Ch.29 — Insight Experiential Colleges; “Awakening the Inner Teacher”
Serializing Insight Experiential Colleges, how Women In Congress re-invented liberal arts college curriculum and teaching methods to produce graduates capable of redeeming-restoring SpaceShip Earth.
In Chapter 29, given the big impulse of Summer Conference 2033, the whole project is re-named.
Invited by Conference organizers, the Writers Room wrote the script and provided facilitators for Women’s Summer Conference (WSC2033). Almost all 20 writers attended as an attendee or as an assistant. Its unexpected positive reception proved the Writers had a hit on their hands. Now what? Attendees wanted more. On the final day, 672 signups for next year’s Conference were already paid in full.
The five-day Insight-like event changed how Writers conceived of what learning could become at New Colleges. Writers were both elated and agitated. Sunday was the last day of the training. Tuesday Writers came back together for a two-day debrief to discuss-collect learnings.
So much was learned from this Conference, based on Insight Seminars, an in-house manual was made called Group Process Rising. It became part of the teacher re-training program, required reading; and eventually, into a best-selling academic book for colleges worldwide.
The following are excerpted from chapters in this book.
From: Group Process Rising (2035)
Curriculum Writers had to face a big truth. During toxic Patriarchy (1100–2024), males were addicted to outdated talking-head formats: lecture formats, interviews; and, limited value Q&A formats. If you are male, if competition-control is your game, you prefer head-oriented formalized, machine-like group process. It’s hierarchical. It works for herding and controlling plants, cattle and people with less education than you.
Between 1965–1995, Best Practices in Group Process took many strides forward; yet, males were uninterested. Between 1965–1995, large group learning seminars, such as Insight Seminars, employed and took further a variety of these newer Best Practices. Yet, these methods were rarely if ever adapted into college classroom teaching. By 2030, this change was long overdue.
After 1990 or 1995, college course instruction methods were increasingly mired in superficial (corrupt) forms of intellectual discourse, called “deconstructionism” and “Cancel culture.”
The Writers Room began to discuss and understand what a lack of deepest-innermost values felt like to young adults — how this void directly facilitated and enabled the rise of brutal movies, brutal video games, brutal trolling and take-downs online.
College were graduating more Cultural Creatives
In the 1980s, for the first time, 63% of all us citizens had at least some college education. The “factory style,” “cattle” approach to mass education, begun in the 1880s, stopped working well. A Cultural Creatives approach should have come in — yet did not. Colleges declined correspondingly.
If your audience is college-educated, if your audience is already used to thinking for themselves — at least somewhat — they are less interested in your leadership or in how much you know. Educated learners are more and more interested in what they know and what they can learn from their own experience (see “spinning straw into gold” in Chapter 28).
To some degree, the highly educated, have internalized teachers and teaching. “When I was a child, teaching and teachers came to me from the outside. When I became a woman, I became the teacher; my teachers are alive inside me.” This is the genius of effective higher education, what it imparts. Male-thinking college administrators were too busy managing endowment funds into hedge funds. They did not notice this change. Students were too young to clearly articulate how their needs had evolved.
The group process from Scholasticism (12th century Italy) of “teacher leads, students follow” remains age-appropriate — yet only for Grades 1–5. In Grade Six and progressively up the grades and into college, the age-appropriateness of the external teacher declines precipitously (a Waldorf-methods K-12 insight).
What group process is age-appropriate for colleges? Pre-eminently, “Awakening the Inner Teacher.” External teachers and professors can only facilitate this. If you have a healthy Internal Teacher, you can learn from other people and learn from your own experience An outer teacher becomes more secondary. Writers came to understand New College college teachers would have to teach less and facilitate more in classrooms.
Academic researchers in 2045 did research and field visits to document New Colleges instructional methods. Compared to group process in colleges in 2020 and earlier, they found, 50% of group process changed. it changed away from information delivery; and towards, interpersonal and intrapersonal learning.
Q: Did colleges become “all fun and games”?
A: You wish. The balance for all the “now-oriented” face-to-face social processes was an EQUAL EMPHASIS on written papers and public speaking. In this way learners were led to develop intelligences in both brain hemispheres, intelligences in both gut-brain and head-brain.
What was the greatest art-form of the 20th century?
From Chapter 2:
quote indent
… In the “getting to know each other” phase of the Writers Room, we naturally discussed abstract topics like, “What do you believe was the greatest art form of the 20th century?” Many of us argued it must have been movies and cinema; especially given, how billions of people consume movies.
However, films and visual storytelling also have negative effects; such as, promoting gun violence; and, violence towards women.
One of our most thoughtful Writers proposed a new practical definition of “art:” ‘A social activity creating or increases personal and/or interpersonal competency, in learners and audiences. The quality of change produced, the individual and socially useful change produced, defines art.’ The Writers Room found this tremendously useful for conceiving of new courses, lesson plans and writing assignments.
Looked at thru this lens, 60 hour personal growth seminar trainings were easily the greatest art-form of the 20th century — even if participants numbered only in the hundreds-of thousands.
Many observers consider Insight Seminars head and shoulders above the other 60 hour seminars. Without promoting any one religion, only truly human values; and, a heartfelt look and feel, Insight’s large group experiences promote the benefits of looking inside, self-enquiry and reality testing; in short, living the more examined life. Insight proved, if produced and executed with a heartfelt look and feel, a large group learning seminar can travel across all international language and cultural barriers. …
From Chapter 3:
How large male-led institutions failed
No simple answer here. Over two months of Monday Lunch With Experts, the pattern of failure in all cultural institutions was explored, discussed and debated. What was learned? The pattern is cultural institutions fail primarily from the top down. Once adult group process at the top loses its heartfelt quality, democratic processes at lower levels deteriorates, becomes mere ritual and habit. Reversing this trend without outside consultants skilled in Best Practices in Group Process is difficult to impossible. The quality of group process in an org defines its culture.
As more and more worker-owned businesses were finding out in the 2030s, simply having a building, low overhead, congenial workmates, low debt and high consumer demand — did not guarantee a harmonious workplace. Worker-owned businesses could become hierarchical and unhappy places to work almost as quickly as corporate workplaces.
What’s the crucial difference? The health and quality of face-to-face adult relations …
From Chapter 5:
What are “Best Practices”?
Eventually a definition emerged: If method X, or Y or Z is beneficial to the 99% of people, to 99% of animal life, to 99% of the oceans, air and forests — AND — likely to be beneficial for the next seven generations — X or Y or Z is a Best Practice for Team Human and SpaceShip Earth. …
… Culture in the 2030s could no longer afford to preserve old males norms, ideas, methods and rhetoric.
How to redeem and repair culture? The New College War Room and Writers Room were determined to explore this question to its brick-and-mortar solutions.
If college graduates do not learn healthy values of social acceptance and tolerance in college — it’s unlikely graduates will learn these values out in the corporate world. In corporate culture, too often primitive defaults of selfishness, prejudice, bias, superstition and blame (scapegoating) dominate. …
Sharing world Best Practices in group process
Our aim in New Colleges is “Relationship competency” or “interpersonal competency” for women first, then for men. Mothers teach the children. Women teach the men. How to teach the women? Constructivist (hands-on, face-to-face practice) in a lively variety of formats. Don’t prescribe this; don’t talk about it. Demonstrate and allow learners to experience “relationship competency.” …
… New Colleges Project began with; and maintained, a strong commitment-consensus to emotional transparency. “Emotional transparency is the new sexy.” …
From chapter 11:
Learning to teach less, facilitate more
Once an individual has a healthy Internal Teacher, he or she can more easily learn from other people; and, from your own experience. Outer teachers become more secondary.
Women intuited this was the genius of effective higher education; at its best, what it imparts to students wiling to learn. External teachers and professors can model and facilitate Awakening the Inner Teacher. To varying degrees, worthy external teachers become internalized. …
NOT “group instruction”
The first few weeks of the Writers Room were fraught with anxiety. We knew Blueprint of WE could NOT be expanded much beyond its domain in marriages, professional partnerships and workplace teams. BofWe made good sense as something to teach in new Colleges; yet, not as a general all purpose instructional method.
We also knew 12th century Italian Scholasticism, was inappropriate for teaching Cultural Creatives; or, to invite more learners to self-identify as Creatives. Writers were astounded again and again how male-oriented, Patriarchy-oriented, 12th century Italian Scholasticism persisted uninterpreted in K-12 and colleges. For example: “Scholastic Education provides a wide range of literacy solutions for the classroom: whole class instruction with print and digital materials, small group instruction for guided reading and student book clubs, and independent reading.” — http://teacher.scholastic.com/education/literacy-instruction.htm
With this new education, Writers noticed what was conspicuous by its absence in college textbooks. Missing was:
- Teaching to multiple intelligences,
- Cooperative, collaborative learning methods,
- Teaching social-emotional literacy, and
- Teaching critical thinking to equip learners to deal with daily onslaughts of advertising and propaganda.
To convey competency in any of the above requires engaging methods far beyond, “open brain, add information, test periodically, graduate when full” (Barbara Schell, NorthCarolina Waldorf School). …
From Chapter 12:
Early LGLS Abuses
Q: Didn’t encounter and therapy groups of the 1960s-1970s become a thing of the past by 1980?
A: No, they did not. Instead they bifurcated, becoming many different therapeutic methods, half more feeling-oriented; the other half, more thinking-oriented.
In the earliest 1960s-1970s, live therapy-encounter groups, authentic self-connection and heartfelt encounters with others was only hit-or-miss. Growth groups 1960–1978 were more issue-oriented and trainer-dominated. The main tools were the trainer’s personal charisma; and, whatever skill they had defusing-transforming unresolved issues in individuals; and, between group members. An excellent book exists on this era of human potential history, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (2011) by Jeffrey John Kripal.
Tho there was much of value from the early Gestalt-Esalen-TA days, the movement needed to be purified of mere cults of personality.
In researching and studying Insight Seminars, Writers had to face the dark side of large group learning seminars (LGLS) prior to Insight. There were abuses. We Writers wanted to learn from earlier errors so we don’t inadvertently replicate the dark side of group therapies in New Colleges. We also knew if New Colleges curriculum looked too much like early LGLSs, this would attract bad publicity. The worst aspects of early large group therapy trainings would be dredged up and thrown at New Colleges.
Old LGLSs failings fell into two main categories:
- Too much power and authority in on person, the “guru problem,” and
- Pyramid sales-enrollment-marketing schemes.
A sub-committee of three writers volunteered to spend a fraction of work hours to research, summarize and report on the history of LGLS which did manipulate attendees; and, LGLSs as financial pyramid schemes.
Over the next couple months, this resulted in several papers which became required reading for all Writers. Excerpts:
The guru problem
Inconvenient truths had to be faced. Some early group facilitators did veer into cult-like behaviors. Useful as many innovations were, all the earliest LGLSs trainers had, as their underlying mythology, the outdated model of un-timely, Patriarchal, power-over, win~lose, top-down organization.
Consequently many attendees became mired in vague, cultish behavior and jargon. This could happen with New Colleges teacher-facilitators if we are not careful.
LGLS as pyramid schemes
‘Pyramid-scheme-like aspects’ of early-mid LGLSs are not easy to separate from the healthy aspects of ‘share the good news.’ A large fraction of recent graduates did experience an emotional high and were only too happy to promote their friends and family into whichever training series they were involved in.
A large fraction of encounter groups 1965–1975 were leader-driven and veered into cult-like abuses. Starting roughly 1980, when Insight Seminars pioneered a heartfelt look and feel for LGLSs, the market as a whole — and facilitators as a group — gradually shifted this direction, some training orgs more than others.
The ‘pyramid-scheme-like aspects’ of LGLSs 1965–1979 were reduced to a large degree by Insight Seminars success. Insight demonstrated even more enrollments and money could be generated without manipulative marketing. What attracted more Creatives to Insight was not sales hype but two things earlier LGATS had little of: One was a heartfelt look and feel. the other was a healthy, positive, ecumenical spirituality. …
To Learn More
Rise and fall of Leadership Dynamics and Mind Dynamics — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Everett
- Irvin Yalom’s research on how early therapy groups evolved [towards Insight Seminars]
- 1970s group therapy maxims reformulated by Irvin Yalom
- Irwin Yalom comments on Lifespring
- What kind of group facilitator gets the best results for a group? — https://www.yalom.com/theory-and-practice-encounter-groups
From Chapter 15:
Learning thru interactive, social Partner exercises
Combining group discussion with thoughtful papers was very effective for dis-abusing college students, male and female, about the dangers, deadfalls and hidden minefields of toxic male agency. Human agency — in a word, “decisiveness” — is simply another two-edged sword. It can cut for the good or cut for the bad.
In this way college learners were dis-abused of the last 200 years of male errors, disasters and catastrophes, how and why this resulted in a gender crisis where women took over most jobs and virtually all leadership positions. All of this was given the positive spin of, “Ask not what SpaceShip Earth can do for you; ask what you can do for SpaceShip Earth.”
IN THIS WAY Insight’s language and thinking about live classroom learning with exercise sequences greatly influenced in the minds of the Writers Room.
Why text-formats alone are NOT effective at conveying social skills
Women asked, “Why had books and text-formats proven so ineffective to convey social skills competence under male leadership?”
After WSC2033, Writers began to understand how ineffective book-learning was for increasing emotional and interpersonal competency. Reading and text-based learning can only be the tail of the dog. The body of the dog is always going to be live, in-person, face-to-face experiments. Why? Because it is the behaviors we practice, where, healthier interpersonal habits are gained or lost. Live practice and experiments is where new behaviors become new habits, upgraded habits.
Q: Why does reading and study work for a few but not many people?
A: The few people who can learn a great deal about relationships and interpersonal competency are already empathic learners. Their “empathy gene” is already switched on, usually from a young age. They already know how to take another person’s experience and feelings inside them — and learn from these. Children are normally extraverted. Young, empathic learners are among the more introverted minority of children. They have the challenge of learning to be successful in a world of extroverts.
This right here, in the above paragraphs, was a BIG take-away for the Writers Room. It gave them a whole new perspective on how to arrange a four year curriculum to invite more students — not only dyed in the wool introverts — opportunity — thru guided practice — to switch on their empathy; to enable, “learning from ‘the experience of others.”
How do you teach empathy? This question too was raised. The best answer turned out to be, voicing how NOT to tach empathy:
- “Critical race theory” blaming one race for the unhappiness of another race,
- “Bleeding heart liberals,” sympathy is NOT the same as empathy. Sympathy is “feeling for.” Empathy is “feeling with” while remaining connected with your own Self, and
- Service projects widely promoted. These were too often “virtue signaling.”
What does work to teach empathy? Well, this is what the Writers of the Communications Course were tasked with. Their story follows after the remaking of “Sports” into a “Games” curriculum.
Only face-to-face practice, guided practice, works. Attempts to make Sensitivity Groups into a ‘science’ of T-groups (therapy groups 1965–1975) or EQ and EQ 2.0 1995–2011 were all failures. Why? They were too serious, too head-oriented, not FUN; and, missed the necessity of a heartfelt look and feel.
What is helpful for students who learn auditorially, is recordings and transcripts of successful group process and one-on-one sessions conducted by very experienced therapists. This too was learned from the five days of an Insight-like Women’s Summer Conference.
It became abundantly clear to Writers people can learn some new relational habits more quickly and more deeply by practicing them in dyads, groups small and large — if skillfully facilitated. Insight Seminars methods of structured dyads, structured small groups; and, structured “room divides” were all experimented with in the five days. Writers took notes and assessed audience responses for what could be improved. It became clear, people, especially Cultural Creatives, CRAVE positive win-win, team experiences.
End of two-day Writers debrief
The debrief was recorded. Learnings, techniques and methods of the five day training began to be incorporated into classroom lesson plans. New College classroom instruction evolved mightily. The five-day seminar profoundly changed how theWar Room and Writers Room conceived of what New Colleges could become.
Memo from Writers to War Room
The writers circulated a memo up to the War Room.
Begin quote
Impressed as we are with Insight Seminars, reviewing the history of LGLSs, the Writers Room accepts the fact abuses of power occurred With any education organization, the possibilities for abuse of power, influence-over-others, are ever-present.
There was pressure on grads to support pyramid schemes selling enrollments for future and advanced trainings. The more Writers researched the large group trainings, the more experts we talked to, the more we understood how meditation, yoga and healthy mindfulness spread widely in the West. We conclude more good than evil was done many times over.
Early LGLS abuses was a good example of what happens when power-social influence in the hands of leaders, exceeds the moral-ethical development of these leaders. New Colleges cannot be schools for training ministers of any faiths. Yet, training in ethical-moral development for all students is crucial and must be on-going year to year. This is also the best way to prevent graduating Gordon Gekkos who evangelize, “Business is always good because greed is good.”
Add to this, a large fraction, over 50%, of enrollment activity pyramid schemes faded after 1979–1980 when Insight Seminars demonstrated more money could be generated with two things earlier LGATS did not have:
One was a heartfelt look and feel. The second was an ecumenical spirituality “plank.” Briefly, ecumenical spirituality translates to acceptance and tolerance of diverse faith approaches. Both of these are discussed at length in Group Process Rising.
This is also “interfaith.” This defines spirituality as more similar than different across all religions and faiths. Hence individuals aligned with service to self; and, service to others can come together harmoniously. Ecumenical spirituality accepts persons of all faiths and paths, as long as they do not inflict their beliefs on others; and, do focus on service to self; and, service to others. Calm, tolerant behavior towards other regions is a breath of fresh air for many who have experienced criticism; or even violence, simply for what they do or do not believe.
By emphasizing these two values, The Writers believe the door is shut on a great deal of temptation to use New Colleges and Women’s Summer Conferences solely as money making schemes.
end Q
The War Room was very happy to receive this memo. It suggested the Writers Room was aligned with the vision coming down from Women In Congress.
Shortly after, the War Room invited the Writers Room to a joint session with Insight Seminars. The topic? Discuss the significance and ramification of changing the name of the project from “New Colleges” to “Insight Experiential Colleges.” This was approved by all parties.
After all the change induced by Summer Conference 2033, the debrief; and, name change, many principals felt like they were at a new beginning.
