The Richly or Poorly Show
Show Transcript
shdawson-20260915.mp3
Episode 09/15/2026
09/15/2026
Hello! Welcome to The Richly or Poorly Show!
My name is Dr. Stephen Dawson, and I am your show host.
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Please consider how you define the term good as we journey through life together in your pursuit of defining the term richly in your life.
Last week, we began the series on The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success. I answered the only two questions that matter in communication: SO WHAT? -and- WHAT NOW?
SO WHAT?
The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success form one of the dominant means for you to live your life more richly from the year 2026 forward.
WHAT NOW?
I suggest you hear what I have to say to you in this series of episodes.
We then stepped through my answers to these two questions to help you understand their impact on you. I urge you to listen to last week's episode to better understand the episode I present to you today.
Today, I will share why waiting to learn The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success harms you. I will do so by sharing how waiting to learn The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success harmed me. I will share about a part of the price you will pay to gain The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success in your life, and about some of what happens to a person who does not gain The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success.
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I entered first grade in August 1972. The personal computer was not released for sale until 1981. My teacher grabbed me by my arm and shirt on the playground the third day of first grade and beat me for some form of behavior that was unacceptable to them. The story that got home to my parents from my teacher about the incident was different from what happened, as the teacher lied to my parents to cover their behavior. I knew then that school was not going to be preferable for me.
The school board where I was raised had adopted a grading system that was based not on the number of assignment questions either correct or incorrect, but on the opinion of the teacher to measure student performance. It was called the performance progress grading system. Here is an example of the performance progress grading system. Let's say a teacher had an assignment for us that had ten questions on it. Say I was not doing well in the topic covered by the assignments. Say I got eight out of ten questions correct for the assignment. I was graded as excellent performance on the assignment. Say you were doing well in the topic covered by the assignments. Say you got nine out of ten questions correct for the assignment. You were graded as average performance on the assignment. There were also minimum and unsatisfactory performance ratings. The collection of performance ratings was then averaged through some unstated calculation to determine student learning progress. The performance progress was reported four times per year in the form of a grade card issued to students, who then carried it to their parents.
I, as a child in first grade who was not even seven years old at the time, knew this teaching system would not work to accomplish teaching.
Now, take that same scenario and multiply it by all of the assignments for all of the topics in a school year for eight consecutive years. Clearly, there was no standard grading system in use. Worse, the same topic taught by a different teacher in the same school would have a different teaching approach, different assignments, and different evaluations of student performance for each assignment. The result is the inability to measure student learning progress.
There were no textbooks used by the teachers during my first five years of schooling. I did not see a textbook in school until sixth grade. Even then, the textbooks were not used by the teachers. The teachers used papers they had prepared in place of textbooks. The chalkboard was used heavily. The teachers did not encourage note-taking of the chalkboard presentations. The teachers professed their presentations on the chalkboard to be so simple that the students could memorize them easily. The result was each student then having hundreds and hundreds of sheets of paper for each school year of learning. Students could not keep up with this amount of paper, taking it home and bringing it back to school without things getting either mixed up, where something could not be found without a difficult search to find it, or lost somewhere between school, home, or back to school. The reason this teaching approach was used was to avoid three matters from occurring. First, the school system did not want to purchase textbooks as a cost-savings measure. Second, the school system did not want what textbooks that were in the school system to either wear out, be lost, or be stolen. Finally, the school system did not want each student to have homework. All topics were taught, assignments issued, and completed by each student before the end of each day.
The impact of this teaching style was the inability for the parents of the students to see what was being taught to their children. I began fourth grade in August 1975 at just under ten years of age. Some of my peers at that point were going to academic tutors on both Tuesday afternoons and Saturday mornings. This was an additional two hours of learning on Tuesdays and three hours of learning on Saturdays. This tutoring occurred because their parents identified there was insufficient learning occurring for their child. There was no such thing at the time as companies that did academic tutoring. The tutors were the school teachers doing extra work out of their homes, beyond their school job as an independent contact worker. It was clear to me that the need to supplement learning at this point in the schooling process meant the learning process was not only weak, poor, and insufficient, but it was a toxic learning environment. There was no coincidence that the tutors were teachers. It was a planned action to gain extra income beyond their teacher salaries.
My beginning of sixth grade in August 1977 had me just under twelve years of age. A textbook was used in some of the topics in some weeks of the school year. Again, the textbooks did not leave the school property for the stated reasons of the school system. The failure of the excellent-average-minimum-unsatisfactory progress measurement system was in the city newspaper at this point as a controversial topic. I was in this grading system for my first eight years of school. The grading system lasted a total of 15 years in the school system before it was replaced with the numeric grading system known around the world as a fair measurement system. My last four years, being high school, used the numeric grading system. What was odd to me at the time was why first through eighth grade students used a different grading system than high school students. I found out the answer to this question the hard way over my last four years of school.
My ninth grade year started in August 1980 with me just under 15 years of age. I did terribly in almost all subjects that year. I could not keep up with the topics due to the lack of academic preparation by the teachers for the first eight years of my schooling. That, and some significant family problems, formed loads of social and relationship problems, combined with my being on the freshman basketball team, taking much of my time for several months. The schooling problem that year was compounded by one teacher of one subject you will hear about in the coming weeks.
Now, to be fair, there is plenty of blame to go around in the teaching controversy of this learning journey. The school board, for allowing such a senseless measurement system to be used. The school principal, for not monitoring teacher lesson materials. The teachers, for demanding of the school board to adopt this senseless measurement system and continue its use to cover their poor teaching results. Finally, me as the student who could always do better in some things in some way, as is the case for us all.
I will leave the specific details of my high school years to the coming episodes of the next few weeks to help you contextualize your understanding of how The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success were discovered in part. It was not until 2013, when I was 47 years old, when The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success were discovered completely.
The opposite is true today from when I entered first grade in August 1972. Then, we had science fiction movies providing us with the idea that a computer would help us learn because we would have all we would need at our fingertips at all times. There is no shortage of devices, technologies, data, and information today, all around everyone in every part of the world.
When was the last time you read the entire contents of a web page? Clearly, the abundance of technology is not the only reason academic learning occurs. Technology is an enabler to help us do things like not being required to keep up with hundreds and hundreds of sheets of paper for each school year of learning. Also, to find new information in, say, either a library or on a web site. Then, to do things with that information like either writing, or sharing, or looking at pictures, or adding numbers together.
We as humanity are now so overloaded with technology that we have forgotten how to learn. We simply grab a device and start to either talk to it or click the buttons on it, hoping we will find something close to what we want and accept whatever it is we have found that has expended our time and energy to look for whatever it is we want to find. I state the term WE as in the majority of humanity, the HIGH majority of humanity, as of the year 2026.
How about you? How do you use technology most of the time? Do you use it for recreation or learning? If learning, what do you learn? Do you learn a technology? Academics? Something that is absolute? Something that can help you live your life more richly?
Then, there is artificial intelligence holding the promise to further extend humanity by helping us be more intelligent. I hold no belief that artificial intelligence can deliver on such a proposal. What I do believe is the danger of forgetting how to learn is a real threat to humanity for anyone to trust artificial intelligence to do the work of thinking for them.
Now, about the two things I told you last week that you would hear from me today about The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success.
A PART OF THE PRICE YOU WILL PAY:
UNLEARN - The lack of mastery of any topic means there is a good chance something was learned along the way that was learned incorrectly, perhaps because it was taught incorrectly. It is not worth one second of your life to be upset about having to unlearn anything you have decided you must learn for you to live your life more richly. Put out the time and effort to learn what you need to learn by way of unlearning and rejoice that your days of doing the specific part of the topic incorrectly have that part of the picture fixed once and for all.
REPEAT - The action of unlearning means some of the time and effort spent that resulted in learning incorrectly must now be repeated. This repeat is not a waste. It is an elimination of what is dead inside of you. Dead, as in lifeless learning. Yes, all learning has some amount of value. However, not all learning results in life. Anything that was learned incorrectly has no life to it, as it does not contribute to living life more richly.
GO FURTHER - You will go further in your life than you ever imagined. You will be empowered to spend more productive time and effort on topics than you ever imagined possible. Spending productive time and effort on one thing means the time and effort was not spent on other things. It is like drinking tasteful water or coffee. There is no going back to tasteless water or coffee afterwards, knowing what is possible in both the present and the future. You will face each day going forward with a different evaluation system of how you will spend your day based on what you have for options, as you have The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success helping you decide what will help you live your life more richly each day.
WHAT HAPPENS TO A PERSON WHO DOES NOT GAIN THESE SKILLS:
The most obvious answer is also the most painful: Continued living of life poorly. Poorly, as in frustration of not knowing how to approach accomplishing any form of work, monetary suffering, and hopelessness brought on by having more and more technology around them with each passing day that will never stop coming into their life.
Next week, we begin the first skill of The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success. The five skills are presented in order of their usage. Here is what I mean by that statement. One must have skills one and two not necessarily mastered to do skill three, but one does need to have a good handle on skills one and two to be able to succeed with skill three. Learning The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success has a structured approach to it, supported by decades of firsthand experiences and academic learning, combined with research covering thousands of years to support the construction of the learning methodology that results in possessing The Five Academic Skills Necessary for Success.
We covered a lot of material today that I cannot prove to you about my earlier years of schooling. If you do not trust me that what I have presented is of The Truth, then it is not possible for you to learn anything from me. How do I know? Simple. It is the last part of what I promised you last week.
All learning involves being irritated. Irritation from being tired physically, mentally, and spiritually. Tired of having accomplished what one perceives as so little while also perceiving there is so much more to accomplish in a learning journey. I offer you my help now so you can defeat irritation as I have learned to defeat it.
THERE IS NO COMPLETION DATE!
Your learning does not have a date requirement for you, where you need to accomplish some specific amount of learning of a specific topic by a specific date and time. You and you alone drive your learning journey. You drive it where you are learning more on some days and not so much on the other days. You drive it where you are going faster some days and slower on the other days. You will know when you need to put more pressure on yourself to do more learning, and when you need to catch your breath on learning. My friend, there is one thing you can etch in stone right now. You will never get any form of pressure from me about your learning. Here is a part of what I said during the December 2nd, 2025, episode of The Richly or Poorly Show.
Listeners have spent years striving for some specific form of success, but have not achieved their desired level. They each have reached a point of being sick and tired of being sick and tired of not being able to live their life in a way that they define as more richly. They have reached a breaking point, tired of not living a richer life on their terms. This combination of circumstances motivates them to seek help to achieve their specific goals.
If you are sick and tired of being sick and tired, then good news. The Richly or Poorly Show is here to help you get past being sick and tired. It is on you to do the work to stay free of being sick and tired.
So, do us both a favor. Listen to this episode again before next week. The episode today had me pull back some deep layers of my life to share with you, and it hurt me a bit to do it. I would not have done it without my having the absolute belief that it was for your best. Please honor our relationship by listening to this episode again to ensure you are ready for what you will hear next week. A hint: The first skill is the easiest one of the five to master.
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Well, that's it for today.
RICHLY IS GOODLY!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Richly or Poorly Show!
I have enjoyed presenting to you today.
Until the next episode, I hope you will be safe and join me next week.
Until then.
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