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Education for Sustainability Standard
Posted by Jaimie Cloud on 11/6/2011
Thank you all so much for weighing in on my questions. I have spent quite a bit of time combing through all your notes—and I so appreciate your attempts to help me. I am still struggling, however. I am writing on the back of George’s response—because his response was most useful in helping me to refine my questions (I hope).
To develop our Education for Sustainability Standard, The Dynamics of Systems and Change I drew from some systems thinking rubrics I got from CLE years ago to determine what the performance indicators are of SD and systems thinking. “One person’s gain is interdependent with everyone’s gain or one person’s folly can lead to folly for all” was one, and “problems and their solutions are endogenous” is the other. I am revising and updating our Standards and Indicators,. Thank you thank you thank you in advance for those of you who hang in there with me on this— I have an obligation to increase my understanding and my students’ understanding by soliciting your perspectives. If they are too frought with disagreement, I will take them out—if they are not quite right, I will revise them with your help.
Question 1 Revised: In The Tragedy of the Commons Archetype, people “play a non-zero sum game” (the only way for anyone to win is if everyone wins) as if it were a “zero sum game” (I win, you lose) and they crash the system. In this case, of course, the tragedy is not really the commons, but open access to a limited commons without the social and legal norms to tend them over time. Peter Senge and I have created a new archetype—The Healthy Commons Archetype” which is a good illustration of how to create regenerative capacity in the system for win win win “non zero sum game like” results-- This is what I meant by “One person’s gain is interdependent with everyone’s gain or one person’s folly can lead to folly for all”. This is certainly true in the case of the commons and in the case of non-zero sum games.
On the other hand,
The collapse of the steel industry in the U.S. created unfavorable conditions for steel workers in Pittsburgh, but favorable conditions for healthworkers—this is an example of what I meant by, “ Favorable conditions for one species/group are unfavorable for another” or What is good for some parts of the system are bad for others and visa versa”. Another example is the advancement of the fuel cell. If it is successful, it will render oil and the combustion engine obsolete. The man that put lead in oil was asked to stop the engines from knocking. Good for the knocking problem, devastating for living systems. What is favorable for one is unfavorable for the other. When photosynthesis was produced and oxygen emerged, it burned almost everything EXCEPT the green cell—and the rest is history--That is life, of course. That is why resilience and adaptation and creativity are required to thrive over time—and why our own sustain-ability requires creating favorable conditions for ourselves to thrive over time by contributing to the health of the systems upon which we depend.
In one case, the whole system crashes, in the other, life goes on in different forms in the system--
What I want to know is, since life organizes toward life, what are the predictors or variables we need to keep our eyes on that distinguish one scenario from the other? Is it the health of the commons (defined here as that upon which we all depend and for which we are all responsible)? Is it the health of the “keystone species” in the system? Both? What else?
Question 2 revised:
The phrase “problems and their solutions are endogenous” is mentioned in the aforementioned rubrics as knowledge a systems thinker has—and I have seen the phrase repeated in much of the SD/ST literature.
1. According to Merriam-Webster, endogenous means
1. Produced or growing from within. 2. Originating or produced within an organism, tissue, or cell.
Q.Island Fisherfolk suffer decline in fish stocks due to poachers. Endogenous or exogenous problem? The solution?
Q. Greater and greater numbers of children suffer from asthma in urban neighborhoods. Endogenous or exogenous problem? The solution?
Q. Urban decay is documented time and time again in Jarrod Diamond’s book Collapse and many other places. Endogenous or exogenous problem? The solution?
So if problems and solutions can be endogenous or exogenous, and solutions are at least endogenous, if not both, then why do I see that phrase everywhere and what am I missing about its significance? The phrase I see most often isn’t, “system dynamics are endogenous”—although I would understand the essence of the concept better if that is how it was put. George—below, you are saying both—and I am still confused.
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“I think it's helpful (actually, I think it's crucial!) to distinguish DYNAMICS that are generated endogenously from those generated exogenously. Different people see the same things differently -- some prefer to see dynamics as endogenously generated and some prefer an exogenous point of view. Does urban decay come from forces and interactions inside the city, or does it come from outside forces originating in suburbia or the government? Jay's book Urban Dynamics takes an extreme (and incredibly insightful) endogenous point of view. The dynamics were generated by forces within the city, completely ignoring suburbs, government financing, and other exogenous influences.
But policy interventions come out of deep analysis and some kind of choice process. I don't think it is helpful to try to figure out whether we'd like to call such processes endogenous or exogenous. That is, I don't think it is helpful to think of the process of policy analysis and choice as endogenous or exogenous.
With one exception: policy analyses and choices have to be done by, or with, all the stakeholders. If that's what some mean by "solutions as endogenous," then I think a good view is "both problems and solutions are endogenous."
...George
Help, Jaimie
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