tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24176149498004277522024-02-02T05:43:53.645-08:00DN/BLOGContents: Course syllabi; student outlines; DN/documents; DN/FR pieces (postings on the University of Rhode Island faculty forum); key articles; Dharma notes; short bioDan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-2354499009331054932009-07-27T10:23:00.000-07:002009-07-27T10:28:07.618-07:00ResumeDAN NOVAK Resume/Vita 2009<br /><br />CURRENT INTERESTS<br />Philosophy of Postmodern/Global/Future Studies; Technology and Planetary Praxis; The Creative-Critical Pedagogy of Learning Communities; The Contemplative Perspective on Ecology; Religious Practice of Community and Engaged Action <br /><br />TEACHING EXPERIENCE *University of Rhode Island Feinstein College of Continuing Education: 2000-present: Initiator/co-instructor of the BGS Social Science Seminar on Globalization; co-leader and instructor of the BGS Humanities Seminar, “The Sixties and Its Legacies”*URI School of Education: 1996-2006, Part-time Instructor, An Introduction to American Education, and previously, The Psychology of Learning *URI Professional Training and Development Presenter: 2003-4*Wrentham State School for the Developmentally Disabled: 1984-92, special education work with the severely developmentally disabled as a direct care worker and supervisor*New Life Enterprises: 1978-82, a principal in a community rehabilitation business*The University Without Walls Program: 1971-77, The Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities: 1971-77, Core Staff advisor/facilitator and seminar leader*Sullivan County Community College, State University of New York: 1970-71, Instructor in Philosophy and Humanities *Hofstra University, Philosophy Department: 1969-70, Part-time Instructor<br /><br />EDUCATION<br />Manhattan College, 1960-64, B.A. Honors in PhilosophyYale University Graduate School, 1964-66, PhilosophyThe New School for Social Research, 1966-69, Philosophy and SociologyUniversity of Rhode Island, M.A. in Education, 1996 (Thesis: “The Curriculum of Consciousness: A History of the Disciplines From the Greeks to Postmodernity”)<br /><br />CURRENT COMMUNITY WORK AND PUBLIC SERVICE<br />Chair of the Town of West Greenwich, R.I. Conservation Commission (1994-present)Founding Trustee of the Town of West Greenwich Land Trust (1998)President of the Rhode Island Association of Conservation Commissions (present)Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-91725766294880267232008-09-21T09:26:00.000-07:002008-09-24T12:53:27.173-07:00A New Concept of the Global ProfessionalNeeded: A New Concept of the Global Professional<br /><br />Ancient Greek/Roman/Hellenistic discovery and oath of profession as art and calling ­ as in medicine, for example<br /><br />Medieval concept of profession as guild craft: the stages of expertise as apprentice, journeyman, and master<br /><br />The rise of modern universities and scientific/scholarly societies: the paradigm of empirical knowledge as the basis for professional pursuit<br /><br />Max Weber: 19th century society as bureaucratic ­ the professions as specializations of knowledge-practice with defined disciplinary operations and legally sanctioned protocols of prescribed relationships with clients and status/privilege relationships with peers<br /><br />Consciousness revolutions and experiments of the 1960s-70s: the demythologization of knowledge and skill -- expertise to be exercised for and by the people; the writings of Ivan Illich on ‘deschooling’ society’s monopologic of expertise-institutions vis-à-vis a new sense of the “tools for conviviality” …taking control of life-domains from experts, from learning, transport and shelter to health care ­ e.g. in the Feminist revolutionary manifesto, Our Bodies, Our Selves…<br /><br />A new concept needed: that of the global professional in the 21st century: the professional as transdisciplinary amateur<br /><br />· appetite, curiosity, a fresh and inquiring mind as defining the amateur ­ like the etym of the philosopher, a “lover of knowledge,” a life-long learner who doesn’t stop at the stage of degree credentialization or career-pinnacle recognition but whose love of his/her field always is revealing something new ­ and substantively new all the time…<br /><br />· a “don’t-know mind” ­ a Socratic watchword as he demolished the pretensions and pomposities of the experts of his day (how clear is a general on the nature of true courage?…) and a confession (e.g. vis-à-vis death) that we truly don’t know about ultimate things despite our arrogant carryings on (reputed words of a famous Oxford don: “What I don’t know isn’t knowledge!”); how many paradigms of knowledge have to bite the dust before we -- in practice ­ acknowledge this in our educational endeavors?... a favorite teaching phrase of a famous Korean-American Zen Master: ‘Only go straight and don’t know!’ ...Edward Said’s concept of the true intellectual…<br /><br />· grounded: what distinguishes the true amateur from the dilettante or the dabbler [although as the author of the famous psychology of the flow-peak experience Csikszentmihalyi reminds us, dilettante originally meant one who takes delight in], is a solid grounding in the knowledge and standards ­ explicit and tacit -- of a particular (historically honored) discipline or area/field of investigation; thorough digging in one spot is a necessity; of particular note: if a practitioner in any field doesn’t realize that their field is infinite with respect to refinement and development ­ “ars longa, vita brevis” ­ then he or she is a hack, is in it just for the job/money, is not a professional<br /><br />· an appreciation of interconnectivity: the recognition of the intrinsic inner connections that plumbing deeply in the various fields reveals ­ ‘ a unified field theory isn’t a fantasy or dream, but that toward which all fields move… knowledge is ultimately one, there is no such thing as ‘history’ or ‘math’ or ‘science’ or ‘art’ or ‘philosophy’ or ‘medicine’ or ‘technology’ or ‘political science’ under the bright moon of enlightenment ­ or in the nature of things: all things, and all inquiries, end in a silence we can’t articulate but can only and finally appreciate in that silence ­ whether transcendent, awe-struck, or dumb… And note: there is a huge difference between ‘interdisciplinary’ and a ‘transdisciplinary’ perspective…<br /><br />· an amateur does not have a “bedside manner” as an adjunct to his or her profession ­ now back to a calling (Parker Palmer), or way of life ­ he or she dwells in care; a global responsibility or stewardship, a planetary and deeply personal habitation (Theodore Roszak) supervenes in which the rigors of response-ability, intimacy, and sensitivity to what is needed become the norm; there are discrete domains of activity and care but these distinct domains do not occlude our freedom of movement or our solidarity with each other; sabbatical forms of rest and refreshment are at the heart of the sane and loving amateur, no longer at the mercy and tyranny of artifically pressurized scholarship, punishing and rigid schedules or beguiling badges of status; thus the true amateur becomes the ‘animateur’ (Peter Senge) or ‘servant leader’ (John Greenleaf) in a variety of continually trans-secting settings as backyard becomes planet, planet becomes backyard, and ditch becomes salvation…<br /><br />IMPORTANT NOTE: After schematizing a concept of the new global professional and how his/her practice differs from the bureaucratic expert, attention should be given to a similarly new concept of the global ­ and globally educated/formed ­ citizen…<br /><br />“City-zen-ship:” the art and practice of living in community, on whatever level…<br /><br />Cheers, Dan Novak<br />9.16.08Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-62807074226901567952007-09-03T17:37:00.000-07:002008-09-24T13:13:02.636-07:00CONTENTS<a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/08/terrarium-cyberspace-and-mall.html">Terrarium, Cyberspace, and Mall</a> (Seminar on Globalization: BGS 390 Course Syllabus)<br /><br /><a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/07/groupwork-and-community-building.html">Groupwork and Community Building</a><br /><br /><a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/09/some-rhetorical-forms.html">Some Rhetorical Forms<br /></a><br /><a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/07/language-and-power.html">Language and Power </a><br /><br /><a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/09/three-modes-of-inquiry.html">Three Traditions of Inquiry</a><br /><br /><a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/09/odyssey-of-western-education.html">The Odyssey of Western Education</a><br /><br /><a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/09/ten-pedagogical-tribes.html">Ten Pedagogical Tribes </a><br /><br /><a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/09/classical-conservative-worldview.html">The Classical, Conservative Worldview </a><br /><br /><a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/07/profile-of-empirical-scientific.html">A Profile of the Empirical Scientific Worldview</a><br /><br /><a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/07/global-consciousness-personal-awareness.html">The Global Consciousness / Personal Awareness Worldview</a><br /><br /><a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-progressives-should-care-about.html">Why Progressives Should Care About Human Destiny in Space</a><br /><br /><a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/08/futurist-manifesto-notes-from-telecosm.html">A Futurist Manifesto -- Notes from the Telecosm</a><br /><br /><a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/2007/07/savages-cyborgs-and-saints.html">Savages, Cyborgs, and Saints</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/A%20New%20Concept%20of%20the%20Global%20Professional">A New Concept of the Global Professional</a>Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-28336900184667889612007-08-25T13:36:00.000-07:002007-09-03T17:53:18.955-07:00Course Syllabus: Terrarium, Cyberspace, and Mall<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ymLkssrNMhe6sm3tg1sMrnrqk75bmFkJLH1mMG8SQO_vCTyUIspSuQtrE1jsNdRaR5y64D_RCJdiLI2oaJnHun7m2BC91d-CIlbgpyauRKt5wcaYdJqegppv_yJAm-CUGOYfgOD3_oM2/s1600-h/Blog+graphic-1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5103912832683943874" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ymLkssrNMhe6sm3tg1sMrnrqk75bmFkJLH1mMG8SQO_vCTyUIspSuQtrE1jsNdRaR5y64D_RCJdiLI2oaJnHun7m2BC91d-CIlbgpyauRKt5wcaYdJqegppv_yJAm-CUGOYfgOD3_oM2/s400/Blog+graphic-1.jpg" border="0" /></a> BGS Social Science Seminar, Fall 2007<br /><br />“TERRARIUM, CYBERSPACE, AND MALL” --<br />GLOBALIZATION: PROCESS AND MEANINGS<br /><br /><br />BGS Social Science Seminar Fall 2007 Providence<br />Shepard Bldg. Room ---- Mondays and Wednesdays 6:00 pm to 8:45 pm<br />Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Continuing Education, The University of Rhode Island<br />Instructor: Dan Novak E-mail: <a href="mailto:dnovak@etal.uri.edu">dnovak@etal.uri.edu</a> ; Phone: 397-4586<br />Individual conferences available (usually before or after regular class sessions)<br /><br /><br />TEXTS<br />Florida, R. (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books.<br />Hartmann, T. (1999). The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. New York: Harmony Books.<br />Harvey, M. (2003). The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.<br />Novak, D. (2007). Weblog. <a href="http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/">http://dan-novak.blogspot.com/</a> (outlines and articles)<br />Pink, D. (2005). A Whole New Mind. New York: Riverhead Books.<br />Schor, J. (1998). The Overspent American. New York: Basic Books.<br />Strathern, O. (2007). A Brief History of the Future. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers.<br />(Note: A small fee will be requested for the xeroxing of additional articles and excerpts)<br /><br /><br />EXPECTATIONS, POLICIES AND GRADES Desired outcome: maximum individual student and group success; good academic output, building self-confidence and a useful learning strategies and community; ATTENDANCE, yes, all classes… contact instructor as soon as possible before (or after!) any contingency arises…<br />CONDUCT OF CLASS: courtesy and respect; we will operate in different modes and styles: lecture-tours to present vistas, guest lecturers to advocate for diff points of view, individual work, sharing in the round, collaborative work in groups and as whole class…<br />GRADING CRITERIA AND HOLISTIC EVALUATION PRINCIPLES:<br />There is no mechanical or statistical grading procedure for this course. There will not be a final exam. There are many ways to succeed in our effort. In terms of the assessment, some guiding criteria or ‘holistic rubrics’ to keep in mind are:<br />Actual response – whether assignment actually done, task or question aptly answered<br />Quantity – length of response (note: sometimes brevity is apt, sometimes more is needed)<br />Quality – excellence, the degree of thoughtfulness, depth or thoroughness<br />Effort – evidence of genuinely trying to understand and/or respond to an assignment<br />Progress – the evolution of a student’s work throughout the portfolio<br />Organization and clarity – how well assignments are structured or presented<br />Creativity / “X-Factor” – significant originality (vividly or subtly) displayed<br />Special Contribution – made in any form to the group or class/course as a whole<br /><br />Note: A student doesn’t pass or fail on the basis of one assignment! Some rough and ready letter designations: F=always attainable! D=very weak, needs lots of work, C=passing/OK, B=good (good means good! have a beer!), A=outstanding contributions (champagne!)<br /><br />SYLLABUS PHASES<br /><br />PART I INTRODUCTION AND WARM UPS<br /><br />PART II THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND RESEARCH<br /><br />PART III GLOBALIZATION AS FACT: A THEMATIC EXPLORATION<br /><br />PART IV GLOBALIZATION: MEANINGS, INTERPRETATIONS, SCENARIOS<br /><br />PART V GLOBALIZATION: STUDENT GROUP ADVOCACY PROJECTS<br /><br /><br />COURSEWORK<br /><br />CLASS PARTICIPATION (each class)<br />PORTFOLIO ASSIGNMENTS (each class, collections on 9/24, 10/10 and at end)<br />AN APPROXIMATELY 7 PAGE APA STYLE PAPER (due on 10/17; revisable)<br />A GROUP PROJECT/PRESENTATION (due between 11/26 and 12/10)<br /><br />PORTFOLIO ASSIGNMENTS: There will be a variety of kinds of assignments, exercises and project notes, but there will one kind of generic format, STANDARD RESPONSE MODES (“SRM”) (4 necessary, 4 optionals) -- occasionally modified -- which will allow students to shape their portfolios in their individual ways and according to their individual interests:<br />(a) your choice of a “juicy word” and its definition {JUICY WORD}<br />(b) brief summary of author’s essential contrast or main points {SUMMARIZE}<br />(c) your reaction to the text (e.g., your choice of a quotation from the text and briefly why you think this is significant/surprising to you) {REACTION}<br />(d) a question you have arising from the reading {QUESTION}<br />(e) bring in some field data: a cultural exhibit or live “specimen” relating to class themes or discussions – e.g. share a brief but revealing personal anecdote or interaction that took place that day; a magazine photo; a found news article; note the subtext of a TV commercial; a street observation, etc. {SPECIMEN}<br />(f) agree with at length or dispute an author’s position in a text; take a stand and provide reasoning and/or evidence to back up your view {AGREE/DISAGREE}<br />(g) probe a text’s meaning, not worrying about being right or wrong – thinking out loud on paper, just analyzing slowly and/or patiently unpacking till you have a better handle on what an author is saying {EXPLORE}<br />(h) devise an exercise or try an experiment – imagine, design, create, invent, play, or plan something new! {EXPERIMENT/CREATE}<br /><br />* ……NOTE: PAPER AND GROUP PROJECT GUIDELINES WILL BE GIVEN AND DISCUSSED TOGETHER AT LENGTH IN CLASS<br /><br /><br /><br />PART I: INTRODUCTION AND WARM UPS<br /><br />Wed. 9/5: INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW<br />Mutual introductions… syllabus overview… texts and themes… expectations, policies and courtesies… criteria and grading… class participation and discovery, portfolio assignments, short required APA research paper, group collaborative project…<br /><br />QUESTION: “What does it mean to learn, work and play in a globalized environment?” -- theme: survival in different historical settings requires different sets of skills<br /><br /><br />TWO SOCIOLOGICAL WARM-UPS (What’s happening around us?)<br /><br />Mon. 9/10: SOBRIETY<br />Readings: Juliet Schor, The Overspent American – Preface, chapters 1 to 3 (pp. 1-63), chap. 4 (pp. 67-74) and chap. 6 (pp. 154-158)<br />Assignment: SRM<br />Some themes<br />-- a micro-lens on the dynamics of our famously consumer society<br />-- social scanning and aspiration; issues of optimism and pessimism<br />-- evidence and inference; field specimens (Nancy Drew: everything is evidence!)<br /><br />Wed. 9/12: OPTIMISM<br />Readings: Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class – Preface, chaps. 1 (pp.1-17), 2 (pp.21-37), 9 (pp. 144-162), and 10 (pp. 166-170)<br />Assignment: SRM<br />Some themes:<br />-- an optimistic view of a new and economically significant “creative class” emerging<br />-- a reinterpretation of our ‘time warp’… and a transformation of everyday life?<br />-- the “creative ethos” and a hunger for active (and quality) experience<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />PART II THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND RESEARCH<br /><br />“The Social Sciences” – An Historical Sociology of a Variety of Kindred Disciplines… A Variety of Methodological Approaches<br /><br />Some disciplinary cousins: psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, and political economy -- the distinctive perspective and kind of imagination found in the social sciences… (Bertrand Russell quote: “Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.” The Arts & Humanities=what you yearn to know…The Social Sciences=what you maybe possibly know… Life, Business, Politics, Spirituality=what you absolutely must know!)<br /><br />Mon. 9/17: WHAT IS “OUR TIME,” OUR ERA? WHERE ARE WE?!…<br />Readings: DN/ “Three Worldviews and Their Pedagogical Traditions”<br />DN/ “Three Modes of Inquiry” and (optional) DN/ “A Learning Community Mandala”<br />Assignment: SRM for “Three Worldviews”… and a Crystal Ball Exercise<br />Some themes: In what age or time or period are we living? – Modern? Postmodern? Global? Planetary? Space Age? Information Age? What is happening? What is the primary dynamic of our time? A next step in the evolution of our culture?<br />A Mega-historical and a Magical History Tour… A ‘Crystal Ball Exercise…<br />Three historical and philosophical paradigms, three traditions of inquiry and their toolboxes and styles, particularly empirically-oriented methodological approaches…<br /><br />Wed. 9/19: WHAT AND HOW DO SOCIOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY AND ECONOMICS STUDY?<br />Readings: Neil Postman, excerpt from his The End of Education (“Spaceship Earth”) on archeology, anthropology and astronomy as the new fundamental ‘basic subjects’<br />Articles by Ruby Payne (on the persistence of poverty and social class) and Barbara Ehrenreich (on dancing – collective exuberance -- as the real revolution)<br />Assignments: SRM for Postman; surprising quotes from the two articles; and a mini profile of a classic or contemporary economist, anthropologist or sociologist<br /><br />Sociology, anthropology and economics in particular: quantitative and qualitative kinds of studies -- from econometrics and mathematical models to empirical field studies to several types of phenomenological approaches…<br /><br />What is the ‘unit of study’ or primary dynamic of sociology? – the interaction? the encounter, the pack, the behavior of large numbers or masses, power hierarchy, the organization, the grid, the matrix, the all but invisible structural environment?….. Society as a contesting ensemble of practices (projects, games, zones, clubs, classes).<br /><br />A brief canvass of the views of classical and contemporary economists and sociologists…<br /><br />Beyond simple prediction and confirmation: the newer approaches of computerized projections or imaginative projection: scientific simulations and futurist scenario building<br /><br /><br />Mon. 9/24: LANGUAGE AND POWER; RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC WRITING<br />Readings:<br />DN/”Language and Power” – language, social place, agency, achievement and power<br />Michael Harvey, The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing – chap. 6 (pp.56-61), chaps. 7, 8 and Appendix: Document and Citation Format – APA format<br />Juliet Schor, “Prices and commodities: Unsustainable consumption and the global economy”<br />Assignments: SRMs for DN/”Language” and Harvey, chap.7 “Paragraphs” –<br />(Survey the structure of the Schor paper and see how she documents her material.)<br /><br />Different types of intelligence and imagination…writing in different modes and styles… writing as process and as product… finding reliable sources online… helpful hints…<br /><br />Research in the Social Sciences… APA paper style… anatomy of a sample paper<br /><br />Assignment of an approximately seven page student paper on any topic of your choice that demonstrates knowledge/skill in APA style citation, ability to find reliable sources, and produce an acceptable APA style paper {N. B. However many revisions necessary, this accepted short paper is required to pass the course!…}<br /><br /><br />------------ ** First Collection of Individual Student Portfolios ** -----------------<br /><br /><br />PART III GLOBALIZATION AS FACT – THEMATIC EXPLORATIONS<br />“Learning, Work, and Play in the New Globalized Environment”<br /><br />Wed. 9/26: COMMUNICATION AND TECHNOLOGY<br />Reading: George Myerson, excerpt from his Heidegger, Habermas and the Mobile Phone<br />Assignment: SRM<br />-- the mobile phone (iPhone!) as medium and metaphor of the new technology<br />-- the technology of desire and “concrete metaphysics”<br />-- the speed/saturation of information and messages versus dialogue and communication<br />-- silence and noise, silence and violence, silence and intimacy<br />-- rationality as slowness, and giving reasons, inquiry as patience and togetherness<br /><br />Mon. 10/1: LEARNING, WORK, PLAY<br />Reading: Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind – “Afterword” (pp. 232-234), and pp. 13-153<br />Assignment: SRM – with emphasis on the optionals!<br />-- a liberal optimistic view stressing opportunities<br />-- the globalization of labor and demands<br />-- left and right brain orientations and styles of discourse: analysis vs. sympathy<br />-- old skills in a new key: holistic and symphonic use of the mind’s powers<br />-- the new global environment’s paradoxes and playbooks<br />-- new and expansive forms of expression<br /><br />Wed. 10/3: WEALTH AND POVERTY<br />Readings: Thom Hartmann, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight (pp. 243-248), Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class chap. 3 (pp. 44-66) and<br />Dinesh D’Souza, The Virtue of Prosperity (short excerpts)<br />Assignment: SRM (spanning the three readings)<br />-- traditional and new sources of wealth, different kinds of poverty – especially that generated by industrialization; notions of abundance and prosperity<br />-- techno-capitalism and American affluence as a good thing and how it beneficially impacts inequality and redefines poverty<br />-- prosperity as attitude, virtue and social practice; moral qualms and moral critique<br />Wed. 10/10 POWER AND COMMUNITY<br />Reading: Thom Hartmann, The Last Days of Ancient Sunlight, Part Two (pp. 97-203)<br />Assignment: SRM<br /><br />-- two ‘socio-logics’: the dominator versus the partnership models (Eisler and Korten) ---their characteristic forms of empire (‘younger culture’ as expansive and aggressive) and earth-based, ‘older’ tribal cultures<br />-- corporate, commercial globalization versus a new orders of human consciousness and the mission of building an inclusive narrative/network of global citizenship ‘from below’<br /><br />----------- ** Second Collection of Individual Student Portfolios ** ------------------<br /><br /><br />Mon. 10/15: APA PAPER: RESEARCH & WRITING ON A TOPIC OF INTEREST<br /><br />------------ ***Note: APA PAPER DUE ON WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER17th*** -------<br /><br /><br />PART IV GLOBALIZATION -- MEANINGS AND INTERPRETATIONS:<br />SIX FUTURE SCENARIOS<br />(Scenarios as exploratory vehicles… exploring six distinct global dynamics)<br /><br /><br />Wed. 10/17: A HISTORY OF THE FUTURE AND SCENARIO I: REGRESSION<br /><br />Readings: Oona Strathern, A Brief History of the Future, chap.7 (pp. 242-255), chap.1;<br />DN/“A Futurist Manifesto” (2002);<br />DN/ “Savages, Cyborgs, and Saints” Scenario I;<br />a short illustrative excerpt, e.g. from "Soldier" in Bruce Sterling's Tomorrow Now<br />Assignment: begin group advocacy project notes<br /><br />Film video selections: from Mel Gibson’s “Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome” or Kevin Costner’s “Waterworld”<br /><br />extreme social fragmentation and militaristic regression; rule by thugs; apocalyptic, catastrophic and/or dire scenarios; societal ungovernability, chaos or a new feudalism<br /><br /><br />Mon. 10/22: SCENARIO II – MALL, MONOCULTURE AND EMPIRE<br />Readings: Strathern, A Brief History, chaps. 2 and 3 (pp. 44-116)<br />DN/ “Savages, Cyborgs, and Saints,” Scenario II;<br />excerpt, e.g. from Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle<br />Assignment: project notes<br /><br />Film video selection: from “Alphaville” or “Gattica” or “Fahrenheit 451”<br />extreme homogenization or monoculture, commercial/corporate hegemony {GUEST?}<br /><br />Wed. 10/24: SCENARIO III – TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATIONS AND RADICAL SPECIES CHANGES -- MULTIPLE FUTURES<br />Readings: Strathern, chap. 7 (pp. 219-241)<br />DN/ S, C, & S, Scenario III;<br />excerpt, e.g. from "The Conquest of Human Nature" in D'Souza's The Virtue of Prosperity<br />Assignment: project notes<br /><br />Film selection: Michael Keaton in “Multiplicity” ?<br /><br />major and centrifugal technologically mediated transformations of the human species into different evolutionary lines and multiple futures {GUEST?}<br /><br />Mon. 10/29: SCENARIO IV -- TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY AND THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM<br />Reading: DN/ S, C, & S, Scenario IV;<br />excerpt, e.g. from Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History<br />Assignment: project notes<br /><br />Film selection: chauvinistic celebration of democratic icons and/or principles? ---<br />John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Ken Burns?…<br /><br />modernity pro and con: the eventual triumph of steady state modernity (science, capitalism, technology, and liberal democracy)<br />classical liberal and incrementalist views of global development; the conservative wisdom of inertia vs. the ‘new growth’ theory of progressive economic expansion;<br />trans-national corporate hegemony versus critical interpretations of modernity; the lure of luxury versus radical Marxist and leftist concepts of historical progression and struggle…<br />{GUESTS: LEFT, RIGHT, AND “CENTER”?!….}<br /><br />Wed. 10/31: (CONTINUED)<br />continuance of previous class discussions; {GUEST?}<br /><br />Mon. 11/5: SCENARIO V – PLANETARY ENLIGHTENMENT<br />Reading: DN/ S, C, &S, Scenario V;<br />excerpt, e.g. from David Korten, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community<br />Assignment: project notes<br /><br />Film selection: from “The Lathe of Heaven” (film version of Ursula Le Guin’s novel)<br /><br />the new age evolution and planetization of consciousness: enlightened cybernetic infrastructure; the materialization of global sensitivity and intelligence {GUEST?}<br /><br /><br /><br />Wed. 11/14: SCENARIO VI – CO-CREATION AND THE DRAMATIC UNIVERSE<br />Reading: DN/ S, C, & C, Scenario VI;<br />excerpt, e.g. "caves, frogs, birds, and angels" -- assorted parables from Plato to Parker Palmer<br />Assignment: project notes<br /><br />Film selection: “What Dreams May Come”? “Siddhartha”? “The Razor’s Edge”? (to be decided)<br /><br />the participatory/dramatic/existential nature of the universe; the paradoxes, polarities and ‘politics’ of an “alternation cosmology”<br /><br /><br /><br />PART V GLOBALIZATION ADVOCACIES: STUDENT GROUP PROJECTS<br />(Student “symphonies”: based on the platform of the six previous scenarios, vividly articulating, arguing for, and gaining sympathy for your considered vision of the future)<br /><br /><br />Mon. 11/19 and Wed. 11/21:<br />STUDENT GROUP CHOICES AND PLANNING; PROJECT PREPARATION AND RESEARCH<br /><br /><br />------------------ ** Thanksgiving Break** ------------------------------<br /><br /><br />STUDENT GROUP PRESENTATIONS: imaginative projections and advocacies; testings, defenses, discussions; critiques and evaluations<br /><br />Mon. 11/26<br /><br />Wed. 11/28<br /><br />Mon. 12/3<br /><br />Wed. 12/5<br /><br /><br />Mon. 12/10 FINAL GROUP PRESENTATION…<br />END OF COURSE: ALL INDIVIDUAL PORTFOLIOS, FINAL PAPER REVISIONS, AND ALL COLLABORATIVE PROJECT SCRIPTS DUE<br /><br /><br /><br />Between December 17th or 19th:<br />FINAL GRADES AND RETURN OF ALL STUDENT WORK;<br />IN LIEU OF A FINAL EXAMINATION, AN IN CLASS<br />NARRATIVE EVALUATION OF THE COURSE<br /><br />(Note: top graphic on title page is from NASA.)Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-16415495645653744592007-08-24T16:21:00.000-07:002007-09-03T17:32:31.396-07:00Savages, Cyborgs, and Saints“Savages, Cyborgs and Saints: Premonitions of the Space Age”<br /><br />Six Historical Worldviews and Scenarios of the Future<br /><br />(Dan Novak, 10.22.06, for the Brandaris Group)<br /><br /><br /><br />What will the long – or deep – future of humanity look like and feel like?<br /><br />What will the intensive development of the spectrum of human temperaments, projects and cultures look like in the cosmic era (say, 3006 C. E.)?<br /><br />Which philosophy best explains the fundamental changes happening in the world right now?<br /><br />Which scenario of the future will best express what our world will evolve into?<br /><br /><br /><br />The following six sketches are an incomplete attempt to describe six major alternative ways of being that promise to solidify or threaten to obliterate the human family. They project six qualitatively different interpretations of human nature. These socio-political-philosophical worldviews aren’t necessarily exclusive – but they do represent distinct and contrasting lines of evolution for the human species (or sets of subspecies). The scenarios below can be seen both as perennial possibilities, but also as intensively developed cultures -- versus merely tracing linear, chronological sequences.<br /><br />They are:<br /><br />I Regression to Savagery<br /><br />II Empire<br /><br />III Techno-Apotheosis<br /><br />IV Triumph of Democracy / End of History<br /><br />V Planetary Enlightenment<br /><br />VI Existence as Drama: the Alternation Cosmology and the Participatory Universe<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Scenario I Savagery and control<br /><br />Human nature: we are heir to a multiplicity of affects -- discordant and idiosyncratic; we are actually a bundle of fundamentally incoherent and/or conflictual impulses; there is a certain tremulousness of our being, a perceived precariousness, a fearfulness and anxiety underneath everything that craves protection (protectedness), safety and security; at the same time we – or more precisely our dominant motive/affect – craves lebensraum, the desire for power, control and ascendance in whatever realm we can manage to secure and batten against the forces of disintegration of existence; we strive to continue in existence<br /><br />Way of death: fearfulness and anxiety – “the coward dies a thousand deaths, the hero dies but once”… the threat or actuality of sudden and violent death… the state of being terrorized or tortured… the state of repression and denial…<br /><br />Classic Philosophers: Thrasymacus in Plato’s Republic: might makes right, the assertion of primal force as the final law; Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan: the savage state of man in nature without governance, the ‘war of all against all;’ de Sade: the purpose of life is the unrestricted and unrestrained assertion of my sovereign liberty, the full and absolute execution of my desires; Nietzsche: the fundamental truth of the ‘will to power’ (control) – each affect wishes to grow and hold sway; Freud’s concept or zone of the ‘id’ – the amoral realm of impulses longing to be born against the denials and repressions of the ‘real’ world, the thin veneer of civilization… Jean-Paul Sartre: ‘hell is other people’…<br /><br />Contemporary Philosophers: John Gray’s Straw Dogs<br /><br />Novels and Movies: The Lord of the Flies, The Heart of Darkness, the ring of power in The Ring Trilogy, “Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome” (and innumerable post-nuclear holocaust/apocalyptic films)…<br /><br />Classic age or historical period: the Medieval “dark ages” of feudalism; the fascism of the Third Reich; the circumstance of atavism, war the only constant; the perpetual possibility of a major period of regression, or the chaotic confusion after a gigantic natural or man-made cataclysm; the historical and cyclic tendency toward entropy and dissolution…<br /><br />Future scenario: a disintegrating, fragmented and regressive world of increasing fear and violence in which security concerns become paramount – whether in surveillance systems and in the increasingly reliance on the fiefdoms and zones of influence of apparently strong and nationalist/localist leaders… One thinks of the perpetual war scenarios described in Orwell’s 1984. Or scenarios of pervasive environmental degradation as described in James Kunstler‘s The Long Emergency… Or Robert Kaplan’s version of the onus of empire ‘the coming anarchy’… a dark age of barbarians with sophisticated weapons and a climate of intimidation… hi-tech weapons with primitive consciousness<br /><br /><br /><br />Scenario II Totality of State Control<br /><br />Human nature: we are pleasure seeking and ingenious/teachable animals with a high coefficient of gullibility or susceptibility to images and image manipulation (as with the rows of captives/captivated in Plato’s allegory of the cave incessantly arguing about the merits of flitting images); we are creatures of great docility, that is, we are eminently teachable, able to be conditioned by the predominant apparatus around us – be it social, religious, political, cultural…<br /><br />Way of death: continual oblivion secured mainly through pleasure and amnesia, comforting, drug-like or cocoon-like forgetfulness; immediate satiation of all desires, death by chocolate (name your ‘poison’ or your controlling ‘soma’)…<br /><br />Classic Philosophers: Plato’s Republic (?) and Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan in both calling for absolute control of all segments of society under the aegis of the ruling class or the absolute sovereignty of the monarchy… Not too many defenders of absolute monarchy, total state control, or the notion of the validity of Empire (maybe some Christian apologists of the Middle Ages, or maybe Rudyard Kipling’s poetry of the British Raj? Lenin/Stalin’s Communist blueprints? Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf? Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book?)… In the 1960s Herbert Marcuse pointed out the parallel systems of control exhibited by USSR propaganda and US advertising… Also formulations like the Situationalist manifesto of Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle and the massive critique of totalist political regimes in Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, and by untiring jeremiads and historical analyses of state/cultural disciplinary regimes given by Foucault… In recent times, the classic formulation and critique of the wedding of political and commercial hegemony by Marxians Hardt and Negri in their book, Empire… Perhaps the most mischievous critique of this libidinal and illusional nexus that governs our time is in the work of Jean Baudrillard, e.g. his Simulations…<br /><br />Recent Philosopher: Canadian Kalle Lasn, in his jeremiad, Culture Jam<br /><br />Novels and Films: Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited, a thousand sci-fi dystopias, Fahrenheit 451, The Truman Show, The Matrix…<br /><br />Classic Age or Historical Period: Historical empires of all sorts – from the Egyptian and Babylonian, to the Persian and Roman, the great European and ‘new world’ empires of the Spanish, French and British; utopian blueprints; fascisms… totalitarian fascist and communist regimes (and also the USA, despite its avowed democratic ideology, becoming the dupe of oligarchic/commercial/military interests and momentum?…) – revolutionary and charismatic societies originally celebrating freedom and liberation and by successive turns becoming militarily powerful and developing forms – intentional or unintentional – of domestic control… the way states become big and powerful and reflexively aggressive… the very tendency toward empire, toward tight unification and uniformity, toward an all embracing totality…<br /><br />Future Scenario: a global monoculture, a world-wide mall, a seamless integration of corporate control over financial and commercial markets, not an intentional “empire” but guaranteed by military protection and progressively anticipatory surveillance/tracking (see “Minority Report” and GIS monitoring of your back yard)… and control of the abdicated electorate by ubiquitous entertainment empires and omni-screen virtual immersions… an immense diversity of styles amounting to a comfort-driven uniformity… an enormous circus tent or set of theme parks whose unrelenting montage of images and roars of applause mask and drown out anything that resembles pain… only pleasure and conformance are permitted…<br /><br /><br /><br />Scenario III Accelerating Technological Convergence or Divergence<br /><br />Lines of human-technology converge and combine to create an unprecedented transformation into either a new trans-human species (beyond the biological or the ‘machine’), the famed “Singularity” event, and/or eventuates in a variety of posthuman species with distinctly different futurals and destinies…<br /><br />Human nature: We are what we make… Tools R Us – “homo faber” -- tools as instruments and as consequent environments are not extraneous but essential to human nature – our amplifications are us, as Marshall McLuhan continually reminded us… We have always been “amphibians” in Aldous Huxley’s phrase, inhabitants simultaneously of/in multiple worlds, or “cyborgs” in Donna Haraway’s famous locution: we have always been and are intrinsically hybrids, creatures whose cerebellums, thumbs and range of virtual extensions have provided the media of our radial/centrifugal energy… civilization has always been the glyph, the book and the screen, the spear and the probe… Every instrument, from telescope to microscope, from horse to car to rocket, has extended our consciousness and altered our space and time sense ratio, our understanding of where we are and where we were… our sensitivity and tactility is always being extended with inherent portals and perceptivities (Whitehead’s ‘prehensions’)… Our consequent ‘world’ is ever being enlarged… We are infinitely malleable, perfectible and transformable sentient beings in constant evolution and generating new domains of interactivity… technology is not synonymous with machines or the machine age but is more in the nature of evolving design, as in software… technology (our nature) may be hard in the beginning but soft in the end…<br /><br />Type of Death: the rejection of death as a biological inevitability; the prospect of an indefinite prolongation of biological life; new, “improved” genetic/bio designs; downloading consciousness into other “translations” of ourselves (cloning and/or molecular patterning/transmissions, e.g. a la Star Trek ‘beamings’); “death” as techno-metamorphosis: transmogrification into the symbiotic-alien, consciousness amalgamation into strange and novel perceptions in new bionic and/or virtual media… the letting go of the familiar human… radically different posthuman cultures, real and virtual planetary dwellings and cosmic peregrinations… the never-ending project of the persistence and metamorphosis of life…<br />Classic Philosophers: Prometheus, the mythical titan and bringer of fire as the iconic hero of the technological quest for extension and control, of the quest for godlike freedom… Archimedes, the archetype of the mathematician-physicist-scientist-inventor, Democritus and Lucretius, the early Greek and Roman atomists who taught that all was essentially material, that the gods were figments of our imagination and that humans should not give in the emotional slavery of fear by being dupes of our own imagination… Bacon’s Novum Organum; Diderot, Voltaire and the French Encyclopedists, who piloted the Euro-Enlightenment project of the dissemination of knowledge and practical industry to improve the lot of mankind beyond enslaving monarchies, hereditary aristocracies and religious clerics; LaMettrie, author of Man, the Machine, August Comte, author of positivism and the religion of mankind; Marinetti, A Futurist Manifesto, Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner who proposed the project of a thoroughgoing scientific ‘behavioral science’… Utopian philosophers who promoted the idea of the perfectibility of mankind… Techno-utopians like Buckminster Fuller (Nine Chains to the Moon, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, etc.) who felt such perfectibility was necessary to survival as well as materially achievable… Marvin Minsky and a host of cyber/computer engineers and theorists… Donna Haraway, Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari; Paul Virilio, Open Sky and The Art of the Motor; Technophiles of more recent sorts like the X-Tropians and the Trans-Humanists celebrated in the journal, Mondo 2000…<br /><br />Recent Advocates: Alan Harrington, The Immortalist; Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions; Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot; Michio Kaku, Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century; Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, The Singularity Is Near; Bruce Sterling, Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years; Robert Zimmerman, Leaving Earth; Michael Zey, The Future Factor…<br /><br />Novels and Film: Science fiction generally (starting with Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, through Clarke and Asimov to Larry Niven and Doris Lessing)… utopian fiction (like Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward)… novel and later film based on Ursula LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven… novel and film from Stanislav Lem’s Solaris, William Gibson’s cyber-classic Necromancer and the ‘cyberpunk fiction’ of others like Bruce Sterling; the sci-fi series by Iain Banks, The Culture…<br /><br />Classical Age or Historical Period: …………………………every age?…………….<br />a continual historical identifying preoccupation with our products and projections, homunculi and all manner of inventions, from puppets to steam engines and cars to robots……. Marx: societies always configure around their predominant material projections which in turn become their infrastructures………… technologically defined or configured societies -- the French utopian Fourier’s socialist experiment? the ‘new man’ project Soviet Russia? a variety of Sixties’communes? the New Alchemy Institute? the international space station? online cyber-communities?<br /><br />Future Scenario: Our evolution is continuing at an increasingly accelerated pace and, as we approach a collective quantum jump, we also find ourselves in possession of an array of interacting instruments and knowledge of micro-processes that give our species to keys of material creation itself… Humans will make themselves/ourselves into either subservience to the technological apotheosis of a more capable complex emergent entity (with something much more capable than one of our first babies, computer chess champ, Deep Blue) or again speciation into a surprising variety of divaricating subcultures/worlds that mirror the spectrum of human temperaments and interests…<br /><br />We are living in a postmodern era defined by a matrix of intersecting technological developments, all of which in tandem threaten to empower or threaten our integrity as a species: medical/cryonic (indefinite extensions or prolongations of human lifespans), genetic design (control, design and even creation of entire life patternings and posthuman forms), nano-technology (control of matter itself!), cyber- AI, AL, robotics, virtual domains and interactivity spheres, space faring and eventual species diasphora… At the very least such developments may require major adjustments in human society… At the most, they present radical options for not only centrifugal cultures but different human evolutionary lines and futures… Humanity will take control of not only its own evolution, but of the very processes of creation itself…<br /><br />It is important to emphasize that this array of techno-enabled futures is not (and never has been) mere speculation. The “future” in its archetypical reality is always active and under construction and today’s phase – the 20th and 21st centuries – is proceeding in the form of major iconic projects:<br />1) the physical plumbing and control of the processes of matter (“programming the universe” as information, atoms as bits, nanotechnology developments…)<br />2) genetic decipherment and design ( the ‘DNA Project’); more than medical or cosmetic redesigns of the human; aging patterns overcome and strategic prolongations of bio-existence; cryonic preservation/resuscitation tactically achieved…<br />3) experimentation and development of ‘artificial’ life patterns (the computerized, silicon based “game of life”) and ‘artificial intelligence’ combined with robotics (Kurzweil’s “spiritual machines”) that will qualitatively transcend human intelligence and action capabilities, perhaps moral capabilities as well -- since humans seem to be such poor stewards of life, what with war as a prime characteristic feature of human history… Brautigan’s telling poetic phrase, “and all watched over by machines of loving grace”…<br />4) the elaboration of virtual reality venues and cyber-domains of experience, moving from game-like settings and programs to holographic projections in/onto virtual ‘planets’ – though the scenes will ever be more complex and shifting, it will be discovered that the scripts of our lives have always been informed by the projections of the imagination… the dimensions of vividness and ‘depth’ will always be pursued…<br />5) the technologies that will permit space-flight, space-faring and space-colonization will finally be achieved as well as being commercially and scientifically exploited… space travel will entail unique encapsulations, dwelling colonies and/or different forms entirely for the human (humus=soil, earth)…new forms of “traveling,” e.g. perhaps quantum tunneling that will enable faster than light travel and will create abrupt and startling ‘appearances’ here and in sundry realms… communing with hosts of interstellar species as human mutants emerge and migrate in the ever-enlarging cosmos… perhaps the achievement of celestial or angelic status or frequency of being…<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Scenario IV “The End of History” -- The Triumph of Western Rationality, Liberal Democracy and Material Progress<br /><br />Human nature: We humans are creatures defined by our rationality and the overcoming of our superstitious tendencies. We thrive on free inquiry, free trade and the pursuit of happiness. The defining event of human history was the birth of Western science, the empirical scientific method and the technologies and social arrangements associated with that – our infatuation with material betterment and social progress, defined as the progress of freedom. What we are essentially is really described by the confirmed results of the latest science. If we are quarks and reflexes, so be it. If we are cognitive concatenations of neural nets and brain activity, so be it. If we are animals evolving over aeons, so be it. A likely story of human genesis is presented by astronomer Carl Sagan in his The Dragons of Eden and his Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. The unbelievably large physical ‘cosmos’ is our home. There are no ‘supernatural’ forces, beings or gods – other than in our superstitious minds. Whatever our ‘raw material,’ the ethos and practice of science and untrammeled commerce really defines and completes us as human beings.<br /><br />Way of death/dying: death by tedium and despair?… the same/old, same/old repetition, an unending series of limited/linear commercial fulfillments, “bad faith” in the sense that there be no broader horizon than our familiar roster of wants, needs, desires and concerns… the Kierkegaardian despair of the finite being resigned to the finite, despite hunger after the infinite… why would the question or desire of an ‘afterlife’ even arise if it were not for the condition of scarcity and want?…<br /><br />Classic Philosophers: greats of early modern science and the philosophers of the European Enlightenment… Adam Smith and John Locke… Hegel as the great philosopher of the historical process… August Comte and his “positive philosophy” of the progress of science and the solidarity/welfare of mankind… socially conscious scientist evangelizers and popularizers like H. G. Wells and Carl Sagan, Stephen J. Gould and Richard Dawkins… philosophers of science like Karl Popper… the great classical and recent economist-apologists for market capitalism, like Frederick Hayek<br /><br />Recent advocates: Francis Fukuyama in his now classic, The End of History; Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies and her The Substance of Style, and Gregg Easterbrook, The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse<br /><br />Novels and Films: ……… utopian depictions of a cornucopian future?<br /><br />The Historical Age: The early modern era of the West has given us physical science, market capitalism as a form of commercial activity, and technology and science-based medicine. It has also given birth to the notion of freedom and the modern form of the liberal democratic state wherein all can pursue their dreams and livelihoods. Despite the major and threatening totalitarian aberrations of the last century, the triumph of modern liberal democracy seems assured – the victory of rationality over extreme irrationalities and totalitarianisms based on fear and political repression. Democracies don’t fight each other; they trade with each other! The world, despite wars and temporary setbacks is slowly but surely evolving toward the final rational plateau of peaceful commerce, individual freedom (with reasonable, consented to restrictions) and continued technological progress, aiming toward medical and eudaemonic well-being. The great cataclysms of human history will eventually terminate in a peaceful planet suffused with material contentment. If history is defined as wrenching struggles and transitions, then we will all collectively enter a period that can rightfully be called, “the end of history.”<br /><br />Future Scenario: While we are experiencing turbulence now (Iraq and Afghanistan, al Qaeda, Iran, North Korea), the values and direction of Western liberal democracy (along with scientific empiricism and free market capitalism) represent the true progress of mankind. The Fukuyama thesis of the victory in the long run of the institutions of liberal democracy means that we should indeed fight to protect those values and will eventually win and usher in “the end of history.” In the end, no more need for warfare and no great crises or transitions or revolutions – only steady scientific/technology progress… the reaching of a kind of steady state and relatively satisfying plateau for mankind…<br />That flowering and leveling off of species material welfare will almost certainly occur, despite a bittersweet tinge – we can have it all if the all is limited and that’s all we want. A humane, global, corporate capitalism goes along with the pursuit of rationality and the liberal democratic state.<br /><br /><br /><br />Scenario V Evolution of Consciousness and Planetary Enlightenment<br /><br />Human nature: We humans are more than merely rational creatures, we are an evolving cosmic consciousness, on a continuum with the embryonic consciousness in plants and animals, even with atoms and stars! We are sentience and interconnectedness and deep ecology expresses this fact. We are starstuff becoming conscious, and evolution generally becoming conscious of itself… We represent the apex of this planet’s evolution about to experience a saltation, major jump in our collective consciousness that will enable us to become more genuine stewards and caretakers of all the beings entrusted to us and with which we fraternize…<br /><br />Way of death/dying: individual/collective transformation into a higher consciousness and/or larger, more expansive identity… the dilation of our contracted being or ego-defined condition to contain the whole swath of existence… a rainbow of powers and talents emerging from pain and crisis, death and suffering… the bursting of the ego-shell or chrysalis into a butterfly-like or nectar-producing being… a psychedelic merging into a holistic and compassionate connectedness, unseparated by familiar walls and filters…<br /><br />Classic Philosophers: The ‘mystery’ and esoteric traditions generally (knowledge of other worlds and realities only given to ‘spiritually’ trained and prepared adepts… Paracelsus, Bruno and Renaissance advocates of “infinite worlds”… Renaissance and early modern utopian visionaries… the English Romantic Poets… Novalis and Goethe… Hegel as the philosopher of organic process and the career of the absolute mind/spirit/consciousness as manifested in history… American Transcendentalism; the late 19th and early 20th century Theosophical Movement… Henri Bergson in his Creative Evolution, William James, and Whitehead in his Process and Reality and the process philosophers generally… Political activist turned yogi, Sri Aurobindo Ghose’s rediscovery of the Indian/Vedic tradition in his The Life Divine and his doctrine and yoga of spiritual-cosmic evolution… George Gurdjieff’s All and Everything: Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson…<br /><br />Recent advocates: the great Jesuit paleontologist, theologian, and mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man and The Future of Man, The Hymn of the Universe; Douglas Harding, The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth; Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth; Satprem, The Adventure of Consciousness; the counter cultural and new age visionaries of the 1960s-70s… the movement and thinkers of “deep ecology”… Ken Goffman, Countercultures Through the Ages; Ray and Anderson, The Cultural Creatives; Duane Elgin, The Promise Ahead; Ken Wilber, The Atman Project; Michael Murphy, The Future of the Body; Joanna Macy, The World As Self, The World As Lover, David Korten, The Great Turning<br /><br />Novels and Films: Olaf Stapledon’s Starmaker; Aldous Huxley’s Island; A. C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land; Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia; David Lindsay, A Voyage to Arcturus; Taoist inspired sci-fi novels of Ursula LeGuin…<br /><br />Classic Age or Historical Period: rudimentary and dispersed awakenings in the “axial period” of human history (Karl Jaspers), corresponding to the birth of the great religions from about 500 B.C. to roughly 500 A.D…. esoteric spiritual societies and utopian commune movements of all sorts from ancient secret initiation brotherhoods and sisterhoods to early Christian ecstatic communities to utopian experiments of all sorts; dissident religious groups and communities; the social-political consciousness movements of the 1960s-70s from Civil Rights to Feminism to the Anti-War Protests and Peace Movement to the Psychedelic movement to the influx of the Asian wisdom and meditation traditions…<br /><br />Future Scenario: We are living in the midst of a great planetary enlightenment, the flowering of consciousness in which technology will reach its maturity in providing flexible and sensitive tactility, and an almost endless supply of energy and abundance, ending aeons of scarcity and contest over limited resources… Collective moral consciousness and individual awareness will match the new seamless and luminous terrestrial-infrastructural “body” of humankind and there will be a golden age of art as humans are liberated by technology to new realms of ludic enjoyment and activity… There may be a great planetary crisis that may precipitate and be the midwife of this collective quantum leap… There will be new “octaves” or cosmic frequencies accessed by human evolution (Gurdjieff) and encounters with higher order celestial beings and/or angelic species… a hope-filled sense that we are close to a major planetary convergence, alignment and leap wherein the local and global in proper resonance and relationship…<br /><br /><br /><br />Scenario VI Saints, Sages, and Existentialists<br /><br />The participatory universe, the dramatic world, and the alternation cosmology<br /><br />Human nature: We humans have the entire gamut of impulses, tendencies and ways of being from the most noble to the most savage… we contain the entire spectrum of latencies or possible ranges of behavior – that gets cultivated according to our karma and choice… we have the seed of enlightened buddhahood within us as well as the most heinous dictator and murderer… Our “nature” contains every realm or level of being… we are actually the most obtuse matter, the most amazing actual and potential energies and processes, the actuality of sage-like understanding and the possibility of universal love… As the great teachers and sages have told us, and as the great saints have exemplified, what we are is always in the balance: we are always falling asleep and into habits which easily grow vile, we are always struggling with ourselves (the great truth of the Manichean war of good and evil in our souls), we are always expressing enlightened wisdom and behavior – whether we know it or not… and we are always subject to “temptation” (and its resurrected cousin, blessing) while alive… the world’s perpetual chaos, disorder and imbalance is the continual possibility of grace… “the world” is the mandala or translation/choice of our consciousness, we create our worlds – exactly… the world always poses the “koan” or the impossible to answer need for reconciling action… awareness of drama and action in accord with our deepest nature makes us fully human…<br /><br />Way of death/dying: St. Paul: ‘I die daily’… We are always the subject of incomplete deaths…. Realization is complete dying to the known and venerated (and hence complete birth or resurrection or final coming to)... the notion that we have never left home (‘been born’), that moment to moment we are in our true home, that we are not wandering “in time” as orphans, that dying to the ego and its agenda is supremely necessary (or supremely unnecessary!), that the ego (and 'other'!) is not so much to be transcended as to be seen as an artful mirage, having fewer habiliments than the proverbial emperor -- the real royalty or aristocrat being the divine heart at the center of our soul! (according to Meister Eckhart), that most deaths are postponements and perpetuations of suffering we insist on and (as say Krishnamurti and the Buddha)… we can only die right now -- or, in Sri Nisagardatta's arch phrase, "you" have never been born, so how you gonna die?! -- or, the one who is born is the one who must undergo dying...<br /><br />Classic Philosophers: the great religious sages and teachers: Moses, Kung Fu Tzu, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Siddhartha the Buddha, Jesus, St. Paul, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Rumi, St. John of the Cross, George Fox, Hui Neng, Huang Po, Bankei, Shankara, Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Aurobindo, Gandhi, Pascal, Simone Weil, Kierkegaard, Krishnamurti, Thomas Merton, Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi, St. Teresa of Avila, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, etc.… Aldous Huxley’s great compendium, The Perennial Philosophy…<br /><br />Recent Advocates: Harding’s The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth and his On Having No Head; Joseph Goldstein’s The Experience of Insight; Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Miracle of Mindfulness; James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games; Robert Thurman, Infinite Life<br /><br />Novels and Films: Plato’s famous allegory of the cave in his The Republic; Dante’s Divine Comedy; Tolkien’s Ring Trilogy; Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage, Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha and Magister Ludi (The Bead Game) ………all the great works of fiction! -- as explicating and unfolding the virtually infinite variations of the law of karma (given circumstance, intentional and unintentional consciousness and the net of consequences of action, suffering and transcendence...) – including and especially science fiction; all great films likewise… Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to St. Matthew”…<br /><br />Classic Age or Historical Period: the peaceful reign of the Buddhist king, Ashoka?… every age; none of them… the world will always be the world, enlightenment will always be enlightenment; “matter” and “spirit” will always be perpetual possibilities on the same spectrum; samsara and nirvana are strangely convertible… reality is always aboriginally sacred, yet has to be made sacred… there is a path, and there is no path or raft or ladder to the Highest…<br /><br />Future Scenario: We are living in the world we have always lived in -- one of perennial danger and possibility that is both extensive and intensive… The nature of the world is always its being out of balance, and balance is only a transient achievement although an important one… The world always is off-center, full of tension and oppositions, always hangs in the balance awaiting determinative decision. Existential choice is the nature of this world – we always create it with our actions and their consequences. The world is unavoidably participatory and can be cultivated in innumerable ways, depending on one’s bent… Ecstasy, whether of a sexual, power, understanding or compassionate sort can always be had by cultivating the appropriate regimen and path of life. The world is filled with Sapphos, Margaret Thatchers and Mother Teresas… Polarities define the world, ironies and surds as well. Be careful about what you do because, one, you’ll achieve it, and two, your most prized work may be translated into its opposite… The world is pure discontinuity filled with a palette of beguiling patterns and absorbing incarnations…<br />Full realization is as available and open as it is difficult and challenging…Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-74766916470465360482007-07-16T11:26:00.000-07:002007-09-15T11:39:35.200-07:00Why Progressives Should Care About Human Destiny in SpaceBy Tad Daley, AlterNetPosted on August 11, 2007, Printed on August 11, 2007<br /><a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/59310/" eudora="autourl">http://www.alternet.org/story/59310/</a><br /><br />Everybody knows that whether it's lavish Broadway spectacle or humble community theater, the lead actors have understudies. If Hamlet, Sky Masterson or Galinda the Good Witch come down with laryngitis a couple of hours before curtain, some brave soul needs to be ready, at a moment's notice, to step into the breach.<br /><br />But perhaps not everybody knows that astronauts, too, have "understudies." If Mission Specialist No. 4 comes down with laryngitis a couple of days before launch, NASA doesn't want to scrub a flight after years of training by the crew and all the preparation that goes into every mission by thousands more on the ground.<br /><br />The crew of the Challenger, which perished on Jan. 28, 1986, when the space shuttle disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean 73 seconds after liftoff, had backups. Christa McAuliffe, who was selected to be the first "schoolteacher in space," was herself backed up by another schoolteacher. Her name was Barbara Radding Morgan, who taught elementary school in Fresno, Calif., and was then 34 years old.<br /><br />On Wednesday evening, more than 21 years later, Ms. Morgan, now 55, went up on the space shuttle Endeavor as NASA's first "educator in space" to continue the mission that Ms. McAuliffe began two long decades ago. And she's doing it from the same place where McAuliffe sat -- in the middle of the lower deck.<br /><br />Morgan and the rest of the Endeavor's seven-member crew will be spending about two weeks at the international space station to continue a construction project that will include replacing a gyroscope, attaching a new truss segment to the station and delivering 5,000 pounds of cargo.<br /><br />Many of the educators who had competed with Morgan and McAuliffe to become the first teacher in orbit, were in Florida to watch the liftoff. Even June Scobee Rodgers, the widow of the Challenger's commander, was present for the launch.<br /><br />"The Challenger crew -- my husband Dick Scobee, the teacher Christa McAuliffe -- they would be so happy with Barbara Morgan. They'd be excited for her, they'd be proud of her and her following through with the mission for the teacher to fly in space,'' said Scobee Rodgers, founding chairman of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education.<br /><br />But why go to all the trouble to launch a now 55-year-old woman into the cosmos?<br /><br />What is the meaning of Barbara Morgan? As we approach our 50th anniversary as a spacefaring civilization (Sputnik was launched into orbit by the late USSR on Oct. 4, 1957), what is the space program for?<br /><br />And why should progressives, with a full menu of more immediate causes on our activist plates, care about this one?<br /><br />I heard one answer last month, in Kansas City, at the commemoration of the centennial, on 7/7/7, of the birth of perhaps the greatest apostle of human destiny in space that humanity has yet produced -- <a href="http://www.heinleincentennial.com/">Robert A. Heinlein</a>. His majestic Time Enough for Love told the life story of Lazarus Long, one of the most charismatic characters in 20th century literature. Setting the scene in the year 4272, Heinlein wrote, "We are no longer able to make a reasoned guess at the numbers of the Human Race, nor do we have even an approximate count of the colonized planets. The most we can say is that there must be in excess of two thousand colonized planets, in excess of five hundred billion people. The colonized planets may be twice that number, the Human Race could be four times that numerous. ... Pioneers care little about sending records to the home office; they are busy staying alive ..."<br /><br />4272. That's not so far off. It's just a little bit longer in the one direction than Caesar and Christ are in the other. But that's what the voyages of Christa McAuliffe and Barbara Morgan are really about. All of us now alive, on behalf of all those not yet alive, have only just barely embarked on that endless expedition. That is the journey, for the Human Race, toward immortality.<br /><br />What does immortality have to do with progressive values? Conservatives, most fundamentally, are about the idea that individuals ought to devote their blood, tears, toil and sweat to pursuing their own individual interests ... and leave it to other individuals to do the same. But if political progressives are about anything, we are about the idea that our lives are about something larger than ourselves. The idea that, as Michael Moore says in Sicko, we are not a "me society" but a "we society." The idea that we have obligations and responsibilities not just to ourselves and our immediate families, but also to the community of the whole.<br /><br />And that means ultimately not only the human community of the present moment, but also the community of our remotest ancestors and our distant descendants as well. Space is ultimately about our duties to generations beyond our own. "The greatest good for the greatest number," said progressive giant Teddy Roosevelt, "applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction."<br /><br />A second core progressive value beckons to us from space as well. Progressives believe that our national citizenship must be accompanied by a global citizenship, that our allegiance to our nation stands alongside an allegiance to humanity, that our national patriotism must in the end be transcended by a planetary patriotism. We stand in the tradition of what the great psychologist Erik Erikson called an "all-human solidarity." We see the first glimmerings of what the political scientist Robert C. Tucker calls an "ethic of specieshood." We are the vanguard of what Voltaire called "the party of humanity."And space has already shown that it can serve as perhaps the single greatest engine of human unity.<br /><br />On July 20, 1979, on the tenth anniversary of humanity's first footsteps on the moon, Neil Armstrong was asked how he had felt as he saluted the flag up there. "I suppose you're thinking about pride and patriotism," he replied. "But we didn't have a strong nationalistic feeling at that time. We felt more that it was a venture of all mankind." (One wonders if any consideration was given, in the high councils of the Johnson and Nixon administrations, to having Armstrong and Aldrin plant not a flag of the United States on the moon, but a flag of Planet Earth.)<br /><br />Many of the fortunate souls who have made it into Earth orbit (and the infinitesimal 27 who have left Earth orbit and ventured to the moon) have expressed remarkably similar sentiments.<br /><br />"The first day or so we all pointed to our countries," said the Saudi astronaut Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud. "The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth." "The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone," said the Russian astronaut Aleksei Leonov, "our home that must be defended like a holy relic." "From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty," said Edgar Mitchell, one of only 12 humans to have walked on the surface of another world. "You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.'"<br /><br />This is why the late Carl Sagan claimed that spaceflight was actually subversive. Although governments have ventured into space, Sagan observed, largely for nationalistic reasons, "it was a small irony that almost everyone who entered space received a startling glimpse of a transnational perspective, of the Earth as one world."<br /><br />Seeing our planet as a whole, apparently, enables one to see our planet as a whole.<br /><br />Finally, space may someday deliver to us arguably the greatest progressive value of all. The ethic of human unity that space seems inevitably to engender may, down the road, ultimately engender permanent human peace as well.<br /><br />Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels, widely considered the greatest science fiction series ever constructed, are set much further down the road than Time Enough for Love -- not 2200, but 20 or 25,000 years in the future. The Foundation's universe contains several million colonized star systems and several quadrillion human beings, so widely dispersed that anthropologists debate which among the millions was humanity's original sun. And yet, for all the extent, diversity and complexity of human affairs, humanity has managed to abolish war. The human race has forged itself into a single politically unified community -- what Asimov calls a "Galactic Empire." The unraveling of that community, and the reintroduction of war into human affairs, is the grand cataclysm that protagonist Hari Seldon and his compatriots, for seven epic novels, endeavor to prevent (or at least to mitigate).<br /><br />How's that for something toward which we on the left can aspire? Progressives insist that it is within the power of the human imagination to create enduring universal peace. We maintain that there can be a next step in the social evolution of our species. In the spring of 2003, many of us demonstrated against a preemptive, unilateral, illegal and very unwise war, the consequences of which we can still only dimly foresee. But for all of our efforts in the past four years to "end the war," isn't our deepest aspiration actually to "end war"?<br /><br />Bertrand Russell taught us that the greatest moral imperative was this: "One must care about a world one will never see." So in addition to all of our urgent work on all of our urgent struggles, progressives should consider joining and participating in the work of hardy and underappreciated space advocacy organizations like the Planetary Society, the National Space Society, the Mars Society and the Space Frontier Foundation.<br /><br />Perhaps the single best line of the Heinlein Centennial was uttered to us on an enormous video screen, from Sri Lanka, by 90-year-old Arthur C. Clarke, when he said, "Robert Heinlein will be revered by future generations. If any."<br /><br />Stephen Hawking, similarly, in remarks just before boarding his widely publicized zero-gravity airplane flight in April, said, "Life on Earth is at risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus. ... I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space."<br /><br />And the Royal Astronomer Martin Rees, of Cambridge University, in his chilling 2003 book Our Final Hour, surveyed the litany of macro-dangers facing humanity (some natural but most of our own making) -- asteroid impact, climate change, nuclear apocalypse, bioterror, nanotechnology spinning out of control, the enormous destructive potentials that can be unleashed today by just a few malevolent individuals. Then he delivered this astonishing verdict: "I think the odds are no better than 50-50 that our present civilization on Earth will survive to the end of the present century."<br /><br />How such a forecast has failed to generate any political debate whatsoever -- among progressives or anyone else -- is surely a testament to the shallowness of our contemporary political conversation.<br /><br />There are two responses that progressives might make to the challenges posed by Clarke, Hawking and Rees -- and to the responsibilities passed on to us by Teddy Roosevelt. One is to confront those challenges head on, to focus upon not only Iraq and impeachment and the issues of the hour, but also the issues of the century, and to endeavor over time to perhaps alter Rees' odds for the better. The other is to dedicate ourselves to the goal, however distant, of establishing the human race permanently beyond the cradle of its birth. First beyond our planet, then beyond our solar system, as we venture, slowly but inexorably, in tiny lifeboats afloat on an infinite sea, to live forever among the stars.<br /><br />These twin undertakings, obviously, need not be mutually exclusive. After all, people who do everything possible to protect their health still take out life insurance policies. Unfortunately, the agendas of our politicians these days seem mostly about neither of these undertakings. The legacies of Christa McAuliffe and Barbara Morgan, educators and astronauts, seem quite obviously about both.<br /><br />Tad Daley is a veteran progressive political adviser and nuclear disarmament policy analyst. He has served as a policy aide for the late U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, as national issues director for Rep. Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign and as a co-founder of Progressive Democrats of America, pdamerica.org.<br />© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/59310/" eudora="autourl">http://www.alternet.org/story/59310/</a>Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-76348784656345420902007-07-15T10:32:00.000-07:002007-09-15T10:34:17.529-07:00The Global Consciousness / Personal Awareness WorldviewProfile<br /><br />MOTTOES: What is truly valuable is not the past, nor the future, but in the drama and depth of the present moment. ...Remember: Be here now! ...Go within. ... Find your true nature. ... Become who you are. ...<br /><br />TIME: the 1960s and 70s (with roots in the perennial spiritual traditions)<br /><br />PLACE: USA and Western Europe<br /><br />PIONEERS AND HEROES: Fritz Perls (founder of Gestalt Therapy), Michael Murphy (founder of Esalen Growth Institute), Charlotte Selver (sensory awareness teacher), Ida Rolf (body work), Matthias Alexander and Moshe Feldenkris (postural and structural awareness), Paul Goodman (social critic), Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass and Daisetz Suzuki (popularizers and translators of Eastern Traditions: Yoga, Zen, Taoism)...<br /><br />MYTHIC FIGURE: the Buddha, the historical figure of Siddhartha Gautama, who became known as 'the fully enlightened one', the awakened, a fully conscious and compassionate being<br /><br />IMAGE/FEELING/FLAVOR: the entire cosmos is alive and sensitive had we but the consciousness to perceive it... the non-realization of this truth - of the fact that everyone and everything feels - brings untold misery (the manifold lines of karma, or the consequences of ignorant/unkind action)... the world is an intricate "mandala" or astral diagram of uniquely appropriate correspondences... the world is like a vast necklace of interconnected gems - simultaneously reflecting and being reflected ("Indra's Net")<br /><br />QUOTES: "If you walk, walk. If you run, run. But above all, don't wobble!" (Zen)<br />"If you can drink a cup of tea correctly, you can do anything well." (Gurdjieff)<br />"By drinking a cup of green tea I helped stop the war." (Said during the Viet Nam War)<br />"There is no way to peace; peace is the way." (Slogan during the Viet Nam War protests)<br /><br />LIFE MAXIMS: Trust your deeper (native, intuitive) wisdom... Live your deep truth... Maintain a 'beginner's mind'... Be faithful to the process and the product will be fine... We all are always on the journey, with the deep uncertainty that entails... Stay attentive, alert and invincibly kind ("ahimsa")...<br /><br />SOME CONTEMPORARY ADVOCATES AND CHAMPIONS: Thich Nhat Hanh, Ken Wilber, Jon Kabat-Zinn... Parker Palmer, Gay Hendricks, Theordore Roszak, R.G. Siu<br /><br /><br /><br />Philosophy<br /><br />NATURE/REALITY/METAPHYSICS: Nature is the vast interconnected texture of pure energy ... it is sheer vibratory energy, radio frequencies, astral correspondences... consciousness is nature becoming aware of itself... 'things' are not permanent substances but are inherently temporal, that is, temporary configurations or patterns of energy... Nature is an integral totality, a resonant whole (versus a discrete collection of atomic entities and/or a dualistic type system - e. g . MATTER-SPIRIT, MIND-BODY, FACTS-VALUES). Knowledge is not the same as understanding. Understand any one thing through and through and you understand the whole. A central NO-THING-NESS is both resident in things and, at the same time, far beyond individual things, acting as a kind of cosmic lure to evolution. Freedom is not guaranteed nor are achievements of any sort permanent. Nonetheless there is deep satisfaction in service and "returning home" to our true nature, in working and being in harmony with the underlying cosmic process (the Tao, Enlightenment, the Dharma). Right action puts us in harmony with all things.<br /><br />SURD/PRINCIPLE OF ANTI-ORDER/SOURCE OF ERROR: the fact that all beings are necessarily limited. Individual selfhood is necessary and yet it is the source of endless problems and conflicting desires. Einstein referred to the self as a kind of cosmic 'optical illusion'. We see all through the 'I'. Individuality, or seemingly being a separate thing, is what Alan Watts, following Buddhism, called 'ignore-ance'. This condition is not so much the not having of knowledge, but rather the state of ignoring, being oblivious or unconscious of other beings. This congenital "blindness" is the root of our problems.<br /><br />To be an individual entity means to develop an individual consciousness (ego, identity), which means in effect to systematically overlook the value of other things. When we are not aware of all the factors that compose us and affect us, we act as if we 'knew it all' or can do it all ourselves - we are thus ego-centric or ego-bound. Breaking out of the shell of that attitude, rejoining our deeper harmony and harkening to our life mission or destiny-work is 'enlightenment'. In transcending the 'me-and-mine' syndrome we become fully free.<br /><br />THE MIND: In this worldview there are two kinds of "mind". The first is the mind we are all familiar with - conscious thinking or overt mental activity. The other is the deep seed of ENLIGHTENMENT within us - that which inexorably draws us to full functioning, full freedom, and the full realization (flowering) of what we are. So it is therefore important to distinguish the ceaseless mental flow of feelings, reactions and judgments that makes up our ordinary consciousness, from the non-discursive, silently aware and non-judgmental witnessing that is at the heart of the meditative/contemplative and spiritual traditions.<br /><br />PRIMARY DISCIPLINE OR INSTRUMENT: the practice of meditation or mindful awareness; the use of some activity like pottery or sports as a meditative vehicle <br /><br />ESSENTIAL COSMIC DYNAMIC: growth and becoming in two dimensions: outward, the chronological development and ripening of entities; and inward, the growth of interiority, sentiency and consciousness<br /><br />IDEAL PERSON: a whole person, one who is integral, fully functioning and free... one who is living an intentional or dedicated life, while nonetheless 'dancing with chaos'... an enlightened sage... one whose life exemplifies service to the community...<br /><br />IDEAL SOCIETY: a true community of equals, each making contributions in a non-egoistic way... a healed planet... a sense of global oneness with an endlessly creative menu of delicious "flavors" (e.g. of ethnic and national identities)...<br /><br />Core Disciplines and Historical Curricula<br /><br />The core disciplines of this worldview are those of relaxation, concentration and meditation. They all involve a deliberate withdrawal from ordinary activities (e. g. the ascetic practices of the shaman) in order to experience the ecstasy (the powerful rush of going beyond oneself) of communion with higher or cosmic or sacred power(s). This is the taproot of all religious traditions: <re-ligare>, <yoga> the communication with an invisible realm that ultimately gives life to, orders and guides everyday activities. Cultivating a deep quiet and a dedicated listening are the perennial prerequisites to opening to this realm or being(s) that both sustains and transforms our world. It is the adventure of the true hero, fighting the inner dragons; it is the path to wisdom.<br /><br />There have been many echoes of this primordial religious tradition throughout the centuries. In the West, Plato may have been the heir not only of the iconoclastic Socrates but also of the 'mystery' traditions of Egypt and the mathematic-religious brotherhood of Pythagoras. Esoteric traditions, which stressed the notion of a 'secret knowledge' of ultimate things, sometimes converged, sometimes clashed, with established religions. Trailblazers in Far Eastern cultures like the Buddha, Confucius and Lao-Tzu stressed the importance of self-knowledge in arriving at the ultimate truth. The idea was that determinedly examining one's own experience brought deeper understanding than exhaustive knowledge of an "external" universe. In the West monastic communities spawned both world renowned scholars and scientists, and at the same time, preserved the tradition of "inner" contemplative knowledge and living.<br /><br />There were the cosmopolitan universities of the ancient world. There were the religiously imbued universities of the medieval world. The latter became stigmatized by the term 'scholastic', meaning given over to excessively verbal argumentation. Western science became a breath of fresh air. And the tradition of science eventually spawned the counter tradition of Romanticism. Science in the modern era threatened to swallow up the entire universe by translating it into Newtonian mathematics. Descartes had divided up the world dualistically into two classes of beings: thinking conscious beings and the external extended world that was material, machine-like, and susceptible to mathematic treatment.<br />Poets like William Blake and William Wordsworth through their poetry tried to validate the importance of sensibility, feeling and the inner life.<br /><br />The curricula of both primary schools and universities mirrored the above tendencies. Religious instruction slowly and eventually gave way to the primacy of scientific instruction. The nineteenth century became the highwater mark of rigorous historical scholarship and an increasing emphasis on scientific and industrial training. Romantic pedagogues like Rousseau, Froebel and Pestalozzi rebelled, defending the special genius and rights of the child. Montessori and Dewey continued this tradition. Ironies abounded. The German Herbart devised a truly dynamic psychology of consciousness only to have it metamorphize into a straitjacket pedagogy. German scientist par excellence Gustav Fechner, founder of 'psychophysics', became an advocate of a 'living cosmos'. William James was both a scientist and fearless investigator of consciousness. Rudolf Steiner, founder of the so-called Waldorf Schools, was part of a theosophist movement in the late 19th /early 20th century that called into question the reigning scientism of the time.<br /><br />In the twentieth century the Romantic tradition has morphed into phenomenology, existentialism, process metaphysics, holism, the counter-cultural movement, and the assimilation of the Eastern wisdom traditions. American humanistic psychology bloomed with gestalt and somatic therapies and the entire human potential movement. The new curricula of consciousness and personal transformation was pursued in 'growth' institutes like Esalen in California. The discipline and practice of meditation had come to the West. There was a new context and frame for curricular development: new goals and priorities.<br /><br /><br />Pedagogy<br /><br />STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT / DIVISIONS OF SCHOOLING: people develop in a myriad of ways, at all rates and rhythms depending on life circumstance and experience, individual aptitudes and modalities... the lockstep pattern of schooling, so friendly to industrial needs and narrow economic requirements, does little justice to the flowering of human potentials, let alone to the unfoldment of our deeper nature...<br /><br />STUDENT: a multi-petalled, multi-dimensional organism; a spiritual embryo<br /><br />TEACHER: guide, facilitator and catalyst<br /><br />TEXT: any compressed expression; any cultural icon or "shard" of meaning; the expressive physiognomy of faces, gestures, persons, relationships, situations, events, artworks, etc.; any configuration of signs requiring interpretation<br /><br /><br />MAIN AVENUE OF LEARNING: A student asked a zen master what was the essence of the Dharma (the path to enlightenment in Buddhism). The master responded "attention". The student continued, 'Is that all?' The master replied, 'Attention means attention.' The student persisted, 'And what does that mean?' The master: 'Attention means attention means attention!' Attention and awareness are the golden keys.<br /><br />Myth, dreams and mis-takes often represent deeper structures of the psyche that we unaware of or deny with our conscious minds. Emotions are 'intelligent'.<br /><br />Electronic networks and potentials become organic plasticity, which in turn are overshadowed by the "bandwiths" or frequences or channels of our almost boundless intuitive wisdom. There are an indefinite number of intelligences, terrestial and celestial. To be a true individual (a unified creature, an integral being) is to be open to and to embody many types of knowing. Integrity is multipotentiality. <br /><br />The main question of learning for humans is not how we learn, but why we stop learning! What are the things that impede, obstruct, sabotage and constrain us?...<br /><br />CENTRAL ACT(S) OF LEARNING: energy, passion,excitement; decision and choice; daring, boldness; persistence and determination; patience and peacefulness; reflectiveness<br /><br />ELEMENTARY SKILLS: "the psychic abc's"; befriending ourselves; learning how to use our own organic 'bio-computers'; developing TRUST enough in basic relationships to feel safe in exploring; being in harmony and thus being able to work with ourselves; for every learning-desire there is a potential teacher/guide waiting, an appropriate syllabus unfolding, and a learning community gladly supporting...<br /><br />SCHOOL: a sensitive and stimulating environment; a challenging environment (which can be anywhere); a voluntary association or intentional community with access to resources<br /><br />STANDARDS: supportive feedback loops formed and refined in any process of learning; the demands of situations that need transforming; the impossible to fully articulate sense-of-rightness ("there are rules but no one rule"); everything one must take into account...<br /><br />There are five sources of standards, five authorities to which we must harken: self, work assignment, partners or relationships, defining mission, and the sacred dimension of experience. Ultimately, judgments of "pass", "fail" and "excel" make reference to one of these measures which are present in any activity.<br /><br />EVALUATION: initial estimate, interim feedback, and finally the sense of closure (satisfaction) that attends any complete experience and/or contribution to a cause (John Dewey) [Cf. STANDARDS]; evaluation means estimating, making a judgment which means constantly assessing the rightness or wrongness of an activity, getting rid of premature kinds of judgment to come to a deeply strong authentic self-determining measure of quality; a cybernetic hit or miss in the archery of experience...<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Reading, Writing and Centering<br /><br />READING: We are always scanning our environment in accord with dominant or dominating values, desires and expectations. We constantly interpret things as signs of what we wish to have or avoid. We are thus constantly composing/creating our world(s). We read facial-tones, body-language and situation-tones. We "edit" our very thoughts and feelings in the same way. We are always trying to make sense of ourselves and our environment. We are thus always 'making meaning', seeing how things fit into a larger picture, the picture that gives smaller actions and events meaning. It is always larger patterns that give smaller events meaning--- and smaller events, if they become highly charged, change larger patterns. This is the "hermeneutic circle", the feedback character, the confirming/disconfirming nature of events...<br /><br />Thus reading is, first of all, the more or less automatic flow of reponses within the context of a larger pattern (stereotype, image, gestalt, cognitive-schemata, story-line, narrative, or worldview). The larger pattern either gets confirmed or there is dissonance, disturbance, disorder experienced. The dissonance itself is then folded into the larger picture or model or narrative - dismissed or denied - or else culminates in a crisis.<br /><br />Secondly, reading is a stopping, a pausing, a being-stuck or struck, a conscious dallying or lingering with fascination. The automatic flow stops and there is an opening to or encounter with an 'other'. That is, there is the entertainment of something new, new information pours in voluntarily or involuntarily. Reading is scanning, rereading, multiple readings. Sometimes there is great struggling with resistances. Often there is not a linear but a circuitous path as the entity struggles and gasps for meaning in a sensitive apprehension (fear or hope). Understanding a person or a text is in principle the same: cues and clues are sought in the physiognomy, travelling through layers, probing the delicate texture of expression... Sometimes realization, insight, genuine meeting occurs... sometimes with a great burst of feeling... sometimes with quiet understanding...<br /><br />Finally, in this spiral process of reading there is hopefully the integration of these inward and outward movements, of transforming and being transformed. The success of reading is the achievement of a new context for confirmation and problems, gaps and happinesses.<br /><br />WRITING: Just as with reading, reading is rereading, writing is rewriting. It is the process of revising and the journey of revisioning. Also as with reading, writing follows the rhythm of flow and focus, of reevaluation, recollection and reflecting. It moves fast and slow, from 'breezegraphs' to 'writing with one's blood'. Like M. Jourdain in Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, we are always speaking the language of concentration without realizing it. Concentration is moving, focused energy. We 'pour' ourselves lightly, mediumly or intensely into things. We immerse ourselves in, we summarily deny and dismiss, we stand dazed and dumbfounded. Writing reflects our involvement. <br /><br /><br />MATHEMATICS: In the Third Worldview mathematics is a distinctive modality of intelligence, a sensitivity to certain dimensions of form. As such it is part of the revelation of beauty, displaying hidden orders, complexities and harmonies. But what it shares with every other modality or way of thinking (like art or engineering or politics) is that it is a way of framing unknowns. In the Third Worldview every situation is inherently incomplete and harboring many unknowns. Mathematics is surely the discovery and tabulation of interesting patterns. But it is more like creative-intuitive thinking in general, the becoming comfortable with unknowns, learning to be flexible and fluid, learning to be playful and open. Fear is the great constrictor of learning and knowing how to acknowledge and work with our mind-states, especially the negative ones, is a kind of primitive or meditative mathematics. As we learn this meta-art of dealing with our own consciousness, of deconstricting ourselves, we open up our own problem-solving abilities and access our native resources. We learn how-to-learn. Mathematics, as all the other arts and sciences, eventually leads to an appreciation and use of our 'beginner's mind' or 'don't-know mind'. It's not a matter of information but of reverencing and delighting in our native faculties. When we learn the arts of self-trust and fluidity, we become much better critics when critical evaluation is required. Mathematics is the art putting the horse before the cart.<br /><br />CENTERING: Awareness-based pedagogy always refers to a base-state of awareness, whatever the activity. It is the integrating factor in an 'integral' or 'holistic' education. Just as Aristotle recognized four coordinates or "causes" of any activity (efficient, formal, material and final), awareness-based pedagogy notes at least five nodes/centers/focal or reference points in every activity: self/agent, partners/relationships, work/assignment, mission/value, and finally the creative source that transcends yet gives meaning to all enterprises, large and small - the Center, our cosmic solidarity, identity or progenitor.<br /><br />Centering, like concentration (of energies and/or attention), is a natural, albeit often unconscious, part of all creative processes. Frequently we are so enmeshed into the objective or situational requirements of the creative process (getting the answer or working toward a satisfactory resolution) that we are quite unaware of this pregnant (and impartial) pausing, this being still and attentive, this sensitive and receptive listening. This stage in the creative process is made the centerpiece and constant companion of all endeavors in awareness-based pedagogy. It is the "fourth R". The art of conscious centering, of mindful awareness of feeling-states and situation-tones, this meditative practice of listening, allows us to access our 'higher' power(s) and/or deeper wisdom. It grounds and leavens every activity. It opens the possibilities of our deeper nature. It is the deep present forever asking "what is truly happening?" <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Summary, appraisals and directions<br /><br />IN SUM, the worldview of global consciousness and its attendant awareness-based pedagogy hinges on a pivotal paradox: to go deeply within, to attain a high degree of self awareness (familiarity with one's 'inner' feelings and states, sometimes quite subtle) is to simultaneously gain a sense of global identification and a solidarity with all creatures. <br />Self-consciousness is the experience of strain and anxiety. Self-awareness is the peaceful practice of slowly realizing what one has in common with all other creatures (e.g. the Buddha said no creature likes to suffer) to the enlightened point that there is no "other", that all creatures deserve reverence and respect. While the path to enlightenment is arduous (sometimes terribly so!), the promise of full liberation holds out the prospect of being truly at home with ourselves and in the universe. The practice of meditation, the path to self-knowledge, is the key to this fertile dissatisfaction and possible delight in all creatures. Enlightenment is the path of stewardship and service in the community of all creatures. We don't know where the cosmos begins or ends off.<br /><br />WEAKNESSES, CRITICISMS, PROBLEMS: fuzzy-headed, utopian dreaming, guru-worshipping, lack of critical judgment, mystification... tending to neglect hard-headed realities... wallowing in feel-good, exaggerated self-esteem strategies... warm and fuzzy, completely lacking in intellectual or practical rigor... neglect of real problems by escape into a vague and nebulous 'within'... relies on the dubious faculty of intuition, which can have a thousand contradictory meanings... sometimes comforting but of no significance, let alone admitting of scientific verification... an outmoded path to nowhere... incomprehensible jargon... wild, undisciplined (and sometimes dangerous!) imaginings... generates true believers and blind followers... tendency toward otherworldliness...<br /><br />STRENGTHS: individual empowerment; global and compassionate perspective...<br /><br />FUTURE DIRECTIONS, PROMISING RESEARCH, VISION OF SUCCESS: a new framework and context for curriculum work; a new cosmic-community paradigm for understanding the universe; a sense of mission and purpose regarding the healing/saving of the planet for the "seventh generation" and the rehabilitation of the earth; the unioning of sensuous and spiritual values (e. g. revaluing the body); the rediscovery of the deeper mystical and contemplative springs of traditional religions; the earth, properly cared for, is a paradise; the present is always the 'coming of the millenium', the right or propitious time (the "kairos"), the needful time...<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Select Bibliography<br /><br />Romantic Poets: Blake, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Novalis, Holderlin, etc.<br /><br />Philosophical Poets: Goethe, Fechner, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche<br /><br />Romantic Pedagogists: Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Steiner, Montessori<br /><br />Philosophers: Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution; John Dewey, Experience and Nature; Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality; Martin Heidegger, Being and Time; Martin Buber, I and Thou; Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be<br /><br />American Psychology: William James, The Principles of Psychology, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Essays in Radical Empiricism and a Pluralistic Universe; Fritz Perls (et al.), Gestalt Therapy; Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person; Rollo May, Love and Will; Charles Brooks, Sensory Awareness<br /><br />Culture Critics: Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd; Alan Watts, Nature, Man and Woman; Theodore Roszak, The Making of the Counter Culture;<br />Sam Keen, Inward Bound and The Passionate Life; Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance<br /><br />Consciousness: Ken Wilber, No Boundary (Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth), The Spectrum of Consciousness, and Up From Eden<br /><br />Meditation: Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind<br /> Seung Sahn, Only Don't Know<br /> Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness<br /> Joseph Goldstein, The Experience of Insight<br /> Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are<br /><br />Awareness-Based Pedagogy: Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones<br /> Mary Richards, Centering in Pottery, Poetry and the Person<br /> Denise McCluggage, The Centered Skier<br /> Margy Emerson, A Potter's Notes on Tai Chi Chuan<br /> Gay Hendricks, The Centering Book(s) [series]<br /> Parker Palmer, To Know As We Are Known<br />J. & M. Levy, The Fine Arts of Relaxation, Concentration and Meditation<br /><br /> Planetary Politics: Duane Elgin, Voluntary Simplicity<br /> Theodore Roszak, Person/Planet<br /> Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society and Tools for Conviviality<br /><br />Epistemology/Theory of Knowledge: Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge<br /> Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions<br /> Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation<br /> R. G. Siu, The Tao of Science<br /><br />Cosmology: Rosemary Ruether, Gaia and God<br /> S. Nicholson & B. Rosen, Gaia's Hidden Life<br />Douglas Harding, On Having No Head and The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth; Gustav Fechner, The Zend AvestaDan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-73768488354549033392007-07-14T10:07:00.000-07:002007-09-15T10:08:36.338-07:00The Classical, Conservative WorldviewProfile<br /><br />Mottoes: 'Back to basics', 'keep to fundamentals', 'back to the (golden age of the) past', 'adhere to tradition', 'preserve the best in civilization', 'what is true is eternal'...<br /><br />Time: 5th and 4th centuries B.C.<br /><br />Place: Ancient Greece, especially the city-state of Athens<br /><br />Pioneers and Heroes: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle<br /><br />Mythic Figures: Apollo, Athena<br /><br />Quote: "All humans naturally delight in the act of knowing." -Aristotle<br /><br />Image/Feeling/Flavor: the world is nature as given, as we find it - a garden of forms that contains all kinds of things: rocks, trees, acorns, fish, roses, chairs, houses, pots, parchment, humans and the sorts of things humans naturally tend to do, from war to sports to sex to arguing to observing to politics... a world of rough and ready commonsense... the cosmos is the ordered universe of substances of different kinds, each with an inherent identity, stability and arc of development from birth to death (acorns don't become sushi!) ... the human mind, after appropriate study, can understand the structure of things, can know reality... the highest knowledge is philosophic (the final essence of things)... human action can and should strive for excellence in all fields of endeavor<br /><br />Life Maxims of the First Organon: aim high; accuracy, exactitude and fidelity to the truth; know yourself; practice continually; know your materials and tools; be satisfied with nothing less than excellence<br /><br />Some Contemporary Advocates and Champions: Adler, Bennett, Bloom, Hutchins, Hirsch<br /><br /><br />Philosophy<br /><br />Metaphysics/Nature/Reality: the World-Story (Narrative): The world consists of a variety of substances, each of which has a defining form. Things change incessantly but there are indeed patterns of order. Things develop in orderly ways according to their natures. (No piranhas from acorns!)<br /><br />"Surd"/"Devil"/Principle of Disorder/Source of Error: particularity, chance, fate, matter, ugliness, extremes, disproportionality, chaos, confusion (elements of something not blending into an ordered and satisfying whole, parts not being in harmony)<br /><br />The Mind: The human mind is capable of grasping and understanding patterns of order. Thought is capable of penetrating appearances and coming to an understanding of the essence of things.<br /><br /><br />Primary Instrument: Logic or the right use of the mind, the study of the correct forms of reasoning; the clarification of concepts and ideas; the study of what constitutes a good argument or proof and provides a convincing or satisfying conclusion.<br /><br />Essential Cosmic Dynamic: ordered change; development according to type; the movement from potentiality to actuality.<br /><br />Personal Dynamic: optimal development of one's individual powers, abilities, talents.<br /><br />Essential Learning Experience: the movement from habit to understanding - going from knowing how to do something to knowing and appreciating why.<br /><br />Ideal Person: the fully developed person, free and responsible; the person of achievement (<arete> was the mark of strength, virtue, excellence in any field); the active citizen and the life-long learner culminating in a kind of philosophic contemplation and aesthetic appreciation of life in the company of friends<br /><br />Ideal Society: elitist; an assemblage of the best; a relatively small community or polity like a city-state; an interesting blend of hierarchy and democracy<br /><br />Core Disciplines and Historical Curricula<br /><br />Core Disciplines/ Historical Curricula: Philosophy, the study of the ultimate principle(s) of reality, dominated the core curricula of the first universities in the Western World, Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum. The fact that things had distinctive forms - be they mathematical proofs, the composition of a good poem, the ideal shape of a beautiful statue, the biological structure of a species, the constitution of a city-state - was the basis for the higher studies, which eventually through the Romans became the known as the "liberal arts". Philosophy, literature and mathematics were the foundations. In the Middle Ages it took the form of the 'trivium' - grammar, logic and rhetoric, and the 'quadrivium' - arithmetic, geometry. astronomy and music ("the seven liberal arts"). These were the studies that the "free" or leisured classes pursued. They were also 'liberating' in the sense that their systematic pursuit brought contact with higher or deeper realities. Later, in the European Renaissance, in the form of the "humanities" they were considered splendid ornaments in the life of a courtier. As science and literature grew more estranged<br />in recent centuries, the elite education of the English gentleman in the Nineteenth Century, for instance, became more literary in character. In the Twentieth Century there has been a rebirth of interest in the 'core curriculum' of the classics, the 'great books' of the Western World in the great American universities - Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, etc.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Pedagogy<br /><pedagogus>= the slave who 'leads' the aristocratic child to school; a tutor<br /><pedagogue>= a schoolmaster, a stuffy scholar<br /><pedagogy>= the art, practice and profession of teaching; its principles and methods<br /><br />Stages of Development = Stages of education: elementary, intermediate and 'higher' or advanced study [<studere> originally meant 'to be eager, to be avid about, to be excited'] corresponding to the 'grammar' school, the 'high' school and the college (or group of scholars) or university (many kinds of study under one tent or roof).<br /><br />The student: raw material needing to be shaped<br /><br />The teacher: a figure of authority; the dispenser of knowledge; a molder of youth<br /><br />Training and the process of learning: repetition and repeated exposure till the essential shines forth; sound training resulted in thorough intellectual and character development, in the formation of a complete human being ("paideia")<br /><br />Text: "classics" - great examples in every genre that challenge and inspire; outstanding expression of an idea; a complete and orderly exposition of a theme with a proper beginning, middle (development), and end; the presentation of a thesis (that which is to be proved) and an argument (a convincing proof or compelling demonstration)<br /><br />Main pedagogical avenue: drill and memory and habit are the main pathways of learning in this pedagogical orientation, the basis and foundation of understanding - not imagination, creativity, the senses, intuition, empathy, not experiment, not paranormal faculties or telepathy, not voluntary participation, not kindness or compassion, etc.<br /><br />Central act of learning: abstraction and generalization - the perception of the essence of a thing or state of affairs, the formation of a concept from a multitude of examples<br /><br />Elementary skills: reading and writing (literacy)<br /><br />School: the specifically designed place where learning occurs<br /><br />Standards: just as in sports great athletes determine the 'mark' to be beat, the standard of achievement, so too in academics great works in all fields determine what is good or bad or excellent or mediocre; a 'good' apple looks good: it has good shape, looks good, is red, ripe, crisp, juicy, delicious and nutritious<br /><br />Evaluation: satisfactory performance; the inner reward of work well done; the outer reward of recognition of achievement<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Reading, Writing and Mathematics<br /><br />How to read: What is the author saying? (essence, thesis)<br />What is the order and development of the text? (main & supporting points) What is the cogency of the conclusion(s)? (are you the reader won over or convinced? or, are there more powerful counter-arguments?)(finding key terms, key propositions, and key sub-arguments as they compose the structure of the text - Mortimer Adler How to Read a Book)<br /><br />How to write: same process as above: the clear, rational presentation of an idea or thesis through the development of a series of parts related to each other like the structure of an organism (each section should have a purpose, each paragraph should have a topic sentence and supporting sentences, etc.). The argument should address the main points at issue and should culminate in a convincing conclusion (e.g., "Therefore homeschooling is the best form of education in the late twentieth century"). Because the world is orderly, writing should be orderly. All writing should have a clear beginning, middle and end.<br /><br />How to do mathematics: familiarity with elementary calculation (numeracy); practice in reasoning; practice in the perception of form, especially complex conceptual form or forms of higher generality; discerning the basic axioms, defining concepts and first principles of any field<br /><br />Summary, appraisals and directions<br /><br />In sum, the pedagogy of the classical worldview, based on ancient Greek and Roman culture, represents the 'heroic' conception of the world. It is based on great events and stories, great teachers, great texts. These texts give definitive and enduring ('classic') expression to great and challenging issues and inescapable human dilemmas. Its core disciplines are literature and philosophy, its core methodology is Aristotelian logic (- which in turn is based on the concepts of identity, difference and the notion of a linking or transitional middle term). Its main achievements are conceptual power (understanding and knowledge) and ethical power (virtue or personal power as the right use of individual energies and faculties).<br /><br />Weaknesses, criticisms and problems with this orientation: tends to be tradition or convention bound, oriented to the past; tends to equate the customs of one's surrounding society or culture with the laws of the universe or the dictates of God; therefore is often parochial, provincial or narrowly nationalistic; with its 'back to basics' approach it tends to be literal-minded and fundamentalist and suspicious of innovative approaches and the creative spirit; tends to overemphasize the development of intellectual capacities over other aspects and facets of our human nature<br /><br />Strengths: tends to emphasize individual responsibility, the value of community and high intellectual and moral standards<br /><br />Future directions, promising lines of research, vision of success: the attempt to maintain stability, continuity and integrity in an always imperfect world; the best kind of research is always coming back to tried and true fundamentals; the ongoing defence against the forces of ignorance and trendiness the inherent rationality of the world, the importance of understanding, the intrinsic reward of virtue for its own sake, and the right ordering of society according to the timeless principles of reality and human nature<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Select Bibliography<br /><br />Mortimer Adler, The Paideia Proposal and How to Read a Book (the obstinate gadfly, the grand old man and the architect of the 'great books' program)<br />William Bennett, The Book of Virtues (real education = character education)<br />Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (a conservative critique of the revolutionary consciousness mindset of the 1960s-70s)<br />David Denby, Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World (a middle-aged New York movie critic goes back to his ivy league college for a year to restudy the great literary and philosophical classics)<br />E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Cultural Literacy (a common language and a shared fund of information is the foundation of a strong culture and society]<br />Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity (A Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Education)<br />Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind (The Greek Origins of European Thought)<br />Mark Van Doren A Liberal Education (a vigorous and lovely defence)Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-8158633439385851892007-07-13T10:21:00.000-07:002007-09-14T10:32:38.007-07:00Ten Pedagogical TribesWhat is the basis of a good education? What is the world truly like? What is the nature of the mind? What is the best gear for the path, and how are resources best distributed?<br />We will examine ten competing visions, ten historical, contemporary and future tribes, ten learning kits, ten pedagogical journeys. Each one has a different interpretation of what’s real, what’s important, what to look for, how to find it, and how to best to express it in our lives. Each vision contains a different view of what it is to be fully human and which human facet most characterizes learning. Each sees a different political context in which the best can occur.<br /><br />Some models emphasize the development of the intellect, others the scientific method and its applications, others creative imagination, others deep personal awareness, others taking full advantage of technological innovation, others social influence and monetary success, still others a critical view of society’s relentless conditioning and a view toward empowered freedom and justice for marginalized groups, others the attainment of school-based standards of achievement in preparation for global competition, others promoting a fierce independence of mind and spirit, others religious piety or spiritual exploration, and finally, others representing a profound meditation on the existence of all these models in a society of deep diversity. Each tribe prepares you to live in a different world, with different values being accentuated, paths pursued, and outcomes sought for.<br /><br />Each vision/tribe/pedagogical practice kit has its own version of the “three ‘r’s”, its own head-gear, its take on developmental sequences or stages of maturation, levels of learning apprenticeship, and also its view of what constitutes advanced study and fruitful research. The ten models we will consider should be seen as tribes in the sense that each has its own special totemic identity but also have many kinds of affiliations with each other too. Some are first cousins to each other! Our main attempt here is not to give an exhaustive historical or philosophical account of this complexity, but rather just to give a brief taste, the “flavor” of each of these perennially important positions and traditions. In one form or another, they keep cropping up! So getting some sense of each, gaining an “ear” for them, recognizing them in discussions of education issues, is helpful. It is useful to see where someone is “coming from,” the assumptions they hold dear, their core practices.<br /><br />The ten models we will briefly sketch are:<br /><br />the classical conservative<br />the scientific empirical<br />the experiential/holistic awareness<br />critical pedagogy<br />market success<br />the technological matrix<br />the national standards movement<br />the outlaw/nomad<br />the futurist<br />the religious/spiritual<br /><br />The Classical Conservative Tradition<br /><br />This is the tradition of the liberal arts, which has its foundation in the culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Here good education is centered around the great books or classics of Western civilization from Homer’s the Iliad and the Odyssey and Plato’s Dialogues to The Divine Comedy of Dante and the plays of Shakespeare to the novels of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf…<br /><br />It assumes the world is fundamentally an orderly place and that the mind can see and understand essential structures. Truth is that which corresponds to reality. Art, in the widest sense, is the fitting or beautiful representation of reality, which may or may not be beautiful.<br /><br />It praises good work in any field as that which perceives or represents its essence, is ordered, whole and balanced – does what it was supposed to do. It criticizes that which is superficial, confused, a disordered jumble, extreme or unbalanced…<br /><br />Its elementary tools are the three r’s, the arts of reading, writing and arithmetic/mathematics. It tries to develop good habits (early on valuing memory and repetition) in the student, under good tutelage steering him through an apprenticeship in thinking, learning the ways of intelligent discussion, to the point where he can truly engage with and appreciate the great classics. It’s all about the development of a mature mind, character and sensibility. It develops the ‘high culture’ of striving for the very best and preserving the pantheon of mankind’s finest achievements.<br /><br />Mortimer Adler has been a great 20th century exponent of the “great books” as the core curriculum of a superior education. Some of his works are How To Read A Book, a guide to in-depth reading of the classic works, The Great Ideas, a discussion of the key notions or most powerful concepts by which we can understand any field of inquiry from politics to philosophy, and The Paideia Proposal, Adler’s manifesto on how to do schooling right. Adler was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s edition of the Great Books of the Western World.<br /><br />Other advocates of this approach are:<br />Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind which attacked higher education for its permissiveness and watering down of high standards<br />E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Cultural Literacy which stressed the need for a common fund of knowledge and shared basis of facts and reference points<br />Theodore Roszak’s The Cult of Information which argues that oceans of data and information were not the same thing as genuine knowledge or understanding!<br />Susan Wise-Bauer’s The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had which offers the challenge, suppose you really wanted a top-flight education? – what would that foundation really look like?…<br />Italo Calvino’s Why Read the Classics? – a fresh take on what makes a book terrific<br />Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran -- classics as forbidden & dangerous<br />2. The Scientific Empirical Tradition<br /><br />The rise of the tradition of empirical science in the West needs no introduction. Or does it? We live and breathe science, and its great progeny technology, in the West. But Alan Cromer in his wonderful little book, Uncommon Sense, argues that we should not. Here he makes the case for the “heretical nature” of science, that it took a very unique set of circumstances found in early modern Europe to arise as an historical phenomenon. Many societies and civilizations of the past have produced encyclopedic observations of nature and natural phenomena – but not science as we know it. Recording observations is a necessary foundation of science but not the heart of science, which is the determined asking of questions and the confirming or disconfirming of possible answers. To be a scientist in the true sense is not to accept things passively but to play a much more active role vis-à-vis nature and natural occurrences. It is to see interlocking patterns on the journey to the heart of nature. It is to see how things are connected, how they work. It is to not stop until we see how all processes, all the fundamental forces of the physical universe, are connected in a single “unified field theory.”<br /><br />No one scientist can do it all but each wages a constant battle with intellectual laziness, group prejudice, and magical-superstitious type thinking (which is to say, no thinking at all). Any book on popular science (astronomy or evolutionary biology) by Carl Sagan or Stephen Jay Gould will beautifully demonstrate the sparkling and restless curiosity, delight in daring, intellectual independence, questioning spirit and willingness to probe and explore. Such excitement is of the essence of science as a mental trait rather than a body of knowledge to be transferred.<br /><br />Two main stages in the codification of the craft of scientific activity: First, concurrent with the great triumphs of the physics of Galileo, Newton and Copernicus, the early “mythology” of the famous scientific method: the famous and oft repeated cycle of observation, hypothesis, experiment, and generalization. (‘Mythology’ because it’s really the asking of artful questions that precede exact and disinterested observations – we could ‘observe’ till we’re blue in the face and it wouldn’t be science! We wouldn’t even ‘experiment’ unless we had something we wanted to find out!) Nonetheless, the emphasis on empirical or field experimentation and research was important to counteract the tradition in the ancient and medieval world that understanding the nature of things could be attained by pure thinking alone. Modern science simultaneously honored nature “out there” and the method-based, right use of the mind (see Descartes famous Discourse on Method) aimed at revealing and controlling her secrets – mere opinion or speculation wasn’t enough.<br /><br />The second stage or formulation of the scientific method comes hand in hand with cognitive psychology. Early in the 20th Century John Dewey made the case in his How We Think that the fancy, elaborate enterprise called science really reflects how we basically think in everyday situations: we deal with problems by making guesses or hypotheses and then checking them out. Thomas Kuhn’s famous idea of “paradigm shifts” that mark great discoveries and changes in science (in contrast to the routine activities of normal science) described in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Norwood Russell Hanson’s Patterns of Discovery, and Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation are works that show how the human mind functions on the edge of a discovery or major conceptual shift. Now the philosophy of science sees the hallowed method as more an ensemble of heuristic strategies and as less mechanical. Science in a word is simply the art of problem solving and requires all the traits that we have come to associate with success in any field: initiative, self-management, collaboration and teamwork, creativity, and a willingness to check results<br /><br />B. F. Skinner in the 1950s and 1960s became a scientifically inspired yet very controversial leader in defining learning objectives in behavioral terms, using a set of rewards and punishments, a precise set of incentives and disincentives, as a set of tools to achieve carefully defined and measured learning objectives. Skinner typified the scientific impulse for precision. Teaching was simply the application of the science of behavior, the application of a rigorous scientific psychology.<br /><br />Pedagogically and practically, science has come to mean not only the devotion to empirical evidence, statistical representation of such data, experimental design and research, definition and measurement of different variables, etc. – it has also come to mean a certain style or way of doing things. There is a kind of rationality that is the application of scientific thinking: breaking something up into constituent parts, dividing a goal into manageable objectives, creating milestones of progress, devising tests and analyzing or evaluating results. Mankind got to the moon using NASA’s “critical path” methodology: formulating a goal and then backtracking to see what are the critical points that must be achieved at each stage of the way.<br /><br />Again, practically, the application of scientific thinking to educational issues means doing empirical research – how students “in the field” do under certain conditions and what changes take place when certain variables are changed (e.g. how they do in relation to socio-economic class) or treatments given (the application of a particular pedagogical technique, like the use of phonics to improve reading).<br /><br />The research in the field of education is vast and covers everything from descriptions of learning style and kinds of intelligence to classroom teaching and management techniques to factors that define and influence the atmosphere of successful schools.<br />ERIC, the Educational Resource Information Center, is an enormous online database, guide and clearinghouse for such research.<br /><br />Aside from the essentials of inquiry and of doing good research (e.g. found in Booth, Colomb and William‘s The Craft of Research), there has grown in recent years a new body of “qualitative research” which sees the teacher in the classroom as a kind of anthropologist or in-flight, reflective practitioner of his/her craft.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />3. The Pedagogy of Awareness<br /><br />Energy, process, evolution, feeling, experience and reflection, the vital importance of direct encounter and personal awareness, a growing planetary consciousness…<br /><br />John Dewey, the foremost American philosopher of education, can be seen in two lights: one, the liberal, progressive and secular philosopher of science, the proponent of the native human quest to solve problematic situations by refining the art of inquiry (of which science is the chief manifestation) and, on the other hand, the heir of the Romantic tradition’s focus on the precious and fundamentally good nature of the child. The latter Dewey followed the pedagogy of Pestalozzi and Froebel and emphasized the centrality and validity of the child’s interests and concerns. No more was the child to be seen as a saluting soldier-follower of the teacher-martinet or the material to be assembled on the assembly line. The student was the heart and starting point of the educational process, which was the satisfaction and refining of natural curiosity and interests via collaboration in the art of inquiry. Learning was to be seen as an inherently social and democratic or non-authoritarian process of finding out. As with science, the heart of education was asking questions – and following up on them. So Dewey was apologist for modern science – and, at the same time, an advocate of a new creed that only really flowered in the Twentieth Century. Dewey became an apologist for what we now call the holistic view of human nature and learning.<br /><br />In contrast the late 19th Century scientific materialism, early in the 20th Century there arose a refreshing philosophy of temporality and process: Bergson’s Time and Free Will, Creative Evolution, Heidegger’s Being and Time, Whitehead’s Process and Reality. John Dewey’s masterwork, Experience and Nature was another in this line of thinking that did not interpret reality as an assembly of static substances that only changed marginally. Time and process was the essence of things! Dewey talked about how we are mislead by ideas of permanence and talked about the “career of an entity.” Whitehead said “there was no such thing as Nature at an instant.” Einstein revolutionary reinterpretation of time as no longer an absolute, uniformly flowing like Newtonian time, was in the air. Whitehead elaborated a metaphysics that saw all entities as undergoing organic development and that the building block of reality was the event or ‘occasion’ and that relationships were connections between and among events. Existentialists echoed Dewey and Whitehead in seeing experience as radically contingent or precarious. It wasn’t as if you were a thing which, once in a while underwent modifications, but you were/are essentially a no-thing thirsting for definable existence. Martin Buber suggested that people are not inert entities but beings who literally find themselves/ourselves in encounter. Not to risk is not to be. To be is to risk, and to be at risk. In this view, change and the rhythm of change is constant and what looks permanent is really what needs explaining.<br /><br />In the turbulent period of the 1960s and 1970s America (and Europe) discovered the inner land of meditation! The outer turbulence made some attempt to go deeply within to find not only peace and self-knowledge, but the inner resources for social change and political commitment. Into this scene of social unrest and revolutionary changes for groups like blacks, women, students, and soldiers at war, came the influx of the Asian wisdom traditions: Zen Buddhism, the forms of Hindu Yoga, and Chinese Taoism. Along with these ancient and venerable disciplines came a host of American human potential movements of every sort and description – fads as well as genuine psychic and spiritual pioneers. (Jacob Needleman’s The New Religions and Theodore Roszak’s The Making of A Counter Culture tell this story very well.)<br /><br />When all material needs are satisfied, what do people look for? When a culture “has everything,” what becomes its next goal? What makes life complete when you have a house, car, boat, and two wonderful and smart kids?<br /><br />Regimens of self-improvement and the more rigorous and inward journey of self-awareness are now as American as apple pie. The Gap and Buddhist meditation. American culture has matured to the point where it asks the same questions about our ultimate source, as do the traditions of the great religions. America has become a strange place, a place where narcissistic regimens of self-improvement collide with the disciplines of deep awareness that touch upon the core mystical traditions of the world. Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson’s book, The Cultural Creatives describes and examines this paradoxical and possibility filled ferment that is America today. America is a place charged with vital confusion and the clash of titanic visions. How will it/we find our place in a global reality? How do we understand ourselves and our role in an increasingly interdependent world? How do we become veritable citizens of the planet? How far does the web of life extend?<br /><br />Holistic education pivots on the art, skill and learning of self-awareness. Without this primary sensitivity, everything becomes ‘external’ – something to control, manage or manipulate.<br /><br />Rudolf Steiner inspired Waldorf schools and Montessori schools are both pedagogical traditions that emphasize sensory awareness and attend to the deeper organic and personal rhythms that we are ordinarily unconscious of. They both have as their agenda developing a comfortability and deep friendliness with the world in contrast to the us-versus-them, competitive orientation implicitly inculcated in most educational regimens. Here the development of care, sensitivity, and stewardship values are cultivated as the “way,” again in contrast to the “end-gaining” mania of society.<br /><br />There are thousands of good books on meditation, although a period of intensive retreat is the best introduction to the serious/joyful path of self-knowledge and ultimate enlightenment. It is good, however, to cultivate a “ginger mindfulness” as a gesture of balance and self-friendliness in all one’s activities. Gentleness toward oneself is not the same thing as laziness or self indulgence. Meditation is often seen and pursued as holistic practice, that is, one that is engaged in the discovery and integration of the different facets and dimensions of the self.<br /><br />Good introductions to meditation include:<br />Any book by Thich Nhat Hanh, especially The Miracle of Mindfulness, and his Peace Is Every Step. There is a universalist, non-sectarian appeal to Nhat Hanh.<br />The classic of the 1960s-70s era that deeply affected many Americans, Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. This small collection of talks has had a real resonance with the American spirit.<br />Joseph Goldstein’s Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom<br />Bhante Henepola Gunaratana’s Mindfulness in Plain English<br />Robert Thurman’s Inner Revolution and Infinite Life (what Uma’s dad, a Tibetan Buddhist scholar at Columbia University, has to say!)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The Critical Pedagogy Tradition: Social and Revolutionary Activism<br /><br />“Tell me what you think you know, and I’ll tell you where and how you live!”<br /><br />Schooling’s job is to reproduce the established order.<br /><br />A society not based on justice will always be unstable and, in the last analysis, cruel.<br /><br />This approach to teaching has its roots in the philosophy of Karl Marx. Here the main objective is to understand the unjust composition of society, determined by the historical evolution of economic structures (like slavery/kingship, feudalism, capitalism, coming socialism), and the historical process that is tending toward human empowerment and recognition. Every historical era has its dominant class. Corporations and great accumulations of wealth (‘capital’) provide the dynamics of today’s society, from shaping electoral politics to the kinds of occupations available. But capitalism is a human artifact, a human creation, one which distributes goods, power and recognition in a certain way. Great wealth has the effect of creating great poverty and manufacturing inequities. Schooling similarly reinforces privilege and social caste. In the Marxian view, revolutionary activism sensitizes workers (students as well as teachers, various functionaries and managers, are laborers!) to their actual condition and hence helps usher in a society based on care and mutual benefit, rather than the hoarding of resources and status for the controlling class. Literacy here, as taught by the great Brazilian teacher Paulo Freire, means learning is essentially consciousness-raising, how to read by discovering – and precisely naming – the conditions that define one’s social class (like boss and functionary, landlord and tenant, debt and mortgage). In a society ruled by wealth, power manipulates from behind the scenes. Understanding who has power and who ultimately benefits from its exercise is the key that unlocks so much.<br /><br />“Knowledge” is not politically neutral! Critique of the “banking metaphor” of education whereby the teacher has all the knowledge and pours it into the empty head of the student… a commitment to mutual questioning and collective inquiry…<br /><br />Where you are in the socio-economic hierarchy, your “class” location, by and large determines your beliefs… your view of the world simply mirrors your socio-economic class and aspirations… to become aware of this is to create a true learning horizon for the first time… all of a sudden all assumptions become worthy of critical examination…<br /><br />Tools:<br />Exposes -- constant exposure of oppressive circumstances and relationships, presenting live specimens, cultural exhibits, embarrassing juxtapositions of the discrimination, hypocrisies and inequities of the current state of the society, especially in and of the media environment, which is one of the institutions, along with schooling, which props up and amplifies society’s dominant and destructive myths –<br />Critique/Theory -- explaining how the parts fit into the whole, the systematic articulation the contradictions of society in comparison with the visionary projection of a just society<br />Liberatory Praxis -- social struggle and social activism, gear for the long haul, a series of broad strategies and changing tactics (psychological, legal, popular, artistic, political and educational) that guide the growing realization of freedom of different groups (blacks, women, latinos, gays, the poor, the very young, service workers and other marginalized groups, students, white collar executives) through their respective struggles for dignity and recognition and promotes the equitable construction of the larger community as the full expression of our humanity<br /><br />People:<br />Paulo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, The Politics of Education, etc.<br />Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam (how to interpret the media as mental environment)<br />bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope<br />Ira Shor, Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change<br />Joan Wink, Critical Pedagogy: Notes From the Real World<br />Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities<br /><br /><br />5. Market Success<br /><br />Late 20th Century market capitalism as outlining the path of career advancement and the unabashed goal of financial success and survival of the fittest…<br /><br />A zillion American business/managerial success manuals -- from the Norman Vincent Peale all time best seller, How To Win Friends and Influence People business, to how to climb the ladder of success and stay there (Up the Organization, How to Swim With the Sharks, etc., etc.), to contemporary corporate applications of the ancient Chinese classic on strategy, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War -- are a treasure trove of advice on positive thinking, visualization for success, wily tactics, aggressively and energetically charting the mental tools and organizational skills key to your personal path to success. They spell out the necessary qualities of determination, drive, decisiveness, persuasiveness, flexibility, creativity, collaborative communication, being focused on results, displaying a winning orientation and topnotch organization skills to boot; an emphasis on innovation, the competitive edge, productivity and social utility, if not enjoyment… creating commercial abundance... Business success as sport and source of satisfaction… what’s wrong with the pursuit of the American dream?… ambition as the very motive power of achievement, a virtue instead of a vice… financial success as the source of good(s)…<br /><br />People:<br />David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity,<br />and Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life (bite sized essays that will put you at the top of your game)<br />Tom Peters, In Search of Excellence, Thriving on Chaos, etc. (Peters has been for decades the management guru!)<br />Stephen McCovey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People<br />Donald Trump, The Art of the Deal (the godfather classic on how to do it)<br />Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style<br />James Twitchell, Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism (how advertising and commerce are surprisingly creative, productive and civilizing)<br />Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization<br /><br /><br />6. The Pedagogy of Technology<br /><br />The close union between cognitive psychology and the stunning assimilation of computer technology in recent decades has created an information explosion and accessibility undreamed of except by the highest caliber of scholars in the past. A world of information is now readily accessible to any student of whatever age and circumstance. The advent of the Internet has made the place (school site) and the timing (school-based curricula) almost a thing of the past!<br /><br />Lewis Perelman in his provocative book School’s Out argues that the advancing, even avalanching, growing edge of technological development (electronic hybrids of all sorts) almost makes school, as we have known it, an antique, like brick and mortar and the horseless carriage. He argues that the system known as schooling resembles a Soviet-style “collective farm” where everything proceeds in lock step according to standards set by the state monopoly on education. The vast and rigid machinery and bureaucracies of education now are impediments to real learning and to the ways that people actually learn. From context-based and apprenticeship learning to the seemingly perverse zig-zags of people’s genuine interests to embedded systems of expertise to “hyper-learning” media and channels, Perelman says we face a new world in which learning becomes our natural (and ‘smart’!) environment, not the painfully slow and bureaucratic certification process that has now become an albatross around our necks and hampering us by placing unnecessary barriers and hoops around what we do quickly, naturally, self-motivatedly and enjoyably. Schooling puts the barriers up and then by doing so creates the great ‘motivation’ conundrum!<br /><br />Schooling is an artifact of the old assembly-line manufacturing mentality. The information age, aided and abetted by electronic media of all sorts, encourages and requires a much more agile and interesting configuration of qualities. Education is no longer slavery in a post-industrial, creativity and knowledge based society. The arts of knowledge production, navigation and connoisseurship are the premium arts of our new era. Creative adaptability and an appreciation of the cognitive skill sets of the mind are key. That long-term memory and storage can be done by computer makes us realize that we are not computers but creative synthesizers of data and phenomena. We dance with reality – or play with it – not follow it blindly and mechanically!<br /><br />People:<br />Howard Rheingold, Virtual Reality (an vivid mapping of our new world)<br />Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital<br />Don Tapscott, Growing Up Digital<br />Douglas Rushkoff, Playing the Future: What We Can Learn from Digital Kids<br />Ray Kurzweil, The Coming Age of Spiritual Machines (sure to traumatize you!)<br />Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class<br />Mark Pesce, The Playful World: How Technology Is Transforming Our Imagination<br />Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World (where have we heard about this one before!)<br />Wired Magazine<br />Joshua Green, “No Lectures, Just Software,” The New York Times, 8.10.00<br /><br /><br />7. National Standards<br /><br />Based on the notion of clearly articulated educational goals and measurable progress toward those agreed upon goals. Educational goals should represent the consensus of experts and/or acknowledged professionals in the various disciplines, like history or mathematics. They should spell out what should be achieved by students and expected at what grade level.<br /><br />The National Standards Movement, originating in the late 1980s and 1990s under Bill Clinton’s leadership, purports to define the ways of measurement of knowledge performance, assessment and accountability of educational agencies like schools, with the emphasis being on superior performance in the context of global economic competitiveness. The motto: Make our students competent, make our country best!<br /><br />Educational goals should be broken down into manageable and attainable objectives. [This is an example of scientific-style reasoning or the application of scientific style thinking to social problems.] Curricular objectives should have internal standards or evaluative “rubrics” by which progress or attainment can be gauged. It should be clear how and when subject material or topics are mastered.<br /><br />Failure on the part of students should have a diagnostic function, that is, identify who needs help, in what areas, and how much. Likewise, teachers, schools and principals should be judged as failing or passing, and also with a view to eventual improvement. [Like corporate business accounting, student and school performance should be clearly measured and transparent.]<br /><br />George W. Bush concretized this movement by initiating federal legislation, entitled Leave No Child Behind, to ensure proper standards of literacy and numeracy and to guarantee that the structures are in place to ensure proper education for all. The correlative of this is periodic, universal and systematic testing to make sure of student attainment and schools and teachers live up to their obligations. Finding out who’s failing and why, and how to fix it, is part of the bargain.<br /><br />A new kind of “PTA”! – emphasis on performance, testing and accountability…<br />As with any scientific style, the application of exhaustive educational research is crucial. In line with this, there is the conversion of every skill or subject into a detailed list of evaluative standards or markers called “rubrics.” What is a good composition? -- Five characteristics. What’s a good research project? Look for the evaluative rubrics. How do you judge good writing or good math skills for someone in middle school? Again, what is key is spelling out specific and detailed measures of competency, successful performance.<br /><br />Student and parental choice has been another hallmark of this approach: student vouchers that enable students and their families to choose successful schools instead of failing ones and new kinds of schools, like charter schools – less encumbered by teacher unions and administrative red tape, privatized commercial operation of some schools, are examples of how choice and better quality for educational “consumers” might be attained. Getting results is the name of the game!<br /><br />Politically conservative writers and apologists have generally supported this emphasis on testable competency as the fundamental function of schools, in contrast to the liberal ‘permissiveness’ and too much freedom on the part of students. Basically they say that the nation has a stake in ensuring a well-educated citizenry and workforce. Students should know how to add and subtract and know the history and primary documents of the country, like the Constitution. Inculcating basic communication skills, like reading and writing, fostering math and science literacy, and making sure (by standardized testing!) there is a common fund of knowledge, is the goal and means of this approach.<br /><br />People:<br />The writings of former Secretaries of Education William Bennett and Diane Ravitch<br />E. D. Hirsch, Jr.’s famous Cultural Literacy is a persuasive argument for a common fund of knowledge that all students should eventually have<br />Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind and Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education are ultra-conservative diatribes against what they consider liberal permissiveness, especially in higher education<br />See “Leave No Child Behind” at the website maintained by the US Department of Education (ED.gov)<br />8. Nomads and Outlaws<br /><br />dissidents and rebels, deschooling advocates, civil libertarians, radicals, individualists, artists, revolutionaries, counterculturals, hackers, anarchists (or rather, polyarchists!)<br /><br />This is the tradition of anti-tradition, the contrarian stance of the romantics and the existentialists, the counterculturals of all ages and historical epochs…<br /><br />life is short! this fact is the only rationale! all fine sounding ideals are hooks!<br /><br />claiming one’s uniqueness and passion as the only way<br /><br />“to find the unknown, you have to go by way of the unknown”… if you cling to the known -- that is all you will ever know… safety will only guarantee…safety<br /><br />Society’s main aim in education is socialization, replication of itself, the transmission of the status quo (under the illusion of rosy change), conformity (how easily this is proved!), productive utility, replacement value… Nor real compromise is possible… adventurous individuality doesn’t ask permission, defines its own norms and standards, has the courage to hew its own path, create its own life, its own life-curriculum (own religion, own sexuality, own canon of taste and value, rhythm of learning, etc.)… radically listening to one’s deepest and most authentic impulses as opposed to mindlessly following the fads, rituals and handcuffs of convention… one has to create a horizon outside the orbit of society to truly grow… integrity, deep harmony with oneself, is not a given – it is an achievement born of struggle… one has to truly claim one’s life…<br /><br />Some heroes:<br />William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (what innocence and experience both teach, according to this aphoristic account by a premier Romantic poet)<br />Max Stirner, The Unique and Its Own (the book that Karl Marx thought was one of the most dangerous works ever written!)<br />Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and Thus Spake Zarathustra (for the intrepid and horizon-breakers only!)<br />Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (early existentialist defense of the solitary thinker versus any system that pretends to completeness)<br />bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress (subtitled, Education as the Practice of Freedom)<br />Morris Berman, The Twilight of American Culture and Wandering God: A Study of Nomadic Spirituality (where inspiration can be found in the desert culture of decline)<br />Laura Riding, Anarchism Is Not Enough (especially her unforgettable essay, “The Myth”)<br />Hakim Bey, TAZ: Temporary Autonomous Zone (why chaos and anarchism are not bad)<br />Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (a gigantic surgery of new patterns)<br />Jiddu Krishnamurti, First and Last Freedom (how society is always in a state of decay)<br />John Taylor Gatto, An Underground History of American Education<br />William Wimsatt’s No More Prisons – esp “A Gourmet Guide to Self Education”<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />9. Futurist Pedagogy<br /><br />A new tradition which has its roots in science fiction and political forecasting in scenarios, the futurism of the 1920s and the future studies of the 1960s, philosophic reflection on deep trends and technological explosion (e.g. genetic engineering)…<br /><br />Reality is constantly self-creating itself… perhaps a small group of tendencies steadily (and by jumps!) multiplying, intensifying, expanding, and constantly reconfiguring by the dual and simultaneous process of interiorization (growth of consciousness) and exteriorization (growth of scaffolding infrastructures and embodiments) that together propel the evolution of our species in the cosmos as it is lured to new realms of experience (which are continually being created)… what we concentrate on, we make real…<br /><br />Tools:<br />There has always been an interest in the future, from prophetic biblical dreams, to Greek and Roman oracles and omens, to divination via the I Ching and reading tea leaves to intriguing and perplexing psychic phenomena like clairvoyance. Since the early modern era with its emphasis on scientific experimentation, there has grown up a tradition of empirically based prediction (specifying experimental outcomes to be confirmed or disconfirmed, weather forecasting, etc.). More recently there has been, especially with the advent of computers, extensive use of graphic and complex simulation techniques. Modernity has also given rise to the utopian imagination and the alternative imagination. And of course science fiction represents a vast repertoire of depictions of the far and intimate future: alternative universes and parallel worlds.<br /><br />Imagination: conceiving of things other than what they are… Two kinds of imagination have been cultivated in the burgeoning field of futurist pedagogy: one, the critical imagination which surveys the fundamental tendencies in human nature which in fact construct the icons and technologies of every society from pyramids and cathedrals to personal computers and space probes (and thus creates the full spectrum of the human), and two, the visionary imagination which creatively envisions that which is deeply possible… between these two, it elaborates a montage of major scenarios that pose dramatic choices in and for cultural and human/species evolution.<br /><br />People:<br />Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution<br />Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality<br />Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, and The Future of Man<br />Karl Popper, A World of Propensities<br />Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture<br />Ernst Block, The Spirit of Utopia<br />Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, Nine Chains to the Moon<br />Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, The Futurists (ed.), and The Third Wave<br />Stanley Kubrick, “2001 A Space Odyssey” (film)<br />Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth<br />Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self (Buddhist teacher on mandala)<br />Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto” (notorious and famous essay on the coming hybrid forms of existence)<br />Donnella Meadows, “Which Future?” (Generation NExT, Winter 1995/96, Page 59)<br />Marina Benjamin, Rocket Dreams<br />Ken Wilber, The Atman Project<br />Robert Aitken, “Envisioning the Future” from his Original Dwelling Place<br />Charlene Spretnak, “News from Scotopia” from her Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature, and Place in a Hypermodern World<br />Michael Zey, The Future Factor<br />Bruce Sterling, Tomorrow Now<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />10. Religious Education<br /><br />Religious education can mean one of two, sometimes very different, things: the training in the dogma (beliefs) and rituals of a given religion or tradition (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc.) – or, the development of the spiritual sensitivity as it manifests in children and as it unfolds throughout life.<br /><br />Is it possible to have spiritual sensitivity without some kind of early religious training in a particular tradition? Good question! Suppose the early training is ultimately rejected in favor of non-sectarian spiritual exploration? What happens then? What’s best for a child growing up? How are “values” best taught? How can you not have religious training/education (things implicitly worshipped) as the child grows up? Is atheism a valid position? What are the goods and bads of religion, historically speaking? How can parents (and teachers) best respect and nurture a child’s innate religiousness? Isn’t some kind of “parochial” education, or narrowness, necessary till the child has wings of his/her own? But isn’t force always damaging? Or is it? What do you mean by force?… respect?… encouragement?… How is fanaticism best avoided? What do we mean by “enlightenment” today?<br /><br />There is endless catechetical literature in each religion’s tradition -- how to become a good Catholic or Jew or Ba’hai or Mormon…<br /><br />Lawrence Kohlberg has done important work in tracing the stages of the evolution of our moral sensibility.<br />Jerome Berryman has edited a tantalizing little book of conversations between Sam Keen and Jim Fowler entitled, Life Maps: Conversations on the Journey of Faith which extends Kohlberg’s profiles of life-stage maturation of basic attitudes<br />Evelyn Underhill, The Life of the Spirit and The Life of Today<br />Jiddu Krishnamurti, Flight of the Eagle<br />Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spiritual Literacy (an anthology of readings)<br />Arthur Magida and Stuart Matlins (eds.) How to Be a Perfect Stranger (2 vols.)<br />Dolores Leckey, The Ordinary Way: A Family Spirituality<br />Robert Aitken and David Steindl-Rast, The Ground We Share (a dialogue between two prominent traditions)<br /><br /><br />Dan Novak, University of Rhode Island (February, 2005)Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-23510033071206321032007-07-11T08:18:00.000-07:002007-09-14T09:00:26.928-07:00The Odyssey of Western EducationAll education is training or preparation for reality. But preparation for what reality?<br /><br />Different cultures build their educational systems around the demands of certain environments. Survival as a hunter-gatherer in the rainforest or in the arctic tundra or in a southwestern desert is very different from social inculcation in an ancient empire or medieval France or early industrial England or modern corporate-dominated, information-rich America. And what of the 21st century? - ecological disaster, political chaos, global networks, material plenitude, poverty, spiritual renaissance, interplanetary expeditions...? What will be the primary environment we as a species will be preparing for and/or reacting to?<br /><br /><br />Major Markers or Quantum Leaps in Collective Human Development: A Mapping of Global History<br /><br />1. Tribal..... nomadic groups, hunting skills, warriorship, shamanism..... (prehistory to 10,000 B.C.)<br />2. Ancient Empires..... kings, scribes, priests, caste-system..... (e.g., Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia)<br />3. The Greeks..... city-states, democracy, discovery of rationality, individuality.....<br />4. Christianity and the “Axial Era” or birth of Major Religions..... rise of non-ethnic, non-tribal religions claiming universality.....<br />5. Modernity..... rise of the scientific method, modern technology, nation-states and social/political revolutions.....<br />6. The Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s-70s..... the birth of planetary human awareness?<br /><br />[7. ??? THE NEXT STAGE IN COLLECTIVE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT?????????- 'Postmodernism'...'Information Age'... Automation...Community on a large scale reborn... Plenitude...Scarcity...Genetic Engineering... Nanotechnology...Interplanetary voyages... Riots...Terrorism... Pax U.N./Americana...Evolutionary/Cosmic Regression or Metamorphosis... Loneliness and the New Solitude...the Unenvisioned, Unknown and/or Unanticipated?........... More of the Same?……………………]<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Three worldviews dominant in Western culture: their traditions, typical methodologies and pedagogical applications:<br /><br />I the Classical/Conservative/Intellectualist Tradition (Greek rationality and logic)<br /><br />II the Scientific/Empirical/Behaviorist Tradition (applications of the scientific method)<br /><br />III the Experientialist/Consciousness/Awareness Tradition (any of the “inner” disciplines of concentration, meditation and/or contemplation)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />There were three symbolic manifestoes reflecting these traditions, three 'toolboxes' on how to investigate and learn about the world:<br /><br />(Note: <organon>in Greek means tool or instrument)<br /><br />1. Aristotle's Organon (~ 4th Century B.C.), his writings on logic and correct reasoning, especially deductive reasoning<br /><br />2. Francis Bacon's Novum Organum (1620 A.D.), an early modern celebration of the new scientific method of the more productive approach of inductive reasoning, testing and observation<br /><br />3. P. D. Ouspensky's Tertium Organum (the "third path or way") (1940 A.D.), an exposition of the "inner" path of awareness or development of consciousness of the Sufi mystic and teacher George Gurdjieff; representative of many Eastern paths (yoga, taoism, Buddhism) which, during the 1960s-70s, would be imported into and assimilated in the West.<br /><br /><br />The Main Idea!!!<br /><br />*WORLD (What is the world like? -- three different images!)<br />*THE MIND (What is the mind like? -- three different takes!)<br />*PRIMARY TOOL/DISCIPLINE/METHOD (three different toolkits!)<br />*LEARNING AND TEACHING (three different approaches!)<br />*PRODUCTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS (three different standards of success!)<br /><br /><br />A Brief Bibliography<br /><br />Bowen, J. (1972-81). A History of Western Education. (3 Volumes)<br />Csikszentmihali, M. (1991). Flow (The Psychology of Optimal Experience).<br />Cromer, A. (1993). Uncommon Sense (The Heretical Nature of Science).<br />Ferris, T. (1989). Coming of Age in the Milky Way.<br />Hanh, T. N. (1976). The Miracle of Mindfulness.<br />Hicks, D. (1981). Norms and Nobility (A Treatise on Education).<br />Kimball, B. (1986). Orators and Philosophers (A History of the Idea of Liberal Education).<br />Novak, D. (1996). The Curriculum of Consciousness (A History of the Disciplines From the Greeks to Post-Modernity). (Thesis)<br />Schubert, W. (1986). Curriculum: Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility<br /><br />[DN/1998, 2007]Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-7906108379215105612007-07-07T10:04:00.000-07:002007-09-03T17:27:49.513-07:00A Futurist Manifesto -- Notes From the TelecosmA FUTURIST MANIFESTO – NOTES FROM THE TELECOSM<br /><br /><br />An Exercise in “Far-Seeing”…<br />A Projection of Five Major World-Scenarios…<br />An Exploration of Some Global, Planetary, and Postmodern Themes…<br />A Preliminary Reconnaissance-Sketch of Possibilities…<br />For Philosophers and Babies only…<br /><br /><br />Preliminary Calisthenic. Nation states in the future will be like North Carolina or Wales or Szechwan: municipal, regional and/or local designations denoting an appealing charm complex of cuisine, language dialect, and history/tradition. Harmonious contact and thorough-going tourism will supplant the terrorism of non-contact and estrangement…<br /><br /><br />1. Major Regression. A widespread reversion to barbarism, mercenary armed forces, and a new feudalism; the triumph of fragmentation and chaotic heterogeneity; futuristic fiefdoms; nomadism…<br /><br />2. Empire. The triumph of over-unification, uniformity, and stimulating and/or pacifying homogeneity (McDisneys)… Global commercialism reigns; “the society of the spectacle” (large scale programmed events); wealth and power continue to concentrate, anonymitize and recede into the background while new foreground versions of bread and circuses capture and encapsulate our attention…<br /><br />3. Centrifugal Cultures. An array of postmodern tendencies and technologies will define varieties of posthumanity (“in situ futures”); the triumph of radical diversity and divergence [see Mark Dery’s Escape Velocity, and Paul Virilio’s The Art of the Motor]… “Humanity”, a temporary abstraction housing a congeries of different impulses and temperaments, makes a leap (a la Nietzsche) and becomes different species in an acceleration that befits an expanding universe… the confluence, exponentializing and hybridizing of technological streams… This will result in obvious (space “ships”) and unobvious (cyber-realms) multiple leavings of the home planet. [See Roger Shattuck’s Forbidden Knowledge, esp. Part Two, “Case Histories”, and Michael Zey’s recent The Future Factor.] There will be, for example, genetic, cyber-, and spacefaring hybridizations, as well as new strains and braided variations… Technology, as McLuhan saw so clearly, simply empowers all tendencies and abilities and raises them to new qualitative and exponential degrees, resulting in radically new and unprecedented environments… Different visions and worldviews, but more significantly, different actual in-process constructions of what it means to be human will be far more important<br />than nation state ideological quarrels and aggrandizements…<br /><br />4. Planetary Enlightenment. Balanced Human/Planetary Evolution. The triumph of harmonious differentiation and coordinate unification… Ecology and consciousness, technology and wisdom, evolving in tandem… A billion flowers blooming in a cosmic meadow… A collective human transformation a la Teilhard de Chardin, Arthur C. Clarke, Olaf Stapledon, Douglas Harding, and Tarthang Tulku [ See The Phenomenon of Man, Childhood’s End, Star Maker, The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, A New Diagram of Man in the Universe, and Time, Space, and Knowledge, A New Vision of Reality, respectively.] There is something deeply benign and much larger than our conscious intent being built (in stark contrast to a complete surveillance society wherein “intelligence” represents the convergence of an umbrella of police and military agencies worldwide, coupled with continuing technological refinement) -- say the intelligent and sensitive infrastructure of global community where no pain or distress goes unnoticed or unaddressed, a proper sensitive sheath or ensoulment of humanity… Perhaps this vision of the beloved community is an archetype of the fundamentalist, utopian, or prophetic imagination… Teilhard: “On the cosmic level, only the vastly improbable is true.”<br /><br />5. The Alternation Cosmology. The Steady State / Unsteady State Scenario. The world will never stop being “the world!”… No matter how sublime the possibilities of cosmic pottery, things will always and forever have a “surd” quality, an irrationality factor and/or unfathomableness, at their base… We are always off-balance. Here the world always changes and yet remains the same, remains the same but nonetheless constantly changes… Here, the Buddhist “samsara”, the merry-go-round of existence, the reincarnation of all tendencies and types, the world-structure and composition essentially the same… The world remains quintessentially defined by tension and the inevitable generation of opposites and contraries… Perhaps, as in Hinduism and Buddhism, some resolute and doughty souls emerge now and then from the existential morass and matrix of selfish desire, and its exquisite permutations of anguish, to the eternality and safety of a beatific state… Regardless, there have always been different “worlds” (‘maya’, ‘lila’, etc.) played out in exacting detail in what is ostensibly the same arena (for example, different kinds of death prepared for and consequently experienced). Our dreams prescribe our realities. Different temperaments, philosophies and worldviews have always defined different human species masquerading as one. The kaleidoscope of evolution tends to obscure the “eternal recurrence of the same.” Be different worlds as they may, tendencies will always develop in relative isolation from each other, and despite temporary dominances, will always create the conditions of instability. The world will always be volatile. The world will always be ec-centric, off-center, throwing us off-balance, making us forever vulnerable to minor, cometary and tidal influences and uncertainties. Towers of Babel, Twin Towers, and space colonies will always topple or eventually dis-integrate. Ultimately gravity will triumph. Upsurges of novelty will constantly upset the devil but not change the nature of the game. [See James Carse’s profoundly stimulating Finite and Infinite Games, and of course Herman Hesse’s classic The Bead Game. Also, see Simone Weil’s theologically incandescent Gravity and Grace.] So, Siddhartha the Buddha: ‘Existence is inherently unstable… Work out your salvation with diligence.” And Jesus, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” Or, as with some sages like Ramana Maharshi, Bankei, Krishnamurti, Thich Nhat Hanh and others, we should REALIZE that we are ALREADY in the wondrous kingdom, our deep home.<br /><br /><br />A postscript and brief commentary:<br /><br />The above represents a dramatic enlargement of scope, a suggested kind of inquiry, in which to consider the current maelstrom of tactical and instrumental-weaponry thinking. We need to have a vivid conception of a global community as a source, a hope, and a counter-vision to paroxysms of patriotism and paranoia. We need the quiet but unmistakable leavening of the “third force” of conscience, the wholeness of moral knowledge, that sees the loving solidarity we must journey to.<br />The above represents a context for thinking about:<br />- terrorism as an ineluctable feature of highly technicized societies [See Andrei Codrescu’s The Disappearance of the Outside, A Manifesto of Escape, and Robin Morgan’s prescient first chapter, “Everyman’s Politics: The Democratization of Violence,” in her The Demon Lover, On the Sexuality of Terrorism.]<br />- the preservation and growth of international law in the coming era of diffuse Orwellian conflicts<br />- refining the mechanics, soft and hard, of a complete surveillance regime with international police and other agencies dovetailing (versus truly intelligent and sensitive infrastructures)<br />- an array of postmodern critiques and incipient cultures forging ahead to new domains of experience<br />- the convergence of spiritual traditions that go far beyond denominationalism and sectarianism to the ‘mystical heart’ of religions; a hearty ‘no-religion’ that sees the sacred latent in all things<br /><br /><br /><br />Dan Novak, September 9, 2002Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-25789864533275722082007-07-06T12:59:00.000-07:002007-09-03T13:02:07.980-07:00Groupwork and Community BuildingA LEARNING COMMUNITY MANDALA (Dan Novak, 2000)<br /><br />COORDINATE #3: GROUPWORK, PARTNERING, TEAMWORK, COOPERATION, COLLABORATION, COMMUNITY-BUILDING<br /><br />The Group as an Energy Field, a Field of Interaction<br /><br />Every group is electric. Every group is a field of energy, even if the energy is weak. So-called 'empty space' is never empty! It is actually filled with feelings and perceptions! - with suspicion and expectations. What is the energy like in a given group? What is the nature of the psychic space between and among a given group? Reserved, curious, adventurous? Any group, of whatever kind, size or variety, has both tone and voltage. It has a tone: it is, by virtue of its interactions, aggressive, mild, accepting, exclusive, freely moving, rigid and constricting, boring, adventurous, playful, fearful, warm, curious, etc., etc. Whatever the atmosphere is, that's the nature, the feeling-tone of the group's energy. Some groups, as alluded to above, are static-y, dissonant, untogether, members out-to-lunch. Other groups have a high degree of interaction, coherence, resonance. Groups have a voltage level: some very weak, others high voltage due to powerful resistances and/or direction flow. What creates the charge, what dampens the flow, what excites the current?<br /><br />Group energy dynamics are often much more interesting than a given problem being addressed! Any group, like any live being, has a tone quality and an electric charge, weak or strong. The average energy field functioning of many if not most groups is like a 'scrambling effect' rather than a reinforcing effect as the groups struggle to solve their conundrums. This is part of what could be called the group 'beta-field' in which personalities and styles typically clash and collide. Playful/happy/productive aspects are often called group synergy. Such a group energy is in the direction of the group 'alpha-field' of mutual reinforcement and alignment and fertile harmony. In any case, a group's atmosphere is crucial to its success in whatever it undertakes. A group can become dysfunctional, can meander aimlessly, and explore excitedly, can have a direction, can be seized with a mission. There is always a guiding tone in a group whether created by default, an official mandate, a leader, a conflict, an engaging interest, and/or an immanent or transcendent principle (e .g., the mission of environmental or social justice).<br /><br /><br />Some Common Types of Groups ("forms of sociation"):<br /><br />irrelevancy (side by side but complete separation, no connectivity, parallel but no contact)<br />mere collection or mere spatial or geographic proximity<br />simple affiliation (simply being a member of a class or group)<br />chaos + and chaos -<br />conflict<br />domination by a powerful person or in-group<br />pack<br />clique<br />hierarchical or bureaucratic organization (often with hidden sub-cultures)<br />a sports team<br />Amerind or tribal ceremonial circles<br />true community and solidarity<br /><br /><br /><br />The Possibility of a Learning Community<br /><br />The essence, task and challenge of a class in a classroom in a traditional course, with authority located in the teacher and the text (representing the subject or discipline) is to convert that scene and setting into a truly voluntary and energetic learning association. Having a common objective guarantees nothing. Individual competition is the norm in our society. Sometimes the attainment of real teamwork is the highest achievement of a group. Sometimes genuine community. Usually a host of conflicting demands preclude this, but it can happen in an atmosphere of trust, respect and openness. Sometimes the catalyst is simple sharing - sharing what is personally meaningful. Sometimes rounds of self-disclosure, particularly of one's own vulnerability or weakness, provides the essential link or bond that creates a certain unmistakable comraderie. Sometimes a series of exercises designed to develop cooperation, as a felt sensation, helps. Sometimes deliberate community-building intentions and techniques change the atmosphere from everybody-for-themselves to a group consciousness. Sometimes only conflict and crisis provide the threshold for the group to transform into something special. Sometimes the commitment to each other only arises out of shared difficulties and collisions in a prolonged effort toward a collective goal. There is no magic recipe. Sometimes it's a galvanizing event, the pressure of an outside circumstance, that forges a true community.<br />By far the most common way groups are held together, other than operating in some authoritative structure (like an institution or business or governmental or service agency), is that of domination. By force of personality or talent one person dominates the activity of the group and creates its agenda, with members either docile or complicit. The greatest challenge for such a group is for the members to become truly equal, self governing and fully participating.<br /><br /><br />One useful model for intensive groupwork is M. Scott Peck's four stages of community-building: (See esp. his The Different Drum Chapter V)<br />1. pseudo-community - the mores that obtain in an officially constituted or organized group; surface pleasantries and interactions<br />2. chaos - the struggle for power and influence latent in any group<br />3. emptiness - the paralysis and despair of a group at the end of its tether<br />4. true community - a group that has gone through vulnerability to acceptance<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY on group dynamics, groupwork and community:<br /><br /><br />Willard Bion, Experiences in Groups (The Tavistock Model)<br />Martin Buber, I and Thou<br />Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power<br />*Jack Gibb, Trust (A New Vision of Human Relationships...)<br />*Robert Grudin, On Dialogue<br />**William Isaacs, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together<br />R. D. Laing, Self and Others<br />Harrison Owen, Spirit: Transformation and Development in Organizations<br /> and his Open Space Technology<br />Parker Palmer, The Company of Strangers<br />**M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum (Community Making and Peace)<br />and his, A World Waiting To Be Born (Civility Rediscoverd)<br />Georg Simmel, Sociology [Kurt Wolff, editor]<br />Jean Vanier, Community and GrowthDan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-10783554003520807722007-07-05T10:25:00.000-07:002007-09-03T10:28:32.776-07:00A Profile of the Empirical Scientific WorldviewTHE EMPIRICAL SCIENTIFIC WORLDVIEW<br /><br />Profile<br /><br />MOTTOES: 'Forward to the future!', 'no limits to progress!', 'progress is our most important product', 'understand Nature in order to command her'...<br /><br />TIME: the mid 17th century, 1600s C.E. (the common era) to the late 20th century<br /><br />PLACE: Western Europe and America, particularly the United States<br /><br />PIONEERS AND HEROES: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein<br /><br />MYTHIC FIGURE: Prometheus, the titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind; a figure symbolizing forethought<br /><br />IMAGE/FEELING/FLAVOR: the world is a gigantic machine whose intricate workings can be analyzed and understood by systematic testing (the scientific method), and which can described most elegantly and effectively by the language of mathematics... movement is everywhere! and seems to shake out into marvelous patterns (in the past referred to as the "laws of Nature")...the physical universe is the sum total of all the forces that scientists discover: from the realm of subatomic particles to the evolution of planets, earth-crust, animal species and to the similarly evolving and expanding galaxies...<br /><br />QUOTES: "And yet it moves!..." (referring to the movement of the earth around the sun - reputed to have been whispered by the defiant Galileo at his inquisition-trial).<br />"I value the discovery of a single even insignificant truth more highly than all the argumentation on the higher questions which fail to reach a truth." (Galileo)<br />"Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know." (Bertrand Russell)<br /><br />LIFE MAXIMS: Question authority! Be critical and sceptical. Don't accept things just because people or authorities say so. Common sense as well as authorities can often be very wrong! People once "knew" the world was flat, and that one race was superior to another. Think of statements more as hypotheses to be verified rather than as statements of fact. Nothing is more precious than independent thinking unless it is your right to be different. Don't be afraid to develop your own individuality. And remember, tolerance and suspension of judgment allow for a society that respects differences and at the same time promotes fairness, impartiality and objectivity.<br /><br />SOME CONTEMPORARY ADVOCATES AND CHAMPIONS: Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Hawking, Richard Dawkins; James Trefil and Alan Comer; Jean Piaget, B. F. Skinner, Marvin Minsky, Seymour Papert, Jerome Bruner and Howard Gardner<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Philosophy<br /><br />METAPHYSICS/NATURE/REALITY: We may never know the ultimate nature or constituents of reality, but what we do have is our unquenchable curiosity and the latest current scientific summaries of theory, testing and research: quanta of energy, "laws" of mechanics, evolution and genetic exchange, entities like quarks, black holes, etc. If something has a measurable effect, chances are it's real. Consistent and reliable measurement of something is an indication of its genuine reality. Mathematics is the best shorthand way of describing how events relate (correlate) to each other. There are no isolated or permanent substances. Nature seems to be a stupendously gigantic evolving totality. Nature in its immense diversity is final frontier. There is no "beyond" Nature.<br /><br />SURD/DEVIL/PRINCIPLE OF DISORDER/SOURCE OF ERROR: the fact that the universe is not a 'perfect', that is, the fact of the asymmetry or 'brokenness' of the universe rather than its perfect symmetry; the poet Lucretius' idea that atoms whirling in the void had a certain tendency to 'swerve'; Maxwell's 'demons', that is, entropic tendencies toward disorder or homogeneity; the Darwinian notion that Nature tends toward endless variability and profusion; drift, chance and/or random mutations; random 'fluctuations' in the cosmic vacuum or the sheer nothingness sea of quantum potentiality...<br /><br />Francis Bacon catalogued four perennial sources of human error, four 'idols' or basic causes of human misconception and mischief: 1. 'idols of the tribe', the generic human propensity to see order no matter what (e.g. palmistry or astrology), 2. 'idols of the cave', our individual blind spots, 3. 'idols of the marketplace', the abuses of language and human discourse, e.g. the notion that to every word corresponds an actual thing, 4. 'idols of the theatre', the unending parade of poorly digested theories that we get as a result of our education and/or conditioning by the media, continually changing fads and fashions.<br /><br />Bacon said in effect that ignorance of how our minds actually work, and of the habitual environmental influences to which they are prone, makes us liable to error. The critical and deliberate methods of science are the great corrective to the human condition of prejudice, rash judgment and vain speculation.<br /><br />THE MIND: the 'enchanted loom' of our brain cells, the circuitry of our bio-computers, the sum total of our neural pathways and networks, creating personal and collective images (models, simulations and holographic projections) of the outside world. The brain itself is a product of evolution.<br /><br />PRIMARY DISCIPLINE OR INSTRUMENT: the scientific method - putting our native ingenuity to work recording observed correlations, developing theories, testing them and making recommendations for future research, thus identifying interesting problems as well as solving them... the famous circuit of identifying a problem, framing an hypothesis, designing an experiment to check the facts, confirming or disconfirming the hypothesis and drawing tentative conclusions, perhaps - if really successful - for inclusion into theory... scientific procedure is the opposite of hit or miss... everything hinges on the application of right method versus random guesses or biased opinion or vain impossible-to-test speculation... the patient work of a community of inquirers over generations produces highly reliable knowledge that yields both prediction and the power of technology... science is the invention of invention, not just a particular discovery, but of how discoveries are made...<br /><br />ESSENTIAL COSMIC DYNAMIC: all is in constant motion and evolution; patterns of order are temporary achievements; there is no standing still...<br /><br />IDEAL PERSON: the person who embraces growth and change as an attitude toward life; a questioner, a sceptic; a person of competence - an expert, a specialist, a professional - one who applies scientific knowledge and/or the scientific method to his/her field<br /><br />IDEAL SOCIETY: a politically democratic, liberal and capitalist society, wherein individual freedoms, economic incentives, technological and social progress, the spirit of scientific inquiry (directed reason) and the ethos of self improvement are all protected by law, respected and celebrated...<br /><br />Core Disciplines and Historical Curricula<br /><br />Physics and mathematics are the premier disciplines, calculus (the mathematics of different rates of change) and Newtonian physics having been developed in the 17th century...<br />the 18th century saw innumerable applications of the 'new science', e.g. Laplace's celestial mechanics... the secularist movement known as the European Enlightenment which questioned traditional theology and philosophy as well as royal, noble and clerical prerogatives in the political sphere... amateur and patroned scientific societies with their important journals were founded... the new sciences slowly became a part of university curricula guided by Galileo's distinction between "natural philosophy" (physics) and "moral philosophy" (ethics and philosophy generally)... curricula developed along these two parallel tracks and culminated in the culture wars of the 19th century (literature vs. science in the famous Matthew Arnold-Thomas Huxley debate) and C. P. Snow's notion of 'two cultures', the literary-artistic and the scientific-mathematical, suspicious of and somewhat hostile to each other...<br /><br />If Newton saw the mathematical form of natural forces, Darwin in the 19th century saw that Nature as a whole had a history...the rise of historical geology (Lyell) and historical consciousness in philosophy (Hegel) gave rise to all sorts of sciences - linguistics, anthropology, sociology, etc. - because everything from language to cultures were now seen in historical perspective... late 19th century German/Prussian scholarship and laboratory science defined new standards of rigor in all the sciences and cultural studies, e.g. in the new science of psychology (which was originally called 'psycho-physics')...<br /><br />In the 20th century there have been numerous attempts to apply the spirit, methods, and results of science to education:<br /><br /> - Taylorism, crude assembly-line style analytical breakdown of tasks into efficient and manageable components,<br /><br /> - sophisticated Skinnerian behaviorist versions of the above,<br /><br /> - the triumph of quantitative models of psychological measurement: IQ (Benet) and educational testing generally (Thorndike),<br /><br /> - various trends in the teaching of science and math (e.g. the Sputnik scare in the 1950s led to Congressional reports like "A Nation at Risk"); various calls for higher national and uniform educational standards, especially on the primary and secondary levels,<br /><br /> - the rise of computer-assisted and based learning arrangements, the development of computer-inspired models of artificial intelligence, and the researches of cognitive and developmental science generally.<br /><br />While science as a cultural enterprise in the past has been associated with revolutionary and progressive movements (e.g. the European Enlightenment and Dewey's social progressivism) - and still has an orientation toward futurity, e.g. alliance with almost science fictionary and cosmic evolutionary themes (from Jules Verne and H. G. Wells to Carl Sagan and Olaf Stapledon) - more recently it has echoed some educationally conservative themes such as an emphasis on the "basics" (reading, writing and mathematics) and the cultural/civic significance of a common fund of shared knowledge (numeracy and scientific literacy). <br /><br /><br />Pedagogy<br /><br />STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT / DIVISIONS OF SCHOOLING: increasingly an emphasis on teaching in a 'developmentally appropriate' way, which has come to mean taking into account a host of relevant variables from 'age-appropriateness' to stage of cognitive and moral development to handicaps and socio-economic status as they constitute readiness in a student... the sequence of 'elementary-intermediate-advanced' refers both to chronological unfoldment and to levels of mastery of subject matter...<br /><br />THE STUDENT: student as empty container needing to be filled, versus student as active developing/unfolding organism...some versions of "scientific pedagogy" - e.g. the tradition from British Empiricist John Locke to behaviorist B. F. Skinner - see the student as a kind of 'tabula rasa' or blank slate which experience and/or deliberate conditioning shapes almost entirely; other versions, notably John Dewey in his classic How We Think, and particularly in the developmental camps, e.g. Howard Gardner, see the student as innately active and curious and reaching out to form images of, understand, and shape the world...<br /><br />THE TEACHER: poser of questions, rather than dispenser of answers; advanced researcher or scientist, one versed in the techniques of formulation and inquiry; an expert, specialist or competent professional; a coach<br /><br />TEXT: Nature itself is the primary text. ('The language of nature is written in the script of mathematics.' - Galileo) Geologists speak of the 'record' or story told by the strata of the rocks (or the events implied by the different layers and formations). Well tested theories are texts in that they need to be interpreted, and are guides to ongoing research and experimentation. A text is a piece of writing that has the structure: a CLAIM made and EVIDENCE that supports the claim. Finally, school textbooks should not only contain the latest updates of knowledge, but should be graded and sequenced for maximal and effective assimilation by students (they should be developmentally appropriate). School texts should be more keyed to questions and the processes of inquiry rather than to right answers. They should thus resemble lab manuals, specifying experiments and activities to be performed before conclusions are made.<br /><br />MAIN AVENUE OF LEARNING: According to John Dewey in How We Think the methods of science ape the actual processes of our everyday thought. For Dewey the process of thought is really the act of, or acts involved in, problem solving. Without disturbance and obstructions we would not think. The pregnant pause of thinking - no matter how brief - is actually the attempt at problem solving. And the hallowed history of science is nothing more than an outgrowth of the human-biological need to adjust to and accommodate the world and make it more satisfying.<br /><br />Humans and animals both encounter barriers of all sorts and find sometimes ingenious and sometimes inadequate ways around them. All organisms continually scan, monitor, measure and evaluate their environments as they respond to difficult and easy conditions. The art of pedagogy is to constantly set up challenges (prefabricated or simulated problems) to stimulate thinking and thoughtful responses (problem solving skills). <br /><br />So the best way to learn is to be actively involved, to be questioning, to be probing - not to be waiting passively for something to happen. The best way to learn is to become conscious of the problem solving sequences that constitute true science: pausing (not being too hasty in accepting something as automatically true without critically examining it); identifying problems (specifying goals, noticing discrepancies); the art of framing or defining problems (posing statements as hypotheses capable of being disproved!); designing ways of testing, comparing and measuring; and formulating conclusions cautiously, keeping generalizations in line with the evidence and data assembled.<br /><br />Perhaps, in the last analysis, the main conduit of learning is simply pattern recognition or concept formation, how we make that leap from data to seeing meaningful pattern... In some schools of cognitive psychology the key path to learning is attention, codification and skill. For other behavioral schools, it is the setting up of favored behavioral pathways. It's not what you say or think that counts, but what you do, are able to do and want to do.<br /><br />ESSENTIAL ACT OF LEARNING: is not assimilation, because that can be done automatically, but evaluation - the comparison of an actual state of affairs (the "facts") with a projected or desired state of affairs (a goal or "hypothesis")... if there is a gap or discrepancy, then there is the need for more thinking... if they fit, we are satisfied and say, "yes, good!" (we evaluate)... evaluation (judgments of yes, no or maybe) is a constant biological process... true learning sees a connection and says yes! (that is, sees it as part of a larger picture)...<br /><br />ELEMENTARY SKILLS: literacy and numeracy; problem solving; the arts of creative and critical thinking; the arts of collaboration or working in teams and groups<br /><br />SCHOOL: formerly a physical place or structure; whatever field or lab settings (and equipment) that support projects of inquiry; now and increasingly, the computer software and infrastructure that support the 'virtual' spaces and interactive communities which in turn direct the flow and evaluation of information...<br /><br />STANDARDS: excellent results in science and mathematics; success in emulating the procedures of scientific inquiry; success in research publications, in peer reviewed journals<br /><br />EVALUATION: assessment based on performance; demonstration of competency; mastery of material targeted or assigned<br /><br />Reading, Writing and Mathematics<br /><br />READING: In both science and reading, it is questions that guide the process. And expectations. Reading takes place on the base of a common structure of information, common referents, common expectations. But difficulties and gaps arise. Reading is like deciphering a code, a continual process of translation, a matching of texts and expectations. Beyond the simple skills of pattern recognition, it is active reading that breathes life into the process: it is having questions to be answered and purposes to be achieved. Reading is what animals do: they purposefully scan their environments: more sophisticated scanning is moving quickly over informational terrain looking for something (something that neatly fits ino an existing pattern, or something that creates a new pattern of meaning or gestalt). To have a problem, hypothesis or purpose is what initiates reading - not passing eyes over print or film or rocks.<br /><br />WRITING: is framing an hypothesis or propounding an idea or solution to a problem or controversial question, in other words, making a CLAIM and backing it up with strong supportive material or EVIDENCE. Presenting evidence can for example mean giving reasons for one's position. But more importantly, it answers the question, "How does one know?" The best kind of evidence, according to the canons of science, is drawn from the field - from direct sources, reports from the field, experiments, statistically valid samplings and observations, documented research studies, etc. Writing is not simply stating or asserting something. It is making a case, a clear and strong case for one's position.<br /><br />MATHEMATICS, OR PROBLEM SOLVING GENERALLY: All problems are "word problems". Beyond simple pattern recognition or simple arithmetic calculation (1 + 1 = 2), all problems are algebraic (al jebr in Arabic originally meant bonesetting, or uniting two parts that belong together). That is, there are knowns and unknowns in any givven situation and they are linked by a question. "How can I borrow the car if mom is for it and pop is against it?" "If you have an --- and a ---, how can you find a ---?" Pieces of information lying around does not constitute doing math. Neither does manipulating pieces of information. Nor does the presence of unknowns constitute mathematics. (Think of the untold unknowns that surround us!)<br /><br />A problem is a question, desire or demand that links certain knowns with certain unknowns. Mathematics does not have to do with numbers, or definite values, per se. Nor is it specific answers to specific questions. Or even right answers. It is the art of framing questions and setting up contexts in which hitherto unrelated things are related. It is the art of making connections. It is the art of discovery.<br /><br />Dewey was right in seeing everyday life as rife with problems, as a "force-field" of competing tugs, vectors and directions - complete with allies and enemies, desirings and avoidances. Everyday life is rarely neutral in tone; it is charged with competing values and significances. We problem solve as we breathe.<br /><br />Summary, appraisals and directions<br /><br />IN SUM, scientific pedagogy is based on the scientific worldview: it is 'objectivist' in that it strives for universal validity (as defined by universally aspired to theory) within the limits of state-of-the-art instrumentation. It is results or performance based and is oriented toward quantitative measurement (precisely defined or 'mathematical' relationships) and sees applications of the scientific method the surest road to human progress. The heart of science is an active stance toward Nature, and experiment is nothing more than actively posing questions (and solutions!) to Nature. Toleration of differences and freedom of inquiry are a must. Science is the extrapolation of everyday inventiveness, and modern technology is the codification and exponential acceleration of invention. It is perpetual restlessness and questioning. It is the desire for the complete knowledge and control of Nature and the systematic betterment of society.<br /><br />WEAKNESSES, CRITICISMS, PROBLEMS: too great a faith in science and technology as the engine and norm of human progress... lack of recognition of other valid modalities of knowing, e.g., art and religion...too sharp a division between scientific facts on the one hand and human values on the other... if (when!) the genetic code is broken (the 'genome project') who or what will decide its potential uses?... atomic bombs and frankensteins... <br /><br />STRENGTHS: the only thing that has cut through endless ages of superstition and human misery (e. g. disease) has been science... patient, humble, dogged inquiry and cumulative research... maintaining suspension of judgment till reliable evidence is accumulated... technology is not a menace but simply the amplification and focusing of human powers...<br /><br />PROMISING LINES OF RESEARCH AND VISION OF SUCCESS: continued brain research and continued study of computer-inspired artificial intelligence...robotics, droid mentors and a new privileged leisure/learning class... continued technological enhancement on all fronts, from miniaturization (e. g. of personal computers) to internet access and scholarship and conferences to distance learning possibilities... knowledge of all sorts will be 'embedded' in a thousand ways into an increasingly omni-smart environment...<br /><br /><br /><br />BIBLIOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW AND SAMPLING<br /><br />Classics of science: Copernicus to Harvey to Einstein (See the very readable and lovely little book, Great Scientific Experiments, Twenty Experiments That Changed Our View of the World, by Rom Harre)<br /><br />Empiricist and positivist philosophers of science: David Hume, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Karl Popper (British); August Comte (French); Ernest Mach and the school of Logical Positivism (German)<br /><br />Great popularizers: Carl Sagan (astronomy and anthropology), Stephen Jay Gould (essayist, biologist and paleontologist, apologist for evolution), Stephen Hawking (the lion-king of contemporary astrophysics), Richard Dawkins (polemicist, 'the selfish gene')<br />Alan Cromer, Uncommon Sense (a teacher defends the historically unusual nature of science as the only counterpoint to our native egocentricity: methods of investigation common to all that ensure 'objectivity' - a consensually corroborated external world), James Trefil, many popular books stressing both the accessibility and importance of scientific literacy for our culture; a collaborator with E. D. Hirsch, Jr.<br /><br />A host of 20th century pioneers in scientific pedagogy: Edward Benet and Edward Thorndike (the fathers of educational testing and measurement), B. F. Skinner (father of American Behaviorism), and Jean Piaget (pioneer in the study of intelligence in children)<br /><br />Jerome Bruner, Essays for the Left Hand (on creativity and intelligence)<br />Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind (the theory of multiple intelligences) and his The Unschooled Mind (How children think and how schools should teach)<br />Seymour Papert, Mind Storms (the computer game of logo as a natural way to learn) and his The Children's Machine (rethinking school in the age of the computer)<br />Lewis Perelman, School's Out (the exponential and hybrid possibilities opened up by the latest technologies and having profound import for what we call schooling)<br /><br />the n-number of patient investigators and researchers (see the ERIC, the Educational Resources Information Center system)Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-65563480557769705052007-07-03T16:16:00.000-07:002007-09-02T16:17:46.451-07:00Language and PowerLANGUAGE AND POWER<br /><br />Society is unfair. Society discriminates in good and bad ways. Society is made up of criss-crossing groups that each have their own power structure. A societal elite is a group – visible or invisible – that is top dog, whether by money, sex, or power, one that tends to control society as a whole and dictate the rules of admission and exclusion. Access to any group is restricted. “Losers” are those who don’t get into the club they want.<br /><br />Your language determines your success sphere in life.<br /><br />Your language determines the group you belong to and also determines the group (or club) you want to be a part of… If you can’t speak a certain language, you can’t get through a certain door… You must be able to speak a certain language before you can get into a certain club… There are very specialized audiences out there… geared to listen to very different things… Groups only hear things communicated in a certain way.<br /><br />“Power” is the ability to use one or more of these languages well and effectively, i.e. to have access to and be accepted into a particular club, with its unique set of rewards.<br /><br />There are, in the main, 5 types of languages, 5 primary clubs:<br /><br />n everyday life, informal, colloquial, family and friends, highly elliptical and often unconsciously poetic… anything goes…<br />n the professions: specialized languages and procedures, often very precise and exacting as part of the delivery of services or the disciplines of learning<br />n the elite power or wealth club: special winks and access codes; exclusive networks provided by big money and/or highly influential contacts<br />n the language of the citizen: critical thinking and action to achieve a publicly desired effect – like trying to influence a change in some major organization or institution (as with a governmental policy or a school board decision)<br />n the language of religion, a spiritual path, or deep personal practice: scriptural or ritual observances; the practices of silent awareness; the cultivation of virtues -- integral attitudes like openness, consideration, respect and reverence; dedicated action and/or deep human/social engagement <br /><br />(Conceivably one could add the language of art (and sports as well?): putting things in unusual contexts (poetry, painting, photography, film and theater), or strenuously participating in games that have no social consequences other than enjoyment; the appreciation of excellent and emotionally charged arrangement or performance.)<br /><br />LANGUAGE, MANNERS AND SCHOLARHIP<br /><br />“Language” in the most general sense includes the gestures we call manners. Knowing what to do in an acceptable sense, e.g. knowing when not to speak, and when and how to speak, is part of the communicative behavior that tells people, and especially the group (club) that is significant to you -- whether the street corner or the university or the board of business trustees or the backroom corridors of power – who you are and what you want. Most importantly, your demeanor -- the conduct of your language/manners – will ordinarily determine whether your request(s) are listened to, seriously considered, and finally granted.<br /><br />Scholarship, or the citation format used in specialized academic language, is the use of research procedures and protocols like APA and MLA. Scholarly format is basically simple courtesy, being considerate of your reader. Such form/format is a set of agreed upon manners that will enable you to especially impress the readers you want to impress. <br /><br />There are three kinds of readers: friendly, hostile, and neutral. There are friendly critics who are indeed interested in what you have to say and who strive to help you make your presentation (or paper or report or whatever) stronger and more persuasive. There are, however, hostile critics who will do anything to find fault with what you saying or asking for. There is no pretext is too small for them to criticize and find an excuse for your whole presentation to fail or not be taken seriously. And then there are those who are neutral, in the sense of being indifferent. That is, they are not particularly interested, involved or invested in what you have to say. They can be persuaded, but you have to show them why what you are saying is interesting, important or has useful consequences. <br /><br />Good scholarship or research is simply the courtesy of clearly showing some special someone(s) how you came to your conclusions, why you came to believe what you believe, and letting them know clearly the sources you used in arriving there. <br /><br />Good scholarly dress includes references to good, reliable and/or authoritative sources, how to quote, use or cite such sources in your paper, and finally listing them at the end. In other words, you leave a good and clear trail so that, if your paper is good, others can follow up on it. Or maybe you will in the future. Confused, muddy stuff won’t help you or anyone else. <br /><br />Good form, manners in the best sense, is consideration for the other.<br /><br />Making a presentation or writing a paper that has poor form is like going to an interview with non-matching, inappropriate, sloppy and/or dirty clothes. It’s like going to a job interview and not having any information about the job and its requirements.<br /><br />CLUES!!…. WHAT TEACHERS LOOK FOR TO SEE WHETHER YOUR PRESENTATION/PAPER IS GOOD OR MERITS FURTHER CONSIDERATION<br /><br />Most teachers, bosses, colleagues or committees have huge responsibilities and a tremendous workload. They look for external clues that tell them quickly or right away whether the paper they are looking at contains anything of value. Rightly or wrongly they look at appearance first. If a paper is riddled with spelling errors and poor English construction or is utterly disorganized (maybe how you go from one thought to another is totally unclear), they don’t want to go any further. They don’t want to waste their time. The student doesn’t have it together. Poor content, even poorer form. <br /><br />Then there are many internal (form, format) clues that tell an experienced reader a lot about a paper, presentation or performance …… <br />……….<br />……….<br />………<br />………<br />………<br /><br />PRODUCT VS. PROCESS<br /><br />THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FINAL POLISHED PRODUCT AND THE PERSONAL / CREATIVE / PRODUCTIVE PROCESS -- BOTH ARE IMPORTANT!<br /><br />A GOOD PRODUCT satisfies a series of task demands and rigorous (club) requirements… the form or packaging of the end product or outcome is a result of quality control, and satisfies the customer or audience for whom it is intended…<br />GOOD PROCESS is anything that helps you become aware of what you are doing (especially your habitual way of doing projects) and ways of doing your work better… Thus, knowing when you are starting off with a question, interest, irritation and/or fascination… ask yourself what your personal stages (5? – the I Ching has 64!) are of doing any project productively (e.g. what do you do to get out of being stuck?), being open to tips, helpful strategies and rules of thumb… above all, openness to sharing with peers and getting constructive feedback from mentors…Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-47776397126028052212007-07-02T16:04:00.000-07:002007-09-02T16:10:29.271-07:00Three Modes of InquiryTHREE WORLDVIEWS, THREE MODES OF INQUIRY, THREE KINDS OF WRITING<br />[Dan Novak, September 2002; rev. 11/03]<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />WORLDVIEW I - THE CLASSICAL CONSERVATIVE WORLDVIEW<br /><br />INSPIRATION: the philosophy and culture of the Ancient Greeks as the foundation of Western Civilization (circa 500-300 B.C.)<br />GOAL: intellectual clarity and sound reasoning<br />HOW ATTAINED: clear exposition of ideas and supportive arguments; logical progression and consistency of thought; proper conceptual or thematic development<br />PRIMARY TOOL: logic! - knowing how to construct a sound argument; careful following of the canons of good reasoning; Aristotle’s syllogism as the paradigm<br />STANDARDS AND EVIDENCE: the development of an argument or presentation via “the 3 c’s”: clarity (clear statement of what one wishes to show), coherence (solid organization in terms of a beginning, middle and end), and cogency (coming to a convincing conclusion). Good thinking and logical reasoning marshals sources and evidence in a way that gets to the essence of the matter or issue at hand, illuminates the basic pattern at work, and provides a complete and/or satisfactory explanation of reasons or causes of the event or state of affairs that compels the reader’s belief.<br />TYPICALLY: talks about essential characteristics and the basic cause of something<br />REMEMBER! “the 3 c’s”!<br />GOOD AND HELPFUL REFERENCE: Mortimer Adler and Mark Van Doren’s classic guide to reading the great books: How To Read A Book<br /><br /><br />WORLDVIEW II – THE SCIENTIFIC EMPIRICAL WORLDVIEW<br /><br />INSPIRATION: the great triumphs in mathematics, astronomy, and physics in early modern science (circa the 1600s A.D.) and the succeeding centuries of cumulative scientific experimentation and research<br />GOAL: to describe how something happens rather than why; to discover the dynamics and mechanics of behavior and events, and to formulate the (hopefully mathematical) laws that illustrate the functional relationships or correlations between events<br />HOW ATTAINED: the patient validation of a claim (an hypothesis) by evidence gleaned from the field (e.g., by experiment, statistical sampling, corroborated research, etc. – the opposite of unsubstantiated guesswork or unverified opinion)<br />PRIMARY TOOL: the rigorous pursuit and application of the scientific method: the canons and protocols of the scientific method (i.e., the cycle of hypothesizing, observation and experiment, tentative generalization, new hypothesis and research, etc.)<br />STANDARDS AND EVIDENCE: the scientific or research-based process of 1) finding reliable evidence (data, records, testimonies, etc.), 2) sifting through such sources along with a variety of interpretations, 3) critically evaluating them; and finally 4) making cautious and limited generalizations on the basis of such pains-taking research and comparisons<br />TYPICALLY: this approach tries to be mathematical and scientific, or at least field research based; it tries to isolate a number of relevant factors or variables at work in a situation and then tries to critically assign a weight to each factor, knowing that they all function in conjunction with each other as forces in a complex situation or event<br />REMEMBER! test your hypothesis! back up your claim!<br />GOOD AND HELPFUL REFERENCE: Booth, Colomb, & Williams, The Craft of Research<br /><br /><br />WORLDVIEW III – PERSONAL AWARENESS / GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS<br /><br />INSPIRATION: the “new age” life-affirming worldview coming out of the 1960s-70s that emphasizes personal awareness and global/planetary consciousness (and its many philosophical, political, social and religious experiments in community)<br />GOAL: to approach and enter into the heart of a phenomenon, text, event, or person and portray it, sympathetically and in depth<br />HOW ATTAINED: the journey of sympathetic understanding: direct contact; personal experience and/or in-depth encounter; passion, immersion, the risk-filled journey into the text, event, phenomenon or person, culminating in a richly resonant or illuminating experience; recreating or representing the phenomenon vividly enough to enable the reader to likewise join, understand and/or appreciate the inner life/soul/spirit of what is being approached<br />PRIMARY TOOL: sustained attention and care as in, for example, the discipline of meditation; the path of personally engaged commitment<br />STANDARDS / EVIDENCE: anything can be conceived as a clue in this kind of ‘physiognomic’ interpretation of a live subject with its bold expressions or delicate textures; the method or approach of drama – entering into the ‘inner situation’ of a person, text, event as alive and/or in the midst of a painful uncertainly or throes of a defining decision - patiently exploring its roots, distinctive flavor, and its ramifications – its “interbeing” with past and future (its significance)… a variety of outward revealing features and manifestations are sought on this journey that involves possible misunderstandings and dead-ends as well as dramatic breakthroughs<br />TYPICALLY: this approach looks for and highlights tones, qualities, and gestures, and seeks the living heart or soul of a phenomenon, typically through an existential zig-zag path of penetrating prejudices, misconceptions, images, and, frequently unnecessary resistances and barriers; one is frequently challenged to go beyond one’s own boundaries in this passionate quest and be open to a kind of mutual and often surprising discovery<br />REMEMBER! how does it feel! be alert to feeling-and-energy tone – within and without!<br />GOOD AND HELPFUL REFERENCE: Parker Palmer’s To Know As We Are Known (Education as a Spiritual Journey)Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2417614949800427752.post-9392782613179392772007-07-01T10:10:00.000-07:002007-09-01T10:15:22.860-07:00Some Rhetorical FormsSOME RHETORICAL FORMS CONNECTING WRITERS AND READERS Dan Novak, 2001<br /><br /><br />Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, usually in the forum of public speaking. But rhetoric can also be construed to mean the great variety of communicative forms - from short and humble to deep and exalted - that provides a bridge between an author's writing and a reader's attempt to understand.<br /><br />Just as there is a range of reading styles from glancing at / scanning / surveying, an array of analytical reading techniques, to in-depth, reflective or contemplative reading - there is a range of writing forms that go from brief observations and attempts to articulate meaning, to scholarly research, team projects and multi-media presentations. The following list is a sample of some portfolio styles of writing/response that give an idea of the many ways a reader can intelligently react to and decipher a given text. A "text" is any condensed meaning, verbal or nonverbal, that needs to be clarified or explained more fully.<br /><br />"LIVE SPECIMEN" "SHARD": a found object, image, artifact, icon, newspaper editorial, spatial or architectural arrangement, media piece, gesture or overheard conversation that expresses culturally significant attitudes or assumptions - a brief comment or commentary would try to pinpoint or elucidate or "unpack" what is going on (e.g. the socially conditioned gender discrimination of a five year old boy saying that 'girls can't be interested in hockey or being president(!)')<br /><br /><word>: a particularly rich, flavorful or expressive term that helps us understand an important aspect of human affairs or behavior (e.g., an authoritarian ruler, a sumptuous feast, an intriguing person, a vicarious experience, a montage of events, a prescient observer, laissez-faire economics, a political conservative, a religious mystic)<br /><br /><concept>: a key idea as expressed in the author's own words or special vocabulary (e.g., what Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget means when he talks about a child's cognitive development; what Neil Postman means by the term narrative; what Ivan Illich means when he says that deschooling our society in this age of universal, mandatory schooling is a critical and important task)<br /><br /><distinction>: a key opposition or contrast, one of which an author is arguing against (e.g., Holt's distinction between learning and schooling, Tapscott's contrast between broadcast teaching versus interactive learning, Postman's discussion of the need for a 'metaphysics of schooling' against the prevalent 'engineering' technical-fix approach)<br /><br />"COMMENT": to briefly make an observation on or state a reaction to a piece of writing<br /><br />"A SENTENCE THAT STRIKES YOU": a particular sentence that strikes you personally as significant, and a brief comment or a brief explanation as to why<br /><br />"THINKING OUT LOUD" ("stream of consciousness"): rapidly writing down or going with the flow of your own feeling associations without much organizing, editing or critically evaluating what you're saying; a way of getting closer to what you actually think<br /><br />"JOURNAL": an attempt to record your personal observations on a given topic/task/problem in a daily, weekly or systematic fashion<br /><br />"SUMMARY": an attempt to convey the author's meaning briefly, informally and usually in your own words<br /><br />"OUTLINE": a skeletal X-ray of a piece of writing... using indentation (space!) and key phrases to illustrate the structure of main and supporting points [see the famous 'Harvard outline' format: I...II...III..., A...B...C..., 1...2...3..., a...b...c...]<br /><br />"ARGUMENT": laying out the reasons for or against a certain stand or thesis (e.g., 'Standardized testing is harmful [or beneficial] because...')<br /><br />"DISCUSSION": you and the author are on equal terms, dialoguing as it were - you try to explain or explore at length what the author means................... to honestly consider an author's ideas and why they are important (or wrong!), what the consequences are of accepting the author's point of view, the implications of what the author is saying, what's exciting or interesting about what the author is saying, where it may lead, etc., etc.<br /><br />"RESEARCH PAPER": a study of a topic, theme or problem, done by citing previously done studies, comparing and evaluating, and interpreting results to illustrate a thesis or come up with a substantiated conclusion. Provides a discussion of studies and a list of reference sources as a scholarly 'trail' for the reader or researcher who comes along later.<br /><br />"PROJECT": a complex task that involves a variety of disciplines or modes (e.g. field research and critical analysis) and often a number of people working as a team to complete over time, the outcome often presented in a collaborative report or multi-media presentation<br /><br />"EXPLORATORY (PHILOSOPHIC) PAPER": an attempt to call attention to a new phenomenon or probe the wider implications of past or recent conceptual work; an attempt to frame a new way of looking at things, articulate a vision or new way of addressing old or unknown problems... a determined attempt to understand in depth...<br /><br />"REFLECTIVE OR CONTEMPLATIVE" WRITING: not meant to prove anything, but to simply encourage self-reflection or awareness in relation to life's deepest questions... thinking or pondering in a slow, quiet listening mode, often in a situation of aloneness...Dan Novakhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03114832656153934284noreply@blogger.com