The Beginning of
Mediocrity—an unconscious intention
It's said that physicians write illegible prescriptions in part because
they are practicing medicine and therefore unconsciously resist being
responsible for prescriptions that might not work. I.e. "Here, try
this." Pharmacists acknowledge that poor cursive handwriting on
prescriptions communicates uncertainty, it causes them frustration;
doctors, ostensibly committed to the well-being of others, actually frustrate
some new pharmacists who try to interpret prescriptions; many are forced
to call the doctor's receptionist for clarification. Most doctors
otherwise do write as legible as most people so it's not that they can't
write neatly. Medical schools have yet to teach the value of "being here
now" with each correctly formed complete charactor. The consciousness
it takes to form correct letters when writing a prescription
communicates an intention to have the prescription work as envisioned; it also enrolls the patient in recreating the doctor's
intention, "So, are we intending that this will work?" Any
hesitancy in the patient's reply reveals that there are non-verbalized
withholds (considerations) in the space between the patient and the
doctor.
This article is not about the penmanship of physicians, rather it
addresses what I believe to be the beginning of most everyone's
addiction to mediocrity, to being incomplete, and to doing incomplete
work. Just as there have been consequences for your first lie (I.e. Did
you brush your teeth?), the lie
for which you have not been acknowledged (caught), so too has there been
a lifetime of undesirable consequences for thwarting, among others, your
penmanship teacher. I.e. If your child (or your boss or employee) does
sloppy work, thwarting your stated intentions, you'll notice that to
this day you continually thwart the success of your penmanship teacher;
you have ensured that he/she failed.
We begin with three premises having to do with communication:
1) All lies and all truths have consequences, even the lies of which you
are unaware. (I.e. ". . . till death do us part . . ." "I'll pick you up
at six." "No, you can't have any candy." "I'll be with you in a
second.") all indicative of unconsciousness.
2) If you have poor penmanship then you have in fact thwarted the
success of your penmanship teacher for which there has been a lifetime
of undesirable ever-compounding consequences. Not that you're a bad
person deserving of failure but that when you need and don't get support
for an endeavor of yours you can't be certain if it's about your
integrity; if it's about you paying yourself back for thwarting another.
3) If as a teacher you were paid to teach a student to write legibly and
you failed, then you are/have been out-integrity, for which there have
been ever-compounding undesirable consequences, for both you and the
student and, for everyone with whom you relate. An acknowledged teacher
communicates up-front the number of students for which he/she is willing
to be responsible. I.e. "I can cause 12 students per class to master
legible penmanship." They also communicate upfront the
student-parent-peer-support staff agreements they insist upon. It's
unethical to accept wages for causing students to fail (students always
mirror a teacher's leadership-communication skills).
One either gets the job done or they have their reasons. Stated
responsibly, a teacher would say: "I failed to get into communication
with the student and his/her parents." "I see now that I did
not have an intention for all my
students to write legibly." "I have dozens of "valid" reasons as to why
I fail to cause all students to recreate my stated intentions, among
those reasons is my rock-solid belief that it can't be done." "In truth,
students with poor penmanship mirror my leadership-communication
skills."
Now here's the tricky, possibly uncomfortable, part: We are always
manifesting our intentions. Some results we produce are exactly what we
envision; other results are not what we say/believe we want. Just
because one is unaware of how they manifested an undesirable
less-than-satisfying result doesn't mean they didn't intend it (albeit
unconsciously). That is to say, unbeknownst to the above penmanship
teacher, he/she did not have an intention for all students to master
legible penmanship; the teacher only believed that he/she intended for
students to perform as expected. We know this to be true because it's
most likely that the above teacher could, if assigned only one student,
cause that student to duplicate the standard for cursive handwriting.
It's not that a penmanship teacher doesn't know how to teach to a
standard, it's that few teachers are being supervised correctly, even
fewer have studied the subject of intention.
Whaaat? You say a teacher unconsciously intends for some students to
fail? Yes. As with learning to ride a bicycle, one repeatedly fails and
then, voila—, succeeds. Teachers stuck in mediocrity haven't
failed enough; they have become stuck somewhere in the communication
mastery curriculum. They keep doing their
imitation of communication
which produces more of the same results. When communication takes place
the results are as envisioned. When teachers fail to communicate subject
matter their students are required to take remedial courses during their
freshman college year. Ironically, it's not a teacher's fault; their own
university speech-com professors failed to teach them how to communicate
subject matter.
A "teacher" stuck in mediocrity imparts his/her addiction to doing
incomplete work, to being incomplete, to each and every student. A
"teacher" who fails to teach each student to recreate the accepted
cursive standard is in fact
out-integrity. They are dragging around a
life-time of similar perpetrations (including their addiction to doing
incomplete work) into each and every interaction throughout each day—for
which there are undesirable consequences.
For example: I know only a handful of people who can be trusted to clean
a window without supervision (two of these are my step-daughters who
learned to clean at ages 9 and 10). Notice that I don't write, "completely
clean" or "perfectly clean" or "thoroughly clean w/no smears." —this is
because the word clean means clean. Most people have never been required
to clean a window, instead they've washed windows; they do a pretty good
job, one that's appropriately acceptable to most; however, upon
examination we see (in various lighting) that they leave grease-like
smears, especially the out-gassing vinyl vapors adhering to the inside
surface of car windshields; one can easily see these smears on a humid
evening or before the defogger takes effect (read about cleaning
training). BTW: A clean window doesn't have the
micro-thin invisible film for dirt
and dust to adhere to easily and so it appears to stay cleaner longer.
For me this pattern of doing sloppy work began with my penmanship class
teacher. The majority of penmanship teachers allow a student to write on
un-lined paper before he/'she has mastered consistently writing within
the lines. With few exceptions most students can do the practice
exercises, the circles and the up and down strokes within the lines;
it's about muscle memory which comes though repetition (lots and lots of
repetition. A student who can't seem to stay within the lines is
communicating something; it's a teacher's job to discover just what the
student is communicating. When the truth is told the problem disappears.
In rare instances the problem has to do with the mind and coordination
and dexterity and as such the student is referred to a counselor or
physician.
Someone in the process of becoming a teacher fails to intend that each
student demonstrate an ability to consistently form letters per the
examples on the chalk board. If a student's dexterity and coordination
is such that he/she can't do the practice circles and strokes within
lines then a teacher gets into communication with the student, and when
necessary the student's parents, so as to ensure no child is left
behind. A qualified penmanship teacher will require a failed student to
repeat their class the following year. All teachers thereafter are
supposed to rigidly support the success of the school's penmanship
teacher.
A student who successfully cons his/her penmanship teacher into
accepting mediocrity disrespects most educators for life, this
disrespect is evidenced by the absence of wage parity between
longshoremen and teachers (for more about acknowledging teachers via
their pay).
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