Dear Organlearners,
Charlie Saur <csaur@remc8.k12.mi.us> writes:
>My job is to help support something called "transition
>planning" for special education students. This transition
>planning is required by IDEA 97 (latest version of special
>education law) and Michigan laws.
(snip)
>When I use the word 'climate' to describe our work here so
>far, I am responding to what I perceive as two major hurdles
>in public education to achieving a flourishing LO; first, we
>have bound ourselves with organizational, legal, and internal
>requirements that impinge on assuring that students
>experience an emgergent learning experience that has some
>sort of long-term focus. Learning is currently fragmented, at
>best; irrelevent at worst.
Greetings Charlie,
Keep up the good work. The transformation of merely one public school
somewhere in this world will serve as a beacon along the creative
course of time.
Public schools do not provide for learners deviating far from the
average, neither the gifted nor the impeded. As such the public
schools do not provide an organisation in which each child can obtain
the results which he/she truely desires. In other words, these
"transaverage" children provide the acid test for whether a school
functions as a LO or not. Arguments such as that the law,
administration, finance or didactics cannot provide schooling for
"transaverage" children in the same public school as for "average"
children merely vindicate that the public school has failed this acid
test. What is even worse, by excluding the "transaverage" children
from public schools, (through lack of experience) a new generation of
people will grow up ignorant of the phlight of "transaverage"
children. This passing on of the issue must stop somewhere. Now is the
time to stop it.
Charlie, you have used the phrase "... requirements that impinge on
assuring that students
experience an emgergent learning experience ...". Your contribution
LO21306 was distributed on 14 Apr 1999 to the LO list. Two days before
that on 12 Apr 1999, my contribution "The Digestor LO21272" appeared
as a result of Dan Chay's request. There is some strange synchronicity
here which Leo Minning will also comment on. If you study the Digestor
carefully and tune your mind to the educational scene, you will
recognise that all these years public schools had been providing only
for digestive learning. (How good they have been providing for
digestive learning, is another issue.) The stepping stone to make this
jump in thinking is in your articulation "Learning is currently
fragmented ...". The fragments of the curriculum are like the bunch of
crystals in the environment which the child (with his system of
"crystal seeds") must digest in order to let their individual
structures grow. The task of emergent learning is something else,
namely to provide the child with this system of "crystal seeds"!
These "crystal seeds" are not simply there in the child's mind. The
child must produce each "crystal seed", all of them different to each
other. These "crystal seeds cannot be imported from the environment.
They have to emerge from within the child. The worst thing to assume,
is that they have to emerge outside the public school. The "primordial
soup" from which these "crystal seeds" emerge, is the experiences of
the child as the result of commuting with his/her environment. Since
every child is unique, the experiences of each child have the property
of individuality. Since the environment is common, the experiences of
each child also have the property of collectivity. The school has to
provide a replica of the world outside it. If this replica is
distorted by making provision for "average" children, but not for
"transaverage" children, the experiences of all children ("average"
and "transaverage") will become distorted. With a distorted
"primordial soup", how can we ever expect for the "crystal seeds" to
emerge within each child in the public school.
In my reply to Winfried Dressler (The Digestor LO21354) I apologise
for having concentrated too much on what becomes of the learning path
after the digestive phase has served its purpose. This apology does
not apply here. The problem of public schools is that the "total
structure" for all walks of education (administrative and pedagogical)
has been scaffolded for merely "digestive learning". This "total
structure" cannot be conserved while also making provision for
"emergent learning" because these two kinds of learning follow
different paths. Some of this "total structure" has to give way in
order to construct such a "total structure" which will provide for
both "digestive learning" and "emergent learning" for ALL children
("average" and "transaverage").
>Second, there exists a pervasive pragmatism that is rather
>insideous. It can best be described by using the model
>Senge describes as 'espoused theory v. theory in practice'.
>Parents and students are generally told that they will receive
>the education their child needs; whereupon what the child
>receives is something quite different due to the constraints
>that we, ourselves have implemented.
Charlie, I agree with you. Yet I see it as an offshoot of a much
deeper problem. It is problem associated with the emergence of formal
knowledge from tacit knowledge. The problem is that people assume that
the formalised knowledge which they use, is consistent and coherent
because of the fact that it has been formalised. This problem can be
identified by observing that people use certain cliches from such
formal knowledge while the tacit knowledge which they wanted to
express with such cliches, is something different. In order to make
people aware of this difference, merely keep on asking them questions
on any possible facet of each cliche. This questioning is the
principal way of delving into tacit knowledge.
Charlie, asking questions obviously heats up the learning temperature.
It is the sign that learning is proceeding to the edge of chaos where
bifurcations will happen. I believe that Dan has made you strong
enough to withstand high learning temperatures. Such strengths can
come only through emergent learning. Have patience with those who fear
the high learning temperatures because they have not experienced
sufficiently emergent learning to recognise it as something not to be
afraid of.
>My intent at the current moment is to help groups of
>people who may not have the opportunity to converse or
>dialogue get around the same table and focus on learning
>what each group's expectations and provisions include.
>It is a small step. I am attempting to be mindful of some
>of the theories and thoughts this list provides; and want to
>thank you all...
One of the purposes with any dialogue is to produce the "primordial
soup" (or the plasmodial state) from which the "crystal seeds" have to
emerge. Try to keep judgements (see for example the dialogue on the
"deemster" problem) away from the dialogue. The effect of any judgment
is to inflict premature structures in the "primordial soup". These
structures will be much deformed and often be amorphous in the extreme
case. The transformation of any "amorphous structure" into something
with a consistent and coherent structure is a pretty tough job.
>I would welcome comment and direction ...
Charlie, my perception is that you are heading in the direction which
I also would have taken.
However, who am I to say that my perception and direction are good and
true? Only time can be the judge. As for me, my learning is far more
important than my teaching because the latter depends on the former.
Furthermore, it is much more important that all the people who you are
serving learn for themselves to distinguish between good and bad as
well as true and false. The first lesson which they and each of us
have to learn is not to judge, i.e not to assume unconditionally that
anything is either good and true or bad and false. Unfortunately,
human nature is predisposed towards the negative because destructive
creativity is far easier than constructive creativity. Fortunately, we
have a remedy which will transform this negative predisposition to a
positive foundation -- love God and fellow humans without stipulating
any conditions.
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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