Heavy boots and communication

Brad Stokes · June 2, 2009 · 8 Comments 

I’ve had my day made by the strangest of articles, Heavy Boots. I’m positively happy and have had my world view restored again. Before you tell me I have a skewed world view, you may be right. I subscribe to the belief that people are people are people and people are people everywhere. Ok, back to this little gem. For those not willing to read the article: it outlines a question posed in a class, “If a pen is dropped will it fall to the moon or float away?”. The answer is fall, but more slowly. What the writer discovered was that people are quite willing to belief that astronauts stayed on the moon b X communicatioecause they wore heavy boots and that the pen would float away. The article is worth the read, if only for the amusement factor. It does raise a real conundrum for educators though. We all interpret the world through our own filters and lenses that we build up through our experiences in life. The idea that heavy boots were responsible for our astronauts not floating away did not phase the philosophy class one iota. In the words of the miscellaneous author, “It was not part of their world view.” They could not understand why the world did not work this way even though at some point they would have learned the basics of gravity. It simply did not figure in their world. This strange happenstance is not unique, but affects every single discussion we join. The idea is not a new one. A great saying is, “People do not hear what you... Read more