Mastery

· Question: What did you have question(s) about from this reading? What made you curious as you were reading? What would you ask the author, given the chance to talk to him/her?

The authors conception of Mastery was very thought out and borrowed concepts from many different traditions and philosophies. But the author placed his perspective in the cultural context of American society, where everything is fast paced. What I would ask the author is how did his conception of Mastery evolve. The explanation of Mastery in this book seems like a crystallized understanding that was based on years of evolving thought on the matter. Both a structure and elasticity was woven into the concepts. What books, and real life experiences played instrumental in developing his understanding of Mastery?

· Quote: What quote(s) did you find particularly illuminating, frustrating, confusing, inspirational, etc.? Be sure to explain why this quote was memorable to you.

·Albert Einstein wrote, "that the modern methods of instruction have not yet strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry...It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and sense of duty." (P 122) This was very interesting to me, besides the fact that Einstein's social quotes are often insightful, but because modern American education was shaped to reflect economic needs, and contemporary California education is based so much on the CSTs. As such systems define the rules and dynamics of education, when teachers are forced to adapt to the demands of testing, the actual social relations in the classroom, as well as the form and content of the academics, establishes its self with a coercive relationship to the student. But such coercion negates the potential, even though the systems that are propped up in coercive terms are justified to foster such potential.

Comment: What did this book make you think of? What connections can you/did you make with other readings? with your own personal experience? Do you have an overall opinion on this reading?

The book understanding of Mastery had influences that were both philosophically western and eastern. Based in the challenges of American fast paced culture that negates long term development, this book attempts to explain how and why one should achieve a state of mastery. Its influences, indirectly speaking, have many Chinese, and eastern principals. The maintaince and tapping into personal energy was something built in eastern philosophy way before their western counterpart. And the centrality of goals, and habitizing activity for perfection I think is very western, but Leonard was lacking the rigidity that these concepts had in say the 1950s. The discipline of the outer, with tapping into energy of the inner, establishes an equilibrium. But the progress is never constant and regression is always around the corner. I found the book to be a little abstract at times, but it definitely deepened my understanding in what it means to master something.