Subject: Cultural SD

Posted by Tim Joy on 12/3/2008
In Reply To:Cultural SD Posted by Lees N. Stuntz on 12/2/2008

Message:

Some years back at La Salle, we offered a course called “Northwest Rhythms,” a look at the natural rates of change in the Pacific Northwest with an attempt to consider to what extent humans are living WITHIN those rates. We stayed away from modeling for a few weeks, instead looking at a local watershed, Johnson Creek. The small creek came off the glacier flows of Mt. Hood (~50 miles east of Portland), flowed through virgin forests, suburban tracts, eastside industrial facilities and into the Willamette River, thence to the Columbia and the Pacific Ocean. Johnson Creek flowed through a National Forest, two counties, six cities, and multiple business and residential interests. Many students were able to locate on a map where they, or someone they knew, lived near the creek or in the watershed itself. Most drove over a bridge crossing the creek. Everyone knew that it flooded every year, usually more than once. We looked at maps, wondered what the watershed might have looked like before the Oregon Territory boomed, what local and national interests had done to the creek in 150 years.

Then we started playing games: Fishbanks, and AgLand. We looked out the window of our classroom – up the hillside that lay south of Johnson Creek about a mile from our school. Recently cleared for multiple apartment complexes, the hillside was a brown slab of land. Students wondered if something would happen once the rains began. We used hand drawn time graphs – road building, population increase, industrial expansion, Army Corps of Engineers flood abatement work, the course of a water year. Our mantra was straightforward: people need to live somewhere, people need jobs, and the Pacific Northwest is really beautiful. Now what?

At some point we did build models, but simple ones – just basic concepts that demonstrated what the students were seeing: one or two stock models, but, ultimately, showing a closed loop with population and various impacts on land. No question, though, that the simple models helped them visualize what was happening, and also helped them understand the different time scales.

The class was not an environmental class, was not a science class, was not a math class, and was not a political class. This was so because I don’t know any of that stuff, but even more so because we wanted a chance to see the corner of the world we inhabit as a place to learn about how to live well. It was simply about where we live and what kind of life we’d like to have. How, then, do we ensure that? Can we?

Focusing on a watershed helped shape the course around personal interests – “I drink this water.” Kids wanted to know.

An aside (or, perhaps, more to the point) this question of whether we can devise a course wherein students learn SD concepts without “teaching modeling” is a HUGE concern. And I do not think it is merely a matter of devising such a course here or there; rather, this is THE ONLY WAY systems dynamics will have some academic lift in schools.

There’s a vocabulary here people need that’s beginning to emerge on the national level – Greenspan recently mentioned when he last testified that his “economic model did not explain” what recently happened on the global scene. Good sign. The model’s broken. Time for a new story, a more accurate story.

I do believe that for this new story to happen there will need to be some love from math teachers, for they too have a story to tell. The math community ought to make its next generational priority to teach young people about exponential change they way they taught previous generations the times tables and algebra: fewer equations, more graphs; less about stasis, more about change.

My way-cool older brother just turned 55 – he can get a senior discount. Time is a funny thing.