What Does Non-Linear Thinker Mean?
What Does Non-Linear Thinker Mean?
That is the question asked in today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse. In the background, the joke is illustrated by comparing little Michael Patterson’s work to his fellow students.
1. Michael has created a snake for the side of the wall instead of the cats drawn by his fellow students.
2. Michael has drawn a dead bird and has a piece of his drawing torn off, unlike the standing birds of his fellow students.
3. Michael has written the alphabet on a sheet of paper with a giant “A” and then the remaining letters at smaller sizes, unlike his fellow students who wrote all the letters the same size.
4. Michael has a done a sculpture which we know from this strip is a giant monster head with a mega-wart on the side, and it is not really that much unlike his fellow students’ sculptures.
From this, I could draw the conclusion that:
a. Michael intentionally drew a snake in order to defy Miss Campbell.
b. Michael drew a bird, but drew a dead one to gross out the other students which it did, leading to the torn page in an altercation.
c. Michael’s spatial skill for writing letters leaves something to be desired.
d. Michael likes to make gross sculpture.
But is this really non-linear thinking? This website defines it as:
Non-Linear Thinking (NLT) is perhaps a complex description of what is intended to be a “simple” thought process to help identify unconventional BUT PRACTICAL solutions to seemingly complex problems that remain a dilemma.
Non-Linear thinking however is not intended to be intellectually revolutionary, as is lateral thinking because it does not have the intent or the capability to formalize its concept as a teaching. It is positioned merely as a holistic resource available FOR every decision maker to use, wherever complexity is perceived.
This website expands on that idea with an example:
"Wojtyla-the-philosopher refined his distinctively phenomenological way of doing philosophy in [his] doctoral seminar. Many philosophers think in a linear way: they state a problem, examine a variety of possible solutions, and then, through a step-by-step process of logic, reach and state a conclusion. Wojtyla did not (and in fact does not) think linearly. His method was circular, but in the manner of walking down a spiral staircase, not going round-and-round a closed circle. He, too, would begin by identifying a problem: for example, what constitutes a just act? Then he would walk around the problem, examining it from different angles and perspectives. When he had gotten back to the starting point, he and his students would know a little more, so they would start walking around the problem again, reexamining it from this angle or that, but now at a deeper level of analysis and reflection. This continued through any number of perambulations, never forcing a conclusion before the question had been exhaustively examined from every possible point of view.
Given this example, Michael could be a non-linear thinker. Let's look at the examples:
Cat vs. Snake. How would Michael come to the conclusion that a snake was the answer? Without knowing the assignment, we have to presume that Miss Campbell did not say, "Draw a cat." That would be too straight-forward. I would think she said something like this: “Draw a picture of an animal that helps kill mice around your house.” Then Miss Campbell drew a cat as an example and the other kids followed her lead. Michael, on the other hand, may think that he doesn’t have a cat around the house to kill mice, since he has Farley the dog. However, he may be aware of snakes he has seen in his yard, and “draws” a different conclusion.
The birds. Miss Campbell said, “You know birds fly. Can you draw a bird doing something that’s not flying?”
The alphabet. Miss Campbell said, “Put the alphabet in order on the page and make sure that the letter A is the first letter.”
The sculpture. Miss Campbell said, “Make something you think is really cool.”
I think Miss Campbell may be right. Young Michael Patterson could very well be a non-linear thinker. Unfortunately, Miss Campbell may also think that is a bad thing. I, on the other hand, have an entirely different opinion.
That is the question asked in today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse. In the background, the joke is illustrated by comparing little Michael Patterson’s work to his fellow students.
1. Michael has created a snake for the side of the wall instead of the cats drawn by his fellow students.
2. Michael has drawn a dead bird and has a piece of his drawing torn off, unlike the standing birds of his fellow students.
3. Michael has written the alphabet on a sheet of paper with a giant “A” and then the remaining letters at smaller sizes, unlike his fellow students who wrote all the letters the same size.
4. Michael has a done a sculpture which we know from this strip is a giant monster head with a mega-wart on the side, and it is not really that much unlike his fellow students’ sculptures.
From this, I could draw the conclusion that:
a. Michael intentionally drew a snake in order to defy Miss Campbell.
b. Michael drew a bird, but drew a dead one to gross out the other students which it did, leading to the torn page in an altercation.
c. Michael’s spatial skill for writing letters leaves something to be desired.
d. Michael likes to make gross sculpture.
But is this really non-linear thinking? This website defines it as:
Non-Linear Thinking (NLT) is perhaps a complex description of what is intended to be a “simple” thought process to help identify unconventional BUT PRACTICAL solutions to seemingly complex problems that remain a dilemma.
Non-Linear thinking however is not intended to be intellectually revolutionary, as is lateral thinking because it does not have the intent or the capability to formalize its concept as a teaching. It is positioned merely as a holistic resource available FOR every decision maker to use, wherever complexity is perceived.
This website expands on that idea with an example:
"Wojtyla-the-philosopher refined his distinctively phenomenological way of doing philosophy in [his] doctoral seminar. Many philosophers think in a linear way: they state a problem, examine a variety of possible solutions, and then, through a step-by-step process of logic, reach and state a conclusion. Wojtyla did not (and in fact does not) think linearly. His method was circular, but in the manner of walking down a spiral staircase, not going round-and-round a closed circle. He, too, would begin by identifying a problem: for example, what constitutes a just act? Then he would walk around the problem, examining it from different angles and perspectives. When he had gotten back to the starting point, he and his students would know a little more, so they would start walking around the problem again, reexamining it from this angle or that, but now at a deeper level of analysis and reflection. This continued through any number of perambulations, never forcing a conclusion before the question had been exhaustively examined from every possible point of view.
Given this example, Michael could be a non-linear thinker. Let's look at the examples:
Cat vs. Snake. How would Michael come to the conclusion that a snake was the answer? Without knowing the assignment, we have to presume that Miss Campbell did not say, "Draw a cat." That would be too straight-forward. I would think she said something like this: “Draw a picture of an animal that helps kill mice around your house.” Then Miss Campbell drew a cat as an example and the other kids followed her lead. Michael, on the other hand, may think that he doesn’t have a cat around the house to kill mice, since he has Farley the dog. However, he may be aware of snakes he has seen in his yard, and “draws” a different conclusion.
The birds. Miss Campbell said, “You know birds fly. Can you draw a bird doing something that’s not flying?”
The alphabet. Miss Campbell said, “Put the alphabet in order on the page and make sure that the letter A is the first letter.”
The sculpture. Miss Campbell said, “Make something you think is really cool.”
I think Miss Campbell may be right. Young Michael Patterson could very well be a non-linear thinker. Unfortunately, Miss Campbell may also think that is a bad thing. I, on the other hand, have an entirely different opinion.
posted by howard at 1:25 PM
7 Comments:
I think you've got something here. In the Cat versus Snake, Mike is thinking "We don't have a cat because they scare Ma so I can't draw one; I did see a garter snake eat a mouse though so that's what I'll draw." In the bird picture, he's gotta be thinking "If a bird isn't flying, it's probably dead." The alphabet sheet is, of course, the result of not being able to see quite straight.
I expect none of these actually occurred to Lynn Johnston. Looking it up on the internet, back in the 1980s, the phrase "non-linear thinker" had been converted to a catchphrase which was another way of saying "creative" or "special."
Since Miss Campbell seems to have been glad to rid of him, it also seems to mean "annoying" and "scary."
My son tends to run out of space when he is writing--he will begin a word near the right edge of the page and simply continue it on the next line, wherever he left off. I can imagine him doing the alphabet somewhat like Michael's in the strip, but he probably wouldn't have made his "A" that big. More likely, he'd have done a fairly large A-M and then have to squoosh his N-Z into the rest of the alloted space.
I can't vouch for how he'd have handled the rest of the assignments (especially since we don't really know what they were).
DreadedCandiru2,
Since Miss Campbell seems to have been glad to rid of him, it also seems to mean "annoying" and "scary."
Clearly Miss Campbell is a linear thinker, who has a difficult time dealing with non-linear thinkers who don’t do it exactly the way she told them.
aprilp_katje,
My son tends to run out of space when he is writing--he will begin a word near the right edge of the page and simply continue it on the next line, wherever he left off.
My son was the exact same way and he was obsessed with everything fitting on one side of one page, which just encouraged that tendency.
I can't vouch for how he'd have handled the rest of the assignments (especially since we don't really know what they were).
In this case, the strip works well for Lynn Johnston. All we know for certain is that young Michael Patterson’s work does not conform to the work from the rest of the class. We don’t know if Miss Campbell approves or disapproves. We don’t know the assignment to know how Michael got there. We don’t know how Elly and John feel about their son being called a non-linear thinker. With so many possibilities for judgment, it is much better for Lynn to have left it ambiguous.
I can tell you from my experiences going into classrooms to see the work of my Asperger Syndrome son, Elly and John should be happy that Michael has completed the assignment. There is nothing worse than walking in a classroom full of other kids' work, seeing nothing your kid has done, and being told that he did not complete one assignment.
Hmm, I actually think the giant 'A' just shows that Mike didn't think ahead enough to make room for all the letters. maybe he just thought he would have to make just the letter 'A', or that he would have 26 pieces of letters to make the alphabet...somewhat like the sometimes individual ABC pictures that are found in most Elementary Ed. classrooms, and instead found out that he had to do all of them, so instead he squished the rest of the letters into the space that was left.
As for being non-linear...I think that someone like myself is able to be both linear and non-linear, depending on the situation. Some situations require creative solutions, like this one time I only had a single hand free to eat my cheese and crackers, which were on a plate in my other hand. I couldn't put it down to spread cheese on the cracker with a knife, so what I did was break up the cracker with the knife, then scoop up cheese with the knife and made the cracker stick to the cheese gob, then brought it to my mouth that way.
Other things like putting things together or writing simple essays require linear thinking, so creativity wouldn't work very well there, I think.
I still think Mike is a fairly normal kid, who has the potential to be smart, and to do things his own way, but he turned into a guy with an extremely rigid, one-track mind.
A non-linear adult Mike would have figured out good ways to keep his kids entertained while he wrote his book, thought ahead enough to have multiple back ups in case his laptop died, and had NOT run back into that flaming apartment! It was as if Mike saw only one outcome that night...that he would go and get his laptop, that his wife and children would be fine, and that he, himself would be fine. He was damn lucky that was the actual outcome, and he took it for granted.
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