God's Investment Plan

107,602,707,791 people are estimated to have lived on earth since 50,000 BC. Each one has played a role in the history of man and the evolution of our knowledge and understanding of everything.  Each person wants to understand their purpose in the big picture of God's plan, but none are able to do it with total confidence.

To improve our ability to grasp the magnitude of the problem, a comparison with the human body can be made.  We have learned that our cells all have unique purposes and, based on their type and location in the systems of the body, each have a very important contribution to make.  As with people, cells live different lengths of time.  There are about 200 different types of cells in our bodies, but there are 100,000,000,000,000 eukaryotic [living, individual, reproducing] cells in the body.  That number exceeds many times the total number of humans that have ever lived.  Realize that the body as a whole lives many times longer than most of the individual cells that define it.  In this mental model we must imagine ourselves as individual cells in the body of humanity.  The mystery of life then becomes analogous to the pondering of any single cell on the impact that it has on the overall mission of the body in which it lives. Imagine answering the question asked by a single mucous cell as to how it is going to contribute to any achievements that the body itself will realize. 

As with the mucous cell it is not possible for any one of us to understand the mission of the body that we compose.  The body of humanity, as far as we know, has lived for over 52,000 years, but we as individuals are privileged to have contributed a mere single human lifetime to God's plan.  The Bible is a history record looking back without revealing the future plan in detail.

Not knowing the big picture creates a problem.  It means that we must have an action directive in order to honor our best potential.  God provided this directive in the best instruction possible through the demonstration of His nature through the life of Jesus Christ.  Jesus showed us how to act and as importantly, how to LISTEN!

Jesus said on the cross, "Father forgive them; for they know not what they do."  It is obvious that we do not have the capacity to understand but we are forgiven!  We must LISTEN to that smallest voice in our minds for the guidance that we need to choose well at each moment of our lives,  If we do that, we will make the correct choices and not be a wasted resource in God's investment plan.

Learning Wheels - Published August 2013

"Learning Wheels"

Living in the world today, each of us is challenged with the need to learn and teach, but waiting for others to provide for our needs in these areas is not a wise strategy.  Learning Wheels merges systems and learning theory to provide a new way to deal with this challenge.

Learning Opportunities are easy to see, but they are normally in a state of chaos and rarely fully exploited.  The mental models presented in this book can act as a vaccination against that chaos and provide a springboard to getting more out of every learning opportunity.  Note that only you need to change in order to benefit from these concepts. 

The thesis of this book is; “If we as individuals can learn to be aware of learning opportunities and if we can couple that awareness with the skills required to adapt to the situational nature of each opportunity, we can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of learning for ourselves and others.”

The Continuum Concept

I love the continuum concept.  When we create continuum we define concepts in terms of extremes. (“Warm” --- “Hostel”) or (“Dominant” --- “Submissive”) 

These models are easy to visualize and are excellent ways to create behavioral models used in teaching and group facilitation.

In the context of God it is not quite the same.  In that context a continuum, to be accurately expressed can only be (“God” --- “Absence of God”).  Sin is many times defined as “Absence of God”

A trap is created when we replace “Absence of God” with another entity such as Satan in that it gives equal power to that named entity.  The entity is then inferred to have a conscience and maybe even an agenda.  

How many times have we found ourselves trying to balance “Good” with “Evil?”  The false continuum I describe here sets us up for many mental errors.  The result is that many times we become confused and turn to blaming God for allowing His Absence to rule.  It's not even logical!

The fact is that it is our individual responsibility to recognize that we are in God.  His voice is there to help us in the form of the Holy Spirit that Jesus taught us.  

Forget Satan!  He does not exist if we face reality, all of the possibilities, including the universe, God, the "I Am."  Facing God we can live the model that Jesus created when he said, "Get thee behind me Satan!"

"I Am" Face to Face

The beauty of God’s world is revealed by the mathematical principle of multiplication.  For example: One God = 1 Holy Spirit x 1 Father x 1 Son, the one in Three.  The equation can even be extended to include each of us as 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 still equals “The One”, the I Am, The Living God.

The problem with us as individuals is that we see with a finite ability to understand reality.  Our understanding is based on the mathematical principle of addition.  We think in terms of 1 + 1 + 1 = 3.  We count things, time and people and see multiplication as a more efficient way to add.  As we add our diversity of opinion the numbers increase with time and imagination approaching infinity.  The more we learn the more we realize we do not understand.

At some point in our lives we realize that one number is constantly decreasing, the number of days until we return to the way it was before we were born. 

Pondering the end of life we again are offered the opportunity to see “I Am” face to face.  Once we start to see the true nature of God we can see the “All in One principle” again.  What we do and believe matters, but in the big picture it changes nothing.  In God all things are possible including the Good and Bad acts and events of life, but in the end God remains the one, “I Am”

The perpetual presence of God's Grace. . . . . .

Some say that blessings come one day at a time. I have found that they come much more frequently than that!

Are We Returning to the Middle Ages?

Educators have known since Socrates that maximizing exchange with and between students while encouraging conversation and debate, to be a key to improving learning.  

Today's teachers are frustrated by the fact that they cannot pursue those and other effective approaches because of a myriad of reasons.  The bottom line is that we do design Learning Events, but they are only partially effective at allowing or encouraging learners to function interactively.  

Students all too often, aside from their immediate circle of friends, are not involved with nor do they have any desire to know what their classmates are interested in or what they have found to be easy or difficult.  In college lecture settings with lecture halls full of students, Learning Events are more like concerts than classes.  In those settings learning is very much an individual affair.  

The current trend in education is toward less emphasis on dialog between learners.  Teachers today must rely on what test results tell them.  Some experimental schools are taking this model even further as they encourage independent study and self-paced learning.  Computer Managed Instruction models use algorithms to make decisions as to what the student needs next and when they have reached competency in a particular subject.  Technology has allowed teacher span-of-control to increase reducing costs, but with a corresponding reduction in time available for one-on-one instruction.  

In these new schools teachers use their time to manage learning problems, as signaled by the Computer Managed Instruction algorithm.  Typically small group sessions are only conducted with groups of students having similar challenges. 

I find it interesting that in this model the students who have the easiest time learning the content are the ones that get the least opportunity to work in groups, a destructive archetype.  

Yes, our current education systems and new innovations do create "Learning" although more self-contained.  

We need to look very carefully at the impact being made in the area of Online Education. 

Albert Einstein said: “I fear the day that technology will surpass or human interaction.  The world will have a generation of idiots.”

Each new program struggles with Einstein’s humorous insight currently being demonstrated by the contradictions being created.  For example; How to be online or distant and meet the need for contact with the teacher and other students?  Such contradictions create complicating concepts and new terminologies emerge in the vocabulary of training design.  We now have descriptive terms like Distance Education, Residency Requirement, Asynchronous and Synchronous Learning, Online Education, E-learning, Computer-Based Training, Computer Managed Instruction all provided to help describe available options.  

The process of choosing a college or degree program has become more complicated than ever.  Those in the process of making those decisions today have begun to realize that having a degree means little if the holder does not have true competence in the subject.  No successful company is going to compensate us for incompetence, at least for long.  

It is true that technology has opened many new avenues in education, but has also impacted the quality of training effectiveness and the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. 

Impact of Human Capital

The importance of having people in the right assignments cannot be over stressed.  Developing and positioning people are key responsibilities for all managers.  When we focus on “people” we learn quickly that it is important to see them as “individuals.”  Successful companies have started to look at the competency requirements in their organizations and matching the competencies of its individual people to those roles.  The result of this approach is predictable in that each person is found to have a unique set of abilities and learning needs leading to establishment of individual training plans with ownership and responsibility for execution of those plans being shared between the employee and their manager.  Today’s managers many times do not have the time or expertise to handle these new important responsibilities.  

Transitioning to this type environment and making it work is extremely difficult, particularly for older well established organizations.  Training and development organizations also are challenged to change and must adapt to a model resembling a cafeteria format from what was probably more like a home style restaurant.  The need for competency evaluation becomes critical and those evaluations must be timely and accurate.   As the need to create Project Teams, Change Management Teams and other small organizations with specific progress missions emerge we start to see the importance of accurately understanding the learning needs of each individual and how to balance their abilities and needs within each organization.  The question becomes: “Does the team have the balance of skills needed to accomplish the mission?”  Each person is actually a unique System offering unique sets of explicit and tacit knowledge that ultimately define their ability to add value.  The ultimate question becomes, "What can you do?” not, "What can you discuss?"  Adding value is the ultimate requirement of us all. 

Value Creation is the joint responsibility of each employee and management.

We used to think that the best way to train people was to make them all alike.  We would test against a standard set of criteria and then train to make everyone equal.  We would not focus on what we already knew, but work diligently on what you did not know.  Everyone would work on things that did not know or like while and not devoting time to work on the things in which they excelled. 

Imagine an orchestra being managed in that manner.

Variability in knowledge is one of the components of diversity.  The question becomes: “Is diversity extra weight or GOLD?”  We must not forget that with great diversity comes great opportunity. 

Essay on Technical Education

On Sunday (13 April, 2008) I watched the show "Awareness" on WISTV and was inspired to share with you some of my ideas in this short essay.

During that program it was stated that we have approximately a 25% drop-out rate at about the 9^th grade level in South Carolina. The entire first segment Sunday was on the future of these drop-outs, particularly as it relates to their future job availability. The thing that I think was missing in the discussion during that show was any articulation of why these people tend to drop out at about the 9th grade level. There continues to be a need to work on the "before 9th grade" part of the problem.

Our current system of education in South Carolina in some cases is simply functioning as a filter, not an educator. The majority of the dialog that I have seen in the media recently was between college graduates that, to that 25% group, appear to be the academically elite talking about how to go to college and how to persuade or enable everyone to be like them.

It is evident, even when shown as good examples in the media, those that do go back to school and earn their GED and even beyond, are put in a special and separate category.

The SC Technical Colleges are spinning themselves as a means to get to and through a four-year college degree. I have watched the process over the last forty years that have led to the SC Technical Colleges current success of now being acceptable for college credit for most of the major universities.

In my opinion this success has come at a price regarding the original focus and even the current Mission and Vision of Technical Education in our state.  The 25% that are dropping out of school early are the ones that today, for multiple reasons, cannot see themselves surviving in an academic path. Humiliated, maybe even covertly, they just give up. There is truly no path obvious to this group that makes them want to continue. We need a means for these people to know about and see as viable the other options available to them. They need to be able to "drop-into", a different path of education.

When the Technical Schools were created in the 1960s, they did a better job of representing an alternative path. One could actually build a Life Strategy that ended with developing and applying a marketable skill obtained at a SC Technical school. It was possible to choose that path and not be seen as some sort of non-performer.

Presently some of our Technical Schools seem to be "Want-to-be-Universities". In this current environment I wonder what the ratio is between time/resources spent negotiating with the universities to achieve transfer accreditation and time/resources spent in working with industry to determining curriculum changes needed to stay in touch with industrial needs.

And even further, the loss of agility to make desired/recommended changes due to the impact on previously achieved agreements on accreditation. Do we even have the knowledge base or time availability of staff to accurately assess the industrial need Vs current curriculum?

Today, advisers at all grade levels must be aware of the message that is received when the student that they are helping make life strategy decisions realize that they, the adviser, and most these recruiters and professors that now work in the Technical School organization chose the four-year (or higher) degree path. There is a need for mentors to be examples of where we are advising the student to go. One problem is that we almost hide our non-four year successes. Pure Technical School Graduates are not celebrated. They, the graduates, in many cases are not proud of the source of their education.

To be effective as a mentor to that target 25% group one has to be able to show how they did it without ever having achieved that four year degree. A mentor holding a Ph.D. cannot do it!

In summary, the current risk and reality is that the Technical Schools are being sold largely as another bridge to the place that 25% group, cannot see themselves going. The feeling is that if they go to Tech and do not eventually achieve their four year degree they risk never feeling the pride of success.

If we continue on our current path our Technical Schools will simply blend into the higher education landscape without being distinguished as that much needed alternative path.

As with all progress we must plan strategy from where we are. The answer is not to undo all of the good things that have been done, but to restore the good part of our history that has been abandoned.

Essay by: David C. Mims – Sr.

AAS/EET Midlands-Technical College, Columbia South, Carolina (Honors 1970)