Is it wrong to trick students into believing in themselves?

At a barbeque on the weekend for my sister in law’s birthday, I met a number of interesting friends of the family, including a high flyer in the banking software world.

As a teenager trying to decide what to do with my life, I was completely unaware of the types of jobs that people that I meet these days, do. I was familiar with the staple professions of law, medicine, and accounting, but technical systems management and its impact on socio political banking was probably a little off my radar at the age of sixteen.

 I spent at least an hour questioning one guy about what it was that he did, how he got clients, and what he considered a reasonable remuneration rate for his time and skills. This dude charged a lot. I mean a LOT people! Taking note of my surprise, and helping me recover with the use of the Heimlich Manoeuvre, he asked what I did and I told him that I sold the benefits of an education to disenfranchised kids. It was now his turn to press for more information in an attempt to gain a better understanding.

I told him that through the speeches, workshops and magic effects, I created an alternate mental perception filter that allows those I taught to process their experiences in a wholly positive and self esteem building way. He pressed me for more info. I told him that pretty much all of the students I see have complex skills that they have mastered. Becoming aware that you not only have these skills, but that you are responsible for attaining them is the starting point for determining the process you used to initially acquire them.

Once we have that process sorted, then we look at the most positive states of mind to get into if we wish to learn new things, and finally how to trick ourselves into those states of mind at will. I explained that it seemed to me there were a lot of jaded, seen all that life has to offer at the age of thirteen year olds out there, who desperately needed some level of morale boost, because what they had seen so far had vastly underwhelmed them. What we needed was something on a biblical scale, I mean huge!

Now he was intrigued, and wondered what I could proffer to warrant such blatant hyperbole. So I told him about the Matrix. He now wondered if I was having difficulty separating fantasy from reality, to which I responded that I was, but how that was unimportant right now, because if you really thought about it, so was everyone else. Whatever random name we give a bunch of molecules is just that; a name we give to a bunch of random molecules, so if you want to call that reality you go right ahead. The thing is that not everyone experiences those molecules the same way, so their reality will in fact differ from yours.

Actually, a lot of the time, reality comes down to what the majority of people believe, and that becomes the norm. Let’s not even go down the flat earth avenue, let’s just say that if you don’t want to look out of place, you agree with what everyone else says and does, including in some cases, what they say about you and your ability. This is certainly true of a number of kids at mainstream school. So I go in and convince them that they can actually attain the skill sets and grades to enable greater flexibility of behaviour, when opportunities present themselves.

So, like a puppy with a new slipper, he refused to let this one slip away and enquired next as to how exactly I managed to engage and convince these kids that they can make this behavioural leap, to which I explained that I achieved these incredible results with the use of strategically implemented NLP techniques in conjunction with magic of the kind you are familiar with seeing Derren Brown, David Blaine, or Dynamo performing. At this point, my new found friend posited an important question. He wanted to know if there was no such thing as magic, why they should believe anything that I had to say to them. In fact, considering the level of cynicism you get with most teenagers, what chance did I think I had even trying to find a common ground?

 I told him that if I create an experience that they cannot explain, then as a by product I am also creating a state of wonder and possibility. These are the exact states of mind that I need them to attain in order for me to be able to shift beliefs. Magic reminds us all of a time when we were younger, and the realms of possibility were much wider than we see as adults. Presenting an experience to an audience who cannot themselves determine if it was true or not, allows one a certain amount of manoeuvrability. I like to move them towards self belief.

Then he got mad. He robustly informed me that it was his belief that I had no right to use such trickery on these students, because my tricks were not real, and therefore the students would just be deluding themselves. As opposed to believing that if they get a degree, they could just walk into a job that would allow them to live the celebrity lifestyle. Magic tricks aside, it was interesting to hear his beliefs. In his world, the use of psychological techniques to change a student’s belief about them self for the better was wrong, because you only have the right to do so if your techniques are real. So, I told him a story. Then as part of the story, I showed him a magical effect using a deck of playing cards. Then I asked him what was real. The story with the effect suggested one world was possible, his brain and common sense were desperately hanging on to the one he was standing in before the story.

When someone experiences something they cannot explain, their mind goes into a kind of freefall. Usually, they can construct somewhere solid to land, but it is quickly assembled from the remnants of the world they felt so strongly was unshakeable. Well we already have the landing pads for the new world, already constructed, with brand spanking new shiny beliefs about the nature of possibility and future success. We do this over and over again, with different stories, and different effects.

My new friend was perplexed. He knew that what he had experienced was just a stupid trick. Just because he didn’t know how it was done, didn’t mean that something absolutely incredible had just taken place, it just meant that it was a stupid little trick. That didn’t mean anything.

I’ll be working with his staff later this month. He still thinks it’s wrong for me to do this, but if anyone’s going to benefit from this persuasion business, then by thunder it’s going to be his business.