SWENSDAY STUFF

The Cause of the Cause of the Cause
Swen Nater
  
One of my coworkers asked me to teach her young son multiplication. I took the challenge. The first thing I did was find out what he knew. He knew 2 x 2, 2 x 3, 3 x 3 and a few more. It was obvious to me, he had memorized them. When I asked him what 2 X 4 was, he had no idea how to get the answer. I learned, he didn’t understand what multiplication was. When testing his addition, I was surprised to learn he didn’t understand that as well. I then realized, the operation foundational to addition was counting.

Searching for the cause of a cause, led me down a ladder. At the base of the ladder was the very first cause: counting. All of math—as broad a subject as it is—is based on counting. After he learned to count to a hundred fluently, I had him skip-count, by 2s, 3s, 4s, and so on. This operation helped him understand, multiplication was a shortcut for addition. Once he got that, he learned his timetables quickly.

The Cause of the Cause of the Cause of the Cause
In my study, I realized that, in most cases, present causes have a string of past causes that lead to one cause that began it all. The great psychologist, Abraham Maslow, discovered the same thing. By studying successful people like Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt who had reached “Self-actualization” in human development, he discovered why some of us haven’t. His Hierarchy of Needs, which he arranged into a pyramid, show the cause for lack of self-actualization is esteem, the cause for lack of esteem is love and belonging, the cause for not feeling loved or not belonging is safety, and the cause for not feeling safe may be the absence of the basics of life such as food, shelter, and sleep. In the classroom, it may be the teacher hasn’t set up “family rules” for mutual respect so the child doesn’t feel safe to make mistakes, a hindrance to learning. 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs)

Therefore, the classroom teacher may find the cause for a particular student not being motivated is founded in that child’s home life. When a sports coach begins to dig down to find the reasons his team is not performing successfully in games, he will find that the cause of the cause of the cause may be the proper and quick execution of the fundamentals. The Addiction Psychologists may find that the cause of the cause of the cause of a patient’s repeated return to drugs goes far deeper than The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The medical doctor, tempted to quickly prescribe drugs for a child who has been irresponsibly and prematurely labeled AD/HD by the school, may discover, through moving down the ladder of causes, the child is as curious as Einstein or perhaps so smart, she gets her work done early and is bored.

Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success is a very effective tool for discovering basic causes for lack of motivation or performance in the workplace, for example. Moving down the Pyramid, a supervisor may discover the primary cause may be connected to one or both of the cornerstones, Industriousness and Enthusiasm. Or it could be a lack of interpersonal development, found in the blocks between those two: Friendship, Loyalty, and Cooperation.

Finding the cause of the cause of the cause is important to solving problems. Without it, we are shooting in the dark. But all this system does is provide us a place to begin or to try. When one thinks he or she has found the primary cause, I recommend running it by those with experience.

If you really want to learn something, teach it.
John Wooden