7 minute read
FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL
This last September, I had the pleasure of addressing parents on the subject of games during Orientation Day activities. We began with the following excerpt:
A game is composed of freedom, barriers, and purposes. That’s easy enough to see.
What’s trickier to see is how this comprises a triangle.... But wherever we look through life, we find that these three points— freedom, barriers, and purposes—are interdependent to some degree. It’s one of the wildest-looking things a person ever studied.
One has to look it over and think of different examples to satisfy oneself that this relationship does exist because it looks very illogical that if you increase barriers, you increase freedom and purposes—or if you increase freedom, you increase barriers and purposes. It just doesn’t seem right at first look. One has to work with it a bit. It’s not intuitive.
This triangle does, however, provide another way to explain why the idea of “let children do anything they want, express themselves in any way” doesn’t work. It’s a total absence of barriers, so there’s no triangle. No game. And they’ll be very unhappy.
...Children with games to play have purposes, barriers, and freedoms and tend to be happier.
Education: Fostering Reason and Self-Determinism in Students based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard
This concept, the pursuit of knowledge as a game, is fundamental to Delphian’s approach to education. In helping students learn to think with this interrelationship of purposes, barriers, and freedoms, I have had many a conversation along these lines:
Me: Do you generally think of a wall as a barrier or as a freedom?
Student: A barrier.
Me: Did you have a purpose in mind when you thought of it in that way?
Student: Wanting to get through it for some reason.
Me: With that same purpose in mind, would you consider a door to be a barrier or a freedom?
Student: I suppose I would think of it as a freedom. I’d be free to walk through it, to open it, to use it for my purpose of getting through the wall.
Me: If you and I shared the purpose of getting through the wall, I suppose we would both think of walls as barriers and doors as freedoms. Agreeing on that, we’d make a pretty good team.
Student: True.
Me: If we wanted more of a challenge, could we set someone up on the other side of the wall with a different purpose, maybe one that would cause them to think of walls as freedoms and doors as barriers?
Student: It would definitely make our game more of a challenge if their purpose was “to keep us out.” The existence of a purpose like that would be a “barrier” to our original purpose!
Me: Pursuing our purpose, we would be tearing down walls or building doors while others, pursuing theirs, would be building walls or tearing down doors. We wouldn’t be on the same team, certainly.
Student: (thinking) Yeah...
Me: For a student, what purpose do you think makes barriers to study most real as barriers?
Student: The purpose of understanding for application.
Me: Can a different purpose make the barriers to study less real, maybe even leading a student to consider it a “freedom” to pass by a misunderstood word?
Student: I suppose if a student’s main purpose for study was to memorize the data just so they could pass a test, or if their main purpose was to just move fast, with or without understanding.
Me: If you observed a student trying to disguise some manifestation of a barrier from their teacher, what would you suspect?
Student: That their purpose isn’t understanding, but something else. If they were purely pursuing the purpose of understanding, they would tackle the barrier aggressively to achieve their purpose— and ask for help if they needed it. Freedoms and barriers depend on purposes!
Beyond conversations like this, students often discover for themselves a variety of applications of the relationship of these three components of games, both in and out of the classroom.
One can imagine how unworkable misaligned purposes can be on a sports team. A coach can present the purpose, “to win by playing as a team” to their players, but even one player pursuing the purpose of “becoming a human highlight reel” can make the team, as a team, unsuccessful, and undermine the game, even the season.
Looking beyond our own environment here, imagine a student studying for understanding and application in a classroom where the teacher’s purpose, for whatever reason, is to have their students score high on standardized tests.
This insight into games helps shed light on how we can all work together to optimize the Delphian experience for every student.
A further excerpt from the same source given earlier:
...purposes are very easily aligned and very easily handed out. They shouldn’t be neglected. They help create games.”
L. Ron Hubbard
In the rare case where a Delphian student is found cheating or breaking an important school rule, I expect faculty to see not a “cheater” or a “troublemaker,” but a student whose purpose is out of alignment with the game we are all playing here.
Without this understanding, the “solution” might be more along the lines of determining appropriate punishment to prevent the student’s pursuit of such a “freedom” again in the future. With an understanding of the importance of aligned purposes, a more effective approach might be about reestablishing in the student their basic purpose for education, one which almost certainly aligns with the school’s purpose for that student—and works within the barriers defined by the school’s rules and expectations.
This topic calls to mind a recent experience. A severe ice storm had disrupted normal class schedules. Day students, any faculty not housed on campus, and all kitchen staff were unable to get out of their homes safely, let alone drive up the hill. While campus faculty were performing other duties, including food prep, to cope with the disruption, upper level students organized and ran study halls for their Upper School classmates. Shortly after their roll call, I walked onto the fourth floor and found a full upper school calmly pursuing their purpose of acquiring an education—without skipping a beat.
When purposes in a large group are aligned, it makes misaligned purposes in other groups look downright painful. And so they are.
Written in various ways over the years, one of Delphian’s larger purposes has always been: To revolutionize the field of education using the educational technologies of L. Ron Hubbard.
An understanding of “games,” as it applies to the field of education, and a purpose shared by students, staff and parents alike, is a big part of why Delphian is such a revolutionary place. It is “revolutionary” to be so well aligned as a group. But this concept of “games” is only
one of many fundamental approaches to education found in the book Education: Fostering Reason and Self Determinism in Students. If you haven’t already read it, I encourage you to do so. If you have, I encourage you to do so again.
A lot of headway has been made, but it is a big game and we need to reach more people with this purpose and include them in our game, for it is one that truly empowers young people and the educators who care for them.
We are enrolling. We are hiring. We are growing, and we will continue to grow in proportion to the number of people that share our purpose.