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<br><div><div>On Jun 19, 2010, at 7:09 AM, Stephen Downes <<a href="mailto:stephen@downes.ca">stephen@downes.ca</a>>t wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">We don't (as we all know, right?) consume an education, but our</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">education system has become based on the model of consumption, so much so</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">that even the critics of it can articulate only about how hard it is to</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">create the consumable.</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">This is why we - George and I and David and Alec and Dave and others - are</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">working on opening up education. Not because we think it will reduce the</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">cost of the consumable to zero, not because we think we can package and</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">deliver an education more cheaply and more efficiently, but because we</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">understand that, unless an education is open, unless it's precisely *not* a</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">consumable, it's not an education at all. And while *this* observation, that</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">education is not a consumable, is hardly new or unique, our approach to it</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">appears to have been (though you know if you go back into the history of</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">education you can find a great deal about self-organizing learning</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">communities and the pedagogies based on such models).</font></p> </blockquote></blockquote></div><br><div><br></div><div>In <i>The Education Bridge</i>, <a href="http://www.educationWorlds.com/bridge.pdf">www.educationWorlds.com/bridge.pdf</a> the notion of induction is developed, along with the related notions of non-locality and emergence. </div><div><br></div><div>A thesis is framed. Our educational system is an induction machine. </div><div><br></div><div>This induction is backward looking and centered on serving the supply system. It is not anticipatory, and thus the education system does not have the properties of an intelligent system. There is a denial that individuals have unique qualities. It is within these unique qualities that one sees "intelligence". </div><div><br></div><div>We trace this limited systemic nature of the current educational philosophy to Dewey, Darwin and Newton. We see education is being anti-democratic in its practice and consequences. It carries the "big lie", that the physical universe is deterministic. This lie then allows a few to pretend as if they are in control. It, the educational system, has the nature of a fundamentalism. It, the educational system, is hijacking the democracy. it does this while also providing us with great benefits. </div><div><br></div><div>The distinction is then made that there is a supply mechanism called advertising which allows supply to control demand. The systematic violation of the individual is then enabled. </div><div><br></div><div>Part of the hijacking of the intention of the individual by these mechanisms requires our citizens to be ignorant about the nature of individual self. The action-perception cycle is interrupted to such an extent that the individual (sometimes) becomes incapable of understanding the self. </div><div><br></div><div>We give up the self so as to be a participant in a consumer based social structure. The educational system assists us in giving up our expectation that intention be expressed in a pure form. In fact we are taught that intention is necessarily evil, unless shaped by the supply side. This "teaching" is part of the fundamentalism. The media and our literatures goes to great lengths to given evidence to this assertion about individual intent. We are fed a continuous supply of evidence as to our unworthiness. We accommodate this feeding as we become ever more incapable. This process is one that must eventually reach the point of absolute absurdity. </div><div><br></div><div>Maybe we are now "here". Maybe it is time to turn the corner and evolve in the opposite direction, to re-establish the concept of governance by the People and also to not over react. Might we reform without extreme reaction?</div><div><br></div><div>The Education Bridge makes the proposal that teaching using supply side methodology creates acquired learning disabilities, specific at first (1950-1990) to mathematics and science, but now non-specific. The entering freshman are rejecting the very notion of learning anything. They wish to just graduate with the credentials that allow them to earn a living and consume. We pretend to teach and they pretend to learn. </div><div><br></div><div>We move away fro the notion of a meritocracy. The remediation to this trend is also proposed.</div><div><br></div><div>The remediation is to develop Socratic,constructivist and participatory pedagogy that asks the individual student to demand specific topics to be discussed, rather than to be forced to consume the material in a specific order and using a very rigid syllabus. If the demand is from a desire to understand self, then this demand will lead to capacity to serve self and others. </div><div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 10px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; ">how hard it is to</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 10px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; ">create the consumable.</font></div></blockquote></blockquote><br></div><div><i>The Education Bridge </i>suggests that we no longer create a regime of consumables that are forced on the student, but rather develop a set of focus topics, the complete set of which would be the "curriculum". There is guidance, not all notions of "supply" are lost! The framework for curriculums is provided, but choices are allowed. </div><div><br></div><div>We then allow students to select which of these consumables he or she wishes to internalize and then to re-express. The re-expression involves an induction, the localization of non-locality and the emergence of creativity. The methods that might support this "demand pedagogy" are illustrated in the <i>Bridge</i>. </div><div><br></div><div>The objective we may choose to share is to balance a system that is now 95% supply side and create a system where a 50-50 balance between supply and the aggregated pure intent of individuals. How is this aggregation to occur, so that we as a society anticipate the future? The answers we give are surprising at first. </div><div><br></div><div>We would be pleased if this list would focus on this proposal, as stated at <a href="http://www.educationWorlds.com">www.educationWorlds.com</a>. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></body></html>