Subject: Neuro-Linguistic Programming
From: David Lloyd-Jones (icomm5@netcom.ca)
Date: Mon 29 Nov 1999 - 21:23:24 MET
From: "David Lloyd-Jones" <icomm5@netcom.ca> Subject: Neuro-Linguistic Programming Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 15:23:24 -0500
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Barry Kort <bkort@musenet.org> writes:
> One of the more interesting theories regarding learning styles is
> Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). This theory suggests that everyone
> has an idiosyncratic preferred style of learning which begins with the
> preferred sensory channel. Thus some people are visual learners:
> they learn best by seeing information presented visually. Others
> are tactile learners: they prefer hands-on learning with something
> they can manipulate. Auditory learners prefer information presented
> auditorily (spoken, sung, or musically). The key idea in NLP is to
> organize the learning activity so that it best matches the learner's
> preferred modalities of accepting information.
This is a pretty fair report of what the NLP folks claim. Barry has also
done us the favor of reporting all the evidence they have to support their
theory: none.
I am not criticising Barry, I am congratulating him on his thoroughness.
There is none to be reported. The seminal works of this cult-du-jour, the
various pamphlets of Richard Bandler and John Grinder, look to me like tape
recordings of Santa Monica cocktail parties. Some dare call them books.
Lest anyone be carried away by the idea that to "organize the learning
activity so that it best matches the learner's preferred modalities of
accepting information" at least sounds plausible, let me suggest an
alternative: in the absence of any evidence whatsoever it is just nuts. If
it were plausible and if there were any evidence for it, somebody would have
produced it in the ten years or so that NLP has been promoted.
What's plausible is that we should organize learning activity so that is
matches the objective nature of the material and activities to be learned.
-dlj.
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