Con Kenney asks:
>Is your perspective influenced by personal construct theory? I find your
>objective for education very appealing and would appreciate learning more
>about your reasoning. Thanks.
As far as I can tell, my perspective began to take shape about 30 years
ago, while I was teaching at Florida State University, and was much
influenced by the work of early cultural anthropologists,
macro-sociologists, and historians--scholars who lived and wrote before
the present emphasis on specialization and quantification of narrow
phenomena. I only began running into the phrase "construct theory" a
couple of years ago, so I guess I'd have to say it wasn't influential
(although people in that school of thought seem to find me OK).
I first laid out my thoughts on the "big" questions of education publicly
in a little (and little noted) book published by SUNY Press as part of
their Philosophy of Education Series. The title was WHAT'S WORTH
TEACHING? SELECTING, ORGANIZING, AND INTEGRATING KNOWLEDGE. Despite what
I felt was its utter simplicity, it was little understood, and I've since
attempted to translate the theory into a course of study for adolescents
(and teachers) called A STUDY OF REALITY; A SUPRADISCIPLINARY APPROACH.
It's a very hands-on, high-involvement course that begins by having
students explore what we mean when we say, "I understand," and ends with
activities which (I hope) help them grasp and work with the systemic
nature of human experience.
Rightly or wrongly, I attribute the difficulties many educators have with
my stuff to the "a fish would be the last to discover water" phenomenon.
A couple of my articles are titled, "A Curriculum of the Commonplace," and
"Educating For Life As It's Lived." Another source of difficulty is my
contention that the popular concept of "interdisciplinary" is a dead
end--that, although disciplinary parallels and intersections are easily
identified, there's no way to bolt them all together to provide an
intellectually manageable macro-discipline students can use to organize
and integrate everything they know. I argue for a "supradisciplinary"
approach that I believe is deeply imbedded in our thought and language.
A (very) few educators think I'm advocating something absolutely
spectacular. A far greater number probably would agree with a
pre-publication reviewer of the SUNY book who wrote in large letters
across the last page, "THIS IS ALMOST PURE SCHLOCK!"
I've recent articles in journals, and have three or four which have been
accepted for publication later this year. I'll E-mail one to you
personally (and to anyone else who's interested). After reading it, if
you want to continue talking, I'll be happy to do so.
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Host's Note: If you want to request Marion's article, please email him
directly, not to the learning-org list.
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Marion Brady
-- gmbrady@aol.com