Pedagogy according to Tony Buzan
Not everything about learning is consciously communist, or even “left wing”, or “progressive”.
Tony Buzan’s original book called “Use Your Head” has helped a lot of people in the 36 years since it was written to accompany a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) series.
Like so much of the BBC’s output, it is carefully “non-political”. But it is useful.
“Use Your Head” is addressed to the individual student who needs to learn how to learn.
The book focuses on three main things: Reading (better and faster, through understanding, and technique); Remembering (especially by rest, followed by revision); and Note-making, especially using his “Mind-Map” technique, of which the illustrations above and below are examples.
Lenin used to prepare short versions of things that he called “Conspectus”. It translates roughly as “look together”, or “seeing all at once”. This is what the MindMap also does. The whole thing is on one sheet, used “landscape” (i.e. sideways), starting with the topic in the centre of the paper. Tony Buzan has also devised MindMap software.
In the final part of the book, Tony Buzan describes his “Buzan Organic Study Method”. It is a process. It notably moves from “preview”, to “review”, without a stage in between. In that case, where is the main event? The answer to this question is that there is no main event in study. Study is a process. All parts of it are critical. There is no part that you can treat as the centre, and there is no part that you can treat as unnecessary.
As a contribution, as a book review, and as a suitable text for the use of study circles I, Dominic Tweedie, have prepared an 8-page “Conspectus” of Tony Buzan’s book “Use Your Head”, and linked it below.
Tomorrow we will finish posting material for this part of the Basics course, with a return to Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed".
Downloads:
