A Slow Learner Reveals Everyone's Genius

2006-02-01T17:36:00.000-08:00

Learner's Learner
Peter Lee Kline

Educator Peter Lee Kline, one-time slow learner, who broadened our knowledge of how to speed up learning, says at 69, he'll live to enjoy and contribute to the greatest renaissance in human history.

Peter Lee Kline was an oppressed “slow learner” in school and college.

“I had come to believe,” Kline writes in his 1988 book, The Everyday Genius, “that a certain level of pain and distress was necessary in order to make learning happen.”

Frustrated with how innate human abilities were ignored, he set out with phenomenal drive and energy to discover, integrate, and spread existing knowledge of how people learn best and how to learn faster.

Fortunately, for other slow learners, including me, Kline was successful in his search.

But more importantly, he went on to popularize his findings in several lucid, easy-to-understand books that were brimming with the knowledge of how to learn or teach anything rapidly, all of it infused with that old democratic goal of liberating everyone everywhere.

In The Everyday Genius (page 59), he writes: “People can learn faster—and with greater depth of mastery and enjoyment—than ever before thought possible. If you act on this belief, you can accomplish results of a different order of excellence. Stop believing in limitations, and recognize that natural learning should proceed five times as rapidly, or more, than previously accepted standards would prepare us to anticipate.”

His belief in the transformative power of helping people learn faster, that he expressed in his first book, remains undiminished at the age of 69.

I first met Peter Kline, and heard about his books, in the late 1990s in Chicago at a session of a Learning Group of employment and training grantees of the Joyce Foundation and the James Irvine Foundation.

Prior to the session, my input to the group’s facilitator, Julia Parzen, was that our main challenge at the Jobs for Homeless Consortium in Oakland and Berkeley was how to help our clients learn faster; I was afraid, I explained to her, that, as the welfare-to-work clock wound down, our clients would become orphans of the new dispensation.

Could she find a trainer for the session who could introduce us to how to speed up our clients’ learning, using methods that were consistent with our client-centered, building-on-strengths approach?

Julia (who had become the group's facilitator with the kudos of James Irvine's Craig Howard), in her usual astute fashion, came up with Peter Kline.

Kline's theory and practice not only reinforced for me the importance of what we were doing at the Jobs for Homeless Consortium in addressing our clients' emotional and physical needs, and making learning fun in our interactive job preparation workshop (Taking Possession of Your Skills and Feeling Good About Yourself), but they also opened up many possibilities of what we could do in training our staff and clients to help them learn faster.

Subsequently, I invited Kline to come out to California to train all our managers and the service leaders of several other agencies in his integrated learning methods.

As a result, at the Jobs for Homeless Consortium, we developed new employment training modules that incorporated Kline’s approach to learning, which capitalized on the learner's multiple intelligences (click here for more on multiple intelligences) and responded to her/his individual learning style(s) (click here for more on learning styles).

I recently asked Stephanie Ross, who also represented Jobs Consortium at the Chicago session with Kline, and later attended his trainings in California, what she had learned from Kline.

“Michael, there are so many lessons that I carry with me, whenever I'm helping someone learn a new task, including expecting high levels of intelligence,” she wrote back in a recent e-mail, stressing an underlying Kline motto: Never underestimate the learner's intelligence.

She found his lessons to be of critical importance because when people had helped her to learn over the years, they were so reluctant to use intelligence and creativity.

“One goal of mine," added Stephanie, "is to own a community meeting place where I will provide resources, learning opportunities, and micro enterprise development workshops. The lessons from Peter Kline and The Everyday Genius are guiding principles on which my workshops will be built.

“In particular, my focus is to reduce emotional barriers to learning with fun, thought-provoking, and mind-stimulating exercises, while addressing other barriers such as basic physical needs and environment.”

Many are the persons who have been touched by the genius of this celebrator of the genius of everyone everywhere, on whose face a smile plays throughout his learner-centered learning sessions as he works his magic to reduce emotional barriers and make learning fun.

Michael Chacko Daniels, Editor & Publisher
New River Free Press International

A Peter Lee Kline Data Bank

High School
Woodrow Wilson High
Washington DC

College
B. A.
Amherst College
M. A.
The Catholic University of America

Other Schools
Additional Courses
George Washington University

Teacher that influenced Peter Lee Kline the most
Edwin Burr Pettet

(Click here for more on Edwin Burr Pettet)

Books that influenced Peter Lee Kline
D. O. Hebb The Organization of Behavior
Stuart Kauffman At Home in the Universe
Harvey Jackins The Human Side of Human Beings
Kurt Goldstein The Organism
Jack Stack The Great Game of Business
Georgi Lozanov Suggestology and Suggestopedia
Neale Donald Walsch Conversations with God
Thomas L. Friedman The Flat Earth

Favorite Philosopher
R. Buckminster Fuller

(Click here for follow-up question on

Buckminster Fuller)

Favorite Singer
Sir Henry A. Lytton

Favorite Quotation
There is that of God in every person.

Published Works of Peter Lee Kline

The Everyday Genius: Restoring Children's
Natural Joy of Learning, and Yours Too
Great Ocean, Arlington, VA, 1988

Ten Steps to a Learning Organization with Bernard Saunders
Great Ocean, Arlington, VA, 1992

School Success
Great Ocean, Arlington, VA, 1993

The Butterfly Dreams
Great Ocean, Arlington, VA, 1998

The Genesis Principle
Great Ocean, Arlington, VA, 1999

[Great Ocean is now Great River Books:
161 M Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84103]

Why America's Children Can't Think
Inner Ocean, Hawaii, 2002

Enjoying the Arts: Opera

The Theatre Student Series Publications
Gilbert and Sullivan Production

Diary of a Play Production:
An Account of a High School Production of

Romeo and Juliet with Stephanie Kline

The actor's voice

Scenes to perform

Physical movement for the theatre

Q________________________

New River Free Press International:

Tell us about yourself.

What makes you who you are?
_________________________

PeterKline I am a person who had difficulties learning in school and discovered extraordinary opportunities to overcome those difficulties. This experience convinced me that all learners can vastly improve their ability to learn, and I have devoted my life to promoting this principle in every way that I can.

As a result, I can confidently state from my own experience, based on what I've seen in classrooms, and the improved test scores that have resulted from those experiences, that it should be possible within the next decade for essentially all people on earth to learn how to do what they do with a level of effectiveness and intelligence that substantially exceeds what is considered average today.

I believe that our current world problems are such that if this does not happen, the future of our species is in rather dire jeopardy, for a large number of reasons. For that reason, I have allied myself with as many people as I can find who share my belief in the possibility of increasing human intelligence quickly, widely, with pleasurable activities rather than stress, and in a way that provides everyone with a chance to become involved effectively in the developing economic system of the Flat Earth.

Q_______________________

New River Free Press International:

What was your vision

of society that brought you

to the work you do?
________________________

PeterKline I believe that all human beings should be empowered by the world society to participate fully in the opportunities provided by a rapidly developing economy and improved educational system.

We should all have a chance to do whatever does not harm others that expresses our individual preference for living the good life. We should also become aware of the state of our planet and contribute to preserving and bettering that state so that the heritage we received at birth is not devalued and destroyed so that our descendants cannot inherit what we inherited.

Other than that, it seems to me that when we can replace war with persuasion, dominance with cooperation, and oppression with education, we will thereby pave the way for a society that everyone enjoys being a part of and is proud to share with everyone else in the worldwide community.

What we are living through now is the sturm und drang of humanity's adolescence. Or, in corporate terms (of form, storm, norm and perform), we are in the storm phase, and as soon as we have been able to reach the norm phase we will build the greatest renaissance in human history, which will be the expression of our performing stage. I am young enough, at 69, to believe I will live to enjoy that phase and continue to contribute to it in my own way for many years to come.

Q___________________________

New River Free Press International:

What do you think we

should remember as we remake

the world through the work we do?
____________________________

PeterKline I believe that every moment of life is both precious and precise. That is, our involvement with our own sacred contract means that we can regard each thing that happens, no matter how seemingly trivial, as of the greatest value and importance, and see that it is exactly the right thing to have happened at that particular moment.

Because I believe this, I constantly rediscover that it is true, even when something that seems to be very unfortunate has just happened. I am now able to look back at all the unfortunate things that have ever happened to me and observe that they were indeed fortunate and should have happened in no other way.

I also believe that because I believe this, I make it true, and if I did not believe it, it would not be true.

Everyone I have ever persuaded to give up the old way of self-pity, celebration of victimhood, and criticism of the evil ways of the world, and participate in the great spirit that is being born at this time has come to the realization that in their own personal life it is true and has always been true. I only hope more people will come to this realization, because when everyone does, it will, in fact, be true of the world as a whole.

Q____________________

New River Free Press International:

Has your vision

changed as you have

participated in the

remaking of the world?
____________________

PeterKline My vision has changed profoundly. I used to be deeply cynical about nearly everything. What changed me, I think, was that we did not have a nuclear holocaust by 1970, as I was certain that we would.

Having seen the Cold War both come and go, the ending of Apartheid in South Africa, the rise of the extraordinarily impossible phenomenon of the modern computer through an incredibly fortunate series of "accidents," and a great many other phenomena that would have seemed impossible if predicted, I gradually was persuaded by the sum total of my experiences that my deep cynicism was ill advised and should be replaced by a deep respect for the wisdom in the way in which the universe (presumably with the help of a force of universal wisdom) creates itself through the powerful anti-entropic life force now called self-organization, or "order for free," whose physical properties are not yet understood, but will soon revolutionize the way we think about reality.

Over the years, it was very, very difficult to persuade me that life was a good idea, but the many people who cared enough about me to try to get that point across eventually succeeded, and I thank them. I feel that if I can be persuaded that life really is good and will continue to get better for an infinite future, then anyone else can do so as well, because with me that idea was such a hard sell.

I am aware that there are plenty of people who do not think this way and I profoundly understand their point of view, because I used to share it and essentially walked in their shoes. They have my respect and sympathy.

Q________________________

New River Free Press International:

What challenges do you

perceive in achieving your

vision of society?
_________________________

PeterKline My goals for society are grandiose and seemingly impossible. The only challenge I see in achieving them is to pay attention sufficiently well to what is happening around me so I don't go off in the wrong direction and make a mess of the deep opportunities that lie beneath the manifold apparent failures that have provided me with such wonderful learning opportunities.

Q_________________________

New River Free Press International:

What needs to be done

to overcome these challenges?
__________________________

PeterKline Simply continuing to pay attention.

Q______________________________

New River Free Press International:

What pointers would you give

young people of the 9/11 generation

as they work in public service

assignments?
_______________________________

PeterKline Think of the public as an extension of yourself. We are all, in a sense, one mind and one person. As you serve anyone, serve that person as you would serve yourself. That means you have to have a whole lot of respect and admiration for yourself, or you will shortchange others the same way you are short-changing yourself. In general, it's a good idea not to take anyone's advice (including mine) unless you can't come up with a better idea than the one someone else has given you. If you can, follow that. No one can possibly understand your destiny as well as you do.

Q_________________________________

New River Free Press International:

What personal and public lessons

have you learned from the

devastation caused by the Asian Tsunami?
___________________________________

PeterKline It's interesting that the animals knew the tsunami was coming and got out of its way. What have we done to our species to suppress that instinctive awareness of what is coming so that we don't allow ourselves to remain in harm's way?

It seems to me that most of the pressures coming from social institutions are designed to turn us against our own intuitive sense of the developing reality of the life that surrounds us.

Each person, as well as each government, needs to learn how to respect and honor the integrity of every individual human being without exception. Thomas Jefferson had some compelling ideas about that, which he articulated far better than he lived them.

Q__________________________________

New River Free Press International:

What personal and public lessons

have you learned from the post-Hurricane

Katerina tragedies in New Orleans?
___________________________________

PeterKline We are very far right now from knowing how to run our country so that everyone is protected. Yet we are much closer to that than we have ever been before. Since this country began, we have gotten rid of slavery and created a public atmosphere in which people of different races, cultures, and languages can mix happily in many places, and without fear of oppression.

I go every day to a community center where I see four out of five races and hear many languages I have never heard before. We all share the same spirit and the love that pervades everything that happens there is wondrous to behold.

The other day, we had a visitor from the fifth race that I had not seen the center before. He is a Native American. I really would like to see more Native Americans and experience along with the others around me some of the tremendous wisdom I hope they still have to share with us about how to live in the midst of natural beauty and be part of it instead of destroy it.

It seemed to me that Katrina was striking back at all of us for the careless way we have been treating the environment. All over the world, in the past 35 years, there has been a huge increase of violent storms.

We need to do two things in response to this. We need to rebuild all our cities and the rest of our infrastructure so that it is protected from the natural violence that we know can occur and sooner or later, in any given place, will occur.

In order to do that, we need to build a consciousness that recognizes how important it is to integrate the future into the present and live so that the future is more likely to treat us kindly.

There are some important economic issues yet to be learned. Every business enterprise depends on the well being of the commonweal just as much as every individual does. When one business pollutes or otherwise harms the environment, all other businesses suffer, just as all human beings suffer.

We need to learn that business thrives as people thrive and withers as people wither. The time has come to replace the "business as war" metaphor with a "business as shared resources" metaphor. The relationship between the flower and the bee is like the relationship between you and the bacteria that live in your intestines and digest your food for you.

Everything in nature serves everything else. Survival of the fittest is a nonsensical concept. Survival of the best integrated is what actually happens. If we study from kindergarten on, systems theory, entrepreneurialism, ecological development, and servant-leadership, we will be better able to function in a literate manner in a society in which the ability to read is only a gateway to the much more important ability to deal with the unexpected.

Because of the speeding up of everything, most of the future will be unexpected, and we must teach ourselves to prepare for it.

The rebuilding of New Orleans could be the drain that breaks our economy and sends us into a deep depression. Or it could be the opportunity for us to learn and teach the art of building the city of the future, based on all the things that we can learn from the legacy of Katrina.

Our challenge is to discover the friendship the storm brought us and rise above the temptation to feel victimized by it. I'm aware from my own experiences that it can be pretty tough to do that. Maybe that's why it's worth doing.

Q____________________

New River Free Press International:

Are you still training

people and organizations?
_____________________

PeterKline I am doing that occasionally, but most of my work now is in developing new programs designed to be digitized. I am mostly working with the Learning Enhancement Corporation in Chicago, whose new product, BrainWare, is the best single educational product ever developed.

In a recent test in a religious private school in the Chicago area, the experimental subjects, who worked on their own at home under the supervision of their parents, using the program on computers, completed the program in 40 hours spread out over three months.

Only twelve of those hours were actually spent working the keyboard to do the exercises. In that time the average student achieved a 4.5 year growth in cognitive skills, as measured on the Woodcock Johnson test, while the control group who did not do the program averaged only three months in their cognitive skill improvement.

In academic skills, the experimental group averaged 23 months of growth, while the control group averaged 1 month of growth. These students were from the first through the seventh grade and included some relatively poor students as well as some excellent ones.

All the students made huge gains in things important to them, like having better memories, understanding ideas better, listening better, getting along better with their parents, teachers and other people.

Their self esteem went up and so did their IQs. I don't know how much with this group, but in a somewhat comparable group the average increase was 18 points, and the range among thirty students from 12 to 27 points.

This is only the beginning of what we'll soon be able to do to increase intelligence by having people spend their time for about an hour a day playing fun video games. If we make these games longer and more complex than they are now, I believe we should be able to raise the average person's IQ about fifty points in less than a year, and without any particular stress involved. This holds for old people as well a young ones, but the GUI we have now caters to the lower age group.

While I did not develop this program, I have been working closely with the company to help bring it to market, and will soon be adding to it the reading program that I developed, with some additional collaborations with another person who is an expert in vocabulary building, plus a math program based on an existing one that is probably the best in the world, but with further developments from the basics that that one provides. Beyond that, my overall goal for the company is to accomplish at last the following:

1. 100 hours of cognitive skills designed to raise the average person’s ability to learn everything else by an average of eight years, while raising the average I. Q. 30-50 points. This will enable the formerly disenfranchised in spirit and in fortune to undertake those studies and preemptive actions that will allow them a secure place in the world’s developing economy, which requires of the average worker skills and competencies never demanded in such proficiency before.

2. 100 hours of concept training that will provide each person with the conceptual background to understand all the major intellectual disciplines that can be further trained at universities.

3. 50 hours of re-education in mathematics. This will provide each person with an access to whatever intermediate and advanced training in mathematics they may wish to undertake.

4. 50 hours of re-education in reading skills. This will provide each person with the ability to read rapidly and accurately demanding materials in whatever field of knowledge they wish to pursue.

5. 100 hours of entrepreneurial training. This will provide each person with the skills and knowledge needed to start a new company or enter into a new enterprise in its early stages and contribute to it meaningfully. In addition, each person who has had this training will feel at home in a corporate structure designed to rely on its employees to contribute to its development through their own excellence of performance and independent, creative ideas.

6. 50 hours of training in the basic theories of economics. This will allow each person to understand how the Flat World is developing, and what each nation must do to strengthen itself in that increasingly interdependent world made up of great nations working peaceably together, all of them aiding those nations that have not yet sufficiently raised their standards of living.

7. 100 hours of training in the science of complexity, systems theory, cybernetics, and ecological development and preservation. This will allow each person to understand the damage that modern civilization has done to our planet and what can be done to rectify it and rebuild the former richness of natural resources, beauty and healthy self-organization that humans must either become a part of or destroy in the process of committing species suicide.

8. 100 hours of training in the arts and sciences, so that each person will be able to acquire a rich background in the historical movements, intellectual achievements, artistic movements, and philosophical insights that have built civilization to its present threshold of universal humanitarian greatness.

I am spending much of the rest of my time working on books, but also am working with a partner to try to create a grass roots movement to respond to the need for environmental consciousness at all levels of society. I have a couple of superintendents and assistant superintendents that I am having conversations with about how to market some of these opportunities to schools.

Check out Kline's answers to follow-up questions at:

http://indiawritingstation.squarespace.com/kline-multiple-intelligences/

http://indiawritingstation.squarespace.com/kline-learning-styles/

http://indiawritingstation.squarespace.com/kline-on-edwin-burr-pettet/

http://indiawritingstation.squarespace.com/kline-on-buckminster-fuller/

You will find articles by Kline at:

www.eye2theworld.net

Using Group Process To Help Students Evolve

Their Own Methods Of Learning by Peter Kline

http://www.eye2theworld.net/i6a5.htm

How To Enhance The Quality Of Parenting by Peter Kline

http://www.eye2theworld.net/i8a5.htm

The Neurological Facts About How People Learn by Peter Kline

http://www.eye2theworld.net/i4a3.htm

Reading From Both Sides Of The Brain By Peter Kline

http://www.eye2theworld.net/i3a3.htm

About the Editor: San Franciscan Michael Chacko Daniels, formerly a community worker and clown, and now a re-emerging writer and editor, grew up in Bombay. Books: Writers Workshop, Kolkata: Split in Two (1971, 2004), Anything Out of Place Is Dirt (1971, 2004), and That Damn Romantic Fool (1972, 2005). Read all about his Indian and American journey at http://indiawritingstation.com/community-service-calls/.

All views expressed in the interview are those of the interviewee

and not those of the editor or this website.

NOTE: THIS INTERVIEW FORMAT IS THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF MICHAEL CHACKO DANIELS AND HIS ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS: NEW RIVER FREE PRESS INTERNATIONAL: US-INDIA WRITING STATION AND CAREER VISIONS FOR A SMALL PLANET.

AGREEMENT: NEW RIVER FREE PRESS INTERNATIONAL/US-INDIA WRITING STATION/AND/OR CAREER VISIONS FOR A SMALL PLANET WILL RETAIN THE FOLLOWING RIGHTS: ALL RIGHTS TO PUBLISH THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW, OR PART(S) OF IT, IN ELECTRONIC, AUDIO, VIDEO, AND/OR PRINT VERSIONS; ALL RIGHTS TO RETAIN IT IN ITS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ARCHIVES INDEFINITELY; AND ALL RIGHTS TO INCLUDE IT IN FUTURE PRINTED COMPENDIUMS AND BOOKS. THE EDITOR RETAINS THE EDITOR'S PREROGATIVE TO EDIT THE INTERVIEW FOR GRAMMAR, STYLE, CONTENT, AND LENGTH. THE INTERVIEWEE FULLY UNDERSTANDS THAT HE/SHE WILL NOT RECEIVE ANY PAYMENT, EITHER NOW, OR IN THE FUTURE, FOR PARTICIPATING IN THIS INTERVIEW. BY SUBMITTING WRITTEN AND/OR ORAL RESPONSES TO THE ABOVE QUESTIONS BY ANY METHOD, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ELECTRONIC, TELEPHONIC, MANUAL, AND/OR POSTAL METHODS, THE INTERVIEWEE AGREES TO THE ABOVE CONDITIONS AND STIPULATIONS. AFTER FIRST PUBLICATION BY NEW RIVER FREE PRESS INTERNATIONAL/ US-INDIA WRITING STATION/AND/OR CAREER VISIONS FOR A SMALL PLANET, THE INTERVIEWEE RETAINS THE RIGHT TO USE HER/HIS IDEAS AND WORDS THAT ARE CONTAINED IN HER/HIS RESPONSES IN THE INTERVIEW FOR ANY PURPOSE WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS. THE FORMAT OF THE INTERVIEW AND THE QUESTIONS WILL REMAIN THE PROPERTY OF THE EDITOR AND PUBLISHER.

-End-

The Pace of Learning

Nobel Laureate Carl E. Wieman on
Why Science Frightens Many

"A lot of why science is so frightening to many is that teachers present material at several times the pace any reasonable person can absorb." --Nobel Laureate Carl E. Wieman

--From "Physics Laureate Hopes to Help Students Over the Science Blahs," By Claudia Dreifus, Science Times, New York Times, 11/1/2005
For interactive physics simulations in English or Spanish of physical phenomena that are fun, check out the website of the Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado:

http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phet/web-pages/index.html

It's free, online, and downloadable.

__________________________

Have you visited the rest of

Michael Chacko Daniels' website,

US-India Writing Station?

If not, please do and be sure to

bookmark this site. If you wish to

refer others to it, here's the URL:

http://indiawritingstation.squarespace.com/

Feel free to visit, and explore: Fiction, Poetry, Community Service, Homeless, Commentary, & Discussion On The Road To Remaking The World We Live In . . . San Francisco, Grand Rapids, Evanston, Bombay, Kerala, Oakland, Berkeley, Monterey, Bangalore, Calcutta . . .

Feel free to share the above link with others.

____________________________

Have you read Michael Chacko Daniels' flash fiction story,
Sing an Indian Name, on Denver Syntax's free online magazine?
If not, here's the URL:

http://www.denversyntax.com/issue5/fiction/daniels/indian.html

Feel free to share the above link with others.

____________________________