VITA last update May 6, 2024

Born Richard Coston Stapleton November 3, 1940, Corpus Christi, Texas, on the Gulf Coast, United States. Legally changed middle name to John in 1978

Reared in Wolfforth, Texas ten miles southwest of Lubbock on the South Plains in Northwest Texas, 1941-1963

Academic career at Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia, fifty-three miles northwest of Savannah, on the Atlantic Coast, 1970-2005

In the interests of full disclosure, here is a video created by the Statesboro Herald  showing what look like now (February 19, 2020) in context with members of Southeast Georgia Scottish Heritage Society carrying in the haggis at 17th annual Robert Burns Supper at Forrest Heights Country Club

ATHLETICS

That’s me Number 37 second row from bottom fourth from left in above picture. Head Coach Joe Moring is on the right. Coach in football, basketball, and track 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, by far best coach ever had in any sport at any level. Coach Jerry Helmer is on the left, the second best coach ever had, and the best teacher had at Frenship. Taught English and plane geometry in high school. Made A’s in both courses, two out of three A’s made at Frenship in twelve years. Made an A in Dr. Jim Mallard’s physics course in high school senior year taken with four other senior male students. Won Gold Medal in physics in Regional Science Fair, “Simple Means of Producing and Measuring Electricity”

All-district four years in high school basketball, Frenship High School, Wolfforth, Texas, 1953-1958, honorable mention all-state one year, all-tournament five tournaments, every tournament played in 

All-district, all-regional, second leading scorer in Class A high school football on South Plains of Texas at age 17, 1958 

According to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal probably the youngest and smallest Class A high school starting quarterback in the US in 1953 at age 13, 5’3″ tall, 110 pounds  

Played basketball on scholarship two years, Hardin-Simmons University, Abilene, Texas, 1958-1959. Averaged 18 points a game on freshman team. Only holdover from freshman team. May or may not have made the starting lineup as a sophomore on the varsity team. Had never sat on the bench in any sport at any level. Had serious problems freshman year with twisted ankles and blisters causing chronic pain during basketball season, exacerbated by skeletal birth defects. Threw in towel as a competitive athlete before the first varsity basketball game sophomore year. Coaches understood and continued full scholarship remainder of fall semester

Had spinal fusion back surgery between sophomore and junior years in high school. Bone was slipping out of spinal column in lower back, caused by birth defect, exacerbated by spinal scoliosis, S curve from front and C curve from side. Would have been paralyzed from waist down had bone fully slipped out. Dr. Herbert E. Hipps (actual name of orthopedic surgeon) in Waco, Texas, the best bone man in Texas at the time, according to Dr. Olan Key, family doctor in Lubbock, Texas, cut bone off top of right hip, ground it up, and pasted it from tail bone up to fifth lumbar vertebra. Stayed in bed in body cast three months during summer of 1956, lying on stomach ninety percent of the time. It worked. The bone fused. Dr. Hipps said it would be like driving a Model T instead of a Cadillac but it would get you there, and so it has. Have had no back pain since the surgery

Was a water boy junior year during football season wearing a back brace as part of recovery process. Wore a back brace playing basketball junior year. Got rid of back brace later in spring for good. Had no restrictions but chronic heavy lifting, over fifty pounds. Did not consider playing college football because of back and size, 5’10” and 150 pounds at the time. Stiffness in lower back exacerbated ankle and blister problems playing college basketball. Had to run faster, jump higher, and cut quicker in this league playing against taller and more talented competitors

Was good passer in football and shooter in basketball. Completed about 70 percent of passes playing football. Cannot remember throwing an interception. Kicked extra points, punted, and kicked off. Made about 50 percent of shots in basketball as point guard. Rarely missed a free throw

BUSINESS

Worked in family businesses during public school and college years, Stapleton Lumber Company and Spear-X Ranch. Involved in lumber and hardware retailing, construction, natural gas pipeline installation and service, submersible water pump sales and service, farming, ranching, and banking at Wolfforth, Hamilton, Eastland, and Dumas, Texas. Did odd jobs building houses at age 8. Did a little of all of it through the years. Worked installing the fixtures in the first bank of the town started by father, the Wolfforth State Bank.  Most satisfying task was riding a horse and roping a calf on the ranch at Eastland

Tired of being told what to do by austere hard-working intelligent successful parents, at age 21 after graduating with undergraduate degree in economics from Texas Tech in May of 1962, resisted parental entreaties cajoling working in family businesses indefinitely, causing family conflict and turmoil. Wanted to make own mark in world

Started and managed the WOLFFORTH-FRENSHIP GAZETTE, a weekly newspaper, and Rick Stapleton Agency, a fire and casualty insurance, real estate, and mortgage loan agency, 1963-1965, with funds saved working in the summer of 1962 as an office manager for Pioneer Brick and Tile Company in Dallas and working in the fall of 1962 for the Frenship Co-op Association weighing cotton at a gin

Made a profit of about $5,000 per year, about $30,000 in 2024 dollars, as a diversified small business entrepreneur at Wolfforth, not bad compared to most small business start-ups at the time, but opportunities seemed limited in small rural hometown, so sold out in early 1965, planning to work for a large corporation and experience more of world. A farmer and community leader, Milton Kirksey, the father of one of his best friends, who had a degree from Texas Tech, on the board of the Frenship School System and the Frenship Co-op Association, in Wolfforth, one of his best newspaper advertisers and supporters, said, “Aren’t you a little young to be retiring?”

Still single at 25 wanted to experience what life was like on other side of fence

Forced to accept two one thousand dollar loans from parents in this period, paid back within two years. Paid own way financially after age 21 with no subsidies from parents. Inherited no family money until after parents died in eighties and nineties

Worked seven months in the winter, spring, and summer of 1965 for Litton Industries, an international corporation with a defense industry electronics assembly plant in Lubbock, ten miles from Wolfforth, with 300 or so employees, mostly women who soldered resistors, diodes, capacitors, and wires into circuit boards that went into military guidance and control systems, as a production control dispatcher and expediter. Fired for being “too sensitive to the needs of people for production control work.” Told in exit interview,”You don’t move fast enough from job to job” and “You ought to get into something like personnel.” Fired in the afternoon after playing an engineer, the best chess player in the plant, up to that time, to a draw in a chess game at lunch in the plant cafeteria, in the presence of most of the male managers and engineers in the plant who became aware of the event

Started work on MBA degree at Texas Tech in Lubbock in the fall 1965

Hired as a management teaching assistant while working on the MBA. Liked teaching and received good student reviews. Was offered a part-time instructor of economics position after finishing the MBA and went into the Texas Tech business doctoral program. Had not thought about becoming a professor before starting MBA. Accidental or inevitable it happened. Spent next 39 years as a professor

Owned and operated a forty-acre cattle farm in the Sink Hole District of Bulloch County, GA, 1971-1977 as a weekend hobby business while a professor at Georgia Southern. Got tired of feeding and taking care of a bull, cows, and calves, and fixing fences. Sold farm and moved back to town

Founder and Owner, Effective Learning Publications, 1979-present; invented, wrote, produced, and marketed DE-GAMING TEACHING AND LEARNING and the CLASSROOM DE-GAMER to approximately 400 school systems throughout the United States and in Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Great Britain, Turkey, Greece, Holland, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and India. DE-GAMING TEACHING AND LEARNING has been updated, re-titled, and re-published as BORN TO LEARN

Founded with wife Deborah Coleman Stapleton Stapleton Learning Company and Effective Learning Company , 2005. Still open for business

32 East Main Street
Statesboro, Georgia 30459

website:  https://blog.effectivelearning.net/

Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/richard.stapleton.397

Published four books after retiring from Georgia Southern–Business Voyages; Recommendations for Waking Up From the American Nightmare; Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning; and As the Rooster Crows and scores of Internet articles presenting analysis and recommendations for social, psychological, political, and economic issues and problems

Was efficient, effective, and productive in business ventures and operations if Adult and Free Child ego states could be cathected in democratic Game-free I’m OK—You’re OK organizational systems. Was not efficient, effective, or competitive if required to cathect Adapted Child ego states in I’m OK—You’re less OK hierarchical Parent->Child organizational systems doing repetitive mundane tasks dictated by supposed superiors. Such systems caused withdrawal into Free Child ego state downtime observing, analyzing, and manipulating flow of three-dimensional technicolor objects and situations appearing on screen of mind, caused by auditory and visual episodic eidetic memory. Was good team player only if was team leader. Was a loner most of time, unable to adapt group imago and flex personality enough to conform to and satisfy ego state and script requirements of most groups and organizations. Was an incorrigible free-thinker

ACADEMICS

CURRICULUM CONTRIBUTIONS AT GS PARKER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Wrote the first syllabus for the computer-based Management Information Systems course at Georgia Southern and supervised its incorporation into the curriculum and course catalog in 1971.  Was the only teacher of MIS in the business school from 1971-1978 laying the groundwork for MIS study at Georgia Southern

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Was the only operations management (originally called production management) teacher in the Georgia Southern business school from 1970-1978.  Taught Production I and added Production II to the curriculum, which led to the creation of the operations management emphasis area in the College of Business Administration

BUSINESS POLICY & STRATEGY

Added the capstone case method business policy course to the undergraduate core curriculum for all majors of the business school in 1971, enabling the Georgia Southern business school in 1974 to achieve accreditation by the AACSB, the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business, the highest academic accrediting association in the business field in the United States.  Was the only teacher of business policy using the case method in the undergraduate business curriculum at Georgia Southern during 1970-2005, teaching approximately four case method business policy courses per year

SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

Taught all but three small business management courses offered by the business school at Georgia Southern during 1970-2005, at least one per year, all with the case method

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Founded the teaching of entrepreneurship at Georgia Southern.  Wrote the syllabus for the first entrepreneurship course in 1987.  Taught most entrepreneurship courses offered during 1987-2005, all with the case method

SMALL BUSINESS INSTITUTE

Supervised approximately 350 Small Business Institute student teams consulting with area small businesses during 1974-2005.  Served as the Small Business Institute Director during 1987-2005.  Supervised students producing approximately ten SBI cases per year funded by the US Small Business Administration at $500 per case during 1974-1992, at which the SBA discontinued funding the SBI program because of decisions of the Clinton Administration.  Served as the SBI Director at Georgia Southern during 1987-2005 

RUNNER-UP NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

Supervised Hartie Cliatt, Reagie Eakin, and Scott Johnson, a Georgia Southern Small Business Institute team, runner-up winners of the National 1992 Case of the Year case research and writing contest conducted by the US Small Business Administration, competing with some 3,000 undergraduate SBI teams at some 500 Small Business Institutes at colleges and universities throughout the US.  The team was recognized and presented undergraduate Runner-Up in the Nation awards by Erskine Bowles, national SBA Director, at the Annual 1992 Small Business Week luncheon, Washington, D.C.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP/SMALL BUSINESS EMPHASIS AREA

Founded the Entrepreneurship/Small Business (E/SB) emphasis area at Georgia Southern in 1987, now known as the Center for Entrepreneurial Learning and Leadership.  Developed the E/SB area and taught all courses required for the emphasis from 1987 to 2001, three courses per year, all with the case method

E/SB BOARD OF ADVISORS, ANNUAL MEETING, AND CASE OF THE YEAR CONTEST

Started an advisory board for the E/SB emphasis area in 1996 composed of area entrepreneurs, retired executives, and former students who own and operate small businesses.  Conducted an Annual Meeting in the spring of the year at which E/SB advisory board members interacted with students and judged the Small Business Institute Case of the Year contest.  First, Second, and Third place winners were selected from among ten or so cases developed in the Spring Applied Small Business course by students in teams of three members

THE BUSINESS PLAN

Was instrumental as a member of the COBA (College of Business Administration) Task Force 2000 committee set up by Dean Carl Gooding in 1996 in which the committee established a new course The Business Plan to be taught by faculty in all departments, a one-hour course that was required for all undergraduate business students at Georgia Southern, along with two other new innovative one-hour courses, requiring students to analytically and creatively think using their Adult and Free Child ego states. The business plan course required undergraduate students of all majors in small groups to research and write a plan for a new business. The course provided a unique environment in which students integrated all business functions—accounting, finance, management, marketing, operations management, and management information systems—while developing communication and inter-disciplinary teamwork skills

Taught one or two business plan courses per year for two academic years after the course was added to the required core curriculum and tried to teach the COBA faculty, now the Parker School of Business faculty, how to teach the business plan course by disseminating teaching notes dealing with the course process and discussing the course with faculty members. Unfortunately COBA faculty in specialized disciplines after a few years organized a coup and voted to eliminate the business plan course, and the other two one-hour courses, from the core curriculum for all majors, despite its value according to student feedback, because it was inconvenient for departmental administrators to schedule and stressful for teachers in various disciplines to teach. Most faculty preferred to teach their three-hour courses in their specialized disciplines in their departmentalized wormholes dispensing standard doctrines and techniques peculiar to their disciplines with their Adult/Critical Parent–>Adapted Child ego state teaching and learning processes (using lecture and telling methods of dispensing information, militaristic row and column classroom layouts, and multiple-choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and solve-the-arithmetic-problem tests), rather than lead and coordinate three one-hour business plan courses in which class members had to use Adult ego states integrating what they had been taught in a team of three or four class members researching and writing a real business plan for a new business that included pro forma income statements and balance sheets using realistic financial data, who had to be graded wholistically using Adult ego states based on overall performance, not graded based on ostensible percentage of course content memorized for so-called objective tests using multiple-choice questions, and the like

Read BORN TO LEARN by RJS for more on how classroom layouts, teaching methods, and testing methods used by teachers of all sorts affect the ego states learners have to use to succeed in teaching and learning processes, showing why most learners are confined to seeing, hearing, reading, and memorizing dogma, doctrine, and procedures in Parent–>Child learning processes, in which Adult ego state analytical thinking ability and Free Child ego state creative ability on the part of learners are squelched in the learning process, not recognized, graded, and rewarded at all in most teaching and learning processes in most learning venues, including those of families, churches, schools, universities, businesses, political organizations, governments, military units, civic clubs, militias, newspapers, TV networks, movies, etc., in which learners are mostly taught how to remember and obey what their “teachers”–parents, sunday school teachers, preachers, public school teachers, university professors, supervisors, department heads, drill sergeants, admirals, presidents, fascist dictators, actors, comedians, writers, editors, publishers, etc.– tell them or show them

GEORGIA SOUTHERN STUDENT EVALUATIONS

Conducted research and writing during 1990-2000 that resulted in Georgia Southern adding study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide in all departments and schools.  These questions were formally adopted by Georgia Southern in 2000 

Data and analysis showing why these questions should be included on all student evaluation forms and weighted in all faculty evaluations are published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations:  A Study of Correlations Between Instructor Excellence, Study Production, Learning Production, and Expected Grades,” by Richard John Stapleton & Gene Murkison (2001), published as the lead article in the June 2001 issue of the Journal of Management Education, published by the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society, a national professional association composed of business professors from leading US universities 

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (April 15, 2024) been cited in 89 refereed professional journal articles in several academic disciplines, including 21 citations since 2021, proving the article is still being read and cited as a reference in refereed professional journals

FORMAL EDUCATION

Diploma, Frenship High School, Wolfforth, Texas, 1958
Attended Hardin-Simmons University, 1958-1960, Economics major, Accounting minor
B.S., Economics, Texas Tech University, 1962
M.B.A., Organizational Behavior, Texas Tech University, 1966
Ph.D., Business Administration, Management Science major, Economics minor, Texas Tech University, 1969
CTA, Certified Transactional Analyst, International Transactional Analysis Association, 1978

Undergraduate GPA, 2.79; Masters GPA, 3.4; Doctoral GPA, 3.67

High Pass, Management and Finance doctoral comprehensive exams

TEACHING POSITIONS

Teaching Assistant in Management, Texas Tech University, 1965-1966

Part-time Instructor in Economics, Texas Tech University, 1966-1969

Associate Professor of Management, University of Southwestern Louisiana (now University of Louisiana–Lafayette), 1969-1970

Associate Professor of Management, Georgia Southern College, 1970-1976
Graduate Faculty, Georgia Southern University, 1975-2005

Professor of Management, Georgia Southern University, 1976-2005

Visiting Professor of Management, Troy State University-Europe, 1982-1983.  Taught systems management in a management master’s degree program offered by Troy State University (now Troy University) in Montgomery, Alabama in the US on US Air Force NATO bases at Incirlik Air Base, Adana, Turkey; Hellinikon Air Base, Athens, Greece; Soesterberg Air Base, Soesterberg, Holland; Hessich Air Base, Hessich, Germany; Aviano Air Base, Aviano, Italy. Courses comprised all ranks of Air Force personnel and their dependents, Department of Defense personnel, and local business people in Greece and Holland

Senior Professor, College of Business Administration, now Parker School of Business Administration, Georgia Southern University, 1990-2005

Senior Professor, Georgia Southern University, 2005

SUBJECTS TAUGHT

Economic history, systems management, entrepreneurship, small business, organizational behavior, quantitative methods in business, operations management, management information systems, control, business policy, transactional analysis

Taught Eco 133, a sophomore economic history course, two courses per semester, during the fall and spring semesters at Texas Tech University during 1966-1969 as a part-time instructor. Paid $3300 per academic year as a part-time instructor, while taking a full load of courses each semester working on a doctor’s degree in business, majoring in management science, minoring in economics, taking doctoral courses in all business fields

ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE

Acting Head, Department of Management, Georgia Southern, 1970-1971
Chairman, Department of Management Self-Study Steering Committee, 1971-1972
Member, Dean’s Search Committee, School of Business, 1971
Chairman, Admissions Committee, AACSB Self-Study, 1972-1973

Member, Athletic Committee, 1971-1973
Member, Library Committee, 1973-1974
Member, Dean’s Search Committee, School of Business, 1974
Coordinator of Graduate Studies in Business, 1974-1976
Chairman, Graduate Program Committee, School of Business, 1974-1976
Chairman, Graduate Curriculum Committee, School of Business, 1974-1976

Chairman, Faculty Evaluation Committee, School of Business, 1976-1978
Chairman, GSC Continuing Education Committee, 1977-1979
Long Range Planning Committee, Department of Management, 1984
Dean’s Search Committee, Division of Industrial Technology, 1984
Library Committee, 1986-1988
Director, Small Business Institute, School of Business, 1986-2005
Member, Tenure and Promotion Committee, School of Business, 1987-1989
Chairman, Tenure and Promotion Committee, Department of Management, 1988-1989
Chairman, Academic Affairs Committee, Department of Management, 1989-1993
Member, Strategic Planning Committee, School of Business, 1990-1992
Chairman, Entrepreneurship/Small Business Committee, School of Business, 1993-2005
Member, COBA Task Force 2000 Planning Committee, 1993-1997
Member, Georgia Southern Institutional Effectiveness Committee, 1993-1998
Member, COBA Governance Committee, 1997-1998
Entrepreneurship/Small Business Emphasis Coordinator, 1997-2005
Member, GSU Judicial Review Board, 1999-2002
Member, COBA Tenure and Promotion Committee, 1999-2001
Member, Dept. of Mgt. Tenure and Promotion Committee, 1999-2001

CREATIVE AND SCHOLARLY ACTIVITY

DOCTORAL DISSERTATION

AN ANALYSIS OF RURAL MANPOWER MIGRATION PATTERNS IN THE SOUTH PLAINS REGION OF TEXAS, published in the National Technical Information Service (PB 188048), 1970.  This research was funded by a $6500 grant awarded by the Office of Manpower Policy, Evaluation and Research of the U.S. Department of Labor pursuant to the provisions of the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1964.  Summaries of the dissertation were published in MANPOWER (1970) and MANPOWER RESEARCH PROJECTS (1970), U.S. Department of Labor, still available free from Texas Tech University by clicking on the title highlighted in blue above

ARTICLES IN JOURNALS AND BOOKS

“The Process of Environmental Structuring–A General Perspective,”  THE BUSINESS SYMPOSIUM, Texas Tech University, 1:1, 1969

“Terminations:  Lower-Level Dismissals,” PERSONNEL, Vol 48 (May-June, 1971)

“When You Have to Say ‘You’re Fired’,” SUPERVISORY MANAGEMENT, Vol 16 (September, 1971)

“The Velocity of Youth Mobility,” ATLANTA ECONOMIC REVIEW (March-April, 1973)

“Terminations:  Lower-Level Dismissals,” reprinted in PRIMER IN SUPERVISORY MANAGEMENT, by Bernard Keys, McCullough & Fryet, (Dubuque, Iowa:  Kendall-Hunt Publishing Company, 1974)

“The Chain of Ego States,” TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS JOURNAL, 8:3, July, 1978

“Classroom De-Gamer,” TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS JOURNAL, 9:2, April, 1979

“How Managers Influence Superiors:  A Study of Upward Influence Tactics,”  LEADERSHIP ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL, 9, 4, 1988,  with B. Keys, G. Murkison, and L. Dosier

“Scripts and Entrepreneurship,” TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS JOURNAL, 20:3, July, 1990, senior author with Gene Murkison

“Academic Entrepreneurship:  Using the Case Method to Simulate Competitive Business Markets,” THE ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR TEACHING REVIEW, Vol XIV, Issue IV, 1989-1990, pp 88-104

“Scripts and Decisions:  An Empirical Analysis,” JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC STUDIES, 3, (4), 1992, 123-127, senior author with G. Murkison

“Scripts and Entrepreneurship,” translated into French and reprinted in ACTUALITES EN ANALYSE TRANSACTIONELLE, 17:66, April 1993, Brussels, Belgium

“The Significance of Schemata and Scripts in Entrepreneurship Education and Development,” (1997), senior author with D. Stapleton and G. Murkison, in T.G. Monroy, J. Reichert, F. Hoy, and K. Williams (Eds.), THE ART & SCIENCE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION:  VOLUME IV, pp. 89-104, Akron, Ohio:  The Project for Excellence in Entrepreneurship Education

“Teaching Business Using the Case Method and Transactional Analysis:  A Constructivist Approach” (1998), TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS JOURNAL, 28:2, April, 1998, pp. 157-167, senior author with D. Stapleton

“The Formulation of Strategies for Teaching Business Policy or Strategic Management,” (2000), BUSINESS RESEARCH YEARBOOK:  GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES, Volume VII, J. Biberman and A. Alkhafaji, editors, International Academy of Business Disciplines, pp. 928-932, senior author with D. Stapleton.  Saline, Michigan:  McNaughton & Gunn, Inc.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations:  A Study of Correlations Between Instructor Excellence, Study Production, Learning Production, and Expected Grades,” lead article, JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT EDUCATION, 25:3, June 2001, pp. 269-291, senior author with G. Murkison .  (This article has now been cited as a reference in 89 refereed professional journal articles in several disciplines, 21 since 2021, proving it is still being read and used)

BOOKS

MANAGING CREATIVELY:  ACTION LEARNING IN ACTION (Washington, D.C.:  University Press of America, 1976), 318 pages (sometimes available used at Amazon.com or eBay)

DE-GAMING TEACHING AND LEARNING:  HOW TO MOTIVATE LEARNERS AND INVITE OKness (Statesboro, GA:  Effective Learning Publications, 1979), 132 pages   

THE ENTREPRENEUR:  CONCEPTS AND CASES ON CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS (Lanham, MD and London:  University Press of America, 1985), 520 pages

BUSINESS VOYAGES:  SCRIPTS, SCHEMATA, AND TOOLS FOR DISCOVERING AND CO-CONSTRUCTING YOUR OWN BUSINESS WORLDS (Effective Learning Publications, 2008, 2010, 2011), 746 pages

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR WAKING UP FROM THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE, Amazon.com, Effective Learning Publications, 2013, 234 equivalent pages

BORN TO LEARN:  A TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS OF HUMAN LEARNING, Effective Learning Publications, 2016, 253 pages

AS THE ROOSTER CROWS EARTHIAN OKness INCREASES, Effective Learning Publications, 2021, Amazon.com, 340 pages

MONOGRAPHS

EXPLORATIONS IN LEARNING LEADER’S GUIDE (Statesboro, GA:  Effective Learning Systems, 1980).  Contains detailed instructions for conducting EXPLORATIONS IN LEARNING seminars and using the Classroom De-Gamer

EXPLORATIONS IN LEARNING:  AN INNOVATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM (Statesboro, GA:  Effective Learning Systems, 1981).  Demonstrates how to apply the de-gaming process to organizations in general

 BUSINESS VOYAGES:  MENTAL MAPS, SCRIPTS, SCHEMATA, AND TOOLS FOR FINDING AND CO-CONSTRUCTING YOUR OWN BUSINESS WORLDS (1998), Class Notes, Georgia Southern University, used in The Business Plan course, 88 pages

GEORGIA SOUTHERN ENTREPRENEURSHIP:  ACTIVITIES, CONTRIBUTORS, CASES (Reprinted 4 times, originally printed in year 2000), Class Notes, Georgia Southern University and Georgia Southern COBA Office of Publications and Faculty Research Services.  Contains cases about businesses owned and operated by ex-COBA entrepreneurship students written by students in the Applied Small Business course during 1999-2004, an overview of the E/SB program, and feedback from ex-COBA entrepreneurship students 1972-1999

PROCEEDINGS ARTICLES

“The Classroom De-Gamer,” RESEARCH IN EDUCATION, November, 1978, School of Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

“Implications of Business Prospectuses Developed by Small Business Students,” PROCEEDINGS of the 1984 Southern Management Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, 1984

“Causes of Unsuccessful Entrepreneurship,” (abstract), ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH, Fourth Annual Conference on Organizational Development and Policy, University of Louisville, Louisville, Ky, Spring, 1986

“A Total Systems Approach to Simulating Free Enterprise in a Small Business Course in a Business School,”  published in PROCEEDINGS of the 1987 National Meeting, Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, Hilton Head, SC, March, 1987

“Entrepreneurial Learning and Small Business Failure Rates, ” with G. Murkison, PROCEEDINGS of the Annual Meeting of the Southeast Chapter of the Institute of Management Science, October, 1988

“What is Most Important:  Entrepreneurial Teaching or Entrepreneurial Unlearning,” (abstract), JOURNAL OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE, Vol IV, No. 1, Fall, 1988

“Entrepreneurship, Decisions, and Scripts,” with G. Murkison, PROCEEDINGS of the Annual Meeting of the Southeast Region of the Decision Sciences Institute, February, 1989

“Entrepreneurial Autonomy and Success,”  PROCEEDINGS of the 1989 Annual Meeting of the Southeast Chapter of The Institute of Management Science, Columbia, SC

“Scripts and Decisions,” with G. Murkison, (abstract), bulletin of the National Meeting of the Operations Research Society of America and The Institute of Management Science, New York, October, 1989

“The Value of Entrepreneurial Experience:  What Entrepreneurs Learn When they Start and Operate Businesses,” PROCEEDINGS of the 1990 Annual Meeting of the Southeast Chapter of the Institute of Management Science, Myrtle Beach, SC, with G. Murkison

“Game-Freer Teaching and Learning:  How to Increase Productivity in Schools by Decreasing Psychological Games,” The Stamford Papers:  Selections from the 29th Annual ITAA Conference, Bruce R. Loria, Editor, Stamford, Connecticut, October, 1991, pp. 250-267

“Feedback Regarding the Use of a Game-Free Case Method Process to Educate General Management and Entrepreneurship Students,” (1993) with G. Murkison and D. Stapleton, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Chapter of the Institute of Management Science, October, 1993, Myrtle Beach, SC

“The Case Method, Business Success, and Masculinity,” with G. Murkison and D. Stapleton, 1994 Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Chapter of the Institute of Management Science, October, Myrtle Beach, SC

“Randomly Selecting Participants to Lead case Method Discussions:  Problems and Pitfalls in Performance Evaluation,” (1996), with D. Stapleton, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 32nd ANNUAL MEETING, Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, Myrtle Beach, pp. 117-119

“The Selection and Assessment of Teaching Methods in Business Schools“ (1997), with G. Murkison and D. Stapleton, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 33rd ANNUAL MEETING, Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, Myrtle Beach, pp. 107-109

“The Student Evaluation of Teaching Process Revisited,” (1997), with B. Price, C. Randall, and G. Murkison, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 33rd ANNUAL MEETING, Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, Myrtle Beach, 178-180

“The Scripting of Family Businesses,” (1999), with D. Stapleton, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 34TH ANNUAL MEETING, Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, CD-ROM,  October, Myrtle Beach

“In Search of a Better Mousetrap:  Can a Composite Profile Accurately Evaluate Teaching Effectiveness?” C. Randall, B. Price, L. Tudor, and R. Stapleton (1999) PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL DECISION SCIENCE INSTITUTE, New Orleans, November, pp. 266-268

“What Do Entrepreneurship Teachers and Students Know?” (2000), senior author with D. Stapleton, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Allied Business Disciplines Association, Ft. Myers, FL, CD-ROM November 2000

“An Investigation of Script Decisions in the Creating, Operating, and Disposing of Family Businesses,” (2001), senior author with D. Stapleton, PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL USABE/SBIDA JOINT NATIONAL CONFERENCE, CD-ROM, February, Orlando, FL

“Basic Policies Affecting the Longevity of Family Businesses,” (2001), senior author with D. Stapleton, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 36TH ANNUAL MEETING, Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, CD-ROM, October, Myrtle Beach, SC

“Attitudes of Family Business Owners Regarding Policies for Transferring the Wealth of Family Businesses,” with D. C. Stapleton, Annual Meeting of the Small Business Institute Director’s Association (SBIDA), San Diego, CA, February, 2002

“What is Good Business Teaching,” with D. C. Stapleton, Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, October 2002, Myrtle Beach, SC

“The Nature of SBI Learning,” with D. C. Stapleton, Annual Meeting of the Small Business Institute Director’s Association (SBIDA), New Orleans, LA, February 2003

“The Morality of University Grading,” with D. C. Stapleton, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and The Management Sciences, CD-ROM, October 2003, Myrtle Beach, SC

“Factors in Family Business Planning,” with Deborah. C. Stapleton and Meredith Tomlinson, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Small Business Institute Director’s Association, Clearwater Beach, FL, February 2004 

“Factors in Family Business Planning” was reprinted in the 1 April 2004 edition of the SBANC Newsletter, the online newsletter of the Small Business Advancement National Center, Don B. Bradley, editor, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas, http://sbaer.uca.edu/ and in The Script, Vol. 34, No. 6, the newsletter of the International Transactional Analysis Association, August 2004

“Mixing Business and Family,” with Deborah C. Stapleton, Proceedings of the 2004 Annual Meeting of SEInforms, Myrtle Beach, SC, October 2004

CASES

“The Dig-Deep Mining Company,” with Grady L. Allen, INTERCOLLEGIATE CASE CLEARING HOUSE, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, 1971

“Tesk:  The Upside-Down Desk,” INTERCOLLEGIATE CASE CLEARING HOUSE, Harvard Business School, November, 1971

“Model Cities Program,”  ICCH, August, 1972

“Regency Estates,” ICCH, September, 1972

“Graham Repair Shop,” ICCH, January, 1973

“Igo and Green,” ICCH, January, 1973

“Berry’s Home Builders,” ICCH, January, 1973

“Mitchell Foods,” ICCH, January, 1973

“David Handlen and Frito-Lay,” ICCH, January, 1973

“T.J. Morris Company (A),” with Arthur G. Butler, Jr., ICCH, November, 1974; “T.J. Morris Company (B),” with Arthur G. Butler, Jr., ICCH, November, 1974

“Business Skylab Conference,”  ICCH, July, 1976

“Charles N. Aronson,” a 163-page longitudinal case showing the development of a highly successful entrepreneur from ages 14-59, Harvard Business School Case Services, June, 1982

NEWSPAPER AND INTERNET ARTICLES

“Entrepreneurs Face Many Challenges When Starting a Small Business,” Savannah Morning News, Business Exchange, July 5, 1998, p. 2D

“Is Your Business Plan a Plan or Is It a Script?” Savannah Morning News, November 21, 1999, p. 4D

“Newspapering Business Has Changed with the Times,” Savannah Morning News, August 26, 2001, The Business Exchange, p. 11

“Microsoft Uses Its Clout to Build Its Market, Keep It,” Savannah Morning News, September 9, 2001, The Business Exchange, p. 7

“Attacks also Assaults on Global Business,” Savannah Morning News, September 23, 2001, The Business Exchange, p. 7

“Economic Development, Tariffs, and Trade Wars,” Savannah Morning News, October 21, 2001, The Business Exchange, p. 6

“Making Money in America Not as Easy as One Thinks,” Savannah Morning News, November 4, 2001, The Business Exchange, p. 6

“Globalization Creates Ethical Dilemmas,” Savannah Morning News, December 30, 2001, The Business Exchange, p. 5

“Even in Information Age, Everything You Read is not Whole Truth,” Savannah Morning News, January 27, 2002, The Business Exchange, p 6.

“Difficult to Gauge Scoring in the Big Game,” Super Business, Savannah Morning News, Februrary 24, 2002, p. 8

“Steel and Other Tariffs Show the Customer is Not Yet King”, Savannah Morning News, March 24, 2002, The Business Exchange, p. 8

“Living with the CEO Disease,” Savannah Morning News, April 21, 2002, The Business Exchange, p. 5

“Today’s Stock Market:  How Safe,” Statesboro Herald, February 2, 2004

“Scripting in Family Business Planning,” with Deborah C. Stapleton and Meredith A. Tomlinson, feature article in SBANC Newsletter, online newsletter of the Small Business Advancement National Center, Don B. Bradley, editor, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas, http://.sbaer.uca.edu, April 2004

“Scripting in Family Business Planning,” with Deborah C. Stapleton and Meredith A. Tomlinson, The Script, International Transactional Analysis Association, Vol. 34. No. 6, August 2004

“Scripting in Family Business Planning,” with Deborah C. Stapleton and Meredith A. Tomlinson, feature article in SBANC Newsletter, online newsletter of the Small Business Advancement National Center, Don B. Bradley, editor, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas, http://.sbaer.uca.edu, February 2005

“Market will determine if you’ve got goods,” Savannah Morning News, Business Innovation Section, page 01, June 29, 2019

Internet Journals, 2005-

Too many to list, primarily in the Intrepid Report  and the Effective Learning Report. For a partial listing go to https://blog.effectivelearning.net/

PROFESSIONAL MEETING PARTICIPATION

New Manpower Researcher’s Conference, U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, D.C., September, 1970, presented grant/doctoral dissertation findings, “An Analysis of Rural Manpower Migration Patterns in the South Plains Region of Texas”

Southwestern Management Association Meeting, 1970; presented a paper “In Pursuit of Equilibrium,” Dallas, Texas

Southern Management Association Meeting, New Orleans, 1973; discussed a paper “Experiences with Policies Regarding Employees on Drugs of Twenty Large New Orleans-Area Firms,” by Gerald Langdon

 Trained and consulted with the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, NC, during monthly weekend training sessions, 1975-1977.  Participated in 24 training sessions of approximately 16 hours each at the Southeast Institute, co-conducting 12 of the sessions

 Spring Conference of the Southeast Institute (of Chapel Hill), Atlanta, GA, March, 1977; conducted a three-day organizational development workshop and presented a paper “The Chain of Command Re-visited”

 Spring Conference of the Southeast Institute, Atlanta, GA, 1978; conducted a workshop and presented a paper “De-Gaming the Classroom”

 Southern Management Association Meeting, November, 1978, New Orleans; served as Program Chairman of the Policy and Organization Planning area; chaired Session I of Policy and Organizational Planning on the program

 Spring Conference of the Southeast Institute, Washington, D.C., March, 1980; conducted a workshop and presented a paper “De-Gaming the Organization”

 Southern Management Association Meeting, November, 1980, New Orleans; served as Chairman of the Public Sector section of the program

 Spring Conference of the Southeast Institute, Nashville, TN, March, 1981, conducted a workshop, “Elements of Entrepreneurship”

 Spring Conference of the Southeast Institute, Raleigh, NC, March, 1982; conducted a workshop and presented a paper, “An Analysis of Business Fantasies”

 First Annual Conference on Classroom Communication, Georgia Southern College, 1984, presented a paper, “Establishing Relevant Oral Communications Among Students in Classrooms”

 Southern Management Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, 1984, “Implications of Business Prospectuses Developed by Small Business Students”

 Spring Conference of the Southeast Institute, “Relevant Communications in Classrooms through TA,” March, 1985, Myrtle Beach, SC

 Fourth Annual Organizational Development Conference, Center for Continuing Studies, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, May, 1986, “Causes of Unsuccessful Entrepreneurship”

 1987 Annual Meeting of ABSEL, Hilton Head, SC, presented “A Total Systems Approach to Simulating Free Enterprise in a Small Business Course in a Business School”

 Co-conducted two 2-hour Organizational Development sessions and presented a paper, “Positive Organizational Ego State Trips in the Land of Harkaval,” at the International Transactional Analysis Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, August, 1987

Presented a plenary session program entitled “Entrepreneurial Unlearning” at the Region IV Small Business Institute Director’s Association Annual Conference, Savannah, GA, April, 1988

Presented “Entrepreneurial Learning and Small Business Failure Rates,” 24th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Chapter of The Institute Of Management Science, Myrtle Beach, October, 1988

Presented “What is Most Important?  Entrepreneurial Teaching or Entrepreneurial Unlearning” at the  annual meeting of the Association for Private Enterprise Education, Cleveland, Ohio, September, 1988

Presented “Entrepreneurship, Decisions, and Scripts,” Annual Meeting of the Southeast Region of the Decision Sciences Institute, Charleston, South Carolina, February, 1989

Described the activities of the  Georgia Southern Small Business Institute to the Southeast Georgia Small Business Consortium, May 25, 1989

Conducted two Catalyst Sessions at the 1989 Annual Meeting of the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society, Columbia, MO, June, 1989, demonstrating how to use the Classroom De-Gamer teaching organizational behavior

Attended U.S. Department of Commerce Export Conference for Small Business, Savannah, GA, January 16, 1991

Presented material on how to direct a Small Business Institute and conduct an SBI case course to the State of Georgia Small Business Institute Director’s Conference sponsored by the Small Business Administration, Atlanta, August, 1992

 Attended all Small Business Institute Director’s Association (SBIDA) Region IV meetings, 1987-1992

Attended National SBIDA Conference, San Antonio, TX, 1992

Attended National SBIDA Conference, San Diego, CA, 1993

Attended National Small Business Week luncheon, Small Business Administration, Washington, D.C., June, 1993

Attended National SBIDA Training Conference, Small Business Advancement National Center, Little Rock, Ark., August, 1993

Participated with 12th Annual U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation, Washington, D.C., September, 1993

 Participated with 13th Annual U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation, Washington, D. C., September 1994

 Attended National SBIDA Conference, Nashville, TN, 1994

 Attended International Transactional Analysis Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, August 1995

 Attended International Transactional Analysis Association Annual Meeting, Calgary, Canada, August 1996

Refereed presentation, “Constructivism in the Classroom,” (1998) 2nd Major International Transactional Analysis Conference, Irchel University, Zurich, Switzerland, August 1998

Attended International Transactional Analysis Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, August 1999

Attended Annual Meeting of International Alliance of  Business Disciplines (AIBD) Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada, Spring 2000

Presented “Managing Transactions in the Classroom,” with D. Stapleton, and served on two examining committees for certified member oral examinations, at the Annual Meeting of the International Transactional Analysis Association, Halifax, Nova Scotia, August 2000

Presented “De-Gaming Teaching and Learning,” with D.C. Stapleton, 2002 World Transactional Analysis Conference, Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 2002

Served as program and session chair and refereed cases and articles in various years for meetings of the Southern Management Association, the Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society, the North America Case Research Association, and the Small Business Institute Director’s Association

GRANTS

U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Manpower Policy, Evaluation, and Research, 1968, An Analysis of Rural Manpower Migration Patterns in the South Plains Region of Texas, received $6,500 to write doctoral dissertation

Georgia Southern College, 1973, received $1,000 in funding for case research

 Georgia Southern College, 1987, received $1,900 in funding for a national study of entrepreneurial startups, with G. Murkison

 Georgia Southern College, 1989, received a $600 travel grant to attend the 1989 Annual Meeting of the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society

 Spring 1989 wrote a grant proposal to Georgia Power Company for computer and laser-disc hardware and software for an entrepreneurial laboratory at GSU which was funded for $13,000

 Georgia Southern University, Spring, 1991, received $600 for “A Longitudinal Study of GSU Management Graduates,” with G. Murkison

 During 1987-1994 supervised the development of 96 Small Business Institute cases for the Small Business Administration, generating $48,000 in funding

 CONSULTING

Jones and Hill Insurance, Savannah, March-April, 1976, Organizational Development

Zetterower-Oliff Realty, Statesboro, July, 1976, Organizational Development

Department of Biology, OD, May, 1977

Brooks Instruments, Statesboro, Georgia, a Division of Emerson Electric, Organizational Development teaching and consulting, September, 1977. This program lasted five years, involving teaching transactional analysis to some three hundred employees from all areas and levels of a plant producing and selling meters and valves in international markets. Conducted Game-free, I’m OK—You’re OK, Adult-Adult, democratic intermittent meetings with groups of ten or so employees from relevant areas and levels of the plant discussing interrelated problems and issues on an as needed basis.

Brooks Instruments, Organizational Development, October, 1977

Brooks Instruments, OD, November, 1977

“Steps in Starting a Small Business,” conference at Sea Island Bank, Statesboro, November, 1977

“Adventures in Attitudes,” DeSota-Hilton Hotel, Savannah, February, 1978. A three-day goal-setting and communications conference for middle and upper level management.  Sixteen people attended representing organizations such as Piggly-Wiggly Southern, Ft. Stewart, Vidalia Hospital, Oxford Industries, and the Savannah WMCA

“Transactional Analysis for Educators,” workshop presented to the Georgia Association of Adult Educators at their annual meeting, Jekyll Island, GA, March, 1978

Adventures in Attitudes,” Hinesville, GA, August, 1978; a three-day goal-setting workshop for the senior-level civilian management of Ft. Stewart

“Adventures in Attitudes,” Hinesville, GA, September, 1978; a three-day workshop for the middle-level civilian management of Ft. Stewart

“How to Start a Small Business,” short course taught through the Georgia Southern Small Business Development Center, GSC, November, 1978

“Adventures in Attitudes,” Continuing Education, GSC, Winter, 1979

“Explorations in Learning,” Continuing Education, GSC, Spring, 1979

Brooks Instruments, OD, July, 1979

“How to Start a Small Business,” Small Business Development Center, GSC, Spring, 1979

“Explorations in Learning,” Continuing Education, GSC, Fall, 1979

Candler Hospital, Savannah, Spring, 1980, Organizational Development

Brooks Instruments, Organizational Development, January-April, 1980

Cullman City Schools, Cullman, Alabama, August, 1980; a two-day workshop, “Explorations in Learning”

Landmark Realty, Statesboro, GA, Organizational Development, Spring, 1986

“Strategic Planning in Small Business,” 2nd South Carolina Minority Business Networking Conference, Orangeburg, SC, November, 1989

Supervised approximately 350 student teams consulting with area small businesses after 1974 through the Georgia Southern Small Business Institute program

Taught two business plan short courses sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and the Small Business Development Center, Chamber of Commerce building, Statesboro,  Spring 2000

Assisted the Chamber of Commerce in a study of past Chamber of Commerce Directors in Statesboro and Bulloch County after the inception of the Chamber of Commerce, Spring 2000

Taught accounting and financial professionals how to construct business plans, Accounting Seminar for Financial Professionals, Continuing Education, Brunswick and Savannah, May 2001

HONORARY AND PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

Sigma Iota Epsilon, Honorary Management Fraternity.

Omicron Delta Epsilon, Honorary Economics Fraternity

Beta Gamma Sigma, Honorary Business Fraternity

SEInforms, Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Information Systems and Management Science

Certified Member, Education and Organizations, International Transactional Analysis Association

Small Business Institute Director’s Association

Organizational Behavior Teaching Society

Statesboro-Bulloch County Chamber of Commerce

MISCELLANEOUS

Passed State of Texas Real Estate Broker’s Exam first time with no experience, Austin, Texas, 1963

Passed State of Texas Fire and Casualty Insurance Exam first time with no experience, Austin, Texas, 1963

Founding President, Graduate Students Society, Texas Tech University, 1969

High Pass, Management and Finance doctoral comprehensive exams, Texas Tech University, 1969

Passed comprehensive exams, International Transactional Analysis Association, 1977, as a certified transactional analyst

Football statistician and basketball shot-clock keeper, Sports Information Department, Georgia Southern, 1985-1989

 Member, Board of Directors, Georgia Southern Faculty Club, 1990-1991

Member, 1906 Society, Georgia Southern University, 1990-

Writer/Editor, GSU Entrepreneurship News, 1991-1997

Associate Editor, Southern Business Review, 1974-1986

 Editorial Board Member, Transactional Analysis Journal. 1993-1997

 Editorial Board Member, Journal of Small Business Strategy, 1994-1996

Editorial Board Member, TAJnet, (http://www.tajnet.org/) an internet journal published by the International Transactional Analysis Association presenting articles to readers in medical, consulting, organizational, and educational fields worldwide, 1998-2002

Listed in Outstanding Educators of America, Personalities in the South, and Contemporary Authors

Member, Phi Gamma Delta social fraternity, Texas Tech, 1960-1962

Member, Scottish Heritage Society of Southeast Georgia, 2004-

Member and Director, Georgia Southern Retired Faculty Association, 2016-

Published scores of Internet articles from 2005-present, most still accessible using Google or any search engine.

SCORE MENTOR, US Small Business Administration, pro bono mentoring of entrepreneurs, 2018-2020

Member, Board of Advisors, Business Innovation Group, Center for Entrepreneurial Learning, Parker College of Business, Georgia Southern University, 2016-

Founder & Moderator, The Ogeechee Economic Forum, Effective Learning Company, Statesboro, Georgia, United States, 2019-

Founder, Owner, Writer, Editor, and Publisher, Effective Learning Report, an internet journal, 2016- . at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/

Writer, Editor, and Publisher, The Earthian, an Internet journal, in the Effective Learning Report, 2018- . Now April 15, 2024 in its 43rd edition, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/

HOW TO EMPOWER EARTHIAN HUMANS

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-GAMER in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern University, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama. He taught management systems, researched, published, and conducted a small business institute at Georgia Southern University thirty-five years, 1970-2005.

All case analyses entail considering three existential questions:

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES? WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?

Whomever the spinner of the “Classroom De-Gamer” selected when it wound down after spinning by an imaginary line of fire extending from the point of the spinner to a class member sitting in the circle classroom layout would become the “Leader of the Moment” required to answer the three existential questions shown above laying out the case to all class members.

The overall purpose of the Game-free I’m OK—You’re OK Adult-Adult democratic teaching and learning process is to produce comprehension of the relevant facts and focal points of the case among class members in order to create rational policies and strategies for successfully managing the states of affairs of the case. All humans have Adult ego states that can be cathected, even children at young ages.

Cathecting an ego state is turning on energy, cognition and emotion in the human psyche for transacting with fellow humans. There are three basic types of ego states that can be cathected: Parent, Adult, and Child.

A soft drink bottle as in playing the childhood game Spin the Bottle works about as well as a Classroom De-Gamer to randomly select the Leader of the Moment to answer the Three Existential Questions. No one can interrupt anyone once someone has the floor. Communicating overtly or covertly with individuals in the room for the whole session is not allowed. Anyone can respond to any speaker once the speaker has finished, disagreeing or agreeing with what was said, and may bring up another problem if appropriate in the context of the discussion.

How long should a discussion last? Long enough for group members to comprehend the system under consideration, a system including interrelations between relevant focal point entities of the system–relevant facts and issues comprising the problem, alternatives and recommendations.

According to R. Buckminster Fuller in his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) comprehension of a system entails separating the relevant points from the irrelevant points in the system under consideration. It takes time to do this. According to Fuller, Comprehension = (N²-N) / 2, where N = Number of total focal point entities in the system, counting the number of focal point facts or issues and all the inter-relationships between the focal point entities.

Comprehension required and produced expands exponentially as the size of the system increases. One has to wonder if most Earthian systems today are ever fully comprehended by Earthian humans. Rather than most Earthian human systems being managed today based on comprehension in general they are managed based on dogmas, doctrines, rules, algorithms, scripts, and the like, many of which are irrelevant. As matters now stand about the best Earthian humans can hope for is that somehow the smartest, wisest, most knowledgeable, most ethical, and most empathetic Earthian humans somehow manage to become top leaders in major systems.

When most members of the discussion group seem to generally comprehend the system it is time to stop. Most paper cases in Stapleton’s classes of about 30 students took about one hour. Real cases and systems in your organizations and groups may take more or less time, perhaps several hourly sessions for one system. Stick with the discussion until most members have comprehended the relevant problems, alternatives, and recommendations of the system under consideration as best they can. In most cases this will produce a solution considered the most rational of alternatives for most members of the group, about the best that can be hoped for at present. Perhaps at some future date supercomputers will be able to comprehend large systems well enough to develop answers that are provably true.

Since all members of the group will not have been caused to develop the same pictures in their heads about what should be done in the case before the discussion starts, a high percentage of the discussants will learn in the discussion as they comprehend what is really going on that their initial conceptions were wrong, causing both unlearning and learning. Sometimes unlearning is more important than learning for creating better Earthian human states of affairs. Unlearning, in fact, might be what is now needed most in order for Earthian humans to develop peaceful and sustainable systems around Spaceship Earth.

Most discussants will not leave the discussions with the same mental pictures they started out with caused by the greater comprehension caused by the back and forth dialectical arguing caused by the Game-free I’m OK-You’re OK Adult-Adult democratic discussion process, proving both unlearning and learning happened.

Stapleton’s De-Gaming process insured that everyone would be relatively GAME-free transacting in class discussions. They all agreed to a learning contract at the outset of the course that they would read assigned cases and would be graded on the quantity and quality of ideas sold in the class market. Anyone caught obviously unprepared by the spinning De-GAMER would lose a whole letter grade from the course grade. No one could feel or think that s/he was being persecuted or rescued if selected to start the class discussion of the day by the Classroom De-GAMER. The psychological GAME Drama Triangle roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim were largely banished from the course learning process. The actual grades received—A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and F’s—were relative grades, not absolute grades, Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, and Failing relative to the class. There were no numbers ostensibly proving what percentage of the course knowledge was retained in memory for so-called objective exams.

Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-GAMING rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMER landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.

Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.

Published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled the Classroom De-GAMER he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management systems, policies, and practices.

Learned and trained using transactional analysis with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978).

Learned how the Harvard business school case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA, Harvard Business School doctorates, at the University of Louisiana—Lafayette in 1969-70.

Has a BS in economics (1962), an MBA in organizational behavior (1966), and a PhD in management science (1969) from Texas Tech University, and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis (CTA) from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978).

Taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department in the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year during 1970-2005 in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major.  He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.

Class members agreed to a course learning contract that stipulated they would read the facts of the case before class and would lose a whole letter grade from the course final grade if the De-GAMER randomly caught them obviously not having read the case before class, if they had not slipped a note under his office door before class telling him they had not read the case, which they could do twice during the course without penalty.

About ten percent of his students made A’s and about five percent made D’s. Most made C’s, which is about right, since C = Average. There were few F’s in his courses. The main criterion for course grades was the quantity and quality of ideas sold by students in case method discussions. He used peer ratings to give students feedback showing what their fellow students thought about the quantity and quality of their ideas sold in class, having made it clear the final decision about final grades was his. He did not believe in Lake Wobegon grading.

No class member was ever forced to take one of his courses to graduate, and the most hardened GAME-players in the school did not sign up for his courses after he issued his Edict of 1972 in which he clearly spelled out in his syllabi the penalty for getting caught unprepared. His Classroom De-Gamer was roundly discussed by students in bull sessions across campus every year and was labeled various things, such as The Wheel of Fate and The Death Wheel. Most students near the end of his career simply called it The Spinner.

Appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor with tenure at age thirty-six and was the senior professor of the university when he retired in 2005.

Solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using Parent-Child transactions, row and column classroom layouts, and so-called objective tests.  

Only former students who had worked in the real world of business ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” published in his book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475. The data were also used in several refereed articles.

See also Stapleton, R.J. (1989-1990). “Academic entrepreneurship: Using the case method to simulate competitive business markets.” Organizational Behavior Teaching Review. Vol. XIV, No. IV, pp. 88-104; Stapleton, R.J., Murkison, G., and Stapleton, D.C. (1993). “Feedback regarding a game-free case method process used to educate general management and entrepreneurship students.” Proceedings of the 1993 Annual Meeting of the Southeast CHAPTER of the Institute for Management Science. Myrtle Beach, SC, October, 1993; and Stapleton, R. J. and Stapleton, D.C. (1998), Teaching Business Using the Case Method and Transactional Analysis: A Constructivist Approach”Transactional Analysis Journal, 28, no. 2: 157-167

Ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.

For more information on related classroom management ethical issues in universities see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. (2001), “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 25(3), 269-292.

Had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation system he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.”

To read the Optimizing Fairness article in full, go to https://studysites.sagepub.com/holt/articles/Stapleton.pdf . After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (December 30, 2023) been cited as a reference in 89 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics and fairness of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including 21 new citations since April 2021, proving the article is still being read and used.

As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.“

If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.

His latest book is As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

Feel free to share this article any way you see fit.

By Richard John Stapleton

The biggest problem facing USians right now is the upcoming 2024 presidential election, six months away.

If Trump wins most likely his first step will be to pardon himself of all his crimes and consider himself a de facto fascist dictator of the USian government for life.

Probably his next step will be to put his cronies and lackeys in positions of authority in executive branches of the US government as soon as possible.

The next steps will entail trying to keep poor immigrants out of the US and changing as many USian government policies as possible to further entrench and solidify idiosyncratic beliefs, aims, wishes, hungers, and desires of Trump’s far right MAGA Christian nationalist white supremacist fascist supporters, such as eliminating the legal right of women to control their own bodies with abortions and the legal right of all USians to identify themselves sexually as they were naturally caused to sexually function by accidental and inevitable concatenations of cause-effect chains.  

Next could come attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and other policies and programs considered evil by Trump’s supporters, mostly things considered socialistic, considered evil despite socialism advocating humans being kind to everyone, trying to create policies and laws that will increase the perceived hegemony of members of authoritarian Christian denominations and the actual hegemony of members of the authoritarian capitalistic USian deep state.

Other steps would likely be trying to cut taxes for the rich even more, cut government spending for social programs, increase military spending, ignore the federal debt and exploding yearly deficit, eliminate student loans, do nothing about credit card interest and debt, do nothing to rationally regulate health care and health insurance, weaken or eliminate environmental laws, increase nuclear weapons proliferation, reduce nuclear weapons treaties, and create transactional business deals with the leaders of Israel, Russia, Ukraine, China and various other countries around Spaceship Earth.

Then there will be the matter of dealing with the backlash the above could cause, possibly World War III, or a civil war of sorts within the US.

There will be plenty of narcissistic psychological Games for Trump and his cronies, lackeys, and knaves to play to get strokes and attention if they get in power, persecuting, rescuing, and victimizing humans on a drama triangle ad nauseam, not only inside the US but around Spaceship Earth. Rest assured they will be in your nightly news every day.  

There is even the possibility Trump and his cronies, lackeys, and knaves will try to create concentration camps in the US to confine or do worse to USians who oppose MAGA policies and actions, clamping down with an iron fist, like Trump’s fuhrer hero Hitler did.

Trump and his cronies, lackeys, and knaves will have little respect for the US Constitution and the USian rule of law as they will have proved merely by supporting and voting for Trump again given the irrefutable visual and auditory evidence against him in public media showing he tried to overthrow USian constitutional government with lies and intimidation about the 2020 election being stolen from him and by inciting an insurrection January 6, 2021 in the USian Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

One of the most depressing side effects of this Trumpian-USian affair is Earthian humans learning how inefficient and ineffective is the USian federal justice system.

Apparently, the USian federal justice system works efficiently and effectively only in the cases of humans indicted for crimes who do not have access to large enough sums of money to hire enough lawyers to defend them with appeals in higher courts and frivolous tactics and motions that can legally delay the starting of a trial.

It now appears Trump and his lawyers, paid millions of dollars, can, maybe will, delay justice for Trump long enough for him to get elected president of the US so he can pardon himself of his crimes.

It was sad for most USians to learn that Trump may not get convicted of a felony crime before the 2024 presidential election, that might have eliminated the possibility of him becoming president again, because of a hesitant and seemingly pusillanimous federal justice system that should have indicted him sooner than they did for the felony crime of inciting an insurrection against the USian government.

But it is sadder for most USians to learn there may be enough USian voters who will vote for Trump again to get him elected president again, despite evidence he has a character disorder and having been well informed in public media about his lies, incompetence, malfeasance, and crimes, in and out of office.

Not only are there some seemingly weak, greedy, unethical, and pusillanimous USian federal justice officers and judges, including supreme court judges; there are millions of needy USian voters who have little respect for ethics and truth. 

We will have to wait six more months to find out how sad this 2024 USian concatenation of presidential political cause-effect chains shall be.

BACKSTORIES

“How Governments Waste Their Time,” by Richard John Stapleton, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, May 19, 2023, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/how-governments-waste-their-time/.

“Earthian Empowerment Systems,” by Richard J0hn Stapleton, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, August 26, 2023, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/earthian-empowerment-systems/.

“The USian Trumpian/Repuglican Dilemma,” by RJS, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, September 30, 2023, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-usian-trumpian-repuglican-dilemma/.

“The Ordeal of Trumpism,” by RJS, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, August 18, 2023, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-ordeal-of-trumpism/.

“Will Don Trump’s Hamartic Script Enmesh Us All Before His Story Ends?,” by RJS, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, July 8, 2023, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/will-don-trumps-hamartic-script-enmesh-us-all-before-his-life-story-ends/.

“Hopefully This is the Last Straw for Trump on His Way Out of the White House,” by RJS, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT, November 29, 2020, https://blog.effectivelearning.net/3222-2/.

HOW TO EMPOWER EARTHIAN HUMANS

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-Gamer™ in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern University, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama. He taught management systems, researched, published, and conducted a small business institute at Georgia Southern University thirty-five years, 1970-2005.

All case analyses entail considering three existential questions:

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES? WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?

Whomever the spinner of the “Classroom De-Gamer” selected when it wound down after spinning by an imaginary line of fire extending from the point of the spinner to a class member sitting in the circle classroom layout would become the “Leader of the Moment” required to answer the three existential questions shown above laying out the case to all class members.

The overall purpose of the Game-free I’m OK—You’re OK Adult-Adult democratic teaching and learning process is to produce comprehension of the relevant facts and focal points of the case among class members in order to create rational policies and strategies for successfully managing the states of affairs of the case. All humans have Adult ego states that can be cathected, even children at young ages.

Cathecting an ego state is turning on energy, cognition and emotion in the human psyche for transacting with fellow humans. There are three basic types of ego states that can be cathected: Parent, Adult, and Child.

A soft drink bottle as in playing the childhood game Spin the Bottle works about as well as a Classroom De-Gamer to randomly select the Leader of the Moment to answer the Three Existential Questions. No one can interrupt anyone once someone has the floor. Communicating overtly or covertly with individuals in the room for the whole session is not allowed. Anyone can respond to any speaker once the speaker has finished, disagreeing or agreeing with what was said, and may bring up another problem if appropriate in the context of the discussion.

How long should a discussion last? Long enough for group members to comprehend the system under consideration, a system including interrelations between relevant focal point entities of the system–relevant facts and issues comprising the problem, alternatives and recommendations.

According to R. Buckminster Fuller in his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) comprehension of a system entails separating the relevant points from the irrelevant points in the system under consideration. It takes time to do this. According to Fuller, Comprehension = (N²-N) / 2, where N = Number of total focal point entities in the system, counting the number of focal point facts or issues and all the inter-relationships between the focal point entities.

Comprehension required and produced expands exponentially as the size of the system increases. One has to wonder if most Earthian systems today are ever fully comprehended by Earthian humans. Rather than most Earthian human systems being managed today based on comprehension in general they are managed based on dogmas, doctrines, rules, algorithms, scripts, and the like, many of which are irrelevant. As matters now stand about the best Earthian humans can hope for is that somehow the smartest, wisest, most knowledgeable, most ethical, and most empathetic Earthian humans somehow manage to become top leaders in major systems.

When most members of the discussion group seem to generally comprehend the system it is time to stop. Most paper cases in Stapleton’s classes of about 30 students took about one hour. Real cases and systems in your organizations and groups may take more or less time, perhaps several hourly sessions for one system. Stick with the discussion until most members have comprehended the relevant problems, alternatives, and recommendations of the system under consideration as best they can. In most cases this will produce a solution considered the most rational of alternatives for most members of the group, about the best that can be hoped for at present. Perhaps at some future date supercomputers will be able to comprehend large systems well enough to develop answers that are provably true.

Since all members of the group will not have been caused to develop the same pictures in their heads about what should be done in the case before the discussion starts, a high percentage of the discussants will learn in the discussion as they comprehend what is really going on that their initial conceptions were wrong, causing both unlearning and learning. Sometimes unlearning is more important than learning for creating better Earthian human states of affairs. Unlearning, in fact, might be what is now needed most in order for Earthian humans to develop peaceful and sustainable systems around Spaceship Earth.

Most discussants will not leave the discussions with the same mental pictures they started out with caused by the greater comprehension caused by the back and forth dialectical arguing caused by the Game-free I’m OK-You’re OK Adult-Adult democratic discussion process, proving both unlearning and learning happened.

Stapleton’s De-Gaming process insured that everyone would be relatively GAME-free transacting in class discussions. They all agreed to a learning contract at the outset of the course that they would read assigned cases and would be graded on the quantity and quality of ideas sold in the class market. Anyone caught obviously unprepared by the spinning De-GAMER would lose a whole letter grade from the course grade. No one could feel or think that s/he was being persecuted or rescued if selected to start the class discussion of the day by the Classroom De-GAMER. The psychological GAME Drama Triangle roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim were largely banished from the course learning process. The actual grades received—A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and F’s—were relative grades, not absolute grades, Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, and Failing relative to the class. There were no numbers ostensibly proving what percentage of the course knowledge was retained in memory for so-called objective exams.

Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-GAMING rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMER landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.

Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.

Stapleton published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled the Classroom De-GAMER he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management systems, policies, and practices.

Learned and trained using transactional analysis with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978).

Learned how the Harvard case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA, Harvard Business School doctorates, at the University of Louisiana—Lafayette in 1969-70.

Has a BS in economics (1962), an MBA in organizational behavior (1966), and a PhD in management science (1969) from Texas Tech University, and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis (CTA) from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978).

Taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department in the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year during 1970-2005 in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major.  He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.

Class members agreed to a course learning contract that stipulated they would read the facts of the case before class and would lose a whole letter grade from the course final grade if the De-GAMER randomly caught them obviously not having read the case before class, if they had not slipped a note under his office door before class telling him they had not read the case, which they could do twice during the course without penalty.

About ten percent of his students made A’s and about five percent made D’s. Most made C’s, which is about right, since C = Average. There were few F’s in his courses. The main criterion for course grades was the quantity and quality of ideas sold by students in case method discussions. He used peer ratings to give students feedback showing what their fellow students thought about the quantity and quality of their ideas sold in class, having made it clear the final decision about final grades was his. He did not believe in Lake Wobegon grading.

No student was ever forced to take one of his courses to graduate, and the most hardened GAME-players in the school did not sign up for his courses after he issued his Edict of 1972 in which he clearly spelled out in his syllabi the penalty for getting caught unprepared. His Classroom De-Gamer was roundly discussed by students in bull sessions across campus every year and was labeled various things, such as The Wheel of Fate and The Death Wheel. Most students near the end of his career simply called it The Spinner.

Appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor with tenure at age thirty-six and was the senior professor of the university when he retired in 2005.

Solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using Parent-Child transactions, row and column classroom layouts, and so-called objective tests.  

Only former students who had worked in the real world of business ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” published in his book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475. The data were also used in several refereed articles.

See also Stapleton, R.J. (1989-1990). “Academic entrepreneurship: Using the case method to simulate competitive business markets.” Organizational Behavior Teaching Review. Vol. XIV, No. IV, pp. 88-104; Stapleton, R.J., Murkison, G., and Stapleton, D.C. (1993). “Feedback regarding a game-free case method process used to educate general management and entrepreneurship students.” Proceedings of the 1993 Annual Meeting of the Southeast CHAPTER of the Institute for Management Science. Myrtle Beach, SC, October, 1993; and Stapleton, R. J. and Stapleton, D.C. (1998), Teaching Business Using the Case Method and Transactional Analysis: A Constructivist Approach”Transactional Analysis Journal, 28, no. 2: 157€“167

Ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.

For more information on related classroom management ethical issues in universities see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. (2001), “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 25(3), 269-292.

Had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation system he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.“

To read the Optimizing Fairness article in full, go to https://studysites.sagepub.com/holt/articles/Stapleton.pdf . After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (December 30, 2023) been cited as a reference in 89 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics and fairness of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including 21 new citations since April 2021, proving the article is still being read and used.

As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.“

If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.

His latest book is As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

Feel free to share this article any way you see fit.

 

By Richard John Stapleton

I was dismayed and depressed when the USian movie star president, Ronald Reagan, lowered the top federal income tax rate on USian incomes down to 28 percent in the 1980’s; but nobody I knew around here seemed to care.

What I thought would happen did happen: morbid inequality.

I also worried about the incipient income inequality caused by lowering the tax rates of the rich being exacerbated by the computer revolution.

It seemed obvious to me that copyrights on computer software, giving lucky Earthian humans like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg monopoly rights on software packages demanded by millions of Earthian humans would also lead to income inequality.

It costs almost nothing to copy, paste, and sell more copyrighted copies of demanded computer code to almost unlimited numbers of Earthian human consumers using personal entertainment and communication devices, and to corporate profit-making organizations in all countries operating agricultural, financial, insurance, health care, mining, manufacturing and distribution systems who use copyrighted software to cut their costs of production by employing simulated and real robots in menu talking systems, management information storage systems, and in manual labor systems rather than use expensive Earthian human robots.

Rather than say to hungry Earthian humans demanding bread “Let them eat cake” as Marie Antoinette did during the French revolution, the Earthian billionaire elite since 1980 has said the equivalent of “Let them eat information” as the Earthian computer revolution happened, and their net worth grew exponentially larger, automatically, with little work on their part, thanks to computer software and income tax cuts, among other things, as the poorest Earthian humans got poorer.

So far hordes of hungry Earthian humans have not brandished their pitchforks, or guillotines.

BACKSTORY

“The Gilded Age Then, the Gilded Age Now,” by Sam Pizzigati, COUNTERPUNCH, March 11, 2024, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/11/the-gilded-age-then-the-gilded-age-now/?fbclid=IwAR1Btb3frOzTjszaLMSDUInVYPMMTyRObkcudwhKAU_2RDrFR4pPA2rG2OE.

How it Happened

Everything that happens is an inevitable accident; it was not planned using free will, but it was caused by inexorably-progressing cause-effect chains. It behooves Earthian humans to tie loose ends together in comprehensive whole pictures trying to let Earthian humans know what is really going on around Earth, regardless of the problems, given the robot-like programmed beliefs and behaviors of most Earthian humans, ensconced in their worm hole tunnels of existence, shut off from relevant outside information inputs, caused by concatenations of inexorably progressing infinitely-regressive cause-effect chains all around Spaceship Earth.

TOWARD THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF SUSTAINABLE EARTHIAN PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS, INC. (EPDS)

Establishing democracy chapters around Spaceship Earth as described and recommended in As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases might develop consensual answers regarding existential matters from the bottom up that might help save Spaceship Earth. These ideas would filter up to randomly-selected humans who would count the consensual answers to make necessary changes. Consensual tactics, strategies, and policies would then be developed around Earth for dealing with the computerized Spaceship Earth management system, operated and controlled using artificial intelligence programming and supercomputers.

Randomly-selected groups of Earthian humans of high intelligence with impeccable moral and ethical character and credentials would control codes for changing the Earthian Magnum Computer System programming to implement bottom-up recommendations of millions of members in discussions in democracy chapters around Spaceship Earth. Each member of the group in charge of the codes for the magnum computer system would serve limited terms. These members would not vote or decide what to do. They would see to it that the computer system implemented the consensual answers of millions of Earthian humans from all walks of life, as determined by honest, free, fair, and frank democratic GAME-free discussions in democracy chapters all around Spaceship Earth, as explained and shown in As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases. The overall objective would be to manage the system in such a way as to maximize the lifetime satisfactions of all Earthian humans, as well as all other species of life aboard Spaceship Earth, while insuring the indefinite functioning of all Spaceship Earth ecosystems.

Necessary moral and ethical requirements and constraints could be programmed in the Magnum Management System that Earthian humans at the top would be obliged to obey. If changes should be made in the moral and ethical codes in the overall program they would be sent back to the Earthian democracy chapters for discussion and then tabulated and analyzed before algorithms programmed in the system would create changes in the magnum operating system.  

This computerized management system would require a strict system of security controls like the current codes of nations possessing nuclear weapons, hopefully providing security several magnitudes more secure than current nuclear codes, to make sure a madman could not get in control of any aspect of the system

A management system such as this would significantly improve previous systems used around Spaceship Earth that have historically empowered fickle, egotistical, greedy, power mad, grandiose, poorly educated, not-very-bright individual Earthian humans to make existential decisions affecting the OKness of thousands, millions, and billions of humans around Earth, that have been used over and over again for millennia, resulting in incredible losses and suffering at various moments of history caused by the unfair and indiscriminate inexorable tunneling out of bad, ok, or good luck for hundreds, thousands, millions, or billions of Earthian humans around Spaceship Earth, resulting from the cosmic evolution commencing with a big bang some fourteen billion years ago. Humans thus far in Earthian human history have not been caused to develop knowledge and decisions that prevents them from empowering greedy, selfish, power mad, narcissistic, not very bright leaders in their largest management systems over and over again.

A tough lesson for Earthian humans to accept propositioned in Effective Learning Publications books is that everything that happens in human states of affairs is either predetermined or accidental and therefore individuals are not to blame or praise for what happens in human states of affairs. This is easier to swallow after accepting that believing and acting otherwise will support and perpetuate the I’m OK—You”re Not OK life position that has bedeviled, sabotaged, and undermined Earthian humans since time immemorial, causing wars and other disasters.

The best way significant numbers of Earthian humans can be caused to be significantly changed psychologically and socially by others is through democratic face to face discussions in honest serious and rigorous dialectical, dialogical, analogical arguing about facts using reasoning of all kinds, dealing with Earthian human existential states of affairs over a relatively long period of time. Yet, this rarely happens.

What is considered natural, unnatural; normal, abnormal; right, wrong; ethical, unethical; righteous, sinful; worthy, unworthy; or sane or insane by a particular Earthian human is caused by information lodged in her/his brain caused to be lodged there by the concatenation of infinite cause-effect chains causing her/him to exist and slowly inch through the Earthian worm hole of existence inexorably tunneled out for her or him by her/his specific unbroken infinitely-regressing cause-effect chains inexorably-progressing throughout his/her infinitesimally short cosmic life, regardless of how bad, ok, or good that luck or fate might be as judged by any Earthian human; and all Earthian humans must keep on inching forward in their worm holes as best they can dealing with inevitable problems and opportunities caused to exist at stages in their unique tunnels, as they are knocked around like balls in a pin-ball machine, as events inevitably and/or accidentally happen externally and in their subconscious and conscious minds, however bad, ok, or good their inherited luck might have absolutely been, which cannot be proved, however easy it might be to relatively estimate.

Changing the life scripts of Earthian humans for the better requires changing the course of unique tunnels of existence in which individual humans accidentally and inevitably live, a tall order indeed. Some biological constructivists would consider this notion a pipe dream, while considering the whole process a meaningless drift in the infinity of time and space.

What is God? Whatever it was that caused the universe to exist.

For more information on the use of Transactional Analysis  to create better discussion groups and democratic processes read Born to Learn:  A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning

For more information on how to co-construct better organizations and economic systems using transactional analysis read Business Voyages:  Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds

Read  €œThe Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc,€  for some management science ideas on how Earthian humans might eventually co-construct an economic system that is viable and satisfying for everyone aboard Spaceship Earth, making it possible for all Earthian humans to develop an I€™m OK–You€™re OK life position. 

Read As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

This novel shows how to conduct a new kind of seminar invented and coordinated by Rout Logger, the protagonist, that might reduce the probability of Earthian human extinction if widely implemented that requires participants in a seminar to speak up when randomly selected by a Truther rooster positioned in the center of a randomly-selected group of forty humans sitting in a circle.

The Truther rooster resembles a spinning weather vane. The rooster is programmed to bob its head up and down and crow after being twirled by a randomly-selected seminar participant, as it spins round and round winding down, letting group members know it’s time to wake up and get to work, before it’s too late. When the Truther rooster stops spinning whoever is at the end of a line of imaginary fire extending from the rooster’s beak to her or him sitting in the circle is automatically selected as the Leader of the Moment for the group.

The Leader of the Moment then leads the group into a democratic discussion of what s/he considers the most serious existential problem around Spaceship Earth.  Forty participants from all walks of life were paid $5000 monthly for participating in weekend seminars conducted in central city hotels in various cities randomly selected around the US. If randomly selected as the Leader of the Moment the participant would define what s/he thought was the most important problem facing Spaceship Earth, present alternatives, and make a recommendation for change. What s/he said was discussed by members of the group on a free-flow first come-first serve basis. It was against the law of the seminar to interrupt speakers or raise hands to get permission to speak. Discussions lasted until they ran out of steam. The results of the discussions were published to wealthy donors who financed the process.

Rout Logger was convinced most Earthian humans would not volunteer to participate in this sort of seminar to merely help save Spaceship Earth from GWCC (Global Warming and Climate Change) and/or MNWP (Militarization and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation) using their Nurturing Parent, Adult, and Free Child Ego States, given the reality that their life time and energy was already programmed and consumed with various forms of withdrawal, rituals, pastimes, psychological games, activities, and intimacy in their unique tunnels of reality, as they acted out their inherited life scripts; so they were paid $5000 per month to participate in a game-free, Adult-Adult democratic seminar that would require them to honestly discuss existential problems with forty other participants from disparate walks of life, if they were randomly selected by the spinning Truther Rooster as the Leader of the Moment.

Achieving Earthian human sustainability entails such things as Earthian humans peacefully reducing through natural attrition (natural deaths exceeding births) the human population aboard Spaceship Earth, never doing work that machines can do better, and delegating the day-to-day management of systems for scheduling, producing, and distributing the necessities of life to artificial intelligence programs and supercomputers, assuming sufficient quantities of non-human clean energy can be discovered and developed using mind grants.

This general algorithmic matrix algebra form can help bring this state of affairs about,

Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj <, =, or >Bi,

explained in €œThe Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.€

This mathematical formulation could help develop power in economics loosely analogous to the power of E=mc² in physics. This formulation, Max CjXj, subject to AijXj <, =, or >Bi, is a general form of the linear programming model, which has been around for many years in management science, operations research, and linear algebra courses.

Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj <, =, or >Bi symbolizes knowledge that gives the Earthian human species about as much potential power to perpetuate itself as Albert Einstein’s formulation E=mc² symbolizes knowledge that gives the Earthian human species the power to exterminate itself.

Riding aboard an airliner about to land at night traveling at four hundred miles an hour at thirty-five thousand feet with clouds, rain, wind, and lightning below, what would you rather have figuring out the path, speed, and angle of descent of the aircraft for touch-down, the plane’s auto-pilot, radar, and computer system or the pilot and co-pilot, seeing nothing out their windows below but clouds and lightning?

The main reason why delegating the scheduling, production, and distribution of the necessities of life to AI programs and magnum computers would be a good idea is that magnum computers and algorithmic AI programs do not get greedy and power hungry or play psychological GAMES. Thus far in Earthian human history most leaders and rulers atop large organizations such as nations have become corrupt one way or another playing psychological GAMES, acting out selfish greedy ego trips, hogging all the power, money, strokes, stimulation, and recognition they could get their hands on for themselves and their cronies, leaving the hindmost to their underlings. Whatever their limitations and possible threats, algorithmic computer programs and super computers are not egotistical, greedy, and power-hungry.

Thanks to Buckminster Fuller for providing the above airplane-landing metaphor in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, first published in 1969, and for planting seeds for other ideas in the essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.” published in the Effective Learning Report, such as computers being the best hope for mankind and humans not doing work machines can do better, being paid to think instead with what Fuller called mind grants. Fuller said unemployment all around Spaceship Earth could be eliminated overnight with mind grants. He was the inventor of the appellations Earthian and Spaceship Earth.   

Many Earthian humans like to win BALANCE SHEET psychological GAMES, to feel superior and lord it over others, regardless if Spaceship Earth is going to hell in a handbasket around them because of global warming and climate change (GWCC) and militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation (MNWP), regardless of how much they have failed in other areas of their lives, and regardless of how heinous were crimes and misdemeanors they may have gotten away with in the process of amassing their riches, since they were saved, as it were, by taking in and controlling more almighty monetary units than other lesser mortals.

If you want to learn more about transactional analysis, such as Ego States, Scripts, and psychological GAMES, read Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning.

Most Earthian humans know what it is to be egotistical, but they have little understanding of how specific human egotistical manifestations, such as Parent, Adult, and Child ego states, can be used to control and manipulate human behavior for nefarious ends.

Most likely it would take several generations using learning processes such as the process described above including millions of Earthian humans all around Earth to change Earthian human behavior enough to cause the evolution of an Earthian management system such as described above that would be able to produce loving and cooperative Earthian humans and Earthian peace and sustainability, gradually rendering obsolete the greedy and selfish slash and burn competitive systems that have been caused to exist around Spaceship Earth.

For short run policies and strategies for dealing with USian economic and political problems see the platform of the FreeFairProgressParty .

HOW TO EMPOWER EARTHIAN HUMANS

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-Gamer™ in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern University, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama. He taught management systems, researched, published, and conducted a small business institute at Georgia Southern University thirty-five years, 1970-2005.

All case analyses entail considering three existential questions:

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES? WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?

Whomever the spinner of the “Classroom De-Gamer” selected when it wound down after spinning by an imaginary line of fire extending from the point of the spinner to a class member sitting in the circle classroom layout would become the “Leader of the Moment” required to answer the three existential questions shown above laying out the case to all class members.

The overall purpose of the Game-free I’m OK—You’re OK Adult-Adult democratic teaching and learning process is to produce comprehension of the relevant facts and focal points of the case among class members in order to create rational policies and strategies for successfully managing the states of affairs of the case. All humans have Adult ego states that can be cathected, even children at young ages.

Cathecting an ego state is turning on energy, cognition and emotion in the human psyche for transacting with fellow humans. There are three basic types of ego states that can be cathected: Parent, Adult, and Child.

A soft drink bottle as in playing the childhood game Spin the Bottle works about as well as a Classroom De-Gamer to randomly select the Leader of the Moment to answer the Three Existential Questions. No one can interrupt anyone once someone has the floor. Communicating overtly or covertly with individuals in the room for the whole session is not allowed. Anyone can respond to any speaker once the speaker has finished, disagreeing or agreeing with what was said, and may bring up another problem if appropriate in the context of the discussion.

How long should a discussion last? Long enough for group members to comprehend the system under consideration, a system including interrelations between relevant focal point entities of the system, relevant facts and issues comprising the problem, alternatives and recommendations.

According to R. Buckminster Fuller in his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) comprehension of a system entails separating the relevant points from the irrelevant points in the system under consideration. It takes time to do this. According to Fuller, Comprehension = (N²-N) / 2, where N = Number of total focal point entities in the system, counting the number of focal point facts or issues and all the inter-relationships between the focal point entities.

Comprehension required and produced expands exponentially as the size of the system increases. One has to wonder if most Earthian systems today are ever fully comprehended by Earthian humans. Rather than most Earthian human systems being managed today based on comprehension in general they are managed based on dogmas, doctrines, rules, algorithms, scripts, and the like, many of which are irrelevant. As matters now stand about the best Earthian humans can hope for is that somehow the smartest, wisest, most knowledgeable, most ethical, and most empathetic Earthian humans somehow manage to become top leaders in major systems.

When most members of the discussion group seem to generally comprehend the system it is time to stop. Most paper cases in Stapleton’s classes of about 30 students took about one hour. Real cases and systems in your organizations and groups may take more or less time, perhaps several hourly sessions for one system. Stick with the discussion until most members have comprehended the relevant problems, alternatives, and recommendations of the system under consideration as best they can. In most cases this will produce a solution considered the most rational of alternatives for most members of the group, about the best that can be hoped for at present. Perhaps at some future date supercomputers will be able to comprehend large systems well enough to develop answers that are provably true.

Since all members of the group will not have been caused to develop the same pictures in their heads about what should be done in the case before the discussion starts, a high percentage of the discussants will learn in the discussion as they comprehend what is really going on that their initial conceptions were wrong, causing both unlearning and learning. Sometimes unlearning is more important than learning for creating better Earthian human states of affairs. Unlearning, in fact, might be what is now needed most in order for Earthian humans to develop peaceful and sustainable systems around Spaceship Earth.

Most discussants will not leave the discussions with the same mental pictures they started out with caused by the greater comprehension caused by the back and forth dialectical arguing caused by the Game-free I’m OK-You’re OK Adult-Adult democratic discussion process, proving both unlearning and learning happened.

Stapleton’s De-Gaming process insured that everyone would be relatively GAME-free transacting in class discussions. They all agreed to a learning contract at the outset of the course that they would read assigned cases and would be graded on the quantity and quality of ideas sold in the class market. Anyone caught obviously unprepared by the spinning De-GAMER would lose a whole letter grade from the course grade. No one could feel or think that s/he was being persecuted or rescued if selected to start the class discussion of the day by the Classroom De-GAMER. The psychological GAME Drama Triangle roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim were largely banished from the course learning process. The actual grades received—A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and F’s—were relative grades, not absolute grades, Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, and Failing relative to the class. There were no numbers ostensibly proving what percentage of the course €œcontent€ was retained in memory for so-called objective exams.

Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-GAMING rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMER landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.

Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.

Published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled the Classroom De-GAMER he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management systems, policies, and practices.

Learned and trained using transactional analysis with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978).

Learned how the Harvard case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA, Harvard Business School doctorates, at the University of Louisiana—Lafayette in 1969-70.

Has a BS in economics (1962), an MBA in organizational behavior (1966), and a PhD in management science (1969) from Texas Tech University, and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis (CTA) from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978).

Taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department in the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year during 1970-2005 in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major.  He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.

Class members agreed to a course learning contract that stipulated they would read the facts of the case before class and would lose a whole letter grade from the course final grade if the De-GAMER randomly caught them obviously not having read the case before class, if they had not slipped a note under his office door before class telling him they had not read the case, which they could do twice during the course without penalty.

About ten percent of his students made A’s and about five percent made D’s. Most made C’s, which is about right, since C = Average. There were few F’s in his courses. The main criterion for course grades was the quantity and quality of ideas sold by students in case method discussions. He used peer ratings to give students feedback showing what their fellow students thought about the quantity and quality of their ideas sold in class, having made it clear the final decision about final grades was his. He did not believe in Lake Wobegon grading.

No student was ever forced to take one of his courses to graduate, and the most hardened GAME-players in the school did not sign up for his courses after he issued his Edict of 1972 in which he clearly spelled out in his syllabi the penalty for getting caught unprepared. His Classroom De-Gamer was roundly discussed by students in bull sessions across campus every year and was labeled various things, such as The Wheel of Fate and The Death Wheel. Most students near the end of his career simply called it The Spinner.

Appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor with tenure at age thirty-six and was the senior professor of the university when he retired in 2005.

Solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult-Adult I’m OK—You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using Parent-Child transactions, row and column classroom layouts, and so-called objective tests.  

Only former students who had worked in the real world of business ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” published in his book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475. The data were also used in several refereed articles.

See also Stapleton, R.J. (1989-1990). “Academic entrepreneurship: Using the case method to simulate competitive business markets.” Organizational Behavior Teaching Review. Vol. XIV, No. IV, pp. 88-104; Stapleton, R.J., Murkison, G., and Stapleton, D.C. (1993). “Feedback regarding a game-free case method process used to educate general management and entrepreneurship students.” Proceedings of the 1993 Annual Meeting of the Southeast CHAPTER of the Institute for Management Science. Myrtle Beach, SC, October, 1993; and Stapleton, R. J. and Stapleton, D.C. (1998), Teaching Business Using the Case Method and Transactional Analysis: A Constructivist Approach”Transactional Analysis Journal, 28, no. 2: 157€“167

Ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.

For more information on related classroom management ethical issues in universities see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. (2001), “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 25(3), 269-292.

Had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation system he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.“

To read the Optimizing Fairness article in full, go to https://studysites.sagepub.com/holt/articles/Stapleton.pdf . After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (December 30, 2023) been cited as a reference in 89 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics and fairness of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including 21 new citations since April 2021, proving the article is still being read and used.

As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.“

If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.

His latest book is As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

Feel free to share this article any way you see fit.

The Forty-Second Issue of a Management Systems Journal Concerned About Existential Earthian Human States of Affairs, December 1, 2023, Effective Learning Publications, 32 East Main Street, Statesboro, Georgia, USA, Richard John Stapleton, Editor & Publisher, Copyright 2023, All Rights Reserved

ASK MORE WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR ALL EARTHIANS–TO REDUCE THE PROBABILITY OF EXTINCTIONS–CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE (GWCC) AND/OR MILITARIZATION AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROLIFERATION (MNWP)

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

1 – PERSPECTIVE OF A HYPOTHETICAL EXONEXUS OBSERVER FROM A PLANET BEYOND THE EARTHIAN SOLAR SYSTEM.

2 – RECENT EXISTENTIAL ARTICLES, IDEAS, AND COMMENTS

3 – TOWARD THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF EARTHIAN PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS, INC. (EPDS)

4 – A GAME-FREE CASE METHOD TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS THAT WOULD PRODUCE DEMOCRATIC DISCUSSIONS, LEARNING, AND POLICY FORMULATION AROUND EARTH

AN EARTHIAN ELDER SPEAKS

“So, I guess what I’m saying is that, as we can establish that the earth is a sphere, and thus finite, then growth in your population and artifacts must have limits. And, your lack of a social-economic system to recognize those limits is leading us all to diaster.”

See and read more about KOKO, the gorilla who knew over 1,000 words.

1 – OPINION OF A HYPOTHETICAL EXONEXUS OBSERVER FROM A PLANET BEYOND THE EARTHIAN SOLAR SYSTEM

Earthian humans are enthralled, manipulated, and in various degrees controlled by their leaders in some two hundred countries aboard Spaceship Earth. Leaders became leaders because of being caused to be leaders by concatenations of unbroken cause-effect chains resulting after our universe started evolving some thirteen billion years ago in the infinity of time and space.

Leaders are generally products of the same sorts of differentiated configurations of cause-effect chains as differentiated followers and members in differentiated countries. All Earthian humans are doing what they were caused to do in their daily lives starting at birth.

Earth as a planet was formed about 4.5 billion years ago and has undergone innumerable transformations in the meantime. Humanoid creatures have been aboard Spaceship Earth for some two million years, and they too have undergone numerous evolutionary changes, as have other Earthian species.

Unfortunately, Earthian humans have now reached a precarious and dangerous stage in their evolution as biological creatures. After slowly evolving more and more accurate, complex, and powerful understandings, technologies, and ways of life for two million years on Earth, during the last two hundred years Earthian humans evolved new technological devices at exponential rates that enabled them to increase the overly-fecund human population of Earth so much that they now threaten not only to destroy their own existence as a species aboard Spaceship Earth but also the existence of most other species alive on Earth.

Keeping eight or so billion humans alive on Earth has required so many goods and services to be produced to satisfy human biological and psychological needs and wants and so much carbon-based fuel to be burned to produce the goods that the climate of Spaceship Earth has been altered by carbon dioxide gas released into the Earthian atmosphere in large-enough quantities to cause extra heat to be trapped on Earth causing the mean Earthian temperature to increase at a yearly rate that threatens to destroy Earthian human life as it now exists, within centuries, if not decades.

Unfortunately, Earthian humans have also developed technological knowledge that has enabled them to produce over 10,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy human life if dropped and detonated around Earth, as they have the capability to do.

2 – RECENT EARTHIAN EXISTENTIAL ARTICLES, IDEAS, AND COMMENTS    

October 19, 2012

ON WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS

“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” – Holy Bible, New International Version

Seems prophetic alright, but it also normalizes war, and hopelessness, except for the “saved”. Saved from what, the eternal fires of a vengeful god? What greater torture could there be than that, created by a supposedly loving god. It’s bad enough to be bombed and tortured in wars by deranged not very bright sadistic Earthian humans, but getting punished and tortured eternally by a god for not keeping a “faith” is off the charts for cruelty and callousness. – RJS

November 21

“WERE THE BIBLICAL PROPHETS ANTI-SEMITIC,” BY MICHAEL HUDSON, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG.

Michael Hudson, the greatest economic historian alive, ties it all together in this article, the most relevant and illuminating article I have read in a good while. It’s a should-read for all Earthian humans. Seems to me there was not an old man up there in the sky with a long white beard wearing a long white robe on a white puffy cloud with a walking stick in his hand telling Jewish prophets what to do about economic policy: It was some highly intelligent Earthian humans called prophets considering rationality itself (truth, justice, mercy, love, etc.) God. – RJS

July 29

“THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD,” BY PAUL STREET, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

Grieve this doesn’t happen. –– RJS

October 19

ISRAEL IS COMMITTING AN EPIC WAR CRIME WITH US BACK AND US ARMS, BY DAVE LINDORFF, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

Say it aint so Joe – RJS

October 14

“THE WAR IS NOT MEANT TO BE WON,” BY ADMINISTRATOR, THE BURNING PLATFORM

This article is too cynical perhaps but it contains more than a grain of truth.

Here is what a renowned USian diplomat and historian had to say about the problem:– RJS

“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.” George F. Kennan (1904-2005), quote published in Foreword to ‘The Pathology of Power'” by Norman Cousins (Norton, 1987), from At a Century’s Ending: Reflections 1982-1995 (Norton, 1997, ISBN 0-393-31609-2), Part II: Cold War in Full Bloom, p. 118. Read more at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan

October 14

FREE PALESTINE, BY AMEL MENJOUR, FACEBOOK

Why not just create a new name for the place, like the United States of Western Asia, or some such, perhaps something like the United State of Judah, Palestine, Israel, and Edum, giving all inhabitants equal rights of citizenship, with no mention of religion in a new constitution, save perhaps one sentence stating the United State of Judah, Israel, Palestine, and Edum shall pass no laws respecting the efficacy or irrelevance of religion, like the United States of America did in its constitution, the bravest and best thing the USian founders did. – RJS

October 36

DOES ISRAEL HAVE A RIGHT TO EXIST?, (W/MIKO PELED), YOUTUBE.COM

Here is the best video I have watched and listened to on the problem in Israel/Palestine. Well worth a look and listen.– RJS

October 25

“THE GREEN IS THE ARAB WORLD. THAT TINY SPECK IS ISRAEL,” BY ELISHEVA NEUMAN, FACEBOOK

The land of Israel has been populated by the Jewish people since 2000 BC. Here’s the timeline, in case you didn’t realize that it is their homeland.

1900 BC: Abraham chosen by God as the Father of the Jewish Nation.

1900 BC: Isaac, Abraham’s son, rules over Israel.

1850 BC: Jacob, son of Issac, rules over Israel.

1400 BC: Moses leads the people out of Egypt and back to Israel.

1010 BC: King David unites the 12 tribes into one nation.

970 BC: King Solomon, son of David, builds the first temple structure in Jerusalem

930 BC: Israel is divided into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah.

800s BC: The rise of the prophets, God’s messengers.

722 BC: Kingdom of Israel is conquered by Assyrians.

605 BC: Kingdom Judah is conquered by the Babylonians.

586 BC: Solomon’s Temple is destroyed by the Babylonians.

539 BC: Persians conquer the Babylonians and take control of Israel.

538 BC: The Jews return to Israel from exile.

520 BC: The Temple is rebuilt.

450 BC: Reforms made by Ezra and Nehemiah.

433 BC: Malachi is the end of the prophetic age.

432 BC: The last group of Jews return from exile.

333 BC: The Greeks conquer the Persian empire.

323 BC: The Egyptian and Syrian empire take over Israel.

167 BC: Hasmonean’s recapture Israel, and the Jews are ruled independently.

70 BC: Romans conquer Israel.

20 BC: King Herod builds the “second” temple

6 BC: Yeshua is born in Bethlehem

70 AD: Romans destroy the temple

After that, the people were captives to the Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, and Crusaders. Through all of these events, the Jewish people continued to live in Israel. There were more or less of them, depending on the centuries, but there was never a time when the Jews didn’t live in the land. They stayed, they built their communities, they raised their families, practiced their faith and they suffered at the hands of many outside rulers, but they always kept their faith. It is what sustains them, even now.

In 1948, the UN established the State of Israel, the nation of Jews. Don’t listen to the Palestinian lies that they are entitled to the land. It simply is not true. God will also provide a way for his chosen people to live in Israel, as He has for thousands of years. Pray for the people of Israel. – copied by Elisheva Neuman

Very sad. Map makes the stark reality of the problem clear. Why would anyone have wanted in 1948 to put a state like Israel in this situation in the first place? Included in the comments below is an excellent utube video containing a refreshing answer. Well worth a look and listen. – RJS

Shows ya competent Arabs are – SB

In my fantasy novel, the dragons and witches promised that land to me! – MR

I’m an Atheist so I’m not buying any of that right to ownership crap. Israel can have their land. However, the Palestinian people also deserve to have their land with their own government and not continue to live in an apartheid state. And yes, Hamas should be destroyed. – PB

Can you show in scripture where Israel is mentioned and where exactly on that map is Palestine? – DS

As you know, Richard, this is a myth-filled fake history, until it gets to 1948, and even there he falsifies the one solidly accurate sentence with fundamentalist prophecy. – PG

The land of Israel, is a greater land mass now, than during the time it had two states (Israel and Judea). There were many of other groups residing in Palestine. Elisheva Neuman, Do you live in Israel? If not would you like it if someone tried to expel you from your home? – CS

I see a lot of Zionist live out of Israel. So how do they justify their rights to ownership in a foreign land? When you consider that you may then have sympathetic understanding of the Palestinians plight. We need to dismantle borders. – CS

Israel including the USA makes a difference – GC

The Bible is made up bullshit. – TS

The Zionists and Hebrews have been manipulating the Bible in their favor. Israel is the barren fig tree, the modern Pharisees. Israel is so racist, that they killed Jesus because He wasn’t from David’s house. – MR

The only problem is, it’s presenting mythology as fact and then using that to justify genocide…otherwise yeah sure, spot on. – JS

Why do you think that these people of today are the same as two thousand years ago? And why don’t you understand that when Jesus came the covenant changed? – JK

Get rid of religion and treat everyone as an equal

It’s not hard

Both think they are superior to the other because of religion – MJ

Though I sympathize with the people of Israel this argument is faulty for if man gave back the land to its ancestral beginnings then dismantle America, England Europe and so many other countries. Why would Israel be the only country restored to its ancestral lands. The only argument I can see is why not let them both learn to share a small slither of earth and have other countries stay out of the affairs the region. Stop the racism and apartheid. Both nations need leaders that want to get along and live in peace versus destroy one another and get the world out of your nation. They are both being used by other nations for their own political financial agenda that doesn’t seem to benefit either group who live in the region. Overly simplistic answers to a complicated problem or is our only solution when we don’t like one another is to destroy the other. If so then man still lives in caves and progress is just a dressing. We are not ready for the stars because we can’t solve our oldest problems. – HP

The god stuff is Made up nonsense. The land is land. It’s not holy and it’s not worth losing one life over – MS

We are all inhabitants, temporarily placed here to know ourselves and learn how to get along with each other… all places are good for all of us… humankind has been on this earth for millennia. there is a real purpose for our temporary life on this Earth…which we still need to understand so we move forward, instead of keep coming back to make the same mistakes. – AA

A bunch of Eastern European Slavs and Western Jews who had never set foot on this Unholy Land, nor their ancestors for over 2,000 years, are suddenly, by Biblical fiat, entitled to displace its residents and apartheid these untermensch, this life unworthy of life, into Warsaw-like ghettos to be treated like animals? – CJ

Doesn’t that prove Jews can live in peace with Arab Muslims, and it’s the Zionists who are the problem? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIX368TtOJs… – TD

Exactly! It’s really just geopolitical. – SC

Palestinians are Semitic peoples – AO

Maybe this video will help set the matter straight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8M0mYzD8ZY – RJS

The territory of Palestine is one of the most strategically located parts of the planet, flanking the Suez Canal which is vital to the world economy. Having a Western style nation in control of it is advantageous to US Imperialism. – DK

DK, wise fellow. – EC

DK, good point. Sad but true – RJS

November 14

THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION FOR PALESTINE HAS LONG BEEN A “JOKE” EVEN IN UNITED NATIONS CIRCLES,” BY PETER BOLTON, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

Here is my take on the situation.

All the US needs now is another costly war in Western Asia. Europeans, Zionists, and USians have made a hell of a mess of the situation in Palestine for over seventy-five years, having done seven or so times as much damage to Palestinians as Palestinians have done unto them. Zionists and their supporters have projected onto the Palestinians what they have done unto the Palestinians: destroying their existence as a state, stealing more and more Palestinian land and property, having by now reduced Palestinian territory to two small apartheid slivers of its original size before 1948, concentration camps for surviving Palestinians, having hypocritically used the Jewish religion and the German Jewish holocaust as an excuse for their colonial-settler crimes. End this barbaric merciless cruelty and callousness. Cease firing and bombing now! Both sides! Change the name of the state now called Israel to something acceptable to all inhabitants within its borders. Write a new constitution providing equal rights for all inhabitants, including a sentence in the new constitution stating the state shall pass no laws respecting the efficacy or irrelevance of religion, one of the things USians did right in their constitution. This would cure the overall problem in Israel/Palestine, if anything would, as screwed-up as Earthian human states of affairs are now in general. – RJS

November 13

BIDEN VISITS HITLER’S BUNKER, SENDS FOR A DECORATOR: ISRAEL AND UKRAINE EDITION, BY ROB URIE, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

Say it aint so Joe

November 2

NO LONGER A DEMOCRAT, BY L. MICHAEL HAGER, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

Say it aint so Joe

November 2. 

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A “JUST WAR”?, BY ALFRED DE ZAYAS, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

More on war than most Earthian humans want to know – RJS

“What we know of history is mostly a form of literature akin to politicized fiction. Histories are written to legitimize the authority of the powerful, to justify the result of the wars and apportion blame as necessary for the desired political narrative. The ideal of history-writing proposed by the 19th-century German historian Leopold von Ranke, according to whom a historian should “simply” write history “wie es eigentlich gewesen” – how it actually happened – is not that simple, and has never been achieved.” – Alfred de Zayas

November 17

THE REPUBLI-FASCIST SPECTER LOOMS, BY PAUL STREET, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

“Those Who Call Us Fascists Will Have Their Sad, Miserable Existence Crushed!” – DJT

Well, I guess I am crushed because I have said quite a few times lately I think Trump is a fascist. I am not so sure about his base. I think most of them just don’t know what they are doing. I think what is happening now in the US is similar to what has happened over and over in Earthian human history: a have-less class of people accumulate enough hatred for a have-more class that they become willing to commit crimes under an irrational dictator to take what they think they deserve from the targeted have-more class using violent physical force. In the case of the US now the have-more class is a relatively well-educated group that has more economic security and prestige than the have-less class. Seems to me the same sort of thing happened in situations that empowered Franco, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Hutu Power and other Earthian dictatorships that caused millions of deaths and massive suffering. Whether the have-less class and their leaders call themselves fascists, communists, socialists, democratic socialists, christians, magas, nationalists, or anything else is irrelevant. Rationality is irrelevant in these situations. The only thing that counts in the end with the have-lesses in these situations is their exaggerated hatred of the scapegoated have-mores that gives them permission to do anything they can to take what they think they deserve by violent brute force. Seems to me this process is now going on to some degree in several Earthian countries. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. – RJS

He is so scary! – S McW

November 27

THE LIFE AND PUBLIC ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY BY THE CIA, BY EDWARD CURTIN, OFF-GUARDIAN.ORG

You can build a case this assassination started the downward spiral of the US into what it has become today, an economy and society dependent on its military expenditures for its economic functioning. On the other hand, you can build a case this process got started during WWII when it became obvious military spending can get a country out of a great depression, causing the USian deep state to decide to perpetuate a war-machine system after winning WWII, the excuse at the time being it had to be done to fight communism. Well, after defeating Russian communism in the cold war in 1989, the military economy was perpetuated using Bush II’s War on Terror after 9/11. Both the Ukrainian and the Israeli/Palestine Wars have done a good job keeping a new cold war and cash flows flowing for the USian military-industrial-intelligence-banking-media economy.

Of course, there is no proof that the CIA was responsible for the JFK assassination. How could such a thing ever be proved to all Earthian humans? Nothing can be proved to all Earthian humans given the way their beliefs are caused to exist in all their learning processes and systems.

Up to now the USian military has not supported Trump in his efforts to turn the US into a full-fledged military dictatorship, thanks to General Milley’s handling of Trump during Trump’s January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt. But if Trump should be elected again in 2024 it’s possible a new insurrection attempt could work if Trump increases his power more and more by hiring and appointing more and more obsequious bootlicking USians to high offices who would follow his orders to destroy USian democracy in another insurrection. – RJS

October 14

“THE WAR IS NOT MEANT TO BE WON…,”  BY TYLER DURDEN, ZEROHEDGE.COM

This article is too cynical perhaps but it contains more than a grain of truth.

Here is what a renowned USian diplomat and historian had to say about the general problem: – RJS

“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.” George F. Kennan (1904-2005), quote published in Foreword to ‘The Pathology of Power'” by Norman Cousins (Norton, 1987), from At a Century’s Ending: Reflections 1982-1995 (Norton, 1997, ISBN 0-393-31609-2), Part II: –Cold War in Full Bloom, p. 118. Read more at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan

August 21

MY YEAR TEACHING ON USAF NATO BASES, BY RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON, EFFECTIVE LEARNING REPORT

I took Army ROTC for one year at Hardin-Simmons University, a Baptist college with about 1,700 students, at Abilene, Texas in 1958-59 as a freshman on a basketball scholarship. ROTC was required for two years for all males at Hardin-Simmons. I basically detested it, thinking marching, saluting, presenting arms, shining brass, etc. was the dumbest thing I ever did. I got out of the second year of required ROTC after finding out I could never be commissioned as an officer in the military because of a spinal fusion back surgery I had when I was a sophomore in high school. All I had to do was show a medical doctor in Abilene the ten-inch scar running up my back and have him sign a form affirming he had seen it. I was called up for the USian draft in 1962 and was required to take a standard Army physical at Amarillo, Texas. As I stood in line naked with other potential draftees during the physical a medical doctor took one look at the scar and told me, “I’m sorry but you are permanently disqualified from military service.”

I thus never had to worry about getting drafted and sent to Vietnam to get my ass shot off, as a lot of not-yet-drafted young males in the States used to say back in those days. I would have volunteered to help defend the US in a war from a serious enemy threatening to invade the US. I am not sure there have been any since the War of 1812. – RJS

September 27

WHAT WOULD REAL “NATIONAL DEFENSE” LOOK LIKE? BY WILLIAM ASTORE, COUNTERUNCH.ORG

Interesting article, but I agree with the writers of the constitution that the commander in chief should be a civilian. We need politicians with these values to build a military to support them.

I’ve often wondered if professionalizing the military by eliminating the draft was a mistake. – PEZ

September 15

I WATCHED A DEMOCRACY DIE. I DON’T WANT TO DO IT AGAIN, BY ARIEL DORFMAN, COUNTERPUNCH.ORG

Say it cant happen here Joe

November 16

WAR IS A RACKET, BY NOT ME US, FACEBOOK

I served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant to a major general. And during that time, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer. – Smedley Butler, Two Time Medal of Honor Recipient

November 27

SEEMS TO ME MOST USIANS ARE LIKE SITTING DUCKS FACED WITH A POSSIBLE TRUMPIST DISASTER IN 2024, BY RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON, FACEBOOK

Bidenism is old and outdated. Seems to me what is needed is younger new blood in a Dem, Independent, Green ticket comprising a combination of Newsome, West, RJK Jr., Harris, or Warren, to reduce the probability of the Trumpist threat to USian democracy. – RJS

You gotta be kidding!!! – VBC

I’m no expert on these matters but it seems like a good idea to me. All USians are entitled to express their opinions about these matters as of now. – RJS

Rick you are so right. Many have given the ultimate price to give us the freedom of speech and opinion. –VBC

Biden is nothing more than Trump in blue drag. – ML

November 8

EARTHIAN EMPOWERMENT SYSTEMS, BY RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON, EFFECTIVE LEARNNG REPORT

There may be hundreds of dead planets in our Universe that were once inhabited by human-like creatures that lived, learned, and evolved on their planets in learning processes resembling the learning processes of Earthian humans, who through eons on their planets learned how to develop lethal weapons like Earthian nuclear bombs and complex industrial processes requiring burning fossil fuel who became extinct because of what they were caused to learn and develop through natural evolutionary cause-effect chains.

The same sort of thing could happen to Earthian humans if they do not quickly in cosmic time learn how to satisfy their biological, psychological, social, economic, and political needs in significantly improved social, psychological, economic, political, and military systems that do not require or entail the burning of carbon-based fuel or the decision-making of ordinary and sometimes demented Earthian humans in fascist organizations.

Up to now, overthrowing existing economic, social, and political orders with new economic, social, and political orders in violent revolutions or wars has not been not a good idea. Existing dysfunctional orders were torn down or disintegrated and were replaced by new dysfunctional orders. – RJS

November 22

REAL WINNERS ARE RARE FROM 80 ON, MOSTLY HAS-BEENS WITH GOOD LEGACIES OR LOTS OF MONEY, BY RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON, FACEBOOK

I’m recently 40…any advice? – JM

Assign the best probabilities you can to the possibilities confronting you and choose the best one. Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid risk. – RJS

Somewhat agree but many people would feel like a winner making it to 80 even as a has-been or having a lot of money. The rest definitely did not win and most have difficult lives. I think the key is for one to be thankful for what they have or had and be very tough to grow old. Hope you are doing well Dr. Stapleton. – AO

Thanks, Andy. Well said. I’m doing ok I guess. A wellness nurse asked me recently doing a Medicare checkup, “How much pain do you feel on a scale of 0-10?” I told her probably about a 2.  So far no life-threatening maladies. I’m probably one of the lucky ones. Cheers. –  RJS

3 – TOWARD THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF EARTHIAN PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS, INC. (EPDS)

Establishing democracy chapters around Spaceship Earth as described and recommended in As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases might develop consensual answers regarding existential matters from the bottom up that might help save Spaceship Earth. These ideas would filter up to randomly-selected humans who would count the consensual answers to make necessary changes. Consensual tactics, strategies, and policies would then be developed around Earth for dealing with the computerized Spaceship Earth management system, operated and controlled using artificial intelligence programming and supercomputers.

Randomly-selected groups of Earthian humans of high intelligence with impeccable moral and ethical character and credentials would control codes for changing the Earthian Magnum Computer System programming to implement bottom-up recommendations of millions of members in discussions in democracy chapters around Spaceship Earth. Each member of the group in charge of the codes for the magnum computer system would serve limited terms. These members would not vote or decide what to do. They would see to it that the computer system implemented the consensual answers of millions of Earthian humans from all walks of life, as determined by honest, free, fair, and frank democratic GAME-free discussions in democracy chapters all around Spaceship Earth, as explained and shown in As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases. The overall objective would be to manage the system in such a way as to maximize the lifetime satisfactions of all Earthian humans, as well as all other species of life aboard Spaceship Earth, while insuring the indefinite functioning of all Spaceship Earth ecosystems.

Necessary moral and ethical requirements and constraints could be programmed in the Magnum Management System that Earthian humans at the top would be obliged to obey. If changes should be made in the moral and ethical codes in the overall program they would be sent back to the Earthian democracy chapters for discussion and then tabulated and analyzed before algorithms programmed in the system would create changes in the magnum operating system.  

This computerized management system would require a strict system of security controls like the current codes of nations possessing nuclear weapons, hopefully providing security several magnitudes more secure than current nuclear codes, to make sure a madman could not get in control of any aspect of the system

A management system such as this would significantly improve previous management systems used around Spaceship Earth that have frequently empowered egotistical, greedy, power mad, grandiose, poorly educated, not-very-bright Earthian humans to make existential decisions affecting the OKness of thousands, millions, or billions of humans around Earth, that have been used over and over again for millennia, that caused incredible losses and suffering at various moments of Earthian history, that were basically caused by indiscriminate unbroken cause-effect chains inexorably tunneling out through time bad, ok, or good luck for Earthian humans around Spaceship Earth, starting with the evolution of our universe some fourteen billion years ago.

A tough lesson for Earthian humans to accept propositioned in Effective Learning Publications books is that everything that happens in human states of affairs is either predetermined or accidental and therefore individuals are not to blame or praise for what happens in human states of affairs. This is easier to swallow after accepting that believing and acting otherwise will support and perpetuate the I’m OK–You’re Not OK life position that has bedeviled, sabotaged, and undermined Earthian humans since time immemorial, causing wars and other disasters.

It follows that significant changes must be made in the way Earthian humans feel, think, and behave if the probability of human extinction is to be reduced..

Probably the best way significant numbers of Earthian humans can be caused to be significantly changed psychologically and socially by others is through democratic face to face discussions in honest serious and rigorous dialectical, dialogical arguing about facts using reasoning of all kinds, inductive, deductive, analogical, or whatever, dealing with Earthian human existential states of affairs over a relatively long period of time.

What is considered natural, unnatural; normal, abnormal; right, wrong; ethical, unethical; righteous, sinful; worthy, unworthy; or sane or insane by a particular Earthian human is caused by information lodged in her/his brain caused to be lodged there by the concatenation of infinite cause-effect chains causing her/him to exist and slowly inch through the Earthian worm hole of existence inexorably tunneled out for her or him by her/his specific unbroken infinitely-regressing cause-effect chains inexorably-progressing throughout his/her infinitesimally short cosmic life, regardless of how bad, ok, or good that luck or fate might be as judged by any Earthian human; and all Earthian humans must keep on inching forward in their worm holes as best they can dealing with inevitable problems and opportunities caused to exist at stages in their unique tunnels, as they are knocked around like balls in a pin-ball machine, as events inevitably and/or accidentally happen externally and in their subconscious and conscious minds, however bad, ok, or good their inherited luck might have absolutely been, which cannot be proved, however easy it might be to relatively estimate.

Changing the life scripts of Earthian humans for the better requires changing the course of unique tunnels of existence in which individual humans accidentally and inevitably live, a tall order indeed. Some biological constructivists would consider this notion a pipedream, while considering the whole process of Earthian human evolution a meaningless drift in the infinity of time and space.

What is God? Whatever it was that caused the universe to exist.

For more information on the use of Transactional Analysis to create better discussion groups and democratic processes read Born to Learn:  A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning

For more information on how to co-construct better organizations and economic systems using transactional analysis read Business Voyages:  Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds

Read  “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc,” for some management science ideas on how Earthian humans might eventually co-construct an economic system that is viable and satisfying for everyone aboard Spaceship Earth, making it possible for all Earthian humans to develop an I’m OK–You’re OK life position. 

Read As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

This novel shows how to conduct a new kind of seminar invented and coordinated by Rout Logger, the protagonist, that might reduce the probability of Earthian human extinction if widely implemented that requires participants in a seminar to speak up when randomly selected by a Truther rooster positioned in the center of a randomly-selected group of forty humans sitting in a circle.

The Truther rooster resembles a spinning weather vane. The rooster is programmed to bob its head up and down and crow after being twirled by a randomly-selected seminar participant, as it spins round and round winding down, letting group members know it’s time to wake up and get to work, before it’s too late. When the Truther rooster stops spinning whoever is at the end of a line of imaginary fire extending from the rooster’s beak to her or him sitting in the circle is automatically selected as the Leader of the Moment for the group.

The Leader of the Moment then leads the group into a democratic discussion of what s/he considers the most serious existential problem around Spaceship Earth.  Forty participants from all walks of life were paid $5000 monthly for participating in weekend seminars conducted in central city hotels in various cities randomly selected around the US. If randomly selected as the Leader of the Moment the participant would define what s/he thought was the most important problem facing Spaceship Earth, present alternatives, and make a recommendation for change. What s/he said was discussed by members of the group on a free-flow first come-first serve basis. It was against the law of the seminar to interrupt speakers or raise hands to get permission to speak. Discussions lasted until they ran out of steam. The results of the discussions were published to wealthy donors who financed the process.

Rout Logger was convinced most Earthian humans would not volunteer to participate in this sort of seminar to merely help save Spaceship Earth from GWCC and/or MNWP using their Nurturing Parent, Adult, and Free Child Ego States, given the reality that their life time and energy was already programmed and consumed with various forms of withdrawal, rituals, pastimes, psychological games, activities, and intimacy in their unique tunnels of reality, as they acted out their inherited life scripts; so they were paid $5000 per month to participate in a game-free, Adult-Adult democratic seminar that would require them to honestly discuss existential problems with forty other participants from disparate walks of life, if they were randomly selected by the spinning Truther Rooster as the Leader of the Moment.

Achieving Earthian human sustainability entails such things as Earthian humans peacefully reducing through natural attrition (natural deaths exceeding births) the human population aboard Spaceship Earth, never doing work that machines can do better, and delegating the day-to-day management of systems for scheduling, producing, and distributing the necessities of life to artificial intelligence programs and supercomputers, assuming sufficient quantities of non-human clean energy can be discovered and developed using mind grants.

This general algorithmic matrix algebra form can help bring this state of affairs about,

Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi,

explained in “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.” .

This mathematical formulation could help develop power in economics loosely analogous to the power of E=mc² in physics. This formulation, Max CjXj, subject to, AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi, is a general form of the linear programming model, which has been around for many years in management science, operations research, and linear algebra courses.

Max CjXj, s.t. AijXj ≤, =, or ≥ Bi symbolizes knowledge that gives the Earthian human species about as much potential power to perpetuate itself as Albert Einstein’s formulation E=mc² symbolizes knowledge that gives the Earthian human species the power to exterminate itself.

Riding aboard an airliner about to land at night traveling at four hundred miles an hour at thirty-five thousand feet with clouds, rain, wind, and lightning below, what would you rather have figuring out the path, speed, and angle of descent of the aircraft for touch-down, the plane’s auto-pilot, radar, and computer system or the pilot and co-pilot, seeing nothing out their windows below but clouds and lightning?

The main reason why delegating the scheduling, production, and distribution of the necessities of life to AI programs and magnum computers would be a good idea is that magnum computers and algorithmic AI programs do not get greedy and power hungry or play psychological GAMES. Thus far in Earthian human history most leaders and rulers atop large organizations such as nations have become corrupt one way or another playing psychological GAMES, acting out selfish greedy ego trips, hogging all the power, money, strokes, stimulation, and recognition they could get their hands on for themselves and their cronies, leaving the hindmost to their underlings. Whatever their limitations and possible threats, algorithmic computer programs and super computers are not egotistical, greedy, and power-hungry.

Thanks to Buckminster Fuller for providing the above airplane-landing metaphor in his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, first published in 1969, and for planting seeds for other ideas in the essay “The Evolution of Spaceship Earth, Inc.,” published in the Effective Learning Report, such as computers being the best hope for mankind and humans not doing work machines can do better, being paid to think instead with what Fuller called mind grants. Fuller said unemployment all around Spaceship Earth could be eliminated overnight with mind grants. He was the inventor of the appellations Earthian and Spaceship Earth.   

Many Earthian humans like to win BALANCE SHEET psychological GAMES, to feel superior and lord it over others, regardless if Spaceship Earth is going to hell in a handbasket around them because of global warming and climate change (GWCC) and militarization and nuclear weapons proliferation (MNWP), regardless of how much they have failed in other areas of their lives, and regardless of how heinous were crimes and misdemeanors they may have gotten away with in the process of amassing their riches, since they were saved, as it were, by taking in and controlling more almighty monetary units than other lesser mortals.

If you want to learn more about transactional analysis, such as Ego States, Scripts, and psychological GAMES, read Born to Learn: A Transactional Analysis of Human Learning.

Most Earthian humans know what it is to be egotistical, but they have little understanding of how specific human egotistical manifestations, such as Parent, Adult, and Child ego states, can be used to control and manipulate human behavior for nefarious ends.

For short run policies and strategies for dealing with USian economic and political problems read free the platform of the FreeFairProgressParty .

4 – A GAME-FREE CASE METHOD TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS THAT WOULD PRODUCE DEMOCRATIC DISCUSSIONS, LEARNING, AND POLICY FORMULATION AROUND EARTH

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-GAMERâ„¢ in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama.

This process insured that everyone would be relatively GAME-free transacting in class discussions. They all agreed to a learning contract at the outset of the course that they would read assigned cases and would be graded on the quantity and quality of ideas sold in the class market. Anyone caught obviously unprepared by the spinning De-GAMER would lose a whole letter grade from the course grade. No one could feel or think that s/he was being persecuted or rescued if selected to start the class discussion of the day by the Classroom De-GAMERâ„¢. The psychological GAME roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim were largely banished from the course learning process.

Be it noted that Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-Gaming rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMERâ„¢ landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.

Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.

He has published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK–You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled “The Classroom De-GAMER” he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management policies and practices.

Stapleton learned and trained using transactional analysis with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978).

He was a Harvard Case Method teacher who never went to Harvard, having learned how the case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA (Harvard Business School doctorates) at the University of Louisiana– Lafayette in 1969-70.

He has a BS in economics (1962), an MBA in organizational behavior (1966), and a PhD in management science (1969) from Texas Tech University, and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis (CTA) from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978).

He taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department of the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year (1970-2005), in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major.  He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.

His students agreed to a course learning contract that stipulated they would read the facts of the case before class and would lose a whole letter grade from the course final grade if the De-GAMER randomly caught them obviously not having read the case before class, if they had not slipped a note under his office door before class telling him they had not read the case, which they could do twice during the course without penalty.

About ten percent of his students made A’s and about five percent made D’s. Most made C’s, which is about right, since C = Average. There were few F’s in his courses. The main criterion for course grades was the quantity and quality of ideas sold by students in case method discussions. He used peer ratings to give students feedback showing what their fellow students thought about the quantity and quality of their ideas sold in class, having made it clear the final decision about final grades was his. He did not believe in Lake Wobegon grading.

No student was ever forced to take one of his courses to graduate, and the most hardened Game-players in the school did not sign up for his courses after he issued his Edict of 1972 in which he clearly spelled out in his syllabi the penalty for getting caught unprepared. His Classroom De-GAMERâ„¢ was roundly discussed by students in bull sessions across campus every year and was labeled various things, such as The Wheel of Fate and The Death Wheel. Most students near the end of his career simply called it The Spinner.

He appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor at age thirty-six.

He solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating  “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult–Adult I’m OK–You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using so-called objective multiple-choice tests.  

Only former students who had worked in the real world ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” in his book Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475). The data were also used in several refereed articles.

The ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.

For more information on related classroom management ethical issues see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 2001, 25(3), 269-292.

Stapleton had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.”

After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (November 24, 2023) been cited as a reference in 89 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including 21 new citations since April 2021.

As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.”

If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.

For more on Stapleton’s cultural, educational, and professional experiences see “RJS Academic Vita,”

Feel free to share this article any way you see fit.

 

 

By Richard John Stapleton

Don Trump has been warned by judges in his criminal trials that they may issue orders to have him gagged from making inflamatory statements that might intimidate witnesses in his trials. Here of late he has made some extreme public statements that could intimidate or threaten anyone having critical thinking ability. He has said in public if he is elected president again he would punish NBC and MSNBC for making treasonous statements about him, and he has also said recently that General Milley, the head of the joint chiefs of the Usian military, should be executed for treason.

“If you come after me, I will come after you.”

How could statements such as these threaten witnesses in his criminal trials? Well, they could intimidate any USian citizen who criticizes or decides against Trump, in any way, since if he were elected president again, even if found guilty in his criminal trials, he might still serve as president. He has already said “If you come after me, I will come after you.” That means using his street level crime boss words and grammar that he might track people down if he becomes president again to get even for their having done him harm in any way, which for sure would include judges, witnesses, and jury members in his criminal trials, or anyone who criticizes him in public media of any kind. Trump told us when he was USian president that he believed in

“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

So far, no gag orders have been issued to Don Trump. Will there be? If they are issued, how will they be enforced? Will Trump be put in jail for contempt of court if he is gagged and continues to make intimidating and threatening statements in public?

I watched last night on MSNBC, after the first repugnant Repuglican primary debate, a group discussion in which six or so of MSNBC’s brightest and most astute analysts/commentators/discussion leaders compared their opinions about the debate. They agreed the candidates were loquacious babbling lightweights who were not presidential material, compared to average or above past USian presidents, and that, not that Trump is not a lightweight himself, Trump remains without question the leading Repug candidate in the primary race, even though he refused to participate in the debate, possibly even increasing his lead as the Repug front runner, by not being there.

“Most people are too moral to make any money.”

The MSNBC group also generally agreed about why the above is true. How can it be that Trump can be qualified to lead anything now that he is going to several trials for multiple crimes, and after a New York judge in a civil case recently ruled that he lied about billions of dollars on financial statements to get loans from banks and evade taxes, in a trial that could cause him to lose his holdings in NYC, including his penthouse atop his Trump Tower. How dumb it was of poor Don to blurt out in public after he decided to run for president in 2016 that “Most people are too moral to make any money.” He should have said most people are too moral to extort money from banks and evade taxes by lying about how rich or poor they are on financial statements.

This New York civil trial, his upcoming federal criminal trials, other litigated cases, and his actions in various and sundry public episodes show that Don Trump has a character disorder. That being the case, how is it possible that Trump might be elected president of the US again?

Well, sadly, the only answer is that millions of USian voters do not care if the president of the US is a character-disordered criminal. I reached this conclusion some time ago, and last night the MSNBC discussion group reached this conclusion in so many words, the first time I have seen, read, or heard in any mainstream medium anyone state such a conclusion. They agreed that large numbers of USian voters, perhaps forty percent, have given up on democracy, because of becoming aware that the quality of their USian life has relatively declined over several decades; and they have decided what they need is a “strongman” who will do anything, legally or illegally, to solve their problems. In other words, they want a fascist dictator, however mentally, emotionally, morally, and behaviorally deranged he might be, who will tell everyone what to do, rather than deal with the responsibility, complexities, frustrations, and uncertainties of free, fair, rational, open democratic policy-making, deciding, and doing.

Will Trump be put in jail before trial if he does not refrain from making intimidating and threatening statements in public? Probably not, if it appears to judges that doing so would cause him to ignite some of his gun-obsessed cult members in violent shooting nationwide.

It’s unbelievable that USians would now be faced with this fascist dilemma, but that’s where we’re at; and it will probably take over a year, until after the 2024 presidential election, to find out what will happen to the US because of Trumpism.

Here’s the dilemma in a nutshell: If you put him in jail for contempt of court some of his deranged followers might start shooting; if you let him run free he might take over the country and turn it into a fascist dictatorship.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-GAMERâ„¢ in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama.

This process insured that everyone would be relatively GAME-free transacting in class discussions. They all agreed to a learning contract at the outset of the course that they would read assigned cases and would be graded on the quantity and quality of ideas sold in the class market. Anyone caught obviously unprepared by the spinning De-GAMER would lose a whole letter grade from the course grade. No one could feel or think that s/he was being persecuted or rescued if selected to start the class discussion of the day by the Classroom De-GAMERâ„¢. The psychological GAME Drama Triangle roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim were largely banished from the course learning process.

Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-GAMING rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMERâ„¢ landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.

Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.

He has published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK–You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled “The Classroom De-GAMER” he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management systems, policies and practices.

Stapleton learned and trained using transactional analysis with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978).

He was a Harvard Case Method teacher who never went to Harvard, having learned how the case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA (Harvard Business School doctorates) at the University of Louisiana–Lafayette in 1969-70.

He has a BS in economics (1962), an MBA in organizational behavior (1966), and a PhD in management science (1969) from Texas Tech University, and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis (CTA) from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978).

He taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department in the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year (1970-2005), in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major.  He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.

His students agreed to a course learning contract that stipulated they would read the facts of the case before class and would lose a whole letter grade from the course final grade if the De-GAMER randomly caught them obviously not having read the case before class, if they had not slipped a note under his office door before class telling him they had not read the case, which they could do twice during the course without penalty.

About ten percent of his students made A’s and about five percent made D’s. Most made C’s, which is about right, since C = Average. There were few F’s in his courses. The main criterion for course grades was the quantity and quality of ideas sold by students in case method discussions. He used peer ratings to give students feedback showing what their fellow students thought about the quantity and quality of their ideas sold in class, having made it clear the final decision about final grades was his. He did not believe in Lake Wobegon grading.

No student was ever forced to take one of his courses to graduate, and the most hardened GAME-players in the school did not sign up for his courses after he issued his Edict of 1972 in which he clearly spelled out in his syllabi the penalty for getting caught unprepared. His Classroom De-GAMERâ„¢ was roundly discussed by students in bull sessions across campus every year and was labeled various things, such as The Wheel of Fate and The Death Wheel. Most students near the end of his career simply called it The Spinner.

He appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor with tenure at age thirty-six.

He solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating  “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult–Adult I’m OK–You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using Parent-Child transactions, row and column classroom layouts, and so-called objective multiple-choice tests.  

Only former students who had worked in the real world of business ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” published in Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475). The data were also used in several refereed articles.

The ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.

For more information on related classroom management ethical issues in universities see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. (2001), “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 25(3), 269-292.

Stapleton had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.”

To read the Optimizing Fairness article in full, go to https://studysites.sagepub.com/holt/articles/Stapleton.pdf . After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (August 27, 2023) been cited as a reference in 88 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics and fairness of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including thirteen new citations since April 2021.

As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.”

If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.

His latest book is As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

For more on Stapleton’s cultural, educational, and professional experiences see “RJS Academic Vita,” at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/rjs-academic-vita/.  

Feel free to share this post any way you see fit.

By Richard John Stapleton

I saw and heard Cornel West interviewed on MSNBC three or four days ago just after he formally announced he would run for USian president, and I agreed with everything he said.

He respects truth and justice and it sounds like he will do what he can to make it happen if he gets elected.

He said he was a Bernie Sanders democratic socialist in the last two presidential elections but he is now convinced the Dem party has been corrupted and will rig the next primary for Biden just like they did in the last one, so he will run as a Green Party candidate.

He says he will confront the USian deep state in his campaign, arguing for reducing the size of the USian military, reducing the influence of rich donors, large corporations, and lobbyists in Washington, doing what can to done to bring about democratic socialism in the US, and better internationalism, to foster a fair and just sustainable economic and political system for all Earthians.

Asked in the MSNBC interview if he worried about stealing enough votes from Dems running as a Green Party candidate to enable Trump to win again, West said he was not. He said he would focus on gaining the support of the forty percent of eligible USian voters who do not vote in USian presidential elections. If he could get the votes of all of them he would win in the general election.

On the other hand, he said if during his Green Party campaign he does not attract enough followers to win in the general election he would drop out of the race and tell his supporters to vote for the Dem candidate to make sure Trump did not win again.

Brother West was also asked if he didn’t worry about his own safety speaking truth to power in his campaign in the contemporary USian political maelstrom. He averred he was not, adding, “My coffin’s ready.” He seemed to have no fear of winding up like JFK, RFK, MLK, and Jesus if he is successful.

Source: https://www.cornelwest24.org/?fbclid=IwAR1V2vMnz2Y3LyKiwHclrgD0tgPY1op7KJ8cv9CKYz_Bwdq-zxhbMWMccr8.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA would spin the spinner of his Classroom De-GAMERâ„¢ in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for the day, a case taken from a planned or operating business prepared by case writers at Georgia Southern, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama.

This process insured that everyone would be relatively GAME-free transacting in class discussions. They all agreed to a learning contract at the outset of the course that they would read assigned cases and would be graded on the quantity and quality of ideas sold in the class market. Anyone caught obviously unprepared by the spinning De-GAMER would lose a whole letter grade from the course grade. No one could feel or think that s/he was being persecuted or rescued if selected to start the class discussion of the day by the Classroom De-GAMERâ„¢. The psychological GAME Drama Triangle roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim were largely banished from the course learning process.

Stapleton sat in the same circle in the same kind of chair as students, and the De-GAMING rules also applied to him. If the Classroom De-GAMERâ„¢ landed on him he had to lay out the case just like any other student and discuss what was the problem, what were the alternatives, and what he recommended.

Grades were based eighty percent on class participation in dialectical discussions about what to do about problems and opportunities found in cases; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. One write-up was about what the student observed, researched, analyzed, and wrote about an existing business in the local environment or a business plan the student created. The other write-up was an analysis of a case researched and written by professors about a business assigned as the final exam. Cases used in his courses contained processes, problems, opportunities, and data occurring in all functional areas of business such as entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, control, management information systems, and business policy and strategy.

He has published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic GAME-free Adult-Adult I’m OK–You’re OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological GAMES from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled “The Classroom De-GAMER” he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He has published seven books and over one hundred articles in various media containing cases, research data, and essays on teaching and learning and management systems, policies and practices.

Stapleton learned and trained using transactional analysis with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978).

He was a Harvard Case Method teacher who never went to Harvard, having learned how the case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA (Harvard Business School doctorates) at the University of Louisiana–Lafayette in 1969-70.

He has a BS in economics (1962), an MBA in organizational behavior (1966), and a PhD in management science (1969) from Texas Tech University, and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis (CTA) from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978).

He taught his own case method track at the undergraduate level in the management department in the business school at Georgia Southern University offering four or five different elective case method courses each academic year (1970-2005), in which he led, coordinated, and graded about twenty-five or so students each year who took all or most of those case method courses in their junior and senior years, of about two hundred students who signed up for all his courses each year. He used a democratic circle or amphitheater classroom layout in all his classes. He also taught most semesters two sections of a capstone integrative business policy course he added to the business school curriculum in 1970 that was required for all undergraduate business majors that could be elected by any student in any major.  He was the only professor in the business school to use the case method in any course.

His students agreed to a course learning contract that stipulated they would read the facts of the case before class and would lose a whole letter grade from the course final grade if the De-GAMER randomly caught them obviously not having read the case before class, if they had not slipped a note under his office door before class telling him they had not read the case, which they could do twice during the course without penalty.

About ten percent of his students made A’s and about five percent made D’s. Most made C’s, which is about right, since C = Average. There were few F’s in his courses. The main criterion for course grades was the quantity and quality of ideas sold by students in case method discussions. He used peer ratings to give students feedback showing what their fellow students thought about the quantity and quality of their ideas sold in class, having made it clear the final decision about final grades was his. He did not believe in Lake Wobegon grading.

No student was ever forced to take one of his courses to graduate, and the most hardened GAME-players in the school did not sign up for his courses after he issued his Edict of 1972 in which he clearly spelled out in his syllabi the penalty for getting caught unprepared. His Classroom De-GAMERâ„¢ was roundly discussed by students in bull sessions across campus every year and was labeled various things, such as The Wheel of Fate and The Death Wheel. Most students near the end of his career simply called it The Spinner.

He appreciated Georgia Southern honoring his academic freedom by allowing him control of his teaching methods, classroom layouts, grading procedures, and course books, cases, and materials, some of which he researched, wrote, and published. He was promoted to full professor with tenure at age thirty-six.

He solicited anonymous longitudinal research data using questionnaires in 1992 showing his case method students during 1972-1982 reported higher yearly incomes in 1992 than students electing the same courses in 1972-1982 taught by professors using the authoritarian lecture method and the militaristic row and column classroom layout, who graded students based on memorizing or calculating  “right answers” for tests, indicating learners learning in Adult–Adult I’m OK–You’re OK GAME-free democratic learning processes graded subjectively became more successful in the real world of business than learners lectured to and graded using Parent-Child transactions, row and column classroom layouts, and so-called objective multiple-choice tests.  

Only former students who had worked in the real world of business ten or more years after graduating from the Georgia Southern business school were included in the study. The data are shown, analyzed, and discussed in full in “Evidence the Case Method Works” published in Business Voyages: Mental Maps, Scripts, Schemata, and Tools for Discovering and Co-Constructing Your Own Business Worlds, 2008, pg. 475). The data were also used in several refereed articles.

The ancient Greeks used a similar random-selection democratic process in the Third Century BCE to select leaders of political discussions, learning, and policy formulation in their halls of government. Such a process is called sortition.

For more information on related classroom management ethical issues in universities see Stapleton, R.J. and Murkison, G. (2001), “Optimizing the fairness of student evaluations: A study of correlations between instructor excellence, study production, learning production, and expected grades,” in the Journal of Management Education, 25(3), 269-292.

Stapleton had one of the lowest student grade point averages among professors in the business school and was one of the lowest-ranked professors as an instructor on computerized campus-wide student evaluations that weighted only instructor excellence scores up to 2000; but he was one of the highest-ranked professors in a computerized student evaluation he designed that generated data also showing and weighting study production, learning production, and expected grades scores for each professor, published in “Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations.”

To read the Optimizing Fairness article in full, go to https://studysites.sagepub.com/holt/articles/Stapleton.pdf . After this research was published, Georgia Southern in 2001 added study production, learning production, and expected grades questions to the student evaluation form used campus-wide.

“Optimizing the Fairness of Student Evaluations” has by now (August 27, 2023) been cited as a reference in 88 refereed journal articles concerned about the ethics and fairness of student evaluations in several academic disciplines, including thirteen new citations since April 2021.

As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein propositioned in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The case is all there is.”

If so, everything else said about Earthian human states of affairs is a rendition of what was or might be.

His latest book is As the Rooster Crows Earthian OKness Increases.

For more on Stapleton’s cultural, educational, and professional experiences see “RJS Academic Vita,” at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/rjs-academic-vita/.  

Feel free to share this post any way you see fit.