Producer Consciousness (PC) for Teachers, Students, Parents/Guardians, and Stakeholders
By Dr. Homer Warren and Atty. Linette Stratford
This document presents an overview of our book Producer Consciousness: A New Mindset for Education. The document is designed to inform teachers, administrator, staff, parents/guardians, and stakeholders about the attributes and benefits of Producer Consciousness (PC). The document is divided into six sections:
1. Purpose of Producer Consciousness for Education
2. Academic Support for PC
3. PC and Teachers
4. PC and Students
5. PC and Parents
6. PC and Stakeholders.
Purpose of Producer Consciousness for Education
The world is changing. Our children will face the effects of AI, robotics, nano-bio-technologies, geopolitical chaos, future pandemics, and challenges to democracy. We argue that the problems of today and the challenges our children will face in the future result from centuries of living under the false mindset (consciousness) that human beings have a consuming nature. In modernity, the false “consumer consciousness” has humans seeing everything as a commodity and relationships as consumption transactions. It has us “consuming” ourselves with envy, jealousy, greed, anger, fear, hatred, stress, anxiety, competition, and self-esteem issues. Indeed, racism, sexism, genderism, classism, ageism, tribalism, body-shaming, and homophobia are the nasty and often deadly symptoms of “consumer consciousness”. Our theories, research, and practices in many academic disciplines are framed by “consumer consciousness.” We’re told the lie that being a consumer is simply about buying stuff and that buying stuff is a positive thing and good for the economy. But the real meaning of “consume” is to waste and destroy and for centuries that is exactly what we have been doing to ourselves and one another.
To their credit, many intellectuals have argued against consumerism and hold the position we must become smarter and more conscientious consumers. We argue that this only perpetuates “consumer consciousness”. The key to effectively dealing with the false “consumer consciousness” is to realize that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A CONSUMER!! The consumer needs to be abolish in the same way Slavery was abolished. We must remove the false “consumer consciousness” from the human brain-mind. We must have a mindset (consciousness) that fits the reality of who we are and how we are to humanely live with one another. Hence, our children must be educated under a realistic consciousness that will empower them to take charge of their lives and survive and flourish in any future world.
Why PRODUCER CONSCIOUSNESS? Because the world is about production and not “consuming.” It’s indisputable that human beings are naturally endowed Producers. Everything in the Universe is about production processes and function under some form of systems theory (i.e., Inputs producing Outputs). Our biology and neurology are phenomenal Input-Output production systems. Our ecological relationships with the Earth and all nonhuman beings are Input-Output production systems. The pure sciences, psychologies, and philosophies effectively theorize about how and why humans “produce” our feelings, actions, reactions, and thoughts. Even all spiritual traditions support the idea that we are Producers. As an example, the Christian Bible tells us that we are Producers because we are made in the image and likeness of God (the “Big” Producer of all things). We are Producers! Therefore, the way we think, talk, act, and teach must fit (be in sync with) the truth and reality that we are Producers.
Academic Support for Producer Consciousness
This section highlights our research into how Producer Consciousness (PC) is integrated into pedagogical theories, pedagogical research, college curriculums, teacher training and development, and classroom practices. PC is metacognitive in the sense that its language and ideas can be utilized to critique (i.e., interpret and translate) the above pedagogical categories. The following is a sample of the books and journal articles that we’ve subjected to a PC critique: [The critiques will be made available upon request.]
· Maria Hantzopoulos’ Restoring Dignity in Public Schools: Human Rights Education in Action, Teachers College Press, 2016.
· Lois Weiner and Daniel Jerome’s Urban Teaching: the Essentials, Teachers College Press, 2016.
· Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students, Corwin Publication, 2014.
· Carol Dweck’s Mindset, The New Psychology of Success: How we can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential, Ballantine Books: New York, 2016.
· Mike Metz’s “Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Teaching Critical Language Awareness: The Importance of Valuing Student Knowledge” in Urban Education, 2021.
· Naomi J. Aldrich, Jing Chen, and Louis Alfieri (2021) “Evaluating Associations Between Parental Mind-mindedness and Children’s Developmental Capacities Through Meta-analysis”, Developmental Review 60 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2021.100946
· Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey’s Better Learning Through Structured Teaching: A Framework for the Gradual Release of Responsibility. 2013, ASCD: Alexandra, Va, 2nd Edition.
· Charlotte Curran’s “The Ethics of Fat Shaming” (tells us precisely why fat shaming is unethical), Philosophy Now, June/July 2021. The PC critique in this article is expanded to include Black shaming, white shaming, intellect shaming, handicap shaming, and all forms of shaming.
· Also, our book Producer Consciousness: A New Mindset for Education contains a PC critique of Constructivism, Behaviorism, and Social Cognition Theory.
· Also, we have a recently published article explaining how PC can be incorporated into a college classroom. Homer B. Warren and Linette Stratford (2022). “Producer Consciousness First, Then Teach Business Ethics”. Journal of Business Ethics Education.
Relative to bringing an Afrikan-centric view to the classroom, the following is a sample of our PC critique of Afrikan-centric articles, books, and ideas:
· Dr. Maulana Karenga’s article “Kawaida Philosophy and Practice: Questions of Life and Struggle” written for the Los Angeles Sentinel, 8-02-07, p. A-7..
· “African Cultural Consciousness and African-Centered Historiography as Preconditions for Wilson’s New World Order” by Reginald Hopkins, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Chair of Psychology Virginia State University The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.6, no.2, July 2013
· Dr. Ivory Toldson’s Breaking Barriers Report, available at
https://www.abfe.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Breaking-Barriers-Report.pdf
· “Decolonizing the Curriculum to Reinvigorate Equity in Higher Education: A Linguistic Transformation” by M. W. Lumadi in South African Journal of Higher Education https://dx.doi.org/10.20853/35-1-4415 Volume 35 | Number 1 | 2021 March | pages 37‒53.
PC and Teachers
The following highlights what Producer Consciousness brings to classroom teaching: [Our book Producer Consciousness: A New Mindset for Education details the PC language and ideas referenced in each highlight.]
· PC is real. Students are quick to reject people, ideas, and subjects as “not being real”. The essence of PC and its common language and easily applied ideas in the classroom will resonate with students. They can’t reject what PC is all about.
· PC’s common language and easily applied ideas are in sync with reality and the truth that all human beings are Producers. PC helps students answer the “Who Am I” question.
· PC’s common language and easily applied ideas help teachers rekindle the “why” questioning that’s often removed from children. Indeed, PC’s production processes and systems theory (i.e., Inputs producing Outputs) is a necessary condition in the child’s “why” questioning. Even teachers and other adults in the child’s environments will experience emotional and intellectual benefits from the PC mental models derived from its Inputs and Outputs analysis.
· PC’s common language and easily applied ideas can be utilized in standard delivery of subject matter, class participation, motivating and rewarding behaviors, and even addressing negative behavioral situations with students and parents.
· PC reduces the emotional drainage (“burn out”) teachers experience as a result of continually tailoring their own personality to fit the personality of each student. In short, when teachers utilize PC’s common language and easily applied ideas with ALL students, the teacher creates a consistent communication process that the students come to expect hearing, no matter the classroom situation. PC offers a consistent structure required for discipline, motivation, and promoting student self-esteem.
· PC, by way of its common language, promotes emotional intelligence and gives a way for teachers to teach emotional intelligence to students. Indeed, students bring to the classroom a lot of emotional issues (their “Outputs”) caused by many “Inputs” emanating from many different environmental sources. PC’s common language and ideas gives teachers a consistent communication process to engage students at the level of each student’s classroom “Outputs”.
· PC’s consistent communication process allows the teacher’s love and honest concern for students to be displayed and appropriately received.
· PC is metacognitive. Students of all ages can be shown how and why the learning process is a very natural production operation of their brain-mind. Research indicates that resistance to education is related to the student not understanding and/or appreciating how their brain-mind learns and processes information (i.e., how Inputs produce Outputs). Indeed, while delivering any subject matter, teachers can utilize PC to explain what’s happening in the student’s brain-mind.
· PC facilitates the incorporation of social-cultural-learning theories that encourage the integration of a student’s environmental realities (their world of Inputs and Outputs) with the pedagogical realities of the classroom. This includes theories like radical healing, racism as a health crisis, and critical pedagogy.
· PC is embedded in EVERY subject matter. Along with understanding how their brain-mind learns information (Inputs), PC can be utilized to help students contextualize any subject matter by way of their environmental realities (their world of Inputs and Outputs). In conjunction with the current hot topic of language-identity dilemma and its cognitive and cultural conflicts, PC becomes a conduit or medium that connects perfectly the language of a subject matter and the language of the students. [Unfortunately, the intellectuals promoting language-identity solutions are using “consumer consciousness” language.]
· PC helps teachers understand and in turn helps students deal with anti-intellectualism, victimization, stereotype threats, marginalization, and issues of oppression. It helps teachers help students to recognize one another as Producers in the educational production chains of attaining and utilizing knowledge. This motivates student collaboration in the educational process.
· PC helps teachers bring out the natural talents, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-actualization that naturally resides in the production systems of the student’s brain-mind.
· PC’s common language and ideas can be utilized with special needs students. PC helps all students respect the production capacities of special needs students.
· PC’s common language and ideas are a powerful way to motivate and empower gifted students; no matter their personal environmental situations. PC gives the gifted student an intellectual framework to go beyond the classroom and perform self-education, self-discovery, and self-development.
· PC’s common language and ideas can be utilized to help students understand and practice meditation and mindfulness methodologies for peace, serenity, and quiet; these practices are currently being implemented in classrooms across the country.
· When teaching history (especially, Black History), PC’s common language and ideas can be utilized to take students beyond rote memorization of facts and dates to helping students make visceral connections to historical figures and events. In short, PC helps teachers and students contextualize the historical figures, events, situations with the student’s current environmental situations.
· PC helps teachers show students how to make sense of and explore their future; this includes potential occupations, potential lifestyles, and the potential economic, political, social, and cultural changes that the future may bring.
· PC’s common language and ideas give teachers a consistent communication process to engage parents and/or guardians.
In closing, we have a 15 page Word document that contains a detailed PC critique of the characteristics and attributes of great teachers. [This document can be made available upon request.] Relative to this document, we can talk to ANY successful teacher in the country, have them give a full item by item account of everything they do in the classroom, and show them the PC intellectual and pedagogical attributes of their methods. More importantly, ANY teacher considered unsuccessful in the classroom can be supported and developed under PC.
PC and Students
The above information about PC and teachers can be discussed from the perspective of the student. The following reemphasizes a few of the above items and provides additional PC benefits for students:
· PC is real. Students are quick to see things as “not being real”. They can’t reject what PC is all about.
· PC’s common language and easily applied ideas helps students answer the “Who Am I” question.
· ALL students need teachers to be consistent in their communication process with the students, not matter the classroom situation. PC offers a consistent structure required for discipline, motivation, and promoting student self-esteem.
· In terms of emotional intelligence, students do not have a way (e.g., mental models or tools) to understand or articulate their feelings, the sensations in their body, and their actions. PC’s common language and easy ideas has mental models that can be utilized by any student to recognize their feelings, body sensations, and actions; to understand how they are producing their feelings, body sensations, and actions; to understand why they are producing their feelings body sensations, and actions; and to make needed adjustments in their feelings, body sensations, and actions.
· PC gives a student a mental model to make sense of how and why others (e.g., teachers, parents/guardians, friends, classmates, neighbors, media personalities, etc.) are producing their feelings, actions, reactions, and thoughts. In short, PC helps students deal with bullying, love/hate/anger issues, and other personal issues students have to deal with.
· PC’s common language and easily applied ideas help students rekindle the “why” questioning.
· PC shows students how and why the learning process is a very natural production function of their brain-mind. Indeed, just learning PC will naturally bring their minds into sync with the neuro-systems of the brain-mind; which will facilitate the learning processes and help to navigate their environments. PC shows them that they are naturally PRODUCERs and that EVERY SINGLE THING about school is an “Input” that their brain-minds naturally want to use in the production of survival and flourishing and also in the production of many other Outputs that will contribute to a quality of life and wellbeing for oneself and for others.
· In terms of the learning process, students wrongfully and falsely see themselves as consumers and they come to the classroom with a false consumer consciousness. As consumers they commodity EVERY SINGLE THING about school. As consumers they reduce education to the binaries of “I LIKE” --- “I DON’T LIKE” and “I BUY IT”--- I DON’T BUY IT”. The evidence is showing that the vast majority of our students “don’t like it” and “don’t buy it”. But here’s the problem: When the so-called consumers in the marketplace don’t like something, their brain-minds produce negative feelings, actions, reactions, and thoughts and then, either express these negativities or simply leave the marketplace. CLEARLY NOTE that when students (as consumers) produce negative feelings, actions, reactions, and thoughts for education they are stuck in the classroom (“marketplace of ideas”) and often punished for expressing their negativity. They either fight back and become disruptive or simply mentally shuts down. PC prevents “consumer consciousness” from controlling the student’s feelings, actions, reactions, and thoughts toward education.
· PC helps students recognize one another as Producers in the educational production chains of attaining and utilizing knowledge which in turn motivates student collaboration in the educational process.
· PC helps students understand and deal with anti-intellectualism, victimization, stereotype threats, marginalization, and other forms of oppression that students are confronted with.
· PC helps the student to recognize their natural talents and helps them understand and explore their future. This includes potential occupations, potential lifestyles, and the many potential changes that the future may bring. As an example, PC can help students who are interested in a business career. PC can help them compensate for lacking business role models and/or lacking the business experiences afforded to student whose parents and/or relatives are businesspeople.
· PC can help students properly interact with the media (especially, social media and the entertainment media). No child should simply be “consuming” the images and unreal characters, personalities, and plots (the Outputs of others) on any screen. This is the zombie like state that consumer consciousness causes that interferes with the learning processes required in education. PC helps students properly interpret and translate the images, sounds, characters, personalities, plots, and hidden messages of the media. PC, on the other hand, motivates students to view educational programming that the media provides.
· PC gives students ancient wisdom teaching about human enlightenment and how humans are fully integration with nature (i.e., this fits the modern arguments about sustainability and how AI can be used). The future will require our students to have a mindset of production processes and systems theory (i.e., Inputs and Outputs). PC is a mental model that can guide students understanding of and decision making about any future developments in sustainability, AI, robotics, nano-bio-technologies, geopolitical chaos, future pandemics, and major challenges to our democracy.
PC and Parents/Guardians
The above sections for the teachers and students can be discussed from the perspective of the parents/guardians. The following provides the benefits of PC for parents/guardians:
· PC provides a common language and easily applied ideas that are in sync with reality and truth that all human beings (especially, children) are Producers. Parenting need a mindset that fits what life and living are all about (i.e., production processes and systems theory).
· PC provides a common language and easy ideas that parents/guardians can consistently apply when communicating about education with their children. When it comes to education, parents and teachers should be using the same language and ideas. This is one of the big problems in our schools (parents and teachers speak a different language and the children know it and in many cases take advantage of it). Also, PC’s common language and easily applied ideas serve as an effective communication method for teacher-student-parent/guardian conferences.
· PC’s common language and easily applied ideas help parents/guardians rekindle the “why” questioning in their children and at the same time have a consistent way to discuss (if not answer) questions raised by children.
· PC promotes emotional intelligence for the parent/guardian and gives a way for the parent/guardian to teach emotional intelligence to their children.
· PC helps parents/guardians show their children what the learning process is all about and how and why the learning process is a natural function of their brain-mind. Many children resist the classroom because they have not be taught by parents/guardians what learning is about and how to learn.
· PC helps parents/guardians understand and deal with the anti-intellectualism, victimization, stereotype threats, marginalization, and other forms of oppression that their children are confronted with.
· PC’s common language and easy ideas can be utilized by parents/guardians who have special needs children.
· PC’s common language and easy ideas are a powerful way for parents/guardians to motivate and interact with their gifted children. Parents/guardians can utilize PC to understand their gifted children and then utilize PC as an intellectual framework to motivate the children to go beyond the classroom and perform self-education, self-discovery, and self-development.
PC and Stakeholders
Technically, everyone in the community is a stakeholder in the advancement and education of children. Aside from teachers, administrators, staff, and parent/guardians, other stakeholders are the profit and nonprofit business community, governmental bodies, churches, public service organizations, social justice activists, etc. Each stakeholder group benefits from Producer Consciousness in the classroom. For expediency, only the benefits to the business community are discussed.
· Future workplaces and notions of work are transitioning and it’s quite clear that employer-employee relations will be in need of a new workplace and production mindset (i.e., Producer Consciousness). The business community will be in need of a workforce with a Producer Consciousness. Students knowing and living under Producer Consciousness will have the emotional, intellectual, and cultural framework to adjust to any changes that AI, robotics, and the so-called Third Wave Revolution will bring and this will be an asset to any business. Also, PC students will bring a natural consciousness for transitioning local businesses from the historically obvious destructive forces of CC to one of modeling business as a correlate to the general common good of a local and regional community.
· PC, by way of its very brain-mind processes, helps students to naturally develop a business mindset that compensates for lacking close business role models and/or lacking the business experiences afforded to student whose parents are businesspeople or provide business modelling.
· Businesses always talk about students lacking critical thinking skills. The very nature of PC’s common language and ideas stimulates the student’s brain-mind’s natural critical thinking processes.
· Businesses always talk about students lacking emotional intelligence of students. The very nature of PC’s common language and ideas promotes what emotional intelligence is all about.
· Communities that are not developing economically suffer from the lack of a common language and ideas that promote a consistent culture of development and prosperity. It’s the lack of a common language and ideas that results in the “isms” (e.g., racism, sexism, genderism, classism, ageism, tribalism, body-shaming, and homophobia) and community divisions that in turn debilitate economic, social, and political maturity of a community. PC corrects this problem.
· Health care costs are huge in business. PC promotes natural “radical healing” on the part of the students and in turn students can help in the “radical healing” of the community.
· PC is a business model for Black business owners and other professionals. The current business models are the source of every corruption and negative externality in operating in a community. The future of business has to transition away from these defective business models (often a function of CC) and PC will allow our students to be in the vanguard of that transition.
CONCLUSION
We end this document with a word about the child’s need for structure and discipline. Child psychology has a number of references about the importance of structure for a child’s healthy mental and physical development. By way of its common language and ideas, PC provides a structure for teaching and a framework that helps children in their “common sense” making of everything in their life. Also, we want the reader to understand that Producer Consciousness is a universal mindset and not relegated to education. Our children will become leaders and professionals in all areas. Producer Consciousness is a framework of ALL areas and by teaching our children Producer Consciousness at a young age they will be able to navigate, negotiate, and transform the future. In short, the information in this document could well be modified and readdressed as PC: A New Mindset for the Justice System; PC: PC: A New Mindset for Health Care; PC: A New Mindset for Corporation; PC: A New Mindset for All Organizations; PC: A New Mindset for Government; PC: A New Mindset for All Skilled People; PC: A New Mindset for Social Justice Warriors.
Thanks for reading this document,
Linette Stratford
Homer Warren
P.S. If you want to get in touch with us, email producer@producerconsciousness.com
