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Root cause of the 'teaching systems' problem
Posted by Tim Joy on 12/27/2010
In Reply To:Root cause of the "teaching systems" problem Posted by Jack Harich on 12/23/2010
I'll go for the long one, Jack.
We (humanity, I mean) have a centuries deep tradition of teaching disciplines - in institutions commonly called schools or academies, local groups (cities, states, et al) hire specialized people to instruct the area's youth in those areas. Focus on content and management. It's the sharply specialized, "highly-qualified teachers" in core disciplines that are endemic of this paradigm.
I was an English teacher for 25 years. While there are multiple means, it's really done one way: students read and write, teachers critique. It helped that I did NOT have an English degree. Having not specialized allowed me to dream up some crazy schemes and, later, I stumbled upon Joseph Campbell and Jay Forrester and Donella Meadows. These folks are great synthesizers. It helped me work on the edge.
Now, what part of high school has any class for synthesis? We've broken up schooling into parts. Of course, the world we experience is really one thing, not 45 minute segments of math, then language arts, then PE, then science, then elective option.
It's the wrong damn paradigm. Peter Senge speaks to this in his Schools That Learn - factory model of standardization remains the model, right up to quarterly reports.
There's another paradigm at work here, more damning still. Students do not know enough yet to do any good for us . . . put them in buildings until they're at least 18. That's another entry for another time.
Here'a way to start, I believe . . . every school in this country ought to adopt a handful of local problems, become expert in them via research, each year adding to the body of a locality's knowledge. Learn what's necessary to study those problems, study them, present solutions, perhaps enact some. Doing this will turn the entire educational enterprise to the world around it rather than the world within it.
But I started all this ("Fall 2010 Year in Review," 12/22) with a metaphor that I did not understand - the lever. A simple machine, the lever has a few crucial parts: the bar and the fulcrum. Depending on where the bar rests on the fulcrum, and depending on where the load rests on the bar, effort is exerted in a certain place to move the load. We needs lots of these, in a lot of places, and everyone pushing really hard.
What's the root cause to the "teaching systems" problem? Our educational institutions and all the attendant apparatus sustaining said institutions are set up for parts only . . . we are all working in an educational system shaped by a world view whose values and story lines are increasingly anomalous.
However, I believe we are in fact on the cusp of a huge shift . . . let's just keep going.
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