Rupert, ID 83350-1105
droundy
Presupposition: The map is not the territory
This week I took my Special Olympics athletes on a school field trip to a museum and a warm springs. We were going with other students from the school and there were five busses going. In years past my group had held up the other groups. This year our district purchased a couple of small busses that teachers can drive and we decided to take a small bus so we would not hold things up. We had to wait for a late bus to arrive with my students on it, then get a wheel chair on and secured before we left. The night before I downloaded several maps to guide me because I knew I would be on my own. I could not follow the other drivers.
When we arrived at the museum we found, to our surprise, that we were the first ones there. I was worried as we had left a half hour later than the rest of the group, and I had stayed right at the speed limit. We enjoyed our museum visit, and had the entire museum to ourselves to explore. As we left the other bus drivers arrived. They had not taken the time to down load the maps and information, had driven to the wrong museum, found it closed and taken the disappointed students to the swim hole.
I thought about the maps I had downloaded. They served me well in several functions.
They were created for a purpose.
This incident brought me to thinking about one of the most fundamental presuppositions of NLP; the map is not the territory. We mean by this that each person sees the world by a different map. The map describes the territory as he sees it, not as it really is. Each map is created by the experiences we have had previously and by our family, or culture and even our history. Many believe that our maps are even in our genes.
Dennis Wood, in The Power of Maps wrote, “this, essentially is what maps give us, reality, a reality that exceeds our vision, our reach, the span of our days, a reality we achieve no other way. We are always mapping the invisible, or the unattainable or the erasable, the future or the past, whatever-is-not-here-presence-to-our-senses-now and, through the gift that the map gives us, transmuting it into everything it is not…into the real.”
My students also use maps of their world and each has his or her own map, distinctly different from any other. We can use the same functions of paper maps to compare and contrast with maps of reality belonging to each student.
As teachers we realize that each student has his or her own reality map. That map serves a purpose. It gives structure, order and certainty to the world for the student. We also understand that the map may not be an accurate representation of the world for that student, but is merely a tool. One of our purposes of teaching is to give our students a more accurate and functional map of reality and help our students create the maps they will need to be successful in their future.
© by Debrah Roundy 2008
The idea for this article was gleaned from a slide show by Charles Faulkner found at http://www.nlpco.com/pages/articles/nlp/NLP-Slide-Show.php Charles is an author and developer of NLP books, seminars and programs. I was fortunate to meet him at the IASH conference 2010 where he was the keynote speaker.
Maps are from Mcrosoft clip art
Copyright 2010 Magic Valley NLP. All rights reserved.
Rupert, ID 83350-1105
droundy