What is called, "Thinking" -- Heidegger

People still hold the view that what is handed down to us by tradition is what in reality lies behind us, while in fact, it comes toward us because we are its captives, and destined to it. The purely historical view of tradition and the course of history is one of those vast self-deceptions in which we must remain entangled as long as we’re still not really thinking.

That self-deception about history prevents us from hearing the language of the thinkers. We do not hear it rightly because we take than language to be mere expression—setting forth the thinker’s views, but the thinker’s language tells what is. To hear it is in no case easy. Hearing it presupposes we meet certain requirements and we do so only on rare occasions.

[To hear the language of the thinkers,] we must acknowledge and respect it. To acknowledge and respect consists of letting every thinker’s thoughts come to us with something, in each case, unique, never to by repeated, inexhaustible and being shaken to the depths by what is un-though in his thought. What is un-thought in a thinker’s thought is not a lack inherent in his thought. What is un-thought in a thinker’s thought is there, in each case only as the un-thought.

The more original the thinking, the richer will be what is un-thought in it. The un-thought is the greatest gift that thinking can bestow. But to the common places of sound common sense, what is un-thought in any thinking always remains merely the incomprehensible, and to the common comprehension, the incomprehensible is never an occasion to stop and look at its own powers of comprehension, still less to notice its limitations.

To the common comprehension, what is incomprehensible remains forever merely offensive. Proof enough that such comprehension, which is convinced that it was born comprehending everything, that it is now being imposed upon with untruth and sham.
The one thing which sound common sense is least capable, is acknowledgment and respect. For acknowledgment and respect call for a readiness to let our own attempts at thinking be overturned again and again by what is un-thought in the thinker’s thought.

There are Four Communication Styles (and they're not what you think).

Anyone involved with communication or education has had the 3 communication styles drilled into them--Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic. We routinely talk about people being visual or auditory thinkers.

While this model has proven helpful in some areas of communication, it is at best, an over-simplification of a complex process and with respect to education (a critical aspect of communication). Research now shows that the Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic model of teaching/learning to be completely ineffective and in many cases has actually impeded effective learning for many children and adults.

After spending the last six years deconstructing how children communicate, learn and process information, the model of learning and communication that I have identified more closely resembles the four Greek Temperents: Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholic and Phlegmatic.

The model is based on two sets of opposing thought processes: Visual vs. Auditory and Logical vs. Kinesthetic. Each set can be though of as a continuum or spectrum from one extreme to another. It should be noted that we, as human beings are a collection of all four processes, however far we may lean to one side of the spectrum.

So the four "new" communication or learning styles are: Visual-Kinsethetic (Sanguine), Visual-Logical (Choleric), Auditory-Kinesthetic (Melancholic), and Auditory-Logical (Phlegmatic). See image.

For fun and clarity, I've also correlated these four communication/learning styles to the four main characters in Winnie the Pooh. The Choleric is Rabbit. The Sanguine is, of course, Tigger. The Melancholic is Eeyore. And the thoughtful Phlegmatic is Pooh. Lastly, for those familiar with the Meyers-Briggs meta-programs, I have included their approximate location in the model as well.

For help with communication and learning, visit our web site, http://www.swish4fish.com

PDD-NOS the Un-Diagnosis

To me, the PDD-NOS is a perfect example of what is wrong with the medical and educational communities, particularly, when it comes to Autistic Spectrum and Developmental Spectrum disorders. You just have to read the name to get it...
Pervasive
Developmental
Disorder...
NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED.

PDD-NOS is not a DIAGNOSIS. It's a NON-diagnosis--an Un-Diagnosis. It simply states that if you are kind of like these guys over here and these people over there, but you don't actually fit into any of the artificial boxes that we've created to fit these and those people into, then here's a catch-all box to put all the left-over people into.

It's like the odd-sizes bin at Walmart. Well, these pants don't match any of the REAL sizes so we'll invent this new 'size' called, "Not Otherwise Specified" and any pants that we can't fit into the real boxes will all get put into the Not Otherwise Specified box. It really is my favorite so-called disorder in the DSM.

And this comment is not about the children or the parents or even the doctors. It is about a system which passed itself off as science when it is little more than an attempt to overlay a system of arbitrary divisions to something which effectively has no divisions--it is a continuous spectrum, be it the Autistic Spectrum or PDD Spectrum. We're talking about a spectrum of behaviors that IMHO does not lend itself to these divisions.

No where in the DSM does it indicate what the source of those behaviors might be. A diagnosis tells you nothing about the source of the child's struggles, nor does it tell you what a child's strength are. No where in the entire DSM does it talk about the gifts an Autistic child or PDD child might have--no where.

I can't speak to other interventions, but I have NEVER, EVER found any help for a child by looking at what was WRONG with the child. Whether ADHD, Autistic, SPD, APD, or PDD-NOS, virtually all the progress I have ever made with a child is focusing on their natural strengths and abilities. That is just my take on it. http://www.swish4fish.com