Although I’ve been confined in Taft Camp for 31 months now, I continue to find new resources that help me learn. As I was returning to my housing unit with a book on Winston Churchill, Albert, another prisoner, invited me to sit with him and watch an educational video on critical decision making.
During the months I’ve served at Taft, I used the library to check out books, to research legal issues, and to meet with fellow prisoners. I’ve never concerned myself with the videos available, but since I admire Albert—a prisoner who graduated from UCLA and went on to a career as the mayor of a city in Southern California—I agreed to sit with him.
Albert had purchased three separate series of tapes from The Teaching Company and he generously donated the tapes to the library at Taft Camp. I’ve read about The Teaching Company over the years (it’s profiled in magazines, and it advertises in those I subscribe to). It is a company that films charismatic professors from the world’s best universities as they lecture on specific topics. Those topics come from every discipline, so a disciplined student could educate himself by watching the lectures and reading the books the professor recommends. Watching the videos simulates part of the university experience.
The video I watched with Albert discussed concepts in critical thinking. To teach, the Harvard professor used a case study of a military tragedy in Iraq where fighter pilots mistakenly shot down two Blackhawk helicopters, killing the American pilots. The question was how the fighter pilots could have made such a tragic mistake. What drove their thinking?
To answer the question, the professor walked the class through critical thinking errors. Drawing from lessons about organizational theory, psychology, and other disciplines, the professor showed why shifting policies, chain of command issues, and other confusions can lead people to draw inaccurate conclusions and how those mistakes affect our ability to make the right decisions. I enjoyed the hour I spent watching the Harvard professor make his case. When I’m free from writing projects and have time to spare, I’ll educate myself further by watching the educational videos in Taft library.
This morning I ran 10 miles. I had a Toastmaster meeting in the morning so I didn’t take time for strength training after my run.
[Consecutive running log: 3,523 miles over 397 days]
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
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