As explanation and a mental exercise for using the very simplest affectance understanding in a practical application, I am going to tell the story of the schooling of Emma. I could call it a story “based on true events” because it starts off about real events but for sake of explanation I want to extend the story beyond the actual experienced events. For those involved in teaching children, especially their own, this can be extremely useful. One can even apply it to oneself, although usually less effectively.
The Schooling of Emma
Emma is a young girl of age nine. We have discovered that she is not doing well in public school. It seems that the problem is that she simply cannot pass hardly any tests, so we are going to fix that. Public schooling involves merely memory and social training. In this exercise, we are not going to get involved in the social training of “proper” attitudes and behaviors nor of any specific ideologies; political, social, or religious.
Using merely the simplest of affectance understanding, we are going to enhance Emma’s natural memory such that she can learn somewhat instantly and recall whatever she has learned upon testing. We are going to enhance both her visual memory and her language skills to the point of being a polyglot with a photo graphic memory. Merely as a part of her exercises, she will learn with perfect recall, a much larger vocabulary, Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, three languages, and Shakespeare’s first five sonnets … all before she reaches ten. At the end of such exercises, she will be prepared to learn to be a mathematician, pianist, actress, philosopher, and most importantly, a lady (one who is exceedingly considerate of all those around her as well as herself)…
Since Emma is still attending public school, we are going to start with simple affectance conditioning that she can immediately begin to use. Currently she is given a series of 20 five letter words each week. Up until now, she has never past a single week’s spelling test. Although there are common associative methods for helping someone learn to remember words better, we are going to skip that and simply increase her IQ. Starting with her next test, she will never fail another spelling test. After two weeks, she will get 100% on every spelling test from then on.
The method is very simple. We are going to enhance the conductivity of her visual perception into her visual memory and from that memory back out to her consciousness. We are merely going to provide a far more clear path to and from her visual memory. With clarity of path comes flow of affectance and clarity of remembrance.
The Environment
First we are going to setup a quality learning environment. Since clarity is what we are after, we must ensure that Emma’s efforts are not disturbed by distractions or confusions (the affectance flow to have minimal resistance). To do this we bring Emma into a room wherein she feels just a tiny bit intimidated and a tiny bit hopeful, a mild sense of reverence wherein she instinctively becomes more alert and attentive to what might come next. The only sounds in our room will be our voices and some soft instrumental music in the background (aka soft “elevator music”). The lighting in the room will be focused mostly around a table where we will spend time practicing mental processes. That room and where she sits within will remain constant throughout the program. This common, simple, and consistent environment will provide the affectance potential (aka “PtA”) and perception clarity necessary to enhance her learning process.
Programming
The human mind is constantly programming and reprogramming itself based upon subtle guessing as to what might be more important or effective. The problem is that it doesn’t know what processes to program into itself until it has already begun to try, somewhat of a confused trial-and-error method often leading to stupefying traps. Most people who have troubles with mathematics are merely the victims of being led into mental process traps, preventing them from being able to learn math. All we will need to do is demonstrate to the mind which processes are most effective thereby resolving the inherent question, directing away from process traps, and providing clarity of hope.
[list]Perception of Hope gathers to tasks
Perception of Threat scatters and masks[/list:u]
The mind naturally migrates toward whatever it perceives as hopeful and away from whatever it perceives as threatening. This concern applies even to the mind’s programming of itself. This is how habits are formed. Thus perception of hope, PH, is used to reinforce memory and behaviors while perception of threat, PT, is used to disrupt and erase memories and behaviors. Recently, this has become a serious technology. We are going to use merely PH so as to migrate Emma’s mental efforts toward firming up her remembrance behavior/process. No punishments, threats, scolding, or slapping knuckles with a ruler will be necessary or allowed.
We Begin
After sitting Emma at her learning table, we begin her conditioning. We place a piece of clear white paper with the clearly printed letters “C A T” before her. With a loving demeanor, we ask her to look at the paper and try to memorize the letters. After about 30 seconds, we remove the paper and ask her to tell use what letters were on the paper. To our surprise, she can’t recall … not even those three simple letters.
Because we know Emma to not be seriously mentally impaired in any other way, we can easily deduce that her mind simply isn’t trying in the right direction. Such is often the case with teachers, parents, and media who are too chaotic in their own behavior and thereby in effect, teaching such mental chaos to their children. So we are going to be consistent, precise, and flawlessly patient. We give the paper to her again and watch to make sure she is at least looking at the letters.
Again, after a few seconds, we remove the paper, but this time ask only for the first letter. We find that she isn’t certain. So again we show her the paper for a few seconds. Removing it we ask again, “Okay, now what was the first letter?” Finally, she gets it, “C”, to which we reply, “There you go. Great.”
“Now let’s see if you can get another letter. Look at both the first and second letter” as we pass the paper back to her. After a few seconds, we remove the paper and ask her to tell us what the second letter was. She remembers, “A”. “Very good. But now can you tell me what the first letter was?” She isn’t certain, but hesitantly guesses correctly.
Each time she shows any uncertainty, we note it and immediately repeat the process before going any further. We never leave her in doubt of what she saw. We never outrun her process of establishing certainty in what she has seen. This is how we establish clarity and confidence in the process of memorizing and recalling. Her confidence is important because any future insecurity issues will challenge her more intellectual processes. It is critically important to never outrun her mind’s attempt to discern the process and be accurate. Outrunning her is to leave rubble in the process path (resistance in the conductor) and weaken the affectance flow that establishes her memory (“particles of mass”).
Realize that Emma is not merely learning to spell the word “cat”, but actually learning how to memorize and be tested, the largest portion of public “education”. It is far more important to teach how to catch fish than it is to merely give a fish. In this case, Emma’s “fish” are the spelling words she will be given each week. She must learn to catch them on her own and feed them back to her testers and judges.
We show Emma the paper again, remove it again, and ask of the first and second letter, as many times as necessary. After it is certain that Emma knows the first two letters, we add the third letter and go through the same process. And we don’t always ask for the letters in the same order. We somewhat randomly ask for the second, first, or third letter.
Within a short while, it is clear that now she knows the letters on that page very clearly. So we take a short break discussing her toys, boys, or whatever. About three minutes later, we ask her what the last letter of the three letters was. She hesitates.
The mind falls into modes and tends to compartmentalize processes, memories, and behaviors. Emma fell into a memorization mode wherein a word was stored. When she was distracted by discussing other facets of her life, that mode was deemed no longer important, ready to be brushed aside along with whatever data was included. We must teach her to leave the process and data intact, never to be brushed aside. So we immediately repeat the entire process as necessary to reestablish her perfect remembrance of those three letters.
That doesn’t take very long, so we add three more letters a little below the others, “D O G”. And showing her the paper, giving her a minute to study it. And removing it, we ask for the first letter of the second word. She remembers that letter quite easily, “D”. So then without showing her the paper, we ask her what the second letter of the first word was. She doesn’t hesitate, “A”. “Can you tell me what the second letter of the second word is?” She hesitates. “How about the last letter on the page?” She makes a wild guess … missing it. Laughing a little, “No, no. No fair guessing”.
We show her the paper again for a minute. “Are you ready?” She nods her head. We remove the paper and immediately ask, “Okay, hmmm… let’s see … what is the last letter on the page?” She gets it, “G”. “Alright, that’s better. So emmm… what about the first letter of the second word?” She gets that one too, “D”. “Hey, you’re doing great. The middle letter of the second word?” She hesitates and starts to just guess. Before she practices that attempt to merely guess again, we quickly slide the paper back in front of her for just 5 seconds. “Got it now?” “O”, she responds. "Good, but how about that first letter of the second word? “D”, she responds. “And the last letter?” She just starts to hesitate but then comes through with an excited “G!”. “Alright! You got it. Great.” Then a little more seriously, “But now … can you tell me what the first three letters were?” She very slowly states each letter, “C … A … T”. And the seoncd three letters? Again slowly, “Emmm … D … O … G”. “Great! You got them both!”
Most teachers would stop with that, thinking that she has learned to memorize letters and words. But we aren’t that presumptuous. We know that Emma has just gotten started instilling the memorization process in its purest form. We want it to be “hard-coded”, firmly instilled, a part of her mind, not likely to ever be forgotten. And the process is not about letters or words. It is about images. So before we go any further, we ensure that the image of the entire paper is firmly instilled. It is unimportant to us that the image is of letters and words.
“So now, tell me the third letter of the first word.” She correctly answers. “The second letter of the second word?” She correctly answers. The second letter of the first word?" She hesitates. We frown a bit and after a few seconds, pass the paper back to her. “Got it? Ready?” She confidently nods and we go again, randomly picking the letters for her to remember until there is no doubt that she knows every letter and its placement on the page. Finally, we say, “Okay, now for the final test. Start from the bottom and spell each word backs up to the top of the page.” It is important that we mention “final test” as such might later become an impeding distraction of concern or worry from the process of simply remembering. Many people fail tests merely because they were worried about being tested. It is an after effect of being too harshly judged and thus too worried about what others are going to think about what the person is doing, distracting from the actual doing.
Without much further adieu, she can easily recall every letter on the page in any order. And with that, we conclude our first lesson period with congratulations, smiles, and the recommendation that she tell her mom of her accomplishment.
It perhaps seems unreasonable to spend one day to merely learn two three letter words when each week her tests contain 20 five letter words, but when begun properly, the process clarified and firmly instilled, she will catch up fast and very soon far surpass.
The next day, we pickup from there….