Keith S. Taber
I found a very kind invitation from an organisation calling itself "Peak Performance International" in my email Inbox this morning * ('Parents Workshop on 12th September 2015')), inviting me to a 'free' 2 hour workshop (in Nairobi) – free as long as I booked before a certain date.
The organisation claims to be run by two parents who had been concerned at their daughter's lack of progress at school and so (as one does) had travelled to various countries including "the US, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia" to learn about programmes of "Accelerated Learning and Brain Development". They claim that what they found was "mind blowing":
We saw children who would flip through a 200 page book of completely new material, at high speed for just a few minutes and then give an accurate account of what the book was about. Others would mentally calculate long mathematical equations and give the correct answers instantly while Professors took so long and still [did] not get the correct answer.
During our tour we attended several trainings. I learnt more about the brain than I had ever done in my whole life. I understood how easy it was to assist children tap into their genius realm and experience quantum leaps in IQ and EQ (Emotional Intelligence) by synchronizing the two brain hemispheres.
It seems Peak Performance International are now keen to share their findings with other parents, thus the invitation to their workshop. How I would have liked to think this is a genuine (even if misguided) and kind gesture. There may be the odd savant who can complete complex calculations faster than professors – but I doubt there is much that can be learnt from those to advise others. As for such extreme speed reading and retention of information: this can be understood two ways. It is either just a complete fabrication (the human brain works slowly with 'completely new material' which has to be understood in terms of familiar material, and engaged with through modest learning quanta) – or is trivial. Any good reader could actually 'flip through a 200 page book of completely new material, at high speed for just a few minutes and then give an accurate account of what the book was about' – by focusing on the blurb or an introduction. However, there would be very little knowledge of the book's detailed contents.
I am not sure whether I should be upset or pleased about this invitation. It is always annoying that some people want to cheat, mislead and swindle others. Often the widows of dictators, dying philanthropists, senior bankers or lawyers, or american military personnel seem to have a problem moving vast amounts of money out of some national jurisdiction and offer to make me rich if I help them. They clearly feel I am especially deserving or suitably skilled to undertake such projects. It is hard to have too much sympathy for anyone who is so stupid and greedy that they respond to such approaches.
Here, however, the scammers are playing upon parents who do not want to get rich quick, but just want to help their children learn more effectively and do better in school. I wonder how much money they will be asked to part with to share in the Peak Performance Programme with its surely fraudulent claims? Shame on the scammers. The only positive aspect of this sorry tale is that people consider education and learning important enough for scammers to think they can make a 'fast buck' out of the selling the pedagogic equivalent of snake oil. Perhaps this is not so different form the companies in countries like the UK where so much of professional development in the education sector has become commercialised, with 'providers' selling programmes in 'learning styles' which often have very little evidential support. (There is good research into some models of learning styles – but where popular ideas like VAK work this is likely either placebo, or the focus on multi-model teaching, rather than the underlying model which is more a distortion of multiple intelligence theory than based on the research on student learning styles.)
When I first saw the email I seriously wondered if this was a genuine but misguided or exaggerated attempt to apply genuinely effective learning/study techniques. I was persuaded otherwise by a link in the email that directed me to "one of our students". Actually this was a 'youtube' video of a young boy on a television programme who allegedly could read whilst blindfolded. He struggled to read an autocue whilst blindfolded – although to be fair he struggled equally to read the same autocue before the blindfold was put on. Looking at the video, and in particular how the boy angled his head, I very much suspect he was looking through the fabric of the black eyeshades (in the section of the programme I watched it did not seem to have occurred to the presenter to provide his own blindfold). Even if this was a genuine sensory skill and not the trick it seemed to be, it appeared to have nothing to do with "Accelerated Learning and Brain Development" or Peak Performance International.
* First published 7th September, 2015
