscar's book is now available from Oscar himself:
"Toranzo, 88 ilustraciones y coplillas" by Oscar at €35
https://www.philomadrid.com/2022/09/toranzo-88-ilustraciones-y-coplillas-by.html
If you need more details please let me know and I'll put you in touch
with Oscar.

--It is with great sadness that I have learnt Julian Martelli passed
away early in October this year, 2022. Julian was very active during our
meetings in Molly Malone and participation was always respected by all.
Christine kindly wants to share with us a photo of Julian with her and
friends. You can find the FaceBook link below.

I also include a link for our visit to Toledo in 2008 when Julian came
with us on the day trip.

Julian
https://www.philomadrid.com/2022/11/julian.html

--Jorge has kindly sent us the link to his book which is available for
Free Distribution at:
Evolution of Thought and its Influence on Society and Technology
https://www.adneli.com/store


Please let me know whether you need the Skype link, thanks.


Best and take care
Lawrence


telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
http://www.philomadrid.com



PhiloMadrid meeting on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 15th January: Repeating to Learn

Repeating to Learn

 

Repeating to Learn

Topic by Ana

Short essay by Lawrence

We are partially to understand the topic in the context of academic education, although this topic is relevant in all aspects of life which require us to learn things.

Of immediate concern for us is how to understand “repeating” and “what” are we learning? It was made clear that by repeating we do not mean rote learning but rather involving ourselves in such activities as revising, finding different sources of the information (or knowledge) we are trying to learn and so on. Indeed this is a key issue in philosophy and epistemology.

To illustrate the problem of rote learning we can use the example of trying to find out what the news is. We can buy a copy of a newspaper and read the same copy every half hour. This, I am sure we all agree, is not the idea of repeated learning. But we can try to be sophisticated, and buy a copy of the same newspaper every hour or so.

The advantage of buying the same newspaper every hour is that later editions of the paper might have new information regarding the story we are following. But in this time and age this exercise might be costly and very time consuming. But a big drawback with this method is that any editorial bias or even honest mistake might also be repeated in all editions. In the age of on-line news, this might cost very little but still time consuming.

A better alternative would certainly be to have access to different newspapers so the information about a story is delivered to us by different journalists and editorial policies. The advantage here is that we might have a good idea of what the key facts of the story are and we are better placed to mitigate any editorial bias or honest mistakes. This is certainly an expensive exercise and one that requires some time to achieve.

But is this good enough? It all depends on what we want to know and how much information we want. If we really want to obtain solid information we need to learn how to question and interrogate the information in the newspapers. In other words if we do not know how newspapers gather their news and redact their information we might still be prone to errors and bias. For example most newspapers today use the same agencies or sources for breaking news.

Why is this relevant for us? In today's world of the internet, search engines, social media and online groups we have easy access to information but this implies that we also have easy access to misleading information, false information, and simply honestly mistaken information. Ironically, these issues and problems are well documented in the scientific method where the quest is always to remove bias and false information: should this be our objective as well?

In an education context we trust that teachers and those who prepare syllabuses for students to learn, know what they are doing, are giving student real information they need and information presented in a manner they can learn. In reality, if people did not trust the education system life as we know it will cease to function. But as philosophers or learned people it will do us no harm if we approached the subject with a good pinch of Cartesian scepticism.

So what kind of repeating should we engage ourselves with? If we take learing a language as an example and our objective is to learn vocabulary we can do better than just reading the words in a dictionary. Although this is a start we really need to learn vocabulary in different contexts and not just that a word has some defition. This is why many students of English dispare with prepositions and phrasal verbs.

But it is not totally the student's fault, the system has only exposed them to a handful of said vocabulary; this is true even if we make an allowance that to inlude all the prepositions and phrasal verbs in all possible contexts is physically impossile. This takes us back to the issue that knowing what to learn is not as important as knowing how to learn in the first place. If we do not know the meaning of say a phrasal very, at leas we know how to find the meaning.

So far knowing how to learn has been a matter of rote learning and memory recall: remember that list irregular verbs or the various anotations in trigonometry? Regarding this matter of rote learning and memory learning, the Princeton University prepared a nice short documents for undergraduates prepciselly how to learn:

How People Learn: Common Beliefs Vs. Research (https://mcgraw.princeton.edu/undergraduates/resources/resource-library/how-people-learn)

One of the key points of the article is what they call “Desirable difficulties”; my interpretation of this term is basically “engaging difficulties we encounter when learning”. These would be problems that we are engaged and motivated to find the answer and not difficulties that are beyond our immediate skills to solve such difficulties. Today aeronautic engineers think of flying they do not strive to build better wings to strap to our arms and back, but rather to design a more efficent flying machine that is reliable when going against the forces of gravity.

It is clear that students, and people in general, learn better when they are motivated to do something and achieve a goal. But we should distinguish between “I want achieve something” and “I've been told to do this or that.” If I just want to integrate in a group or with my peers and I am required to know, for example, what the news is, all I have to do is read a newspaper. But if I want to be knowledgeable about world events and geopolitics I'd better know about how editorial copy is prepared, the provinance of news information and where to find information. But how can we get what has to be learnt with what I want to learn?

I would argue that today a process of learning must involve three factors: why learn something; How to learn; and what to learn.

Best and take care

 

Lawrence

 

telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813

Email: philomadrid@gmail.com

http://www.philomadrid.com

 

 

 

PhiloMadrid meeting on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 15th January: Repeating to Learn

PhiloMadrid meeting on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 8th January: Distributive leadership,,

Dear Friends,

Hope you had a good holiday and are keeping well.

This Sunday we are discussing: Distributive leadership
The topic was proposed by Cristina and in my short essay I try to
identify some key issues. The topic is very interesting especially since
it covers both education and business practices: I include some relevant
references in my essay.

Distributive leadership
https://www.philomadrid.com/2023/01/distributive-leadership.html

NEWS
--Oscar's book is now available from Oscar himself:
"Toranzo, 88 ilustraciones y coplillas" by Oscar at €35
https://www.philomadrid.com/2022/09/toranzo-88-ilustraciones-y-coplillas-by.html
If you need more details please let me know and I'll put you in touch
with Oscar.

--It is with great sadness that I have learnt Julian Martelli passed
away early in October this year, 2022. Julian was very active during our
meetings in Molly Malone and participation was always respected by all.
Christine kindly wants to share with us a photo of Julian with her and
friends. You can find the FaceBook link below.

I also include a link for our visit to Toledo in 2008 when Julian came
with us on the day trip.

Julian
https://www.philomadrid.com/2022/11/julian.html

--Jorge has kindly sent us the link to his book which is available for
Free Distribution at:
Evolution of Thought and its Influence on Society and Technology
https://www.adneli.com/store


Please let me know whether you need the Skype link, thanks.


Best and take care
Lawrence


telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
http://www.philomadrid.com



PhiloMadrid meeting on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 8th January: Distributive
leadership

Distributive leadership

 

Distributive leadership

 

Topic by: Cristina (originally: Distribution of leadership)

Essay by: Lawrence

 

Distributive leadership, also Distribution of leadership or Distributed leadership, is a relatively new thinking and approach in education and up to an extent in industry as well. For our purposes we can also look at general issues in education, especially: how should school children be taught during their formative years? In business the idea is also one of how to make the organization better at what the organization does. Whatever distributive leadership is, many would argue that what matters is the practice of leadership and not some theory of leadership.

 

In both contexts leadership is not to be considered as a top down command structure but rather something like a motivational skill to help others follow someone who is better placed to solve problems in their sphere of expertise. Of course, my presentation of distributive leadership here is not enough to understand the concept. In a way we are talking about a scientific/psychological/sociological concept and, therefore, it has very little connection with the everyday use of leadership in our language.

 

The references below are an excellent introduction to the topic, so I won’t be writing at length here. However, there are some issues worth highlighting.

 

In education, for example, we cannot have a theoretical or practical theory of leadership until we have a decent theory of how children learn: i.e. a theory of learning. And by children I am also including adults at university level; we can even extend this to all contexts of learning including businesses and social culture. Today we know, as if in the past we did not know, that children learn better when they are not hungry or surrounded by family turmoil and in the class room they are not bored witless.

 

So before teachers can become leaders in the context of our discussion they must have skills in attracting pupils to follow them and learn what they are teaching (see Alma Harris on this point). But some teachers only see themselves at delivering the syllabus and not motivational coaches for children. Motivation and coaching does not seem to be within the pay grade of some people whether they are teachers or not. We have all been there: there were, and maybe still are, teachers in our life who we were committed to their teaching and others we detested at sight.

 

In a way teaching and leadership are not a matter of doing what you are told, but rather giving motivational reasons for others to learn what is required of them. But this is easier said than done! Exploiting the creativity and curiosity of learners should always be the foundations of learning: why are we learning this is just as important as what to learn and how to learn.

 

Distributive leadership is practically equivalent to letting the experts exercise their expertise, even if this is alien to neo liberals today or the dogmatic social engineering of the left. But this is the issue: who is accountable for education? Is it the state, the government, society, teachers, parents, children or adults paying for their university degree?  Is it a case of those who pay the piper call the tune, or a case of we pay the piper because we trust the piper will know best?

 

Education and learning are so important in society that we are bound to come across some vested interests. Education is not called the formative years of a person’s life for nothing. What we learn and why we learn will form, amongst other things, our political views. It should, therefore, not come as a surprise that politicians have an interest in education and what is being taught. It is also very difficult for politicians to show that they are indeed being accountable if the results of their policies take fifteen or twenty years to reach fruition. Hence, the absurdity of syllabus content manipulation, continuous assessment instead of feedback reports (to the child not the parents), or artificial barriers such as language testing (language is not tested but practiced) and so on.

 

This is not to say that responsibility and accountability are not required, only that the leaders and their peers are the best placed what is accountable for their actions in the sphere of operations. Of course, managers, director, head teachers and others all their leadership duties and obligations within their context.

 

One final issue is what is the causal chain of decision making? In a business context the final causal effect should be productivity and presumably profits. But what about education? As I have already said the results of education might take decades to mature and materialise. Today we have systems to account for the effects of education and how individuals perform in society, even if these systems are full of flaws.

 

To conclude is distributive leadership, just another name for delegation, even though Harris disagrees with this. And one issue that seems to be missing from the debate is the little matter of budget and money. As long as money is both king and queen in our society and managed by real people it might be very difficult for such people to be magnanimous and generous with their money and power.  

 

S02E09 - w/ Alma Harris - From Distributive Leadership to System Recall (Education context)

(https://tinyurl.com/355supt6)

 

Great leadership is a network, not a hierarchy - Gitte Frederiksen (Business context)

(https://tinyurl.com/mps7t8pn)

 

Distributed leadership. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (General overview)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Distributed_leadership&oldid=1112868927)

 

Programme for International Student Assessment. (Background on educational standards)

In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment&oldid=1130526755)

 

Best and take care

 

Lawrence

 

telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813

Email: philomadrid@gmail.com

http://www.philomadrid.com

 

 

 

PhiloMadrid meeting on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 8th January: Distributive leadership