I certainly agree with Pete Heineman's contention that merely
preparing students to enter the workforce reflects a devastatingly narrow
conception of education's task and challenge.
However, I want to pick up on his Alan Bloom quote:
"If we can find ways in which to help students synthesize their several
forms of
knowing, we should be in a position to educate students for understanding."
More than 30 years of intense interest in and work with students of
all ages on this matter convince me that we already have, implicit in our
language and thought, such a synthesizer. However, we've been so focused on
"interdisciplinarity," so intent on trying to find ways to synthesize by
bridging BETWEEN our "several forms of knowing" (the academic disciplines)
that we've been blind to the inherently integrated, "supradisciplinary" way
of knowing that we all use every time we frame a thought or a sentence.
As productive and as useful as biology, chemistry, economics,
political science., physics, sociology and the rest of the disciplines have
been, when it comes to putting together a truly general education, they're
the primary problem. They segment reality in awkward, artificial ways that
make the systemic nature of human experience all but impossible to discern.
As I've said several times on this list, every kid comes to school
with a mental model capable of encompassing and integrating all knowledge.
We need but make this implicitly held model explicit and formally adopt it
to "synthesize (our) several forms of knowing," and "educate students for
understanding."
If we ever do that, we'll provide students with an intellectual
framework that, unlikely as it may seem, will not only give them "a sense of
direction, a sense of community, a sense of value," it will allow them to
think in ways we don't now even imagine, and be free of perceptual prisons
we don't now even know exist.
--Marion
<mbrady@digital.net> http://ddi.digital.net/~mbrady
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>