Moshe D. Caspi/Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Everywhere: A Creative Self-Education Approach

FOR MY STUDENTS:

Welcome Everyone's a mythological hero or heroine, looking for a version of the Elixir of Life. This is the archetype of creative self-education: something's missing, someone's looking for it.

The life of the mythological hero has invariant fea- tures. The hero is compelled to undergo fateful stages, journey to specific places, endure trials, disasters, dan- gerous beings.

First the call (the urge, the more than human im- perative), then the setting out. The hero, leaving home (regular schooling), journeys toward the challenge. He has to assert the hero in himself through tests of cour- age, cleverness, and endurance. He is provided with hints, clues, a talisman. He meets remarkable beings (overcomes the malignant ones, receives the blessings of the benign ones). He moves in strange spheres, en- counters new catastrophes, new miracles testing his re- sources. Finally, he discovers, steals the desired elixir (knowledge or love or youth). Now he plans a splendid return, but must first ward off the previous owners of the treasure. He hatches elaborate schemes. He returns. Homecoming is a cause for celebration--amusement-- fear--new challenge.

Must we continue to acquiesce in the disastrous neglect of children and teachers in educational set- tings? They almost never nurse a dream--summons --departure--search--courage---enchanted meeting-- miracles----discovery--return--joy. Let's then create conditions favorable to creative self-education, instead of half-heartedly attempting to patch up the formal edifice.

Architecture and environment furnish a few of the conditions favoring improved education. The guide- lines set out below provide most of the conditions, as long as the children, teachers, aims, methods, contents, and environment are not fixed together mechanically.

It shouldn't be too difficult to establish some work- hag environments and to apply them to any educational setting.

Interchange/Vol. 7, No. 4/1976-77

The rooms we have in mind are: the Common- Sense Room; the Fantasy Room; the Blow-Up and Elaboration Room; the Excavation of Dead Days Room; the Updating Laboratory of the Present; the Planning, Optimalization, and Maximalization Room; and the Personal (X) Room.

In and from these rooms we penetrate the world of the Egosphere, the Sociosphere, the Ecosphere, and the Cosmosphere. 1

One can enter each room from everywhere anytime. There is no relevant or irrelevant, important or un- important space or room. After the first question, How do you begin from the beonrting?, the main question is: Where are you now? When and how will you enter one of the rooms?

Our topic, en passant, is X, where X represents . . . but we will discuss that later.

The Common-Sense Room This room seems the easiest to design. Consequently it's the most difficult to build--in our distorted, neurotic world, the simpler a thing is, the more complicated it becomes. It can be described as a plain ageometric form, with simple walls, simple colors, simple ceiling, and clean air. If you like you can hang simple draw- ings and paintings, and drape the usual curtains on the windows . . , but if you didn't first visit the Fantasy Room, it might be difficult to explain to others its com- monness and simplicity.

Anyway, we're here now, and grasp what common sense and simplicity mean. The occupants are able to think clearly, because there's no one to disturb them. There are no shelves, no books , . . , pencils but no erasers . . , common everyday instruments, empty cabi- nets, a n d . . . (fill in other things needed). (Most edu- cationalists, I know, will need to place--I don't know why--the usual desks in this room, and heap them with blank sheets; "graphed" tables, "arithmetized" sheets; usual chairs.)

A festival of common sense all the t i m e . . , only spontaneous, simple, and direct information, be it pro- jected, played, or written, about the simplest things in

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this world. Why are people afraid? Why do they love, work,

fight? How? How does a simple instrument, a watch for instance,

function, get broken, fixed? Why? No one drives away the free-floating clouds of pre-

judice in this room; no one punctures the hovering bal- loons of superstition; no one disconnects the telephones of gossip and rumor; no one opens the obliging encyclo- pedia, which a teacher may have left (by mistake?). In this room, no one corrects mistakes or fallacies; no one changes anyone's habits.

Everyone enjoys the optical, auditory, and kinesthe- tic phenomena; everyone loses oneself (someone wants out into the Fantasy Room); everyone dips into the kitty of folk-tales, folk-songs, folk-dance, riddles, puz- zles, jokes, parables; everyone laughs, cries, is afraid; everyone enjoys the shining figures of speech and folk- wisdom of one's culture and all cultures; everyone en- joys seeing, identifying, evaluating the movements of friends, eiders, animals, plants, even the memories of forebears; everyone enjoys seeing how silly the others are when they disagree; everyone . . .

The necessary key-rings for this room are: - -Enter the room but not into role-playing. ---Be yourself as you really are (don't overdo and don't underdo your virtues and vices), ---Don't be oversophisticated; take advantage of all your common senses. - - . . . (Add another key) . . .

Try to plan and design a space that will help you toward: ---A quick, comprehensive insight into what each visitor to the room knows about the topic X: kinds of informa- tion, their extent, the ways they are organized. Methods of utilizing the information. ---A quick, comprehensive insight into what each visitor Jeels about the problem: anxieties, indifference, enthu- siasm; prejudices, superstitions, wishes. - - A quick, comprehensive insight into each individual's motivations: kind of motivation, its extent, intensity, what activities are encouraging, personal aspirations. - -The spontaneous expression of the inner-world of each individual: what is troubling, levels of awareness, fields of association, self-image, various sensitivities. --Immediate responses to what is worthwhile doing: how to approach the subject, what kind of skills and techniques to use, how to organize. ---Experiencing one's boundaries: idiosyncratic expres- sion and instinctive, spontaneous, whole body responses in all the relevant domains, especially sensory and motor expression. --Practicing useful techniques for the organization of what the individuals in the room have learned about their entering behavior. ---Avoiding the danger of: one-dimensionality in the responses of superficiality; oversophistication at the ex-

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pense of spontaneity; overdramatization at the expense of sincerity. - - . . . (Add other functions) . . .

The Fantasy Room If you have already had a fantasy room of your own, this is an easy room to design and construct. Unlimited possibilities are offered to anyone who has forgotten (who hasn't?) how to fantasize, explore, get curious, combine in a fresh way. There is a poet in all of us who dies when we are young.

The room has a surrealistic shape. Its architecture is meta-naturalistic, its interior decoration derives from the unconscious or superconscious. Every unexpected corner conceals unexpected experiences. Fantastic music (neither angel-like nor computer-like) rever- berates through the room in modulating intensities, colors, rhythms: in one comer, extraordinary calm music; in a second, the strident rhythms of combative nature; in a third, the music of the enchanted brain; in an opposite comer, the music of the impossible; and in the . . .

We are in all possible situations. We live in the Fantasy Room with all our being. We bend to decipher hieroglyphs, olfactory codes. Vibrating combinatorics flash; virtuoso gadgets and instruments analyze and syn- thesize. Varieties of ESP occupy a small shelf in one comer, 87 kinds of divination another. Chairs built out of organic matter throb in space. Runes and charms are woven into carpets and cognitive maps. Inventions not yet invented beg to be your building-blocks. Divi- nations slide from the shelves; and the cloud and earth divination, wind and blood, fire and water, dream and death, mountains and Takes, coffee and liver, conduct an irregular happening at 11 : 00 a.m. The opaque and transparent, the dull and the shining, forecast every- one's future-present and fantasy problems now- always-never . . .

Three pounds of gray matter in the decorated kit of several dozen pounds of other matter are getting excited. They select, combine, control, reorganize all the impossibilities. The walls of the room contract and expand to a subtle rhythm, and in time to the heartbeats of everyone seated here. Windows are telescopic. Every- thing in infinite space can be seen from them, though everything changes according to the vision of the ob- server. Exotic tastes and smells overcome even the suf- ferer from sinusitis.

Everyone can do whatever one likes with one's body. Or else nothing (no check at the exit, no test, no follow-up report). Everyone . . .

Everyone's somebody else, he's she, she's he. No one pricks the colored bubbles of the reverie;

nobody wears sunglasses against the tanning of the mind's eye; n o b o d y . . .

The room is crammed with games and entertain- ments, latent, concealed, sensual-functional . . . . New

prospects penetrate the walls; ideas step smilingly into their opposites. The soul's opera directs itself, an un- mystical experience gaily wipes the nose of its ex- periencers.

A roomful of fantasy instruments rescues the users of this room from stereotypes. They're up in arms against reason and even common sense; they enrich the anxious word; they scalp guilt feelings and distorting obligations; they dig the grave of efficiency, criticalness, and other deadly poisons. Hesitations are chemically dissolved at the threshold.

The necessary key-rings for entering this room are: - -P lay all possible roles (impossible ones also). ---Be what you always wanted to be, also what you dream of being. ---Forget your deliberating self. - - . . . ( ) . . .

Try to plan and design a space that will at least help you toward: --Imagining, intuiting, playing the desirable, the pos- sible, and the plausible in the topic (for a little while) ; imagining the fantastic, the utopian, the unfeasible, and the impossible (for a long while); proceeding from a unidimensional to a four-dimensional image, and even to n-dimensional images. - -The generation and production of abundant alterna- tives, opportunities, radical modifications, revolution- ary changes, varied points of view. ---Acquiring techniques for the production of ideas, images, hypotheses. --Invention of new objectives for X, new ways and gadgets, new modes of planning and designing, imple- mentation and elaboration, evaluation and control, get- ting feedback and forefeeding. ----Designing (imaginary or practical) new maps of reality (e.g., a map combining dreams, flowers, and a tower) ; unknown and unconventional portraits of per- sonalities, events, places, etc., related to the topic; un- connectable connections between parts of the topic. --Speculations (savage, theoretical reflections without a base) concerning the conditions in which X will be realized without restrictions of time, personnel, money, etc. --Creating farcical situations, farcical games, etc., for acquiring new insights and different points of view, in addition to relaxation and discharge of tension. --Avoiding the danger of: escapism as the sole pur- pose of staying in this room; rigidity, closedness, the fear of making a fool of oneself (as a condition and a process in opening up toward the other aims of this room). - - . . . ( ) . . .

The Blow-Up and Elaboration Room The personalities of some people almost never impel them. They wait to be given the order of the rooms, the time to be spent there, and the things to do.

This is a constantly expanding room interlocking with everywhere. Microscopic enlargements and aerial photographs are coaxed into maps. Films record pro- cesses. A musical theme has its special variation, per- sonally adapted and arranged by the listener. A delicate gastronomic smell greets you at the threshold. Entry allows you the recipe. You learn the chemical compo- sition of the ingredients, rules for combining and re- combining them, the calorie content, the aesthetic gestalt, preparation, the reactions of the guests, their arrangement at the table, the kinds o f . . .

Combining the level of the Common-Sense Room with the level of the Fantasy Room, the oldest kind of elaboration and extension visible in this room is the mythological extension. Our primary endeavor is to explain, extend, relate, and establish what human beings, at all times, have hoped for, looked for, or found meaning in--working out of huge ignorance, and employing non-discursive, non-rational, non-empiric, and unsystematic methods.

Such elaboration and extension of this nature seem chaotic and arbitrary to the superficial observer, but at second glance--and this room consists of second and third glances--it's clear that mythological elaboration, like any other form of elaboration, has its own delicate logic (which isn't confined to the understanding of the anthropologist). Patterns, recurring motifs, dance- movement-ritual scores, a hunting poem, the legend patiently unfolded, demonstrate even to a child that the most "primitive" creation or product is a quite complex and deliberate process, taking shape in some "primitive" Elaboration and Blow-Up Room, or person somewhere.

The technological extension is the best known series of elaborations and extensions, for most of the Western Sociosphere. This room exemplifies this series of ex- tensions. First through the special and highly adaptable materials of which it is constructed, then through the sophisticated programming of the instruments and tech- nological products it contains, and last through its applied use of the technological extending processes themselves. Our huge sensory, motoric, social and ad- ministrative, informative-intellectual limitations require these technological extensions. (Marshall McLuhan and R. Buckminster Fuller haunt this room.) All is made possible by the huge stock of specific and general- izable knowledge and by planning abilities and strat- egies (enumerated, but not tried out, in the Lab of the Present). All these types of elaboration are reinforced by the "Controlled ImaDnation Super Nuclear Facili- tator" dominating the center. Children enlist all the scopes--micro, tele, bio---miniaturized transport, new clothes and houses (extensions of the skin), computers and new artificial intelligences...

The third extension is the symbolic, which includes the artistic, the ideological, several scientific ap- proaches, futuristic elaboration. These are the modern, complex counterparts of the mythological (naturally

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there are a number of modern mythological extensions also, but not in the primary, unconscious sense above). Most of our symbolizing is a response to our deficien- cies, our ignorance, doubt, conflict, tension. This is the basement of symbolism. In the third room,-" however, the symbolism isn't a response to our poverty but to our abundance: curiosity, play, expression, reorganization, exploration.

The social-educational is the fourth extension. It's concerned with psycho-social problems (group dy- namics, moral cohesion) and the improvement of com- munications and social living. In general, this extension concerns itself with "process-solving" and the other ex- tensions are concerned with "product-solving." Of course, social elaboration can connect with product- solving (for example, developing a new kind of school).

The fifth extension is the best known. This is the logical elaboration--reasoning, deliberation, etc. The blow-up process here is an individual elaboration pro- cess in the Egosphere. Possible conflicts between the individual elaborator and the team should receive more attention than they have till now. The work-stages, to- gether with the personal and social variations inherent in each elaboration or extension, are not reduced here to mechanical and closed methodologies or a priori techniques, some of them recommended in the literature supposedly dealing with creativity.

Magnifying and diminishing lenses are provided for all. Topological devices and methods, Rashomon-like changing viewpoints, and above all abundance motiva- tions encourage more prolonged stays in this room.

And the games played and elaborated oscillate from simulation to real-life situations in the Ego-, Socio-, and Ecospheres (if the transport budget is unbearably high, one of the first problems to be solved, with the aid of all our rooms, is how to reduce costs).

The necessary key-rings for entering this room are: - - B e an inventor (from the partial and abstract idea to the full and elegant solution). ---Patience, industry, persistence, flexibility,.. . (till the sweet end). ---Don't talk a b o u t . . , do it! (With all the media and m e a n s . ) - - . . . ( ) . . .

Try to plan and design a space that will help you achieve toward:

Extending our own Egosphere in all directions; up.- folding processes, awareness, and pleasure. --Acquiring the habit of not being satisfied with the problem and data as given, but redefining the problem from time to time, reorganizing and all the time search- ing for more data while trying to enliven the subject, and to develop it, to expand it, to enrich it in various directions. --Acquiring the information, know-how, and will to extend and elaborate each problem in the direction of practical-technological extensions, speculative and

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mythological extensions, psychological and symbolic extensions, social extensions, educational extensions, logical extensions. --Experiencing the scanning and selection of the best idea; practicing varied decision-making with the aid of different models of deliberation. The questions to be decided include: What to do, with whom, how, and when, e.g., What else to look for, and till when? What to stop? What to defer till further information is avail- able? What to apply and how? What to elaborate and develop? --Learning to consider as much data as possible, quickly and reliably, concerning myself, the team, the objectives, the content, the devices, etc. --Consciously cultivating an elaboration orientation, blow-up aptitudes, and controlled activity (including control over the final goal or product; control of the processes of reaching it; and controls unique to the individual carrying out the task). --Learning as much as possible of the main problems, ways, techniques, instruments and gadgets of inventors and inventions (technical, aesthetic, social, scientific, and other inventors-inventions); learning how an in- ventor works on, with, for . . . . . and how difficulties are faced. - - T h e production of a full, practical, true, valuable, feasible, original (if possible), elegant product, solu- tion, suggestion. --Avoiding mechanical and stereotyped methods of working; end-products greedily finished without in- hibiting completion of the work; verbosity, instead of real reorganization;. . . - - . . . ( ) . . .

Excavation of Dead Days Room The dead past is alive and well in this room. The living past evolves: it's not the dead who determine it with their compulsive will; rather, the living recreate it.

Your picture of topic X on entering this room and on leaving it doesn't vary too much. Its form will be the partially known, as conceived by us in the present (there's no other way). If the visit is successful, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be, the picture will be more comprehensive and focused. The focus could contain a latent dysfunction. It could emphasize what was important; provide pseudo-analogies; prevent de- velopment of the topic by raising doubts about the suffi- ciency of our knowledge and the validity of our past predictions. But since nearly all of us like this room (we don't have to get too involved), it seems the merits outweigh the demerits.

The room contains the following exhibits: a Sher- lock Holmes Boulevard, the Cavern of Poe's Raven, Coffee House Aleph of Homo sapiens, the invention of speech, the formation of the idea of Idea, the "savage sideshow" o f . . .

These components of the past--people, events,

institutions, ideas, etc.--present themselves to us with the usual ambiguous shadings. Their interconnections are quite simple (if you know some history, which of course you can't). They combine archaeologies, his- tories, geologies, etiologies, genetics, cosmologies, the rings on all the trees, carbon 1 4 . . . and new methods evolved by students in the Elaboration Room and trans- ferred to the Laboratory of the Present.

Two kinds of excavation are identified: the acci- dental discovery (serendipity) of something unknown in the past, and the uncovering of a partially known layer of interest to us now. The several shelves, his- torical elevators, glass stairs to different periods, sky- scrapers, tunnels, time-machines, giant gophers set up a complex interrelationship between the several topics and periods. It's chronological, causal, contingent, correlative, associative, analogical, repetitive, syn- chronical . . .

The design of this room induces dizziness in those indifferent to the past and has a calming effect on over- heated cultivators of history.

The necessary key-rings for entering this room are: - - L o o k for the roots! Be a tree that grows in all direc- tions. Live your own past and the past of humanity to enrich the present and the future (and try to avoid such phrasing in the future). ---Be selective and practical (not everything that oc- curred is interesting or important). - - . . . ( ) . . .

Try to plan and design a space that will at least help you toward: --Learning to see the past as the beginning of the pres- ent and future by digging down until you find what interests you today; learning to relate in different ways (chronologically, casually, genetically, etc.) to various periods, personalities, events, institutions, ideas, etc. --Identifying and locating trends and factors influenc- ing the chosen topic: similarities and differences, modes of functioning, instruments used, limitations placed on possibilities . . . . --Discovering cautious analogies in ideas, human mo- tives; purposeful location of errors in planning and functioning of institutions and instruments, etc. ---Experiencing techniques and skills of various pro- fessionals working with the past, e.g., archaeologists, historians (and not only political historians), astro- physicians, geneticists, geologists . . . . ;learning the art of questioning the past. --Avoiding dangers of: determinism; anachronistic analogies and inferences, and other fallacies; over- romanticization; mythologizing the past (especially if chauvinistic, provincial, etc.) ; too much nostalgia. . . . . ( ) . . .

The Updating Laboratory of the Present The laboratory is not simple (not a tool room, library, shop, gymnasium), not fantastic (an alchemical labora-

tory), and not scientific. Rather it's all of them com- bined and something more. Everybody has visited a laboratory. Nobody has been to the Up-to-Date Labora- tory of the Present. What is the present? It's the unique coordination of eye and hand, heart and brain, inquiry and technique, limbs and instruments, mouth and stom- ach, buttocks and eye, ear and gossip, trivia . . . .

The waUs are made of ideas, feelings, attitudes, tastes, instruments . . . . It is a huge repertoire of knowl- edge, means, and techniques for being reliably up-to- date. It includes existing products (not yet transferred to the "world we live in"), successful inventions, olli- cial reports, together with some of the most important useless ideas and inventions of the recent past and the near future. It includes observatories, methods of classi- fication (the beginning of knowledge and frequently its assassin), little laboratories for ad hoc experiments, "dynabooks ," . . . Information is constantly transferred to a huge blackboard, globe, and to atlases that focus on the most important problem of each area, light up into red emergency lights. Displayed are the names, scope, numbers, personnel; forecasts are made. One machine retypes the main news as viewed by the six major ideologies applying to each of the four spheres. A second machine blanks out the biases, the redundan- cies, and such other variables as its temporary--and rotating--operator chooses. A third machine plots pic- torially all the available information according to indi- vidual specification. A fourth machine biofeeds back. A fifth "machine" named "STRATEGIC MC 5 FORMS ''3 encourages. The room also contains tacit information, emotional and kinetic information, intui- tions, impressions, aesthetically charged symbols, natural signals, and instruments for their coding, or- ganizing, and communication.

The necessary key-rings for entering this room are: ----Be boundlessly curious. (Why aren't you Leonardo?) ---Be a full cosmos, but change all the time. ----Relate everything to everything. ---Know how to investigate and check, also when and how to give yourself stop-orders.

Try to plan and design a space that will at least facilitate: --Muscular, emotional, intellectual, and social experi- encing of processes going on inside and outside: up-to- dateness, without being intoxicated by it or pursuing it overmuch. --Experiencing the unity of all the "spheres"; the re- lationship of varied orientations to the present: getting acquainted with feelings, facts, trends, directions, phe- nomena, powers, and personalities from the viewpoint of the various functions (emotional, cognitive, and social), various theories and doctr ines . . . --Getting practice in skills and techniques of collecting, organizing, controlling, evaluating, documenting, re- trieving, and using the best available impressions, in- tuitions, and data (not only books).

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-----Developing skills of the present in the emotional and social domains, not just the intellectual, with the aid of such multidimensional techniques as "here and now." ---Developing and encouraging intuitive grasp of large, holistic forms. ----Active understanding of such concepts as: present, near future, recent past, the present I, the world as it seems to me now, the world as it is in the eyes o f . . . ---Planning, designing, and using updating instruments and gadgets, and presenting various kinds of data in a convincing and reliable way. ----Avoiding the danger of: not seeing the wood for the trees; postponing planning and action because of the sparseness of updated da t a . . . - - . . . ( ) . . .

The Planning, Optimalization, and Maximalization Room This extraordinary room is neither a control room nor a war room. It is a "responsive environment," which not only clarifies the specific project every individual is working on but also epitomizes every pedagogical effort. It assists planning and, later, optimalization and maxi- malization, and is designed to help everyone pass from ideation, trial and error, experiments, the orientation imported by the present from the deep past, visions of the future, and even basic common sense to the final crucial question, What am I going to do now, and how?

Creative self-education carried out in each room is the optimalization, and perhaps the maximalization, of everything gained in all the other rooms. Standard education for the most part attempts to remove ob- stacles and to correct ignorance and lack of skill-- that's to say, it transforms minus into zero (as though putting out fires or healing the sick). Creative self- education converts, through optimalization, minus into plus (without traveling through zero). Then, with maxi- realization we attempt to convert plus (the satisfactory product or solution) into the best (two or three pluses) .4

Sharpening our senses is based on our knowledge of their limits, on our notions of how they function, of how they could or even should function, of their evo- lution, their extension through technology, their pre- sentation in art, their comparison with other animals or with fictitious beings (including supermen), and our superstitions and anxiety about our health. The same holds true of our intellect, emotions, personality, so- ciety, culture, world. Planning, optimalization, and maximalization are three cycles of elaboration employ- ing the instruments of all the rooms and spheres.

The necessary key-rings for entering this room are: - -This is my life, and I try to make the best of it(?!?). - -You and I can do better. --We'l l build a better world. - -Don ' t jump into the future because you have diffi-

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culties in the present. - - . . . ( ) . . .

Try to plan and design a space that will help you toward: --TransJorming raw materials (common-sense prod- ucts); dreams and images (fantasy products); up-to- date knowledge and updating methods; acquaintance with the roots of the past; possibilities, ways, and tech- niques of blowing-up and elaborating; personal needs, expectations, and styles of working, thinking, and ex- periencing. . , into fruitful, purposeful, feasible plans and programs. --Regular connecting and reconnecting of all the other rooms with this room in the critical stages of work through constant visiting, control of products and pro- cesses, continuous reports, . . . --Developing a comprehensive, flexible, optimistic, and plausible future-orientation at the personal level (with the aid of all the techniques suitable to the individual) and at the social and cultural levels (with various formal and instrumental techniques of forecasting, as- sessment, etc. ). --Experiencing all the phases and problems of opti- malization: transformation of difficulties and obstacles into challenges. Example: The superstition about num- ber "13", as with any other superstition, will never be dispelled by logical analysis and intellectual appeal alone. It might be transformed into a challenge if at Christmas the clinger to this superstition were given 13 bulbs, 13 colors, 13 decorative shapes, etc., to decorate the tree. --Experiencing all the phases and problems of maxi- malization: elaboration and improvement of the ideas and products achieved up till now (with the aid of opti- malization), and making the good into the superior. --Experiencing and practicing the techniques of or- ganization of information; imparting one's experiences to others; producing detailed programs and plans with all their corresponding phases; establishing timetables; using a priori and post facto criteria. ---Avoiding: Dogmatic and mechanical surrogates of planning; indoctrination (how X should look); satis- faction with anything less than the best and, at the same time, demanding unrealistically high stand- a r d s ; . . . - - . . . ( ) . . .

The Personal (X) Room When it comes to fostering creativity, certain types of people are neglected. For example, many kinds of intro- verts are forced prematurely to become members of teams, to involve themselves in communication pro- cesses and other anti-introvert situations. When people talk about territories, cubicles, privacy, solitude, in- timacy, reserve, etc., they of course don't mean any specific type of person--they are considering the needs of the same person in different roles and situations.

The Everywhere of this paper is not an environ- mental psychology project or a technique for educa- tional improvement; there is a different end in view. We must take into account every kind of teacher and learner, and their needs. Space must be reserved for the individual X Rooms required in any Sociosphere for the development and enrichment of the millions of Egospheres cut down to size. We don't know the effect a conventional room has on anyone; it's difficult, there- fore, to prescribe the X Rooms of this system.

Everyone should shape a personal corner, and de- cide upon the optimal use of all the other rooms. 5

The necessary key-rings for entering this room are: - - I t ' s never too late for me t o . . . - - I ' m for me, and the others are also for me; and later, I 'm also for others. ---The most important thing for me to do now i s . . . - - I f you don't enter this room, you'll be sorry you d i d n ' t . . . - - . . . ( ) . . .

Try to plan and design a space that will help you toward: --Learning how to understand, at first with the aid of others, and later through self-diagnosis, the sponta- neous behavior we became aware of in the Common- Sense Room: -What do we know a b o u t . . . -What do we feel a b o u t . . . -What would we like to do a b o u t . . . -What does our inner world reveal a b o u t . . . -What are our characteristic modes of feeling, thinking, and acting when dealing w i t h . . . -What are our competencies in the skills and methods needed for working o n . . . -What are our expectations of personal development and gain when dealing w i t h . . . -What are our strengths and weaknesses in relation t o . . . -What is our self-image as one who creatively self- educa tes . . . - . . . ( ) . . . ---Awareness, tolerance, motivation, joy, and skill in dealing with every topic and problem in its appropriate way, determined by the personality of the individual-- an introvert's room needs to be designed differently from an extrovert's; the motoric or quick learner will want a different environment from the slow, deliberate learner; the musical person, the humorous, the practi- cal----each needs a personal atmosphere, and has special needs and idiosyncrasies. --Encouraging and assisting self-realization and self- expression, in addition to sell-knowledge. --Developing personal techniques for experiencing learning. ---Relating the ways the individual uses each of the different rooms in the Creative Self-Education Center (trying to plan at least three or four corners for three

or four types of learners who especially interest you). --Avoiding retreat into one's personal shell; satisfac- tion with the merely intuitive or generalizations instead of personal diagnosis and individual searching. . . . . ( ) . . .

Individuals who have really used all these rooms have educated themselves.

One Method o[ Implementation (A Jerusalem Experiment) A group of 40 educationalists and teachers was divided into seven teams (one for each of the rooms). Each team worked in one or more of the following directions: a) General planning and designing of one of the rooms, according to its functions; experiencing the implemen- tation of some of the things planned. b) Team and individual planning of a specific topic or problem, while emphasizing the characteristic nature of each room. c) Assigning at least one aspect of the teamwork to each member: architectural, musical, intellectual, dra- matic, social, games, etc. d) Overcoming process-solving, for instance, coop- eration among rugged individualists; and overcoming product-solving, such as preparation of materials, de- signing a new game for elaboration development. e) Meeting members of each of the teams representing some specific interest (see c above): reporting, differ- ential comparison, and planning of new lines of activity. These meetings were sometimes carried out with the aid of consulting experts (a composer, an architect), who helped with specific new ideas and provided useful training in needed skills and techniques. f) A general meeting of all the teams: mutual visits, questions, discussions of how to cope with problems in process- and product-solving. g) Elaboration of selected aspects in each room: the Magic Corner, the Retrieval Catalog, the Echo-Sonata of our Personal Past. h) Individual evaluation of the processes and products or ideas that each was working on, team evaluation of its own work, especially those parts of the plan that were fully realized. (Because of lack of time and other more serious difficulties, each team brought to fruition only a small part of its fantasies and plans.) i) A long, thorough group discussion of suggestions for implementation in schools, universities, and other educational institutions.

In the next stages, selected ideas and products will be tried out, and planning, optimalization, and maxi- realization of each of the rooms will continue, both through improvement of the existing products and the production of new ones. New functions for the rooms will be added, and possibly even other rooms. Experi- ments wili be conducted in other topics and projects. Reports (including recorded and field documentation) are in preparation.

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Exchange of ideas and information between visitors to the different rooms will be encouraged.

A Proposal for Topics (Used in Jerusalem) For a comprehensive introductory theme, we can con- centrate on the (sad) fact of our limitations in all fields and functions. The following related questions are cen- tral to creative self-education: How can we regard our limitations as a challenge rather than a determent? How can we wring the best solution out of this chal- lenge?

Each team chooses one kind of limitation, and tries creatively to overcome it. Examples follow of our limi- tations: 1. Our senses are limited. We perceive a very small part of what's happening around us. The radiations in nature are many orders of magnitude greater than we can even imagine; all our senses are ridiculously under- developed. 2. Our intellect is limited. We use a very small fraction of our thinking abilities; a criminally small part of it is devoted to the improvement of our life and world. Our perception, remembering, thinking strategies, etc., are thousands of years behind. 3. Our physical strength is limited. Our strength, physi- cal endurance, flexibility are very limited compared with many other creatures in the animal kingdom (not to mention natural forces), though we pride ourselves on our superior adaptability ( the phrase "superhuman strength" really means full use of our potential strength). 4. Our motility in space is limited. The area we can move in, our speed, and the distances we can cover are very small. Yet everyone (except some educators) knows movement is the first and last sign of life. 5. We are psychologically limited. We are the descend- ents of H o m o sapiens, but our mis-education, neuroses, weak will, intense irrational emotion, limited aware- ness, etc., are clear enough, even when judged through the organs whose limitations we have already dis- cussed (even our domestic animals contribute their share in maintaining the psychiatric profession). 6. We are socially limited. We all object to poverty or wars, yet poverty and wars proliferate. 7. We are culturally limited (deprived or tor tured) . We have never sorted out our confused values and orientations. We don't "know how to use our language functionally. Fashions dominate u s . . . (Is an optimalis- tic future possible?) 8. We are limited by our personal and historic social past, and without any serious future o r i en t a t i ons . . . (How could we maximalize our lives as individuals and as members of society?) 9. We are l i m i t e d . . .

Each team can begin with a small topic of its own, and give it maximal elaboration with the aids and tech- niques available in one of the rooms. This could be

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done after imaginary confrontation with the other rooms (if they have not yet been built). Each team may select a specific topic, one of the following for instance: ----How can we improve one of our senses without re- lying exclusively on the artificial aid of instruments? - - W h y is it important that we improve our organization of knowledge (and do not depend exclusively on com- puters)? Who can find new ways of overcoming ob- stacle x (without resort to such artificial means as machinery and public t ransport)? - - H o w can we increase contact and understanding be- tween people using other media in addition to language? - - H o w can we widen and deepen our self-awareness?

Some Methodological Remarks To a large extent, we are "model-condit ioned." With- out a working model, there's the danger that an idea will be mere speculation. Those who demand models do so justly, because we never lack good ideas in edu- cation. But good models are available. What we need is people--planners , who would like to, and could, realize the ideas or models in their own work.

It seems to me that centers of creative self- educa t ion- -Everywhere - -would provide one possible answer for coping with the varied interests, skills, and possibilities of educators, all in their own way, at their own level, and to the extent their own imagination and daring allow. Everywhere is non-linear and open to many personal variations and can still retain its general orientation and rationale. The same holds for pupils and students.

The following sequence might be appropriate for the systematic, intellectual type of learner. The learner enters the Common-Sense Room, with or without an a priori task. After learning or discovering what he is really interested in, he enters the Fantasy Room. There he may produce numerous ideas, images, hypotheses, suggestions, and then proceed to the Elaboration and Blow-Up Room for the full actualization of one of his provisory ideas. Later still, he may enter the Updating Laboratory of the Present, get acquainted with what other people know about it, localize and define clearly its strengths and weaknesses, and perhaps extend his field of work. His next stop is probably the Excavation of Dead Days Room, where he will acquire new per- spectives on points of interest to him. Next he may enter the Planning Room for the preparation of a de- tailed and systematic plan. Newly armed, perhaps he'll return to the Elaboration Room or, if necessary, the Fantasy Room. Later, he'll sit in his Personal Room, and try to execute his plan. When he begins to sense the feasibility of his plan (or after someone's advised him), he'll enter the Optimalization Room.

The second cycle begins. The learner enters each of the rooms according to his needs. He may notice or be influenced by aspects and products he neglected in his earlier visits. And again, he'll conclude this cycle

in his X R o o m o r i n . . . N o w begins the th i rd cycle. H e enters once again

the M a x i m a l i z a t i o n R o o m and the o the r centers , ac- co rd ing to his needs, till giving or receiving a S top O r d e r . . .

W e are in teres ted in c rea t ing the cond i t ions for each ind iv idua l to deve lop and unfo ld and no t in was t ing the ind iv idua l ' s and our t ime and the resources of society. But it is a far cry f rom the accep t ance of this p remise to advoca t ing creat ive se l f - educa t ion with a c losed me thodo logy , its s tages dec ided in a p r io r i fashion, and its guiding pr inc ip le an unbend ing effi- c iency. Even our sys temat ic l ea rner might begin in the P lann ing R o o m and no t in the C o m m o n - S e n s e R o o m . A n ambi t ious s tudent might first en te r the M a x i m a l i z a - t ion R o o m .

I t seems to m e no t imposs ib le to r educe the anxie t ies ar is ing f rom an open and flexible m e t h o d o l o g y l ike Everywhere . Pe rhaps the educa to r s themse lves shou ld sit in these rooms, o r at least in the i r i m a g i n a r y equivalents .

The designing of a pe r sona l p l an for each l ea rne r is a funct ion of a comprehens ive set of cons ide ra t ions : the s t rengths and weaknesses of s tudents as wel l as t eachers and experts ; genera l a ims and ind iv idua l pu r - poses ; var ious contents and fields of s tudy; the inven- t ion and adap ta t i on of me thods and aids for each ind iv idua l for the rea l iza t ion of the ind iv idua l ' s pu r - poses in a reasonable space- t ime, etc. 6

T h e r e is an air a lmos t of p a r a d o x in m y p roposa l . T h e genera l no t ion incu lca ted by ou r educa t ion and educa t iona l psycho logy is that we s lowly c l imb to levels of abs t rac t ion , and become less d e p e n d e n t on exper i - ence and the concrete . Tha t is, we shou ld need the rooms, o r any o ther i n t e rmed ia ry means , less and less. But no regular school (wha t eve r " r egu l a r " m e a n s ) will a d o p t our app roach in full, tha t is, in its " conc re t e " form. F o r a school tr ies to rea l ize a m e t h o d o l o g y th rough real rooms, and p roceeds on the bas is of con- d i t ion ing the envi ronments ins tead of the pupi ls . I t ' s p r o b a b l e that anyone wil l ing to a d o p t this a p p r o a c h wou ld begin in a small way. A t eache r might devo te one d r a w e r of a c lass room desk to " f an t a sy , " a n o t h e r to "excava t ion , " a third to " e l a b o r a t i o n . " O r a t e ache r might reserve one c o m e r of the c l a s s room for t ry ing on " fu tu re glasses," "shoes of the pas t , " o r an " u p - t o - d a t e p resen t ha t . " Later , a t eache r might set as ide severa l c o m e r s for some, or even all, of the func t ions in the rooms. A progress ive school w o u l d be r ecogn ized b y the design and cons t ruc t ion of severa l o r all of the r o o m s (o r even o ther new r o o m s ) . I, however , begin wi th the rooms, but am real ly in teres ted in a p p r o a c h i n g the " I n n e r R o o m s , " tha t is, in r each ing all ind iv idua l s in such a way that they will be able to func t ion every- where , in all necessary forms and exper iences , in all the spheres , wi thout any specif ical ly des igned r o o m s at all.

Opera t iona l ly , educa t ion t o d a y m e a n s s i t t ing for x

years in the same r o o m ( o r in a lmos t comple t e ly ident i - cal r o o m s ) , with the same act ivat ing t eache r ( o r nea r ly i d e n t i c a l . . . ) , toge ther with a set of p rocedure s and a p r io r i tests that mus t be passed r i tual is t ical ly . So i t 's no t rea l ly all that r ad ica l to p r o p o s e a m e t h o d of im- p rov ing educa t ion wi thou t revolu t ion . Students would be se l f -educa ted th rough si t t ing x t imes, in y different rooms, with z var ious people , and mas te r ing a set of p rocedure s they themselves he lped to develop!

W h e n these exper imen t s succeed ( a n d there is no reason why they s h o u l d n ' t ) , we will have t aken ano the r smal l s t e p . . , and l a t e r . . .

Notes

The author wishes to thank Dennis Silk, Ted Kahn, and Fredrick Kaufman for their work on the final draft of this article, which is a condensed version of a larger work. 1 1 would prefer to have some space altogether free of education, even of creative self-education. Furthermore, this article deals only with some aspects of the rooms. o The whole city should actually be our elaboration room(s). 3 A mnemonic formed from the initial letter of each of the following characteristics of information: Source, Time of receiving, Relevancy, Accuracy, Type of presentation, Extent, Generality, Importance, Contents, Modality, Code, Clarity, Complexity, Comprehensiveness, Completeness, Frequency, Objectives, Relationship between its parts, Message, Style. 4 Educational practice powerfully reinforces the maxim that the good is the worst enemy of the very good. 5 Ideas, techniques, and criteria for building this and the other rooms are presented in my Educombina tor ic s (in press). 6 The huge topic of educational deliberations is dealt with theoreti- cally in my article, "Creative Self-Education," and in my book, In troduct ion to Educat iona l Del iberat ions (in Hebrew; not yet trans- lated into English). On a concrete level, it is dealt with in a pam- phlet called, "Man, His Body, and His World: An Illustration of Creative Self-Education" (in Hebrew), where various examples of personal techniques of work are to be found. Here, I provide one example of what I mean by technique: divination was mentioned in connection with the Fantasy Room. The use of this element, sepa- rately or in combination, in connection with the exploration or ex- pression of an individual's deeper wishes, and then for devising games where these wishes are considered fulfilled, is commonly termed "white magic." This technique, then, is the positive use of magical elements attractive to the individual. It might facilitate ap- proaches different from the individual's wishes, whose expression is vital in any creative work. Other techniques are also well-known: the "if" technique, the "How can it be done differently?" technique, the "strong point" technique, etc.

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