November Seven

That's one of the things that concerns me. Quizzing the Instructor should be fair game. The Instructor should not be beyond the need for individual vetting by a student or potential student. Else, the student or potential student can't have a viable way (method) for determining the quality of instruction he/she may or may not receive from said Instructor.

It is kind of like Ronald Reagan used to say: Doveryai, no proveryai. Trust, but verify. I don't know if I spelled that correctly or not, but you get my point. I think a good Instructor would welcome and even relish the opportunity to put all concerns aside by rendering their student's or potential student's question so thoroughly answered that he/she has no doubt in their mind as to the level of competency their Instructor has.

If I were an Instructor, I'd make it so crystal clear that my level of competency was well beyond that which was necessary to instruct the student, that no question or doubts about my competency would ever emerge during the course of conversation my student might have with another regarding how their flight training was progressing.


I want them to know their being tested. In fact, right up front, I'm going to get agreement that I need to know they have the ability to Teach within certain parameters that I know I can learn best. This gets into one of the reasons why our Public School Systems are doing so poorly today, but let me give you a small example. Each individual has a dominant neurological filtering sub-system through which they evaluate information within their environment and make decisions about how their interact with the world in which they live. This is very simple neuroscience used in a number of different places today.

There are essentially three (3) types of dominant filters. Most people have adapted one or the other as their primary filter for understanding the world around them. Some people split across two dominant filters, but most use one primary filter.:

- Auditory
- Visual
- Kinesthetic

Teach a Visual person through their Auditory filter and that person will never achieve optimal learning. Teach an Auditory person through their Visual filter and you will get the same lack of optimization in the learning experience. Teach a Kinesthetic through either their Auditory or Visual filters and optimal learning is impossible. This reality sits at the core of most failed educational systems in existence today. It is not that people are dumb, slow, stupid or suffer from severe ADD (in may cases ADD is incorrectly diagnoses when the "symptoms" were detected in school). The problem is that not everyone's brain is wired the exact same way, which has everything to do with Genetics and Early Childhood Inputs To The Brain (Parenting).

I've been studying this for about 25 years. I was split between Visual and Kinesthetic. My Auditory channel was severely unseated. This is what made me such a lousy Student in School. Yet, today, I have a PhD in Physics. What happened? I was classified as a "Slow Learner" as a child. They were wrong. The "System" put a "Teacher" in front of a blackboard and made that Teacher Audibly instruct their classroom with Visual references on the blackboard. So, my brain was receiving highly confusing inputs and that's what caused me to pick up on material slower than the rest.

Fast forward to later in Elementary School. A counselor knowing about neuroplasticity took me in and began arranging workshops (this was flat out experimentation back in those days) with me after school. I actually began enjoying the "Workshops" more than classroom instruction. What happened? They tested me and found my Dominant Filters. They then began "Teaching" me that exact same course material, but through my Dominant Filters. They found out that I was a Visual/Kinesthetic split and began instructing me that way.

First, they delivered the Visual instruction which was followed up immediately with some kind of hands on Kinesthetic experience modeling the original instruction. Boom! I took off and learning was now incredibly fun and amazingly easy - simple.

To this day, my Auditory channel sucks. You can imagine what this could mean while sitting in the cockpit trying to communicate with ATC and my Instructor. This is why I have purchased the "Say Again, Please: Guide To Radio Communications" and have been drilling that into my brain for a while now. Radio communications are purely Audible. Most flight instruction given will be Audible followed by Kinesthetic then Visual. That's backwards for optimal learning for me personally.

So, I'm going to have to sit down with a proposed Instructor who can understand this sufficient to gear or skew the training through a Visual/Kinesthetic/Auditory mode. Show me first, then let me experience it second, then tell me the details third. It may seem backwards to those who are purely Visual, but it is the correct channel for optimized learning for me personally.

Want to teach me how to do a power-on stall? Show me how its done first, then let me do it, THEN tell me all about it last. My brain will eat that up and you won't have to spend a billion instruction cycles trying to teach me something that jamming my brain.

Many years later, I learned how to use this in Business, but I remained ethical and moral. I learned how to pick up on an individuals Dominant Processing Filters in a first meeting. I could jam their brain, if I wanted to improve my business position and they would never know it was happening to them. But, again, I never did that (though I experimented with it outside of Business to confirm it). Instead, I helped people figure what they truly wanted, needed and desired by using their Dominant Filters without them knowing it - in a Counselors fashion.

I'm going to need a flexible Flight Instructor.




Very interesting, indeed.

Yesterday, I just got a text message back from a Flight Instructor at a local club nearby who said that he had "...no idea what a VLJ was...", but that he'd be more than happy to arrange an "Introductory Flight."

Question: Do I walk or run from this Instructor's call back? I think just politely moving on would be best.



Yes - that is scary. But, out of pure curiosity - was he 'touching' the controls in an attempt to speak to you through his actions? It would freak me out as well, but I'm just curious if whether or not this is a typical method that Instructors use when the see something the student is not doing right - rather than talk to the student, they simply nudge the controls a bit. Not sure if that's true or not.

Thanks for the contribution!