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Role of a Teacher
Posted by Henry Cole on 12/5/2004
In Reply To:Role of a Teacher Posted by Scott Guthrie on 11/28/2004
Reply to Scott Guthrie:
Scott, that was a most interesting and well written piece you sent out. Here are just a couple of comments about basic ideas in our educational system which may connect with the modern day issues that you are struggling with.
The basis for the belief that our education system doesn't foster system dynamics reaches back farther than Professor Forester in the 1940s at MIT, back to the invention of the calculus in 1666, which you had mentioned. At that time, of course, we entered the age of analysis and reductionism where problems were solved by means of the rule "divide and conquer" and the central analog was physics. Even the hymnbook had the words: "Eternal ruler of the ceaseless round where sparkling planets spinning on their way," (approximate words from the hymnbook). The seventeenth century was the century of the conception of the solar system as a beautiful and perfectly designed clock. (Actually, it was quite magnificent). But the clock was mechanical, reductionist, and could be taken apart and repaired, section by section, and we didn't worry about possible interactions among the parts.
Fast forward to the nineteenth century where the industrial revolution was in full swing and the aim of education seemed to be to 1) produce a uniform population of workers, and 2) produce a uniform population of consumers. By this time the medievil quadrivium and trivium had been refracted into the multiple "disciplines" of the normal school cirruculum and the concept of western reductionism was thereby locked in place, supported on the one hand by the educational establishment and on the other by our society for whom dealing with the world in separate little parts seemed to be easier and was more efficient, ie., you train a worker to do only one thing. As Buckminster Fuller writes in his book on "The Great Pirates," it was always more convenient for the leader of the countries of the world to have their workers know only a small part of the whole scheme of things and never acquire the total integrated vision.
John Gatto, in a recent issue in Harper's (Sept 2003), has an article: "Against School, How public education cripples our kids and why." He describes some origins of our educational lineage back into the nineteenth century starting with (he believes) the (standardizing) Prussian Model of education described also in the writings of Horace Mann in 1843 in a report to the Mass Board of Education. Such ideas continued into the twentieth century through the writings of Dr James B Conant of Harvard who encouraged the standardization of children by subject, age grading and ranking on tests - amazingly similar to "no child left behind." By contrast, Russell Ackoff in his book, "The Art of Problem Solving," talks about a related issue where he points out that school never will produce the most creative children because they are, tacitly, encouraged to loose their creativity. He writes "suppose that all through school the young were provoked to question the ten commandments, the sanctity of revealed religion, the foundations of patriotism, the profit motive, the two party systems, etc. The answer he feels, is clear: society and its institutions and organizations would be radically transformed by this new inquisitive generation. But the rub is that most of the affluent do not want to transform society or its parts. They would rather sacrifice what future social progress creative minds might bring about than run the risk of losing the products of previous progress that less creative minds are managing to preserve." Certainly this is an option: you decide how far you want to go.
Are these ideas believable of not? It is left for the reader to decide but perhaps the followers of systems might be open-minded enough to consider and weigh the influence of this history. Regardles of the changes that we make in the implementation and improvement of teaching practice today in the classroom, we still labor, I feel, under the huge tradition of a particular style of education that must be understood, thought through, and revised if we are to make serious education changes.
Good to hear what you are doing. Best to all in Portland.
Merry Christmas, Henry Cole
So, an answer to one of your first questions about the committment of society to system dynamics is that "the way things are is built into the very fabric of our society
and it will not be easily changed."
I like your point about the NCLB tests: but, of course, people who take those tests will never be able to connect the dots required by a complex society. They will not be able to conclude, like the FBI Special Agent, Gail Rawley did, that Alcaida members taking flying lessons had something to do with imminent danger to our country.
Gatto says later that if our education were done correctly, "Genius would be as common as dirt." I myself have experienced amazing genius in the visual arts amoung Native Alaskans who were taught in a manner quite different from the normal national instructional approaches. Some of this art, by 13 and 14 year olds, hung for some years in the Smithsonian.
That is it for now.
I hope you got other good feedback Scott and I hope that you are doing fine.
I am teaching sporadically in an environmental program and enjoying it alot since I have the time to work over the material and make it more interesting and useful to the students. I also try to present SD methods to entrepreneurial and nonprofit organizations for the solutions of their problems in a manner that may be effective. This doesn't always lead to a contract, however, since I spend alot of time in explanation. For that matter I would like to discover a good effective marketing message for the application of SD and ST to business. Do you or anyone out there know of a way to approach this problem? Perhaps we should have a workshop on this.
All the Best Scott.
Henry Cole
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