Gary writes:
>On a separate thread here, I'd like to hear comments on how we could
>improve society (postively). If anyone wants to pick that up, I think
>from the calibre of people on this discussion list, we could collectively
>start something massive!
Quite an assignment, and one likely to bring out the cynics. However, I'm
an educator, and at least some of us probably think that that's what we're
trying to do.
H.G. Wells: "Human history becomes, more and more, a race between
education and catastrophe."
My own effort in this direction (as many of you know) involves an attempt
to gain acceptance of (and build a general education curriculum around)
the "supradisciplinary" mental model shared by the members of societies.
In the introduction to the teacher's edition of the course of study I've
built on this idea, I say it this way:
"Every society has a model of reality--a body of knowledge and a way of
organizing that knowledge. If this knowledge and its organizing scheme
are made explicit and formalized, it will constitute each society's
optimum design for general study. Such study will be inherently
comprehensive and integrated."
What this approach runs up against, of course, are the traditional
disciplines. The entire educational establishment is married to and
organized around them. Given the highly specialized nature of modern
society, specialized study is obviously necessary, and should and will
increase. However, if that's all there is, students walk away with a
fragmented view of reality, unable to see its systemic nature. It's like
giving them a piece or two of a jigsaw puzzle, with no "picture on the lid
of the box" to help them see how the tiny area of their expertise fits
with the whole.
Traditionally, this problem has been attacked in academia with
"distribution requirements." Students are required to taste a bit of this
discipline and a bit of that. Behind this there's probably a vague
assumption that "back there" sometime in history, a bunch of superbrains
sat down and sliced reality up and parcelled it out, and that with the
help of a few introductory courses, students can pull it all back together
and grasp human experience holistically. It doesn't happen, and it never
will, and even if it worked, it would be extremely inefficient. Most
students see "that other stuff" as just a bunch of hoops they have to jump
through to get to the good stuff--their area of specialization. One of my
proposals is that every educational institution at the secondary level and
above create an autonomous general education department. With a single,
integrated general education program, there'd actually be _more_ time for
specialized study.
The difficulty (wouldn't you know) comes down to the necessity for a
paradigm shift. Just about every "educated" person in the world has come
through a system that fragments perceptions of reality, taught be teachers
who sincerely believe that the disciplinary aperature through which they
view reality is perfectly adequate. Getting them to accept the far
simpler approach to segmenting reality imbedded in our thinking and
language (time, place, actors, action, cause) just doesn't compute. Most
educators literally can't imagine it. In fact, just to get them to sit
still, I've had to resort to shameful strategies.
I'll quit with an illustration of such a strategy--a quote from an article
of mine in an academic journal that came out a few months ago:
"There is a perception of coherence in the elements of a particular
segment of reality when, in relation to that segment, data are presented
that (1) provide an image of a milieu sufficiently detailed to identify
its component elements' relationship to events occurring within it, (2)
identify actors on the basis of their action(s) and cognitive state(s)
within the segment of perceived reality, (3) posit or imply actor state(s)
leading to meaningful actor action, (4) describe actual physical behavior
growing out of or consistent with actor cognitive state, and (5) fix the
whole in appropriate time parameters. The criterion for inclusion of any
particular element or characteristic of milieu, actor, cognitive state, or
action in an account of a particular segment of reality is the extent of
that element's or characteristic's systemic relationship to other elements
in the system, the question being whether or not that relationship is
sufficient to cause change, and if so, to what degree, in one or more of
those elements."
Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! (In other words, we think an experience is
coherent when we know who did what, when, where, and why.)
Tell the head of your local secondary level school he should create a
general studies department.
Marion Brady
-- gmbrady@aol.com