TACTics Journal

A Publication for and by TOC for Education Practitioners

April 2, 2004

In this week’s issue:

Connections

(1) Important Announcement, Kathy Suerken

(2) Titanic Logic Diagram/Causality Connections, Eleanor May-Brenneker

Editors’ Notes

(3) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A. Edwards

CONNECTIONS

(1) Important Announcement

From Kathy Suerken <suerken@cox.net>

As we know there are many concerns about international travel security and,

as well, with recent events in the Balkans region. It is with enormous regret

that I announce the 2004 TOCFE conference is cancelled. For this year, we

will find another direction of a solution to share our insights and vision and

to create the resultant SYNERGY. After all, “WE, in TOCFE, can do all that

WE think WE can!” Thank you, Virgil, for such a brilliantly worded direction

of solution and to YOU in TOCFE for enabling the needed implementation!

For next year, we are already proceeding with plans for Conference 2005 in

Seattle, Washington, USA, likely second week of August. I just returned

from there where the TOCFE inspired and committed partnerships of Sears

and Audrey Taylor along with Jim and Jackie Trimble WILL make it happen.

Meanwhile, TOCFE owes gratitude that defies words to Zana Borisavljevic

who worked voluntarily and endlessly to create an anticipated local

attendance of more than 300 local Serbian teachers, NGO’s and Ministry

officials. A necessary condition was that she also created a huge facilitator

network to ensure the highly anticipated first level seminars.

Zana supports our difficult decision/current reality with all the focus and

amazing grace that embodies the hallmark of a TOCFE servant leader.

A humble thank you, Zana, from all of us. Should you want to respond to her

personally: jana.b@eunet.yu

Kathy

(2) Titanic Logic Diagram/Causality Connections

(As worked out at Florida Conference 2003 with MA group of LD/Dyslexia

tutors.)

By Eleanor May-Brenneker

(I assume the story line is well known!)

 

(5) The Titanic sets sail and IF
(10) The Titanic is known to be unsinkable because of modern technology THEN
(15) The passengers and crew(owner) believe the Titanic will not sink.

IF (15) The passengers and crew believe the Titanic will not sink and IF (20) The crew have poor visibility in frigid (iceberg) waters and IF
(25) The ship travels too fast THEN
(30) The ship hits an iceberg.

If (30) the ship hits an iceberg and IF
(35) There are design flaws and IF
(40) The iceberg rips a hole in the ship THEN
(45) The ship sinks.

If (45) the ship sinks and IF
(50) The passengers are greedy and fight for seats and IF
(55) There are not enough lifeboats and not enough seats Then
(60) Many people on board perish.

 

First we listed all the main events of the tragic accident to form a chain. Then

we added necessary ingredients to these main events. (Asking: is that always

the case or normal that because of X, Y happens? Do we need another entity?)

After that we looked for the logical links or causality connections between the

existing entities and checked for validity of our logic. (Do you know in which

boxes these were entered?) The end result was the effect of many lost lives.

But where lies the real bottom line cause?

It was amazing how people who were new to TOCFE composed such a wonderful

“good enough” logic diagram in one TOC session. When we analysed where the

whole Titanic enterprise went pear-shaped (wrong) many delegates discovered

that the cause of the massive accident lay in the arrogance and greed of the

ship’s owner who forced the captain to speed in order to break a world record in

the false belief that the ship was unsinkable.

We then applied these findings to our relevant every day lives’ experience and

they all came up with examples where a similar thing had happened to each of

them personally. Out of that we extracted a generalisation: arrogance and

greed can lead to disaster.

Your views please!

Thank you,

Eleanor

EDITORS’ NOTES

(3) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A. Edwards

This week's TACTics includes graphics, which can be seen in the pdf version,

which is attached. You must have Acrobat Reader to open the file. It is

freely available for download from: www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html.

If you have the Reader installed but still can't open the file, drag it from

this e-mail to your desktop, launch the Reader, and open from the FILE

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You may also view TACTics in its intended formatting, by visiting our web

site at www.tocforeducation.com. Click on "What's New."

We welcome your responses, applications of the thinking processes, lessons,

announcements, and etc. Send by mail to: Cheryl A. Edwards, 2253 S. Hill

Island Rd., Cedarville, Michigan 49719, USA. Or, send hyperlink to

cedwards@cedarville.net or kayseal@comcast.net.