by Marion Brady
Published in "Transecence" Vol. XIX, 1
Of
all the problems of general education, the most difficult seem to be those
having to do with the curriculum. We are decades into an information
explosion, and we still have no criteria to tell us what new knowledge to
teach and what old knowledge to discard to make room for the new. We know
that ideas vary enormously in usefulness and power, yet we have not
decided which are most significant and deserving of attention. We are
charged with helping our students understand a world in which everything
is related, and we represent that world using disciplines which have
little or no apparent relationships to each other.
That we do not yet know how to select, organize and integrate general
knowledge stems, I believe, not from the complexity of the task but from
our refusal to approach it from directions other than those suggested by
the traditional academic disciplines. The fundamental purpose of education
is to help us answer the question, "What is the nature of reality and of
human experience?" To assist us, the academic disciplines were devised.
Now, however, the disciplines loom larger than the reality they were
designed to explore. Means have become ends. We are more comfortable with
our textbooks than with the reality the textbooks are supposed to explain;
are more at home in our classrooms than in the world outside.
Trying to deal with the curriculum's inadequacies, we experiment with
disciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary
strategies. Even those educators who believe that the needs of individuals
or the problems of society should be the focus of general education talk
of "bringing the perspectives of the disciplines" to bear on their
concerns. Our thinking is so structured by the disciplines that we can
hardly imagine alternatives to their use.
But there are alternatives. Forget the disciplines for a moment. There is
a place for them in formal education, but in the search for a
philosophically and theoretically sound general education curriculum, they
have not served us well. Consider instead the merit of the simplest
possible approach to the study of reality: the direct study of our
perceptions of it.
How do we begin? In the same way those in the Western cultural tradition
have sought understanding at least since Copernicus. We identify parts. We
note the relationship of the parts to each other and to the whole. We
follow the movement of parts and whole to grasp, as best we can, causes,
effects, meaning and purpose. And we build mental models reflecting
this--outlines, guides frameworks of words and symbols representing parts
and processes, structure and function. There are other ways to seek
understanding, but we use the methods we know.
Helping adolescents build mental models encompassing and organizing
reality may appear to be a task too formidable to undertake. But each of
us already has a conceptual model of reality. The task is merely to move
that model into consciousness where it can be thought about, played with,
organized and systematized, and alternatives considered.
How well can 10-to-15 year-olds handle such complexity? Well enough. Here
is one of many possible versions of a core assignment that can lead
students to develop a formal conceptual model of reality:
"When we say we understand something (say, a clock) we usually mean that
we (a) can identify its pieces, (b) know how the pieces fit together, (c)
know how the whole thing works when it's assembled, (d) know what the
thing does or what it's for.
"Choose some familiar class of thing (bicycles? insects? flowers?) Using
reference material, put together an outline for a report designed to help
someone unfamiliar with that class of thing understand it.
"Be sure you've dealt with a, b, and c above.
"Okay. Your school is a 'thing.' Other schools are similar things--things
which can be studied and understood in the same organized, systematic way
as whatever you chose for the above activity.
"Put together an outline for a detailed report designed to help someone
unfamiliar with schools to understand them.
"Be sure you've dealt with a, b, and c above."
What will gradually take shape as the above assignment is pursued is a
formal model for the description and analysis of a society. Think of the
school as a kind of small country. It has a size and shape that can be
described in detail and with mathematical precision. The exact nature and
location of its internal features can be noted. The usual geographic
distribution of its citizens and other demographic data can be mapped,
quantified and represented graphically. The school's tools, technologies
and infrastructure can be identified, described and analyzed. The
citizens' habits and customs can be traced (and the descriptions thereof
can put incredible demands both upon students' powers of observation and
their ability to translate those observations into precise language).
Formal and informal patterns for social control, for displaying status,
for making decisions and for other activity can be traced and analyzed.
Shared attitudes and assumptions, those that make it possible for the
school to function (always present but almost never verbalized), can be
identified and clarified and their possible origins discussed.
When all the pieces are in place, questions can be raised about
relationships among them. How, for example, are perceptions of the
relative power of various individuals created or reinforced by the
physical organization of the school? Of classroom furnishings? What are
the bases for status within the school and within classes, and what are
the costs and benefits of these bases? What kinds of leadership are
exercised? In which situations? How do the citizens' attitudes and
patterns of action change as various instructional tools and techniques
are used? How are assumptions about self and others related to ways the
school is organized and functions?
Continued > > >
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