When I was a teenager, I met a man who had worked with Gandhi in India. He told me that the key to Gandhi’s success was that “he looked at every problem as an opportunity, not as a pain in the butt.”

I don’t know if Gandhi would have quite used that language but, nevertheless, I view that conversation as one of the most important moments in my life, and have thought about — and applied — that advice constantly since that time.

It’s served me well in my personal life, during my nineteen year career as a community organizer and during my nine years as a high school teacher.

I’m not trying to get all “New Age” here and suggest that just by looking at things positively we can fix all the problems in the world. Thinking positively can only take one so far, especially for so many people in the world (including lots of my students) who face many more challenges than I ever will.

I am, however, suggesting — and reminding myself — that, as the title of this post says, “much of what seems real to us is governed by our own perceptions” and that keeping this in mind in the classroom will make it a better place for everyone. Our students act out of their perceptions of reality, which sometimes means they do things they should not, but that doesn’t mean they are bad. Perception is not all relative — there are things that are just right or just wrong — but taking the time to understand where kids “are coming from” can help us move from being “right” toward being effective

The title of this post is from a very interesting short article by Michael Michalko, who’s known for the idea of “Thinkertoys.” Here’s a story from it about Picasso when he was at an exhibition of his work in Paris:

There may, or may not, be any Picasso’s in my classroom, but I need to remember that — nobody how much I might be tempted to — it helps nobody to “call the hold thing off….”

I have an extended lesson plan in my book, Helping Students Motivate Themselves, on helping students learn to take personal responsibility and blame others less.

In addition, I have a related “The Best..” list called The Best Resources For Helping Students (& The Rest Of Us) Learn The Concept Of Not Blaming Others.

Today, I got an idea for an addition to those lessons.

First, NPR ran a story titled Partisan Psychology: Why Do People Choose Political Loyalties Over Facts? It discusses a study on cognitive dissonance — holding two conflicting opinions in your head at the same time. Even though the article was talking about it in the context of politics, it certainly happens in the classroom. For example, when a student throws a wad of paper at another student and explains to the teacher that the other student “made him do it” even though the teacher points out that nobody “made him” do it but himself. They have inconsistent ideas in their head.

The NPR article points out a study that found that people tend to have cognitive dissonance because it’s painful for them if they do not. They then found that people were more likely to get past these inconsistencies if they felt more positive about themselves.

So, I’m going to develop an addendum to my lesson on personal responsibility. I’m thinking it might be worth including a short piece on cognitive dissonance where we learn what it is, I share examples from my life, and students share experiences from their own. We can review this study, and I’m hopeful that it might make student more aware of its dangers.

In addition, I’m thinking that this info could be a useful classroom management tool. When, for example, I have a paper wad throwing incident like I share earlier, I wonder what might happen if I asked a student who was reluctant to accept responsibility to take a minute and think about something positive he did in his life?

Coincidentally, Jon Stewart did a piece on cognitive dissonance last night on the Daily Show. There are a couple of inappropriate parts here, but portions of it could be useful in class. Here it is:

I’m certainly open to other ideas on how to make this point better, too!

Robert Krulwich had another thought-provoking column at NPR yesterday — Inside-Out Your Mind.

He shares a number of excellent examples, including the video I’ve embedded below, that encourage people to be creative by thinking the opposite — “inside-out.”

I always found that exercise very useful when I was a community organizer. One example was when we preparing for a candidates forum, but we didn’t want to do the usual routine of trotting the candidates out, asking them their positions on our proposals, and then ending it there. Those were certainly productive, but we had already done quite a few of them.

So we considered what would be the opposite of what we usually did. We ended up bringing the candidates in and, instead of having them tell us what they thought, we had people provide testimony on the issues that were important to them and how it affected their lives. Then, candidates had to share what they heard, and our members publicly graded them on their listening ability. It was a great action!

I’ve also used this method to help me be creative in dealing with classroom management issues.

But now I’m trying to think of how I could use this as a lesson. It could certainly be useful in my IB Theory of Knowledge class when we study “perception.” However, there just has to be a way for me to use it with my mainstream students, but I’m not coming up with anything.

Any ideas?