Have you ever heard about Gheorghi Lozanov?

[edgitarra]

I recently started re-reading the introduction of a book called "Techniques of Super Learning"(unfortunately the study is made in romanian), and I this introduction was related to an amazing educator called Gheorghi Lozanov, which became famous in the world of education with his methods of learning. I will quote from the book:

If initially, his students managed to learn a language in a month, later on, Lozanov managed to get his students to learn the basic rules of a language and a vocabulary that contained around 2000 words in 10 days, by practicing 6 hours per day, as to later the acceleration would get so fast that in only one session of learning students could be taught 15 lessons from a french manual, along with a set off 500 new words, every session.

This is the wikipedia info:

Georgi Lozanov (July 22, 1926 in Sofia, Bulgaria – May 6, 2012 in Sliven, Bulgaria) was a Bulgarian educator and psychiatrist who developed suggestopedia/suggestopaedia, a learning/teaching theory based on his early-1960s study of suggestion which is called as "suggestology".[1]

Lozanov's theory and practice triggered an accelerated learning movement in the West, where various techniques not originally included in the Lozanov's theory were introduced. Such techniques included elements such as breathing, visualization and biofeedback. In present days there is a school in Sliven dedicated to preparing teachers for using suggestopaedia during lections in order to improve the learning speed of pupils.

Lozanov had earlier also conducted advanced long-term research in the field of parapsychology, especially on clairvoyance. See Psycic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder. Due to the policy of the former communist regime which confiscated much of Lozanov's research-material, the main body of his work in this field still remains unpublished.

And here I will post an 8 page information about Lozanov:

Looking in the Lozanov Mirror.


Written at the request of Shapers of Education by Grethe Hooper Hansen, March 2005

An extraordinary educational experiment took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, in the
1970s. Dr Georgi Lozanov, psychiatrist and medical doctor, had created a method of
education, Suggestopedia, and ran large-scale experiments in primary schools,
bringing ballet dancers and opera singers into the classroom. Astonishing results
were achieved, such as young children learning to read in days, with no sense of strain
or effort. Dr. Lozanov was briefly famous before he fell victim to Communist politics
and disappeared into house arrest.

This method was developed from his clinical practice. He had been required
to use hypnosis frequently as a last resort when patients did not respond to milder
treatment, and was always amazed by the power of mind over matter that hypnosis
demonstrated. However, he felt that when patients were controlled in this way, their
autonomy was eroded. Seeking a way of reaching the same personal power without
the adverse effects of hypnosis, he gradually developed his own method of clinical
suggestion, and demonstrated its effectiveness by applying it as a means to
anaesthesia in serious medical operations. The next step to greater patient autonomy
was to find a way of having the patient create his own positive suggestion rather than
being told how to feel by a doctor. Lozanov noticed that patients absorbed his
suggestions unconsciously, and that this worked better when they were focusing
consciously on something else. His answer was to teach them a new language in a
way that supported and inspired them but also caused them to work autonomously.
For the duration of the course, they lost their symptoms, and Lozanov’s method was
seized upon as the basis of a new ‘quantum’ approach to education.


He was at first supported by the government, sent to observe yogic phenomena
in India and train with parapsychologist Vasiliev in Russia, given a scientific institute
with a team of researchers, allowed to choose and train his own teachers and run
projects and experiments. In the videos I have seen of classes demonstrated to United
Nations observers, the difference between the control groups (learning normally) and
the experimental groups (learning suggestopedically) is extraordinary. The control
groups begin with excitement and expectation but gradually grow more depressed and
anxious, as children often do in school, although in the hands of an excellent teacher,
while the experimental group takes flight. This is simply the result of spontaneous,
self-appropriated, autonomous learning, as opposed to a culture of obedience.

His lessons took the form of stories, drama and play, so that the mind could
work without the myriad inhibitions of defensive behaviour and the gradual
abandonment of autonomy that are our response to control. As a clinical
psychologist, Dr Lozanov had been trained to see the world in a different way from
that which is common to most people living in a materialist society.



Incomprehension

He had been trained to look through the (material) surface of behaviour and
notice what was underneath. For example, behind the aggression of a child there is
often the presence of pain and fear. Clinical professionals would then treat their
patient as a child in pain, not as an aggressive child. A few educators in history have
adopted the same approach, most notably Steiner, Montessori, Carl Rogers, AS Neill
and Krishnamurti. But when I first encountered Dr Lozanov’s work, I was firmly
fixed in a materialist view of the world and did not have this understanding.


By this time, the Iron Curtain was faltering and Dr Lozanov and his
professional partner, Evalyna Gateva, were preparing to move to the West. When
they did so, they encountered people who thought as I did and interpreted their ideas
mechanistically; the result was Accelerated Learning. No longer surrounded by
clinical professionals, they found it almost impossible to convey the subtlety of their
thinking. We therefore poured their quantum wine into our materialist bottles.

At a seminar in Florence, Dr Lozanov explained to us that tiredness is the
result of inhibition: if a child is tired in class, this is probably an indication that he is
being forced to work in an inappropriate way. Children love learning, and when
taught appropriately, they are energised by effort, never tired. When I protested that I
used his method and my students were often tired, he smiled and said that their
‘problem’ was a mirror of my practice. Looking in that mirror would show me what I
was doing, or failing to do, that caused them to be tired. It took me approximately ten
years to find the meaning of that message. Because I did not understand, the ideas
went round and round in my head, leading to constant inquiry: when we know we do
not know, we have to keep on searching.


On another occasion, I was attending a seminar Drs Lozanov and Gateva gave
in Sweden and I kept asking the same question, "What is your approach to emotion?"
Again and again he ignored me, until eventually I realised that I would have to
be more specific: "What would you do if someone began to cry during the lesson?"
He had no problem with that: "I would smile to show them that crying is normal and
acceptable, wait for a few minutes and then continue with the lesson". It was worth
going all the way to Sweden just to hear that answer, although, again, it took years to
decipher. Let me explain.


The quantum paradigm and pre-conscious processing

The quantum paradigm introduced the understanding that in the organic world,
causality proceeds from subtle to gross. It presented a picture similar to the ancient
ideas set out in the Hindu Upanishads, resting on the concept of an akashic field
(quantum hologram/zero point field) which absorbs and responds to collective human
thought and feeling and from which all on the material dimension subsequently emerges.

Einstein observed that we cannot solve the problems we have created with
the mind-set that caused them; this is often interpreted as a logical statement, but it is
more likely that he was referring to the fact that, according to quantum physics, our
thoughts have a palpable effect on the energies that bring matter into being. These are
not the thoughts we are conscious of; they are the beliefs, assumptions, attitudes,
fears, needs and desires that motivate our action but tend to remain hidden from our
awareness. We know this from the science of pre-conscious processing (PCP).

PCP science comes from the work of Dr Norman F Dixon, MBE, an army
officer who, after losing his right arm in bomb disposal, fled to the study of
psychology and eventually became a professor at University College, London,
constantly engaged in an exploration of his own unresolved trauma, seeking to
understand the mysteries (and horrors) of the unconscious.
He wrote about the pre-conscious, all the activity that occurs in mind and body
in the fractions of a second before we begin a thought, deed or speech act, in order
to limit the field of his research, but his findings apply to any aspect of mind that is
unconscious.
This reveals the world that Lozanov is working with.


Diagram

Imagine the mind as an iceberg, of which only the small tip appears above the
water; this gives some sense of the proportions involved. The tip is the part that
carries conscious awareness; it is like a tiny misted window through which we can
look into the vast complexity of the undermind, which deals with all that is not
conscious. While conscious awareness selects a few specific items and tasks to focus
all its attention on, the undermind is perpetually busy taking in the vast stream of
passing information that the conscious mind has not noticed and working in its own
very different way to make sense of it. Millions of impressions are registered through
the different senses simultaneously (‘in parallel’), all that we see, hear, feel, smell and
taste. Below the threshold of awareness, there is a continuous pouring in of new data
matched by the turmoil of items seeking for selection by endless grouping and
kaleidoscoping into new patterns from which meaning can emerge.

Logically, as the undermind takes in information, all that might be relevant
has to be stored in memory. This is because at the moment when impressions are
received, we do not know which will be relevant for the future. The quantity of
information stored in the undermind in readiness for selection to conscious awareness
is unimaginably large. We scan this store at regular intervals and select items for
attention as they become relevant. Information enters and leaves. If it is not selected
for conscious awareness and does not carry a strong emotional charge, it will
gradually fade out of mind. Forgetting is a vital protection of our sanity, removing
the burden of unnecessary mental clutter.


Diagram: clustering

Conscious and undermind arrive at understanding in opposite ways.
Undermind selection of information is largely bottom-up: items cluster together until
by virtue of their collective volume and strength of signal, they self-select into
conscious awareness. As they reach selection, the concept emerges from them; the
nature of the concept is determined by the data that comprise it. By contrast, our
conscious process is top-down: first we decide on what we are going to think about,
then make a search of memory for matching material, and finally bring all together to
produce an idea. Using this method, we cannot arrive at new information, only a re-
interpretation of what we already know. These different processes have considerable
implications for our thinking, as Lozanov realised.

(Dixon used the image of an iceberg because he wanted to emphasize what
lies below our conscious thoughts. But nowadays we think of human perception in
quantum terms as hologrammatic; Erwin Laszlo’s well-known image is of a pond
with ripples spreading out from a central splash, interacting with other sets of
ripples. There is no up or down, just interplay between a complexity of influences
ranging from subtle to gross, which together produce a multi-dimensional sense of a
whole object or scene, a hologram.)


Limitations of the conscious mind

Because we are conscious only of that of which we are conscious, we
often assume that conscious awareness is all there is. We do not realise that by far the
greater proportion of our mental activity exists below the surface of awareness. The
conscious faculty of mind has severe limitations: Dixon describes it as a low-content,
short-term buffer aimed at stimuli with action potential. It evolved to give us the
power to focus on a single item from the whirling mass of data in the undermind; it is
like the narrow beam of a torch, picking out one thing at a time from the vastness of
the dark. This enables mind to perform specific functions:


* to gain access to the end products of its pre-conscious activity;

* to prioritise information, plan and prepare for action;

* to monitor the automated system, taking over the action in situations of
danger and intervening when things go wrong;

* to suppress information that might upset us or distract us from action
(using the defence mechanisms, which enable us to repress emotional material
or express it in such a way that we do not have to recognise it.)


Specialised to make quick judgements about the world it perceives, and act on
them immediately, the conscious mind deals with things one by one. Its great
strengths are prediction, generalisation, classification and simplification; it seeks
certainty and tends to be uncomfortable with ambiguity, but it can also teach itself to
override its natural preferences (for example, in counselling and facilitation training).
This is the aspect of mind intended for organisation and action, not for learning. Alas,
when education began, we did not have the knowledge to make this distinction.



Educational approaches


We are all familiar with the traditional approach to education: reduce concepts
and ideas to their elements and teach the elements one by one, slowly and clearly,
arriving at the whole by a process of gradual accumulation. Lozanov realised that this
is not the way the brain works. It perceives a whole, or gestalt, and once it has seen
that whole, can then understand the parts by relation to the whole. The traditional
approach deprives learners of the whole - and of all information that is not perceived
as relevant at this stage. The protean mind, designed for high-volume, holographic
learning, comes to a grinding halt, and in addition, learners are made dependent on the
teacher to reveal all the parts so that they can finally understand the whole.



By contrast, Lozanov produces a high volume of information, too much for the
conscious mind to deal with in its step-by-step way, so that the undermind takes over
and absorbs the gestalt, which it does naturally while the conscious mind is kept busy
with a game or some such trivial task. At the moment of absorption, the learner is not
conscious of what is absorbed. This means that his knowledge and understanding has
to be self-selected by the clustering process; this is the basis of autonomy. In the
traditional classroom, learning is conscious and top-down; in Lozanov’s, bottom-up.


Lozanov targets the undermind because, as well as depending on autonomous
process, it can absorb a massive amount of information at great speed, whereas the
conscious mind is slow and can cope with only a thin stream of information. The
children he taught learned to read in days because they were absorbing infinitely more
information that the children learning consciously, and without effort: it is natural and
normal for the undermind to process high volume, whereas conscious awareness is
not intended to do this and it will experience overload if expected to cope with
volume. For this reason, learning in the traditional way is exhausting; as Lozanov
explained, tiredness is an indication of mistaken method.



Diagram


The information stored in the undermind has nowhere to go but up into
conscious awareness. We know that the conscious mind is limited in capacity to
approximately seven items; because of this, unlike the undermind, it has to keep
changing its content. Items have nowhere to go but down into the undermind. As Dr
Lozanov laughingly points out, this is not an efficient direction for learning.


This dynamic was intuitively understood by Maria Montessori. She took
children from the slums of Rome who were labelled “uneducable” by the education
authority and within a short space of time, turned them into highly intelligent students
ravenous for more learning. This was done by giving them non-verbal problem-
solving activities, which allowed the undermind to arrive at new concepts in its own
way and in its own time. Unfortunately, the science was not available at that time to
describe what she was doing. Many people dismissed her work as applying only to
young children at particular stages of readiness. In fact, it applies equally to young
and old, and at any stage of life.




Weak and strong

Conscious and under-conscious are complementary: one does what the other
cannot, so as to maximise our ability to perceive and act. Conscious attention is
naturally focussed on the material world, all that we can perceive with the five
physical senses, as well as verbal statements (indicating intention), and all that is
clearly, obviously and intended to be the case. Dixon refers to these things as the
strong signals of communication.



The undermind does the opposite; it focuses on the non-material, such as
emotion, feeling, voice tone, gesture, discrepancies between things, the unintended
and the subtle. Dixon refers to these as the weak signals. The conscious mind
analyses the intellectual content of a statement, while the undermind picks up voice
tone, gesture and all those subtle things that reveal whether the person is speaking the
truth or not. Each is seeking a different aspect of meaning.



This leads us to the special understanding that Lozanov had as a psychiatrist.
A mixed message is one in which weak and strong signals convey opposite
impressions: for example, the person professes one thing (“I love you”) while
unconsciously conveying the opposite through a cold voice tone or a movement of
separation. The receiver responds to both messages, consciously picking up the
verbal statement but also feeling discomfort in its subtle contradiction.


Identifying weak-signal messages is the key issue in the development of
emotional intelligence (EQ). Most people working in clinical psychology, social
work and mental health are trained to work at the emotional level, which involves
learning how to de-code weak signals: for example, noticing the pain and hurt that lie
behind aggression in children, as described above. Some people are born with this
awareness, some are taught by their parents, and a few learn at school. In the absence
of this skill, aggression is more likely to be interpreted at a surface level and reacted
to as attack. Of course, there is no difference of kindness of heart between clinicians
and other professionals, only a difference of knowledge.


This is the understanding that prevented me from using Lozanov’s mirror; I
had to do co-counselling training, as well as study pre-conscious processing, before I
could apply the mirror in a useful way. In UK universities, there is a growing
postmodern movement, developed from co-counselling ideas and techniques, which
draws attention to the importance of emotional ethics in education. Postmodernists
analyse the emotional dynamics behind educational practices such as repetition,
examination, judgement and assessment, showing the extent to which our systems are
based on fear and the need to control. As more and more people acknowledge the
importance of this movement, they also learn about the dimension of weak signals.
Lozanov might say that the success of a teacher in inspiring students depends largely
on the coherence between the weak and strong signals of their communication, in
other words, their emotional intelligence.



The double plane

Lozanov referred to the differences between weak and strong signals as the
“double plane”. He said that most teacher messages could be received on two
different planes, the obvious and intended message and its implication; teachers need
to be aware of both. The implication is very often the reverse of the obvious. For
example, when we attempt to make something simple, as we often do in teaching,
finding short-cuts to learning, we may inadvertently give the impression that we think
our students too stupid to cope with the normal complication. For this reason,
Lozanov makes the first lesson of his course more difficult and complex than those
that follow. The message is that if you can learn this, the rest will be easy.

At one of his conferences I gave a talk on poetry, presenting three poems with
ingenious ways of learning them deeply and quickly. His response was a frown as he
tried to find the words to express his objection. He could only manage, “That is not
necessary; there is everything in the text.” I was hurt, but it set me thinking – once
again, for years. Finally I realised that not only was I simplifying, which is contrary
to his double plane rule, but my mixed message would attract the more attention
because it was gratuitous. For the same reason, he objected to visualization, NLP and
all activities, such as self esteem, which involve therapeutic interventions. Anything
that is added to a normal lesson in order to make it pleasanter or to ‘help’ the learner
implies that the lesson is difficult or dull and that the learner is in need of help –
which fatally lowers their deep expectations and suggests to the student that learning
is suffering. Also, when we finally learn to design educational processes sensitively,
there will be no need for compensation. Children will love learning for its own sake.


In the example above, when he chose to smile at the student who cried in class
and then continue with the lesson, he was letting her know that crying is normal and
healthy and not an indication that she was damaged or defective.


His method succeeds because, with infinite subtlety, its suggests that every
member of homo sapiens is a creature of exquisite sensitivity, complexity and
intelligence - and the evidence is that learners respond by becoming what is expected
of them. Aristotle presented the same idea with his entelechy.


This is only the tip of the Lozanov iceberg, but it gives the idea. For 300 years
science viewed the world in Cartesian sunlight, exploring the material surface. When
it became possible to measure the microscopically small, we perceived in its more
subtle moonlight a different, quantum (very small) dimension, in which many of the
rules of manifestation reverse: there is no law of contradiction, things are not
separated by time and space, and so on. If we make the same shift at a mental level,
transferring our focus of attention from the conscious and intellectual to that which is
too small in impact to be conscious, the same changes appear, together with similar
reversals of Cartesian logic. We have at last reached the fortunate position of having
some basis to begin to re-think everything we know about education.

I do not know if this clip is made using a technique used by Lozanov, or just a funny representation of his life but here it is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRJG7fLpm1c

Hope you will find it useful!