Replying to LO25944 --
Dear Organlearners,
David Gleiser <dgleiser@uniandes.edu.co> told the story:
>How to predict the weather
>
>The Indians asked their Chief in autumn, if the
>winter was going to be cold or not.
(snip)
Greetings David,
Your story tells about a feedback loop in which several parties are
involved. But each party is aware of only its part of the loop. Thus no
party is aware of the full loop and what it exactly does to all parties.
Here is case study which fits your story nicely. It concerns providing our
nation with science teachers. Long before, during and even now after
apartheid, there is an immense scarcity of good science teachers. We
presently need about 5x as much as what we have. There are many, many
reasons, some which come and others which go and some that just have been
with us from the beginning. I specifically want to avoid all these reasons
and focus on only one which has been with us from the beginning. This
reason concerns learning itself.
Learners meander between two assymptotes of learning -- authentic learning
and rote learning. In rote learning lots of theoretical information are
memorised as if this information is knowledge itself. Thereafter lots of
information on applications are memorised as if this will help the learner
to internalise this information parading as knowledge. But in authentic
learning the learner rather explores the whole world to gain in
experiences. From these experiences the higher faculties of learning have
to emerge, first assisted by mentors knowing how to guide and later by
self-guidance through own understanding (double loop learning).
A good science teacher at least has to integrate his/her didactic thinking
and scientific thinking into one didacto-scientific thinking. If one of
them fails, this integration is not possible and thus good work becomes
rare. Here in South Africa from earliest records there was a scarcity
among all its peoples in persons having either didactic thinking or
scientific thinking. Thus good science teachers, persons in which both
kinds of thinking were integrated, were very rare since the beginning.
I will dare to claim that more than 90% of our pupils for the nation as a
whole in primary and secondary schools learn all subjects rotely, if not
something close to it. So when they arrive at the universities as
students, they try their luck in every faculty with rote learning, even
the science faculty The consequences are disastrous for many of these
students.
Most lecturers in the faculty of science at universities reckon that
students should have learned already at school the "how" of scientific
thinking and the "how" of learning, whatever that might be. What these
lecturers then do, are to disseminate by information the "what" of science
so as to "define" the "whole" course. The students self then have to
combine the lecturer's "what" with their own "how" so as to progress in
scientific thinking. But since the vast majority of students previously as
pupils had no good science teachers at school to guide them, they lack
seriously in this "how" of scientific thinking as well as the "how" of
authetic learning.
It is in our nation the task of the science faculty at every university to
provide us with good science teachers. But the scientific thinking and
didactic thinking needed to become good science teachers, are usually
little taught, if any, in all the pre-graduate years. The usual faculty
assumption is that the schools ought to have done that. Hence the majority
of those students who eventually manage to obtain a degree in science
still lack seriously in the "how" of scientific thinking. The very few of
them who then intend to become teachers, lack just as much in either the
"how" of didactic thinking or integration of these two "how"s into one
whole.
Since few good science teachers are made available to schools, the
assumption that the "how"s of scientific thinking and authentic learning
should have been mastered at scool is false. The assumption of passionate
students that finally at university they will learn these "how"s is also
false. Thus the universities do not get what they need and the schools do
not get back what they need. Each of these two parties assumes that the
other pary's part of the loop is operating as is assumed. (To assume what
is assumed -- how can that be?)
Let us now go from system stories like "How (not) to predict the weather"
and "How (not) to provide science teachers" to some serious Systems
Thinking.
It is like the Indian chief assuming that the weather bulletin has sure
information and the weather forecaster assuming that the Indian behaviour
has sure information. Somehow the thinking of the Indian people, the
weather people, the university people and the school people did not
commute in a loop.
It is easy to make simple assumptions which do not involve sureness and
wholeness. But it seems to be an impossible task for each of these two
parties to trace the loop persistently while searching for wholeness and
sureness. Why is the task impossible? They cannot do a task involving
wholeness and sureness when they did not learn authentically the "what,
"how" and "why" of wholeness and sureness.
I am now going to tell something based on my own authentic learning of the
essentialities wholeness and sureness. Long ago I would have thought this
telling to be very curious, if not impossible to understand.
Every assumption in which a requisite level of wholeness or sureness (or
any of the other five essentialities of creativity) is also assumed, is a
faulty assumption. Why? Because assumptions themselves have to be created!
In their very creation an actual level of wholeness and an actual level of
sureness are operating implicitly. Wholeness cannot tell all of itself and
specifically not its actual level nor its requisite level of operating.
Thus wholeness alone cannot care for itself in the creation of the
assumption involving it explicitly. The same applies to sureness and each
of the other five essentialities. Each essentiality needs also the others
six to tell all of itself as far as each of us know. Only all seven of
them can care implicitly for one of them in the creation of an assumption
which involves that one explicitly.
Should you fellow learners also think of the ongoing LO-dialogue on
Polanyi and the Tacit Dimension of knowing, the telling above will
immediately become curious for most of you. Why? The mere fact of
comparing the telling above (involving can and cannot) with what Polanyi
had told, also involves tacitly your own actual levels of wholeness and
sureness and not merely that of mine. (As for their levels in Polanyi,
that you will have to discover yourself.) To let your wholeness commute
with mine involves more than merely wholeness. It is this "more than"
which makes you curious!!
Perhaps the following will help you to understand Michael Polanyi better
on specifically "tacit knowing" and me on, for example, the "seven
essentialities". Polanyi wrote "we can know more than we can tell". In a
somewhat symbolised form it becomes (the ">" meaning "more than")
. [we can know] > [we can tell]
I agree with Polanyi. I will now even go one step further by focussing on
my knowing of wholeness:
. [we can know of wholeness] > [we can tell with wholeness]
Can we now infer from this last expression that we cannot tell what we
know tacitly of wholeness? No, this very last expression is some telling
(but never all telling) of wholeness!
I think that every person telling of wholeness, even in writing, struggled
with the order relationship
. [we can know of wholeness] > [we can tell with wholeness]
As a result of my readings, I am sure that it has been the case with
thinkers like Leibniz, Goethe, Smuts and Boehm. Why am I sure? Because I
have had sufficient experience in this relationship, also on this
LO-dialogue of us. Allow me to give you some midwifery advice -- begin to
tell what you know of wholeness. You will then experience that which are
needed in the telling. You will learn by telling that wholeness alone is
not enough to tell what you know of wholeness. Let nobody assume that what
you tell of wholeness is what you know of wholeness because that
assumption is fraudulent as I have tried to explain above.
What better space do we have to tell than the LO-dialogue? Perhaps we will
stop gathering firewood like crazy and deliver more good science teachers.
Perhaps we will create many system stories and not merely rely on case
studies.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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