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A Pilot Reader

A Junior Book of Social Inventing

For Creative Non-fiction Writing in schools

A Reading and Writing Book for creative thinking, constructive writing
and empowering action

from the Australian Centre for Social Inovations (ACSION)
for classrooms, individuals and groups

Imagination is the ability to consider what may be possible,
in the real world, not only in fantasy

These pages may be printed out for school use. Creative Commons copyright © Valerie Yule 2008

1. Play the Wishing Game

2 Inventions that are needed

3. The Great Big Schoolbag Competition

4. Invent Alternatives to Pleasures and Problems

5.Fashioninnovations

6. Gimmicks and Gadjets

7. Inventions that are needed

8. Jobs that are needed

9. Literacy Innovations

10. Inventing Myself

11. Test modern Myths

12. Imagine peace

13. People they laughed at

14. Preventing Waste of People

15 Better pleasures.

16. Socratic Quiz. Children ask teachers questions

17. Examples of social inventions - Ideas to start you off

18. SkillOlympics

19. Your Ideas for Television programs

20. ECOlympics as a TV reality show

21. School inventions

22. Inventing words

23. More ideas . . . Sports inventing . . . Change the government. Why not? An Ozroypublic

Introduction: Social Inventing as Non-Fiction for English studies

A "Social Inventions Reader" that can be used as non-fiction

in English classes and Future Studies

and as a Thinking cure for insomnia

and as an Action cure for depressing boredom

for Anyone at all

The basic idea of Social Inventing is that any one can do it.

The more you practise thinking up ideas, the better you get at it.

Improve quality of life. Help solve social problems, small or big.

Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise are subject topics in Australian Studies and are likely to be examinable. However, Social Inventing needs to be a strong non-fiction part of English studies too, because here you can have Creative Thinking, Constructive Writing, Free-Range Observation and Voracious Writing - all directly relating English studies to the worlds around us and within us, now and in the future.

This Little Book can start off all of these, inspiring lateral thinking and linear presentations and even inspiring more hope that in the rather awful world around them, young people can still help to make it livable, because it leads to ways for them to do so.

You can write about your own ideas, or discuss and write about ideas in this book - including how they might work and how you could improve on them. School anthologies can now include Anthologies of Ideas and Projects, published to the wider world.

• Without constructive thinking, critical thinking is negative.
• The greatest energy crisis today is the crisis of human energy - Critical Mass in Physics - and in human affairs, Critical Mess.
• For every good idea, there are 999 ideas that fail, and these are the compost for that one good idea to succeed.

AS A SCHOOL TEXTBOOK: primarily for junior secondary schools, but also readable in upper primary and indeed by any teenagers and adults. Reasons:

• Many students do not like the fiction that is set in schools, and prefer non-fiction
• This would be good stuff for young people to read and get interested and enjoy discussing and getting stimulated to have ideas and projects of their own.
• A format of the A5 books is just right, and the content is so varied in length and complexity that in any mixed ability class the poor readers could find what they could read and the brightest students could find what made them really think hard.
• There is not anything else in the non-fiction line like it - and really stimulates the imagination - which is the ability to consider what may be possible, in the real world, not only in fantasy.
• It is cheap, and expandable. Every class can produce its own, with special gold stars or other sign of brilliance for every idea that is put into action.

3. The Great Big Schoolbag Competition

The Great Big Schoolbag Competition

 An increasing world-wide problem is schoolbags that are over 10% of the body weight of the students carting them around. Some bags are almost the size of the children bearing them. An American cartoon showed a little boy with his schoolbag who fell over backwards and he couldn't get up again, like a beetle.

It has been justified on the grounds that when students are shackled by heavy bags they can play around less as they go to and from school.

But there are more disadvantages to heavy bags than merely damaged backs, and discomfort, and fatigue that reduces capacity to actually do the homework when they get home.

• Students learn that schools are stupid in being unable to manage education better.
• More traffic on roads as more parents drive children because their freight is so heavy.
• Learning to put up with burdens that are unnecessary is not good learning for Australian young.

Ideas already suggested to solve the schoolbag problem: -

• Teachers co-operate so that homework for different subjects falls on different nights, so fewer books need hauling home.
• A radical change in the lap-top scheme, so school-owned laptop computers stay at school, students have simple possibly second-hand home computers sufficient for school needs, and only floppy disks need transport. School computer clubs give technical support by phone.
• School facilities to do homework that involves heavy books or materials, so they need not be carried home.
• School facilities to keep at school belongings that otherwise have to be trekked back and forth daily.
• Homework designed to avoid trekking heavy books home.

4. Inventing Alternatives

Constructive alternatives to messes

For every whinge, attempt a solution

Here are some topics for research, thinking, discussion, writing - and innovating

And think up anything else you would like to 'alternatise' -

• Alternatives to poverty
• Alternatives to competition - ways to cooperate
• Alternatives to drugs
• Alternative taxes
• Alternatives to waste
• Alternatives for jobs
• Alternatives to consuming - what can be re-used?
• Alternatives to always getting bigger
• Alternative pleasures
• Alternative glory - who should be celebrated, and how?
• Alternative celebrations
• Alternatives for Parliament
• Alternative sustainability
• Alternatives to suicide
• Alternatives to extinction
• Alternative dreams
• Alternative visions

For example - Gambling is a human instinct for survival. Without being willing to gamble we would never try anything, dare anything. No explorers, no reformers, no inventors. Gambling for money is only a silly way to lose money and to mis-use the Gambling Instinct. What you win, someone else must lose. So - a topic for Social inventing - Alternative ways to use the Gambling Instinct.

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5. Clothes Innovations

Australian Fashions could lead the world - if designers thought,
What sort of clothes would everyone like to wear?

Beautiful? Comfy? Warm? Cool? Durable? Different?
Design your own!

Some starter ideas:

• Space Clothing' to replace wasteful Space Heating. Everyone can control the temperature of their immediate personal space (Personal Weather), regardless of the climate around.
• Conservation Clothes so that only parts needing washing need be washed.
• Gaia Fashions would be frendly to the whole earth, and emulate the loveliness of Nature. They last, wash, renovate.
• Beautiful, comfortable tracksuit styles - with gorgeous Persian-style tunics or Chinese jackets that give the larger or dumpier person a beautiful line and dignity.
• Kit-Clothes. take the mix-and-match trend even further. You could also buy or make additional accessories and pieces for particular styles, with 'kit-patterns' in magazines or the shop catalogues. This would also help people with limited clothes-sense, who tend to accumulate incongruous garments.
• Stackable Fashions. Co-ordinated garments suitable for changeable weather - for example, for girls and women -
  1. Blazing hot weather - bikini top and pants
  2. Not quite so blazing - add a cool-cotton slip-dress
  3. As the day cools, add on a zip-up sleeved dress with wider skirt
  4. Cool change - add a sleeved velcro-edged cardigan
  5. Colder still - add cotton-elastic dressy long pants underneath.
  6. Freezing - add long wide-sleeved oriental-style jacket, warm over-pants, padded jacket and bonnet, warm socks and boots
  7. Cold as outer space - - add space-suit pants and gloves.
• Fashion-kits' that include easy-attach replacements for parts of clothes that wear soonest, or that could be washed separately to save washing a whole garment because of localised sweating. Velcro and studs or Korean paste could stick them on again. Replacements could come in great variety, so that the same basic garment can look very different even from day to day, with different collars, sleeves, scarves, knees, cuffs, pockets. This was how Koreans managed to have changing fashions despite poverty preventing having new clothes.
• Pockets-Plus. Most female clothes are pocket-minus - supposedly pockets would 'spoil the line'. But pockets can increase the curves, or they can hide in full skirts, or decorate almost anywhere, with velcro and similar adhesives, We could buy decorative pockets to stick on, with velcro or some such, or the old-fashioned Lucy Locket pockets tied on, like the waist-pockets for backpackers and swimmers. Or big square Chinese pockets on hip-covering tunics.
  
  I would like an arm-pocket that could fit a biro-pen, or more decorative useful neckwear that carried pen and glasses and notebook. I would like a wrist accessory that notes could be written on as you think of them. Perhaps write-on, rub-off, a minute note-pad, possibly an electronic memory.
• Cup-Clip unisex accessory - a strap-on container or clip, to carry a cup at work or outings, so there need be no more waste of throwaway cups or cluttered sinks. Cups could be designed as accessories to go with garments. One possible style is the light folding aluminium or stainless steel. Or you could have Sholder Bags like superior handbags, that held everything, including folding hats, and a toilet bag with small cloth to save using hot-air dryers or waste paper in public loos. (Air Force men had straps on their shoulders to tuck their caps under.)
• Women with child look beautiful in maternity clothes of many other countries. A Korean woman in high-waisted flowing 'empire' style, looked like a graceful ship in full sail. Australian maternity clothes, comfortable, healthy and beautiful could make wearers feel and look like the most wonderful people in the world, instead of like clumsy, wide-bodied containers or as if they had balloons in their middles.
• Gro-clothes Hems and linings easily undo to lengthen, revealing smaller hems within. Slit inbuilt panels in the side to widen. Pajamas that cut down to pants.
• Pasted Clothing from the old Korean idea of cut-out clothes, that were taken apart to be washed and ironed, and then pasted together again for wearing. All sorts of clothing variations could be made by the wearer of Pasted Clothing.
• Elderclothes -Beautiful, comfortable warm clothes that are easy to put on and off.
• Multicultural clothing. We are a multicultural society. Our people have come from countries with many beautiful, useful and comfortable styles of clothing that we could adapt and learn from. What fun. And how much more fun to be in a crowd that was not just dark blobs, but multicolor like hundreds-and-thousands, each one a living picture.

Personal-Weather Clothes

They used to burn down a whole house in order to roast a pig inside it (according to Charles Lamb) and only by accident was it found that the pig could be cooked separately, without wasting a house.

They used to jump into the river and sometimes drown, in order to wash their clothes (according to another story) - then they discovered that they could take off the clothes and wash them by the banks.

They used to wash whole garments daily or weekly - and still do - until they developed stick-ons for the parts that needed the most frequent washing, and so saved all that water and energy.

They used to heat whole rooms and cars in order to keep themselves warm - and still do - until they developed Personal-Weather clothes that had adjustable temperatures inside them.

?????? Yes, indeed it is possible.

For indoor and even outdoor wear there can be Wizard Personal-Weather clothes to move around in, looking more like Wizard clothes than clumsy space suits.

Most people feel the indoor climate most when they are sedentary and not moving around. So Personal-Weather clothes, cleanable by spraying, can therefore also be attached to seats rather than to people. One puts the PC clothes on the seat - or just leaves them there for personal chairs - sits inside them, and adjusts the temperature to one's preference. If the outside temperature is really awful, there can even be a head-cover with a clear visor, which slides to make spaces to eat and breathe.

Personal-weather gloves are of a flexible bubble three-digit sort, so that most tasks that do not involve water can be carried out with precision. The third digit flexibly accommodates the three minor fingers.

The great advantages of Personal-Weather clothes are:

• In the same room everyone can have their own weather at the temperature they prefer, adjusting it as they like.
• Heating entire spaces for the sake of the individuals in it will then become quite unnecessary except for large parties or meetings, or when, as can happen with the best of inventions, someone's Personal-Weather clothes have a crash.

The savings in fuel and in costs will be enormous.

6.  Invent Gimmicks and Gadgets

SMALL IDEAS can solve large problems

 Innovate to make where you live more livable

A lot of time and fuss and money is wasted in houses, when we could innovate to make it all more pleasant and easier to live in.

Why, even filling a kettle with no more water than you expect to use would save litres and kilowatts in a week. Check the family bills.

 Here are some starters for thinking about Innovations at Home:

• Bathwater diverter
• Bush-fire resistant housing.
• Computer Index for favorite recipes, so you can cook according to what ingredients you have

• Conservation hints
• Date-labels for items in your refrigerator
• Dependable-Mendable furnishings
• Flood-resisting designs for houses & shops
• Garden murals
• Garden recycling
• Gimiks and Gajets
• House-selling computerised, and libraries as estage agents.
• Insinkerators that produce compost for your garden rather than pollution for the seas and oceans.
• Kitchen and pantry designs with pallets or modules for
• Plastic Bags conservation
• Renovatable chairs
• Science in the home
• Soapshakers
• Standardised sizes for staple food jars
• Sustainable-Society architecture
• Teenage-bedroom cleaner-upper
• Time-motion study of how people do things.

Make up a school book to sell on Alternative Homekeeping.

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7. Think about what inventions are needed

Here are some ideas - you can think of others. (It is interesting how many ideas I have had in the past that are now invented!)

• Benchmarks Quizzes to check people's present limits, to compare with what they come to tolerate later.
• Charities - preventing waste in raising money
• Computer Conflict Simulator to be played by leaders, instead of wars & strikes.
• Remote control STOP buttons so an audience can indicate to a speakers when they need to stop.
• Erasing Machine to re-use paper rather than recycle it.
• Pokies that do something useful, for people addicted to operating machines with their lights, noises, and jingles.
• Pre-Shock Prevention training, so people can have personal resources when emergencies happen.
• Rites of Passage for all seven stages of life, including Initiation Rites to become Adult.
• 'Automatic Pilot' to practice behavior for emergencies so you can still act sensibly when you dont have time to think.
• Remote Control Gun Exploder to explode or disable any other loaded weapon.
• Uses for Pests and Weeds since there are so many to use.
• Carbon dioxide A way to get carbon from the carbon dioxide in the air, bypassing photosynthesis by plants.
• 'Immature Adult' ratings for shows, and change the criteria for ratings for Mature Adults.
• Food from rocks - bypassing the millennial food-chain.
• Improving letters and numbers so they weren't muddled so easily (as in labels that get sent to the wrong place).
• Truth-Print shows the truth in black, fiction in blue and what cannot be decided as either true or false in purple. A boon for news readers, if not for the Press.
• Computer games to build a Utopia that works.
• More Computer Games where knowledge and thinking, not violence, win the games e.g Youth to Age Computer Games - as you play, you grow older and wiser or sillier.
• Culture. More fun and beauty in our culture, with less waste.

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8. Jobs that are needed

IF all the jobs that need to be done were being done, there would be no unemployment. The only question is, how to pay for them. Here is an almost-ABC of jobs that are needed. Innovations can mean more jobs that are satisfying and worth doing.

• Australian distinctive, innovative cultural products
• Child care , leisurely, for less herding and more freedom
• Conserve marine and forest resources
• Education that is lifelong to produce resilient adults
• Fashions - beautiful, useful, durable and comfortable
• Households that are Sustainable and save waste. are more essential for our economy than markets that produce waste. Sustainable households need more manpower (generic).
• Housing and community environments that are decent for everyone. Our spate of development can build wastefully designed houses that pile up future problems.
• Landcare - you cant just plant trees and leave them.
• Pest and weed eradication that need manpower more than chemicals.
• Products that are more innovative & less wasteful - renovatable, updatable, durable, beautiful and recyclable
• Sewage systems restructured and rebuilt to stop current appalling waste of our most renewable fertiliser, to reuse heavy metals and re-use grey water at source
• Shops and repairers for Conservation Products.
• Sick, handicapped and elderly to receive decent care
• Transport infrastructure vastly improved
• Uses and salvage for everything thrown daily out of shops and homes
• Water-supply reparation and conservation
• Work share to reduce the load on the increasingly overworked work force
• Better services to the public everywhere.
• Increase (not cut) research in many areas
• Preserve Australian unique flora and fauna
• Fertilise the land without pollution
• Food sources easily grown that do not deplete soils
• Manufacturing techniques that conserve resources
• Uses for pests and weeds, since they abound
• Plants to withstand climate changes
• Technology for renewable non-polluting energy sources

Look around. We even need more street-signs.

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Many schools now have the technology to make a half-hour cartoon literacy video, or parts of one, with graphics and animated text to link speech and print.

The international success of a quality UK cartoon video for small children shows that video could help many reluctant learners to understand 'how to read' or 'find out where they got stuck', especially those unwilling or unable to go through clerical activities at a computer.

All the school can join in the project, in one way or another.

• Very good readers advise on what helped them learn to read
• Learners with difficulties to advise on how they are stuck and try out solutions.
• All students helping to make the video will have a real stimulus in thinking about reading and spelling. 'What do you think people need to know to be able to read?'
• Students with skills in computers, graphics, technology, writing, music, composing, organising, researching, narrating, singing, join in every stage and develop their skills further.
• Everyone with bright ideas at all levels in the school advises and comments and evaluates at all stages.

TARGETS

Any audience can be selected - young or old, strugglers, teenagers and adults, English language learners, ethnic groups such as aboriginal, using their own culture, or a comic version mainly for laughs - for example, with a sound-track speeded like Donald Duck.

OUTCOMES

• A higher school profile for reading and community effort.
• Improved literacy throughout a school.
• A diagnostic tool to find where failing learners are stuck.
• Win a prize at a film festival, for a work of art.
• Evaluations by trialing different versions from different schools can identify what proves most helpful to the target audiences, and these successes can be turned into widely-available versions. Videos and follow-up CDs may be suitable for wide distribution and export as an Australian Innovation.

COSTS

Where a school has computers, and access to a CD-drive, a color printer, scanner, black-and-white fotocopier, a simple word-processing program and grafics programs even as simple as Photoshop LE and Claris Draw that 8-year-olds can use, and a tape-recorder, then introductory production would involve no further costs except stationery and phone/postage, up to stage B. Sponsors might be found. An early amateur pilot version, and newer storyboard are available at cost ($15+) plus consultant help.

Spelling - how would you like it?

The English language keeps changing. How do you think English spelling needs to change to be user-frendly? .

English spelling is only a tool to write the English language. It is not the language itself.

Here is a story to try out your ideas of improving spelling:

Once upon a time the beautiful daughter of a great magician wanted more pearls to put among her treasures. "Look through the centre of the moon when it is blue," said her mother, "and you may find your heart's desire." The princess laughed, because she doubted these words. Instead, she used her imagination, and moved into the photography business, and took pictures of the lunar sphere in colour. "I perceive most certainly that it is almost wholly white," she thought. She also found that she could make enough money in eight months to buy herself two huge new jewels too.

But wait, you need to have some rules, or you may just make the present irregularities worse.

So, invent the rules you think would improve English spelling.

 HERE is an example of how you might do this.

Speling No Traps would be a godsend if we can stil read what we hav. It would save us milions of dolars - even bilions!

Here is an Australian invention that has been reserchd for forty years, sinse I found out how meny pepl ar kept back from literasy because of English speling. And that 95% of pepl cannot spel wel.

TO MAKE IT SPELING NO TRAPS FOR READING ALOUD, ads acsent marks for vowels A E I O U and how tu sho stress in wurds. So the sentense would go: - Speling No Traps for reading aloud keeps 31 wurds we ùse all the time, seven alturnativ speling paterns, paterns for fìnal vowels, and -s ending for verbs or plùrals. (Now was that èzier for lerners tu read aloud and lern how to say the wurds?)

TO MAKE IT SPELING NO TRAPS FOR SPELING IN RÍTING, u nèd not bother with lerning eny alturnativ speling paterns exept the 31 wurds we ùse all the tìm and for -s and vowels ending wurds. So the sentense could go: - Speling No Traps for riting kèps 31 wurds we ùs all the time, paterns for fìnal vowels, and -s and -d endings for vurbs or plùrals. (Now would that be èsier to spel than what we hav now?)

Milions of pepl can not read or rite becaus of English speling. Milions mor can not read or rite wel. Most pepl hav trubl with speling. Almost every other major languaj has had big or litl reforms of its riting sistem in the past 150 years - even French, but also - (These could be on a map of the wurld or a big chart)

Pepl like speling with SMS TXT mesajes!

Meny wurds alredy hav alturnativ spelings, like jail and goal, so enyone could use Speling-No-Trap spelings eny time thay liked, now.

Speling-No-Traps could be used as a pronunsiation kee in dictionarys. In books for lerners of English languaj and for beginers. On the Internet.

Pepl could hav reserch grants to test it out!

We could hav an International English speling comission, so that English could be mor useful as the lingua franca of the wurld.

The big problems with English speling ar surplus leters and sily leters.

Seven prinsipls insted of having to lern thousands of difrent spelings could chanje all that, and yet it would stil look prity much like we hav now!

Meny resons ar put up for not chanjing the speling. As u can see, this Australian invention makes all the resons look sily.

Our cultur is not lost!

 vy's speling test that pruves that 95% of pepl can not spel wel.

Some or all of these wurds ar misspeld. Rite them out corectly.

acomodate . . . . . . . . . exessiv . . . . . . miniture . . . . . . . . . . professr  . . . . . .

remembrd . . . . . . . . . unparaleld . . . . disapoint . . . . . . . . . .gardian . . . . . . .

mischivus . . . . . . . . . psycology . . . . . sovren . . . . . . . . . . . disiplin . . . . . . . .

iliterat . . . . . . . . . . recomend . . . . . . . ocasion . . . . . . . . tecnicly . . . . .

The 31 words we use all the time are ALL ALMOST ALWAYS AMONG COM SOM COULD SHOULD WOULD HALF KNO OF OFF ONE ONLY ONCE OTHER PULL PUSH PUT AS WAS WHAT WANT WHO WHY, and the ending - ION

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10. Inventing Myself

HOW many choices do I give myself to be what I am?

A problem.

Many people define themselves as 'Oh, I could not do that.' 'Oh, I dont like that'. 'Oh, I couldnt'. "I'm not that sort of person that can do things' . They have a sort of reflex that says 'No' to good things, and can get conned into other things

Some people are a barrier to progress through damning new ideas as a sort of reflex. Others can be too credulous and gullible about novelty.

Towards solving this: -

1. Be self-aware about being able to consider new ideas when you meet them. Test your Ideability.
   
   Rule a sheet of paper with 6 columns for 'Good Idea' 'Has possibilities' 'yes, but -' 'Not sure/don't know this area' 'Doubtful' and 'Ratbag'. Read or skim through 20+ consecutive ideas in a list of Social Inventions, and enter each item in one of the categories as you read it. At the end, sum up the columns and work out the percentages of your attitudes.
   
   You may be right in describing them all as Ratbag, but if you think there is not one Good Idea in the lot, it might be a good idea to look through more carefully and check why you are so critical of every one.
2. Write stories with central characters who do what you would like to achieve and to be like.
3. Classroom roles.
   
   The class makes a list of roles that people can play - and for a month, one person in the class can play each role, and people look up to them as playing that role. Next month, switch roles around - but you might like to keep your old role as a hobby too. You dont have to be better than average to play a particular role, and there are plenty of roles for those who often get overlooked as being a bit dumb. For example, the Class Announcer, Class Brain, Class Calligrapher, Class Carer, Class Clown, Class Collectors (of whatever people may nominate for their hobby), Class Decorator, Class Good Sport, Class Inventor, Class Leader, Class Mechanic, Class Mender, Class Monitor, Class Pet (if the Class think it's a good idea), Class Philanthropist and Fund-raiser, Class Poet, Class Public Speaker, Class Quiz-Kid, Class Receptionist to visitors and new students, Class Singer, Class Sports Captain, Class Storyteller, Class Teachers' Pet (again if the class thinks its a good idea for someone to get special attention for a month). Class Thinker, Class Wit.

And more...

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11. Check up on modern myths

LOOK AROUND, and see how much of what people believe today is just Myth. Some modern myths are destructive. They make us helpless. They fuel violence and distress. What myths today help? And what dont? Let's have truer myths.

Check up on the myths that are around - are they over-simplified, just wrong, helpful, based on all the evidence?

Are the statements made here about them too sweeping?

Myth of Change for the sake of change, regardless of the waste - eg. throwing out socks because you have got bored with them.

Myth of Competition - without Co-operation.

Myth of Determinism Even if we 'cant help' what we do, we must try to act as if we have free-will and choice, or we pre-determine ourselves to helplessness, misery, failure and loss of self-control.

Myth of Evil - the myths that to know good you have to know evil; and that life would be boring without evil/suffering. This is based on the delusion that 'good' is neutral and dull. It is not. It is at the other pole from 'evil', and more pleasurable. It is by knowing good that evil is recognised as what it is, not the other way round.

Myth of Exams. "If it's not examinable, it should not be on the curriculum." Rather, if it's worth knowing, it should be there. Exams should help students find out what they still need to know, rather than punish or reward them for what they knew already.

Myth of Excitement - that everything has to be exciting. Constant excitement is a form of subclinical chronic stress, and makes it hard to enjoy quiet pleasures, as sensitivities are blunted.

Myth of a bleak Future as inevitable, so we need do nothing. That social progress is mythical; that no improvement is possible. That there will be star wars even in space. That injustice is inevitable. Or denying there are problems ahead, so that we need do nothing.

Myth of Humourr - that humour is fundamentally malicious, and always about sex or violence, especially bullying. Wit, absurdities, cheery fun and 'battler' humour in hard spots help spice life and make it bearable in hard times.

Myth of Imagination as only useful for fantasy, not everyday life.

Myth about Information as the main future source of activity, with labor not needed. This assumes that we have solved world problems of air, water, food, shelter, transport, clothing, and health.

Myths of ISAGIATT (It Seemed A Good Idea At The Time). Exposing and condemning what well-meaning people did in the past can be a displacement activity , distracting attention from evils being perpetrated at present, and what well-meaning people may be mistakenly ISAGIATTing now.

Myths of the Jungle - society will always be callous and you must get in first with attack, and start wars. Recent proverbs, such as 'never give a sucker an even break', and 'Smash him before he smashes you.' are very different from the proverbs in happy societies.

Myths about Knowledge, thinking, reasoning, rationality, blaming these as the causes of human problems, rather than their absence, and their application to ignoble emotional desires.

Myths anti-Learning , that it is more pleasurable not to want to know, and to numb the brain, and to dynamite thinking processes. 'Mind-blowing' used as a 'good' word. Let's grow brains.

Myth of aggression and male violence Myths that "Wars are inevitable because Man is aggressive." "All men are rapists." Such myths only encourage this. But they are not based on statistical observations of all men, not even of violent men all the time.

Myth of Mandarins that anything useful is to be avoided. In old China, mandarins grew fingernails up to a foot long, as proof that they never used their hands. The Mandarin myth in our country is often seen in schools, in status, and some 'labor-saving' products.

Myth that Moralising is wrong. Now there's a bit of moralising for you. Everything carries a message, intentional or not.

Myth of Novelty as essential for interest, so change comes faster and faster whether needed or not, and people aren't recyclable.

Myth of Outlets, that our psyches are like plumbing and drainage systems with no taps, so have to have outlets. Human emotions are more complex, and there are many alternative expressions for them. 'Appetite grows by what it feeds on' can result of thinking violent entertainment as 'outlets'. 'Return of the repressed' like avenging ghosts if it is not consciously brought back, is solved by recognition and diverting or dealing with desires, not by denying on the one hand or encouraging on the other.

Myth of self-esteem - that people can be given self-esteem by reassurances - rather than receiving love from the moment of birth, so that self-esteem is built in. Self-confidence is built up by being liked by others, especially in school yards, and from knowing that what you do is worth doing.

Myth of Sentimentality -that sweetness is cloying. Sentimentality is artificial emotion, whether sweet or callous. The Victorians liked their sentimentality sweet and morbid. Today sentimentality is more likely to be morbid and brutal.

Any more myths? What about some good ones?

Make up some myths.

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12. Imagine Peace

For years the news and entertainment has given us such images of destruction, anger, violence, horror, cruelty and conflict, that some people think peace would be boring. How can creative writers imagine a peaceful and happy life?

• CHANGE IN IMAGINATION. Imagination is from both heart and mind, and all conscious action starts first in the mind.
  
  The terrorist bombings of New York and Washington were not unimaginable. The film industry, computer games, music culture and science fiction have been imagining and enjoying such horrors and blockbusters for years. Let us imagine peace-builder entertainment instead, to spreading a culture round the world about justice, mercy, kindness and good humour, and which struggles to solve problems.
  
  This requires first class artists, actors and producers, not second-rate. Second-rate actors and artists can act and produce violent and horrible stuff - they cannot show what is Good without seeming artificial and sentimental.
• IMAGINATION IS the ability to see more than what is in front of our eyes. It can connect the present with past and future. What are the 'lessons of history' really? The more you know about the past, and its many wheels of changes, the more you have a chance to invent a future that is different still, without its mistakes, and keeping what is needed to build with.
• Artists give us our visions of the future, don't they?
  
  Imagine your vision - and how it could be reached.

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13. People they laughed at

GOOD IDEAS are often different from what people expect,
and they are often laughed at first.

Great people are often laughed at at first.

Look up examples to write about, and think how we could prevent all this People being Laughed At.

1.100 innovations, ideas and discoveries that were ridiculed when they were already at the practical stage

Who made them, and what courage brought them to become accepted and welcomed? Make a class list. For example: -

2. Investigate some people from the 1988 Bi-Centenary Book of 200 Australians who made Australia Great

Here is a list of people in this book who had bad setbacks through ridicule for their ideas. If you have their name or surname you can feel proud.

• Three early leaders ,William Barak, Governor Bourke
• Two explorers, John McDougall Stuart, Charles Sturt
• Three inventors, Thomas Fisk, James Harrison, Hugh Mckay
• An air pioneer, Lawrence Hargrave
• Two nation builders, William Light, C.Y. O'Connor
• Seven medical pioneers ,Joseph Bancroft, John Cade, Kate Campbell, Elizabeth Kenny, Jean Macnamara, Lucy Osburn, Harry Wunderly
• Five scientists, Joseph Banks, W. B. Clarke, Ferdinand von Mueller, Griffith Taylor, Macfarlane Burnet
• Three believers, John Dunmore Lang ,Daniel Mannix, Mary McKillop
• Three academics , John Anderson, Peter Board, W E H Stanner
• Dancer, Edouard Borovansky; Artist ,William Dobell
• Eight social reformers, Daisy Bates, Caroline Chisholm, Pearl Gibbs, Vida
• Goldstein, John Gribble, Louisa Lawson, Rose Scott, Mark Wilson
• Four newspaper men, J. F. Archibald, Keith Murdoch, David Syme, John West
• Two writers, Mary Gilmore, Henry Lawson
• Six politicians, Ben Chifley, Andrew Inglis Clark, Billy Hughes, Hubert Murray, James Service, W C Wentworth
• Four organizers and unionists, Frank Dixon, William Ferguson, John Flynn, William Spence
• Three judges, Henry Higgins, George Higinbotham, Isaac Isaacs
• One captain of industry, Thomas Mort

Of the 200 'great names', nearly 30% were noted in the Bi-Centenary book as having to battle severe resistance to their best ideas. Many of the others also faced resistance, which you can find from more detailed biographies.

As for the thousands of others who have helped to make Australia great, you can find out about many hundreds who have had to battle unnecessarily against people's automatic rejection of good ideas - e.g. King O'Malley, Hugh McColl.

If you know about sports stars, know about these other Australian greats too.

3. How many people develop one invention.

For 'constructive writing' - a page that gives an account of the many stages of development and the many contributors to an invention such as photography. Or you can write it up creatively as a story.

4. Not all new ideas have been good ideas.

Any inventor is likely to have 99 ideas that dont work for every one that is brilliant - but oh, how brilliant that one is. Between 1901-1905 over 140,000 British Patents were granted - pick ones that have worked: -

Hornby Meccano, a clip-holder to get boiled eggs out of the hot water, sunscreens for horses, arm-rest for violin players, moustache guards, clothes for babies and children designed to be easier to put on and remove, a portable foot and body warmer, advertisements on toilet rolls that change as paper is removed, improved shelter for watchmen, improved train for ladies' skirts with a brush on the bottom, a trap for burglars attempting to open safes, staircases in schools so boys and girls will not pass each other, hat ventilator for top hats, Gillette's razor, ways to fix ladies' hats on their heads, ways to stop your hat being stolen, a way to use the breath to heat the outer body, device to hold down ladies' skirts when taking exercise, the Wright brothers' improved aeronautical machine, an improved motor car that can go up stairways, improved apparatus for throwing animals into the air for exhibition purposes, and 46 Perpetual motion machines that were patented between 1901-1905.

Some References

The people who made Australia Great . Collins. 1988

The Australian Dictionary of National Biography

The Dictionary of National Biography

The Book of Heroic Failures

Edwardian Inventions - an extraordinary extravaganza of eccentric ingenuity . R Dale & J Gray W H Allen, London 1979.

The Encyclopedia of Ideas

Unsung Heroes and Heroines of Australia. ed Suzy Baldwin.

Greenhouse 1988

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23. Anything else you'd like to have a go at solving?

Here are some ideas I have had that are now invented - or ought to be. You can think of others. (It is interesting how many ideas I have had in the past that are now invented!)

• Benchmarks Quizzes to check people's present limits, to compare with what they come to tolerate later.
• Charities - preventing waste in raising money
• Computer Conflict Simulator to be played by leaders, instead of wars & strikes.
• Remote control STOP buttons so an audience can indicate to a speakers when they need to stop.
• Erasing Machine to re-use paper rather than recycle it.
• Pokies that do something useful, for people addicted to operating machines with their lights, noises, and jingles.
• Pre-Shock Prevention training, so people can have personal resources when emergencies happen.
• Rites of Passage for all seven stages of life, including Initiation Rites to become Adult.
• 'Automatic Pilot' to practice behavior for emergencies so you can still act sensibly when you dont have time to think.
• Remote Control Gun Exploder to explode or disable any other loaded weapon.
• Uses for Pests and Weeds since there are so many to use.
• Carbon dioxide A way to get carbon from the carbon dioxide in the air, bypassing photosynthesis by plants.
• 'Immature Adult' ratings for shows, and change the criteria for ratings for Mature Adults.
• Food from rocks - bypassing the millennial food-chain.
• Improving letters and numbers so they weren't muddled so easily (as in labels that get sent to the wrong place).
• Truth-Print shows the truth in black, fiction in blue and what cannot be decided as either true or false in purple. A boon for news readers, if not for the Press.
• Computer games to build a Utopia that works
• More Computer Games where knowledge and thinking, not violence, win the games e.g Youth to Age Computer Games - as you play, you grow older and wiser or sillier
• Culture. More fun and beauty in our culture, with less waste.

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What do I need to know, anyway?

IT used to be thought that school would be more interesting for students if they said first what they wanted to learn, and then that was what would be taught.

And so you have university courses in witch-craft and many, many primary school lessons about dinosaurs.

But one question is, how do you know what you want to learn, if you dont know what there is to learn?

For example, when people say what they want to learn when they are learning to read, they still might not be able to read, because they dont know what they dont know. So they cant say what they need to know.

Teachers often think about what they think students need to know, and plan their lessons about that. But if the students dont know whether they need to know it, they might not want to learn it. What's the point?

So this aspect of Social Innovating is classes working out together what they need to know about, now and when they have left school.

And then, how do you learn about it?

For example: -

• You need to know about what you yourself want to know about, and every one in the class may be different here. So if you want to know about birds' eggs or how to blow glass or how babies go to sleep in other cultures - then how can you get a chance to learn these things?
• If you dont want to know about anything, then the thing you need to know is what has gone wrong, that has made you not want to know. Curiosity and pleasure in thinking we are born with - what has squashed it out?
• What do you need to know about adult things for when you leave school or even before? - about keeping records, and how a car works, and mending things that go wrong, and how to train a toddler in growing up (not just toilet-training!), and avoiding being taken in by confidence tricks, and standing up for your rights and for changing what needs to be changed, not turning disagreements into quarrels, saving money and . .. .
• What do you need to know about what's going on in the world that will affect them? What will affect you, anyway?

For discussing, researching, writing, thinking and imagining.

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See also The Encyclopedia of Social Inventions, and The Global Ideas Bank at http://www.globalideasbank.org