Subject: Social Studies follow up

Posted by Bill Ellis on 3/24/2006
In Reply To:Social Studies follow up Posted by Jeff Potash on 3/24/2006

Message:

BE:
We can't transfor the social system without deschooling society.


> From: "Jeff Potash"
>
> We’d like to follow through on the request (threat?) we made in our
> recent CLE newsletter article (“Musings on Social Studies and System
> Dynamics”) to hear thoughts on “what you might be interested in doing
> to contribute to the CLE’s collections and to bolster our collective
> capacity to assist social studies educators.”
>

There is a "Critical Thinking Movement" in American universities that closely parallels a recent White Paper, "Life-Long Self-Learning Movement" on K-12
innovations. They seem to be saying the same thing, abandon the current
school systems and create a radically different universal learning system.

Universities across the country are recognizing that "Americans can expect to change jobs as many as half a dozen times in their lives." No amount of university education, as now given, can provide the skills and knowledge required for a long fullfiling and productive life. Universities must transform themselves to produce "critical thinkers." They must cultivate open minds, able to face any problem, economic, political, scientific, or social, with balanced, critical, reflective judgement. This does not mean abandoning the learning of techcnical and scientific knowledgei, nor the arts and humanities. It means aproaching all knowledge wth a more questioning, wholistic, exploratory and less dogmatic mind. To recognize that most decisions are made in a field of uncertainty requiring judgement and wisdom as much as reason and facts.

The difficulty universities are having in producing critical thinkers is, as one professor puts it, "that even 4 years of college only brings traditional-age college students to a very low level of critical thinking and judgement."

It is hard to see how anyone could expect much better. Young people in K-12 schools are imbued with exactly the opposite mindset.
Authoritarian, undemocratic, hierarchal schools prepare students for an authoritarian, undemocratic hierarchal world. Students are taught to obey orders, work on schedule, and accept authority. Nothing could be more contrary to critical thinking. It is clearly not only unreasonable, but also inefficient, to spend 12 years teaching people to accept order and control, and then 4 years attempting to erase that order and control mode from their minds.

These facts have been recognized in a White Paper on "The Life-long Self-learning Movement" drated by an ad hoc group of citizens concerned with the failure of the K-12 schools. It points out that there are a host of actions aimed an producing a radically different learning system.
Homeschooling, Charter Schools, Folk Schools, Vouchers, Democratics Schools, Parent Directed Education, and many other learning innovations are replacing the schools of the past.

Together these two movements show the need for a radically different life-long learning system. We need to abolish the barriers between higher and lower
education, as well as the barriers between real life and school life at
all levels. This is the challenge facing all elements of our current
culture.