Sb: Who decides Educn Goals? LO5418
In response to a qustion on the level of unanimity among aducators about
the role of education, Marion Brady said, in summary, that there was no
consensus. In fact, educators' thinking -- especially beyond k-6 -- is
dominated by the traditional disciplines -- Reading, Physics, Chemistry,
Biology, and so forth.
Marion says, in part, "So we're pretty much stuck a fragmented, rather
pedestrian conception of the task, and there are lots of consequences--no
agreed-upon criteria for determining the relative value of different
content, little interest in or institutional opportunity for
non-traditional fields of knowledge, a passive, inundated-with-information
role for students, increasingly specialized jargon complicating
communication and further isolating scholars and their fields from each
other, years of lag between cutting edge insight and what makes it into
the general curriculum, etc."
I can only say that all my experience as aparent and participant
reinforces Marion's points. Individual teachers break out, but those
become rarer and rarer as the student progresses through the system to the
higher levels.
The only glimmer of hope I have seen is that in a few schools -- colleges
especially, and now some high schools -- there is beginning to be a focus
on the environment as a field of study. By its nature, the environment
brings together different fields of study. So, for example, physics,
chemistry, math can all play synergistic roles in helping understand what
is happening to an environment. At its best literature and the arts are
integrated, and they help us understand our feelings about the
environment. Not to be a pessimist, but the examples of this are still
very remote, 25 years after the first environmental courses were being
offered in college curricula.
-- Rol Fessenden LL Bean 76234.3636@compuserve.comLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>