The Role of the Educ System LO4978

Barry Mallis (bmallis@smtp.markem.com)
19 Jan 1996 10:57:29 U

Reply to: RE>The Role of the Education System LO4916

John O'Neill, in his posting about New South Wales' statistics and their
simplistic intepretation and ostensible weight in the pubic domain,
demonstrates a sorry state of affairs clearly described. What an
interesting and timely posting for me.

Yesterday afternoon I completed a 3-day presentation of a high-performance
team course. Each evening, participants have an assignment based upon
their reading in "The Team Handbook" by Peter R. Scholtes et al. They
apply the reading to the case study team we follow. In one particular
case, a participant told us how his 15 year-old daughter observed the
assignment contents related to group work together ("Ten Common Problems
and What to Do About Them") and commented how that stuff was really badly
needed in our local high school.

The material, as I have suggested in another recent posting, broadly
outlines a need for two foci: content (data) and process. Today's society
rushes to judgement about most anything. You and I get caught up in it.
In this vicious circle, personal calls for reflection are sometimes
overwhelmed by the din of quick takes, short-sighted goals, and the race
to make ends meet with a paycheck in hand.

John asks how do we instill critical thought into a society where it is
often in some people's best interests for the rest of society not to
exercise the power of critical thinking. One path to thoughtfully
consider is a current thread on this list: the link between business and
education. Manufacturing and service organizations have perforce adopted
some modicum or other of organization to survive. You may call it
darwinian, capitalistic, or whatever.

The organization requires teamwork to some degree. It seems from
experience that the more functional the team (skillful use of thinking and
analytical tools plus strong team process understanding), the greater the
chances of success.

Schools, as someone has pointed out so succinctly, teach very often in
this country (yours, too, John?) against a backdrop of competition, not
team work. The occasional team concept generally awaits university or
graduate school students already indoctrinated previously into our
unconscious, competition-based systems. Somehow, we have to prove OUR
SELVES, quite alone--all the time--in the areas of critical thinking,
rather than engaging in growth through critical team work. The counter
examples to my words here are mostly in the realm of private education.

Well, I hate long posting, and here I'm doing it myself. So if you've
gotten this far, suffer through this quatrain from Rumi:

Sometimes visible, sometimes not, sometimes
devout Christians, sometimes staunchly Jewish.
Until our inner love fits into everyone,
all we can do is take daily these different shapes.

Best regards,

--
Barry Mallis
bmallis@markem.com