Subject: K-12 SD education in time?

Posted by Bill Rathborne on 3/7/2008
In Reply To:K-12 SD education in time? Posted by Alice Squires on 3/6/2008

Message:

Hi Alice,

Thanks for the questions.

First a clarification - The quote from "Living Systems" is in fact an excerpt from the book "The Active Society" by Amitai Etzioni (1968). I don't have that book so I am not sure whether "inauthentic" is extensively defined in that book. However, in the text above the excerpt in "Living Systems" there is also this reference. "He
(Etzioni) identifies alienation as a pervading pathology of modern societies, causing severe strains among societal components and subcomponents at all levels of the organization , the group, and the organism. If a society is highly alienating, it cannot form an authentic consensus." So it would appear that Etzioni's use of "inauthentic" relies on the issue of a "highly alienated" (sorry, no definition of 'alienation'!) society featuring "political processes"
that do not represent "consensus".

Etzioni's book goes all the way back to 1968, so I guess it is a bit of a judgement call as to whether things have improved or deteriorated since? Unless there are studies that have in fact quantified changes between 1968 and the recent past.

There is no reference to "systems thinking" in the index of this 1,110 page monster! However, there are many references to the work of J.W.
Forrester and to "Industrial Dynamics Models", and the use of DYNAMO modeling. I think it may be a matter of the evolution of the language around SD/ST.(?)

It would be wonderful if this book could be placed on the internet fully "google" indexed. It would make for an endless Wikipedia project!

Cheers,

Bill

Follow Ups:

K-12 SD education in time? - Janis Dutton 3/7/2008