Teaching for tangibles

What are your course takeaways? What actionable take-homes are available to your students? What do they get that the others don’t?

Today I received an email about a course on writing a manifesto.

Phil Knight of Nike fame did it. So, to the futurists, I’ve even written for the Athletic Entrepreneur. If you want to boldly state what future success might look like, then write a manifesto.

But, here in lies the trap.

Anyone who ever wrote a manifesto didn’t do it on a course; no one taught them how to feel, what to feel, or even how to write a manifesto. They simply wrote.

We are taught to teach for tangibles, for outcomes, for something that differentiates you from the crowd. But that gets in the way of what is really going on. Maybe you are learning to express yourself, perhaps testing your idea, or hoping that someone else thinks just like you. Whatever it is, being able to rip it up and start again is at the heart of writing a manifesto.

If you need something to show for it, it might just be for show.