Educating Psyche
Educating psyche by Bernie Neville is a book which looks at radical new approaches to learning, describing the effects of emotion, imagination and the unconscious on learning. One theory discussed in the book is that proposed by George Lozanov, which focus on the power of suggestion.
Lozanov's instructional technique is based on the evidence that the connections made in the brain through unconscious processing (which he calls non-specific mental reactivity) are more durable than those made through conscious processing. Besides the laboratory evidence for this, we know from our experience that we often remember what we have perceived peripherally, long after we have forgotten what we set out to learn. If we think of a book we studied months or years ago, we will find it easier to recall peripheral details - the colour, the blinding, the typeface, the table at the library where we sat while studying it - than the content on which we were concentrating. If we think of a lecture we listened to with great concentration, we will recall the lecturer's appearance and mannerisms, our place in the auditorium, the failure of the air-conditioning, much more easily than the ideas we went to learn. Even if these peripheral details are a bit elusive, they come back readily in hypnosis or when we relive the event imaginatively, as in psychodrama. The details of the content of the lecture, on the other hand, seem to have gone forever.
This phenomenon can be partly attributed to the common counterproductive approach to study (making extreme efforts to memorise, tensing muscles, inducing fatigue), but it also simply reflects the way the brain functions. Lozanov therefore made indirect instruction (suggestion) central to his teaching system. In suggestopedia, as he called his method, consciousness is shifted away from the curriculum to focus on something peripheral. The curriculum then becomes peripheral and is dealt with by the reserve capacity of the brain.
The suggestopedic approach to foreign language learning provides a good illustration. In its most recent variant (1980), it consists of the reading of vocabulary and text while the class is listening to music. The first session is in two parts. In the first part, the music is classical (Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms) and the teacher reads the text slowly and solemnly, with attention to the dynamics of the music. The students follow the text in their books. This is followed by several minutes of silence. In the second part, they listen to baroque music (Bach, Corelli, Handel) while the teacher reads the text in a normal speaking voice. During this time they have their books closed. During the whole of this session, their attention is passive; they listen to the music but make no attempt to learn the material.
Beforehand, the students have been carefully prepared for the language learning experience. Through meeting with the staff and satisfied students they develop the expectation that learning will be easy and pleasant and that they will successfully learn several hundred words of the foreign language during the class. In a preliminary talk, the teacher introduces them to the material to be covered, but does not 'teach' it. Likewise, the students are instructed not to try to learn it during this introduction.
Some hours after the two-part session, there is a follow-up class at which the students are stimulated to recall the material presented. Once again the approach is indirect. The students do not focus their attention on trying to remember the vocabulary, but focus on using the language to communicate (e.g. through games or improvised dramatisations). Such methods are not unual in language teaching. What is distinctive in the suggestopedic method is that they are devoted entirely to assisting recall. The 'learning' of the material is assumed to be automatic and effortless, accomplished while listening to music. The teacher's task is to assist the students to apply what they have learned paraconsciously, and in doing so to make it easily accessible to consciousness. Another difference from conventional teaching is the evidence that students can regularly learn 1000 new words of a foreign language during a suggestopedic session, as well as grammar and idiom.
Lozanov experimented with teaching by direct suggestion during sleep, hypnosis and trace states, but found such procedures unnecessary. Hypnosis, yoga, Silva mind-control, religious ceremonies and faith healing are all associated with successful suggestion, but none of their techniques seem to be essential to it. Such rituals may be seen as placebos. Lozanov acknowledges that the ritual surrounding suggestion in his own system is also a placebo, but maintains that without such a placebo people are unable or afraid to tap the reserve capacity of their brains. Like any placebo, it must be dispensed with authority to be effective. Just as a doctor calls on the full power of a autocratic suggestion by insisting that the patient take precisely this white capsule precisely three times a day before meals, Lozanov is categoric in insisting that the suggestopedic session be conducted exactly in the manner designated, by trained and accredited suggestopedic teachers.
While suggestopedia has gained some notoriety through success in the teaching of modern languages, few teachers are able to emulate the spectacular results of Lozanov and his associates. We can, perhaps, attribute mediocre results to an inadequate placebo effect. The students have not developed the appropriate mindset. They are often not motivated to learn through this method. They do not have enough 'faith'. They do not see it as 'real teaching', especially as it does not seem to involve the 'work' they have learned to believe is essential to learning.
Questions
Choose the correct letter , A, B, C, or D.
1. The book Educating Psyche is mainly concerned with
a. the power of suggestion in learning
b. a particular technique for learning based on emotions
c. the effects of emotion on the imagination and the unconscious
d. ways of learning which are not traditional
2. Lozanov's theory claims that, when we try to remember things
a. unimportant details are the easiest to recall
b. concentrating hard produces the best results
c. the most significant facts are most easily recalled
d. peripheral vision is not important
3. In this passage, the author uses the examples of a book and a lecture to illustrate that
a. both of these are important for developing concentration
b. his theory about methods of learning is valid
c. reading is a better technique for learning than listening
d. we can remember things more easily under hypnosis
4. Lozanov claims that teachers should train students to
a. memorise details of the curriculum
b. develop their own sets of indirect instructions
c. think about something other than the curriculum content
d. avoid overloading the capacity of the brain.
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage ?
True if the statement agrees with the information
False if the statement contradicts the information
Not Given if there is no information on this
5. In the example of suggestopedic teaching in the fourth paragraph, the only variable that changes is the music.
6. Prior to the suggestopedia class, students are made aware that the language experience will be demanding.
7. In the follow-up class, the teaching activities are similar to those used in conventional classes.
8. As an indirect benefit, students notice improvements in their memory.
9. Teachers say they prefer suggestopedia to traditional approaches to language teaching.
10. Students in a suggestopedia class retain more new vocabulary than those in ordinary classes.
Complete the summary using the list of words A -K below.
Suggestopedia uses a less direct method of suggestion than other techniques such as hypnosis. However, Lozanov admits that a certain amount of 11........................................ is necessary in order to convince students, even if this is just a 12................................... Furthermore, if the method is to succeed, teachers must follow a set procedure. Although Lozanov's method has become quite 13....................................., the results of most other teachers using this method have been 14......................
A. spectacular B. teaching C. lesoon
D. authoritarian E. unpopular F. ritual
G. unspectacular H. placebo I. involved
J. appropriate K. well known
Ans: 1. D
2. A
3. B
4. C
5. FALSE
6. FALSE
7. TRUE
8. NOT GIVEN
9. NOT GIVEN
10. TRUE
11. F
12. H
13. K
14. G
The True Cost of Food
A
For more than forty years the cost of food has been rising. It has now reached a point where a growing number of people believe that it is far too high, and that bringing it down will be one of the great challenges of the twenty first century. That cost, however, is not in immediate cash. In the West at least, more food is now in immediate cash. In the West at least, most food is now far cheaper to buy in relative terms than it was in 1960. The cost is in the collateral damage of the very methods of food production that have made the food cheaper: in the pollution of water, the environment of soil, the destruction of wildlife, the harm to animal welfare and threat to human health caused by modern industrial agriculture.
B
First mechanisation, then mass use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides then monocultures, then battery rearing of livestock, and now genetic engineering - the onward march of intensive farming has seemed unstoppable in the last half-century, as the yields of produce have soared. But the damage it has caused has been colossal. In Britain, for example, many of our best-loved farmland birds, such as the skylark, the grey partridge, the lapwing and the corn bunting, have vanished from huge stretches of countryside, as have even more wild flowers and insects. This is a direct result of the way we have produced our food in the last four decades. Thousands of miles of hedgerows, thousands of pounds, have disappeared from the landscape. The faecal filth of salmon farming has driven wild salmon from many of the sea lochs and rivers of Scotland. Natural soil fertility is dropping in many areas because of continuous industrial fertiliser and pesticide use, while the growth of algae is increasing in lakes because of the fertilisers run-off.
C
Put it all together and it looks like a battlefield, but consumers rarely make the connection at the dinner table. That is mainly because the costs of all this damage are what economists refer to as externalities: they are outside the main transaction, which is for example producing and selling a field of wheat, and are borne directly by neither producers nor consumers. To many, the costs may not even appear to be financial at all, but merely aesthetic - a terrible shame, but nothing to do with money. And anyway they as consumers of food, certainly aren't paying for it, are they?
D
But the cost to society can actually be quantified and, when added up, can amount to staggering sums. A remarkable exercise in doing this has been carried out by one of the the world's leading thinkers on the future of agriculture, Professor Jules Pretty, Director of Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex. Professor Pretty and his colleagues calculated the externalities of British agriculture for one particular year. They added up the costs of repairing the damage it caused, and came up with a total figure of $2,343.This is equivalent to $208 for every hectare of arable land and permanent pasture, almost as much again as the total government and EU spend on British farming in that year, And according to Professor Pretty, it was a conservative estimate.
E
The costs included: $1220m for removal of pesticides; $16m for removal of nitrates; $55m for removal of phosphates and soil; $23m for the removal of the bug cryptosporidium from drinking water by water companies; $125m for damage to wildlife habitats, hedgerows and dry stone walls; $1,113m from emissions of gases likely to contribute to climate change; $106m from soil erosion and organic carbon losses; $169m from food poisoning; and $106m from soil erosion and organic carbon losses; $169m
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