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Marion Brady is a familiar figure to education listserv "lurkers."
He is a passionate advocate of using "the nature of reality and human
experience" as curriculum -- the ultimate in hands-on learning. "Each
of us already has a conceptual model of reality. I advocate merely the moving
of that model into consciousness where it can be thought about, played with,
organized and systematized, and alternatives considered," Brady says.
"How well can 10-to15-year-olds handle such complexity? Well enough."
A good example of Brady's challenging and sometimes controversial approach
to teaching and learning appeared in the magazine Transecence (Vol.
XIX, #1) and was later posted by Brady on the Integrated Teaching listserv
moderated by the Appalachian Regional Education Lab. If you find his ideas
intriguing, visit his website linked here.
The 'Here and Now' as Curriculum
Of all the problems of general education, the most difficult seem to be
those having to do with the curriculum. We are decades into an information
explosion, and we still have no criteria to tell us what new knowledge to
teach and what old knowledge to discard to make room for the new. We know
that ideas vary enormously in usefulness and power, yet we have not decided
which are most significant and deserving of attention. We are charged with
helping our students understand a world in which everything is related,
and we represent that world using disciplines which have little or no apparent
relationships to each other.
That we do not yet know how to select, organize and integrate general knowledge
stems, I believe, not from the complexity of the task but from our refusal
to approach it from directions other than those suggested by the traditional
academic disciplines. The fundamental purpose of education is to help us
answer the question, "What's going on here? What is the nature of reality
and of human experience?" To assist us, the academic disciplines were
devised. Now, however, the disciplines loom larger than the reality they
were designed to explore. Means have become ends. We are more comfortable
with our textbooks than with the reality the textbooks are supposed to explain;
are more at home in our classrooms than in the world outside.
Trying to deal with the curriculum's inadequacies, we experiment with disciplinary,
interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary strategies.
Even those educators who believe that the needs of individuals or the problems
of society should be the focus of general education talk of "bringing
the perspectives of the disciplines" to bear on their concerns. Our
thinking is so structured by the disciplines that we can hardly imagine
alternatives to their use.
But there are alternatives. Forget the disciplines for a moment. There is
a place for them in formal education, but in the search for a philosophically
and theoretically sound general education curriculum, they have not served
us well. Consider instead the merit of the simplest possible approch to
the study of reality: the direct study of our perceptions of it.
How do we begin? In the same way those in the Western cultural tradition
have sought understanding at least since Copernicus. We identify parts.
We note the relationship of the parts to each other and to the whole. We
follow the movement of parts and whole to grasp as best we can, causes,
effects, meaning and purpose. And we build conceptual models reflecting
this--outlines, guides, frameworks of words and symbols representing parts
and processes, structure and function. There are other ways to seek understanding,
but we use the methods we know.
Helping adolescents build mental models encompassing and organizing reality
may appear to be a task too formidable to undertake. I offer Figure 1 as
evidence that it can be done. [Note: I can't reproduce it here, but a version
can be found on page 31 of the 1995 ASCD Yearbook, or several screens into
my homepage ( http://ddi.digital.net/~mbrady
).
Each of us already has a conceptual model of reality. I advocate merely
the moving of that model into consciousness where it can be thought about,
played with, organized and systematized, and alternatives considered.
How well can 10-to15-year-olds handle such complexity? Well enough. Here
is one of many possible versions of a core assignment which can lead students
to develop a formal conceptual model of reality:
"When we say we understand something (say a clock) we usually mean
that we (a) can identify its pieces, (b) know how the pieces fit together,
(c) know how the whole thing works when it's assembled, (d) know what the
thing does or what it's for.
"Choose some familiar class of thing (bicycles? insects? flowers?)
Using reference material, put together an outline for a report designed
to help someone unfamiliar with that class of thing understand it. Be sure
you've dealt with a, b, and c above."
_______________
"Okay. Your school is a 'thing.' Other schools are similar things--things
which can be studied and understood in the same organized, systematic way
as whatever you chose for the above activity.
"Put together an outline for a detailed report designed to help someone
unfamiliar with schools to understand them. Be sure you've dealt with a,
b, and c above."
What will gradually take shape as the above assignment is pursued is a formal
model for the description and analysis of a society. Think of the school
as a kind of small country. It has a size and shape which can be described
in detail and with mathematical precision. The exact nature and location
of its internal features can be noted. The usual geographic distribution
of its citizens and other demographic data can be mapped, quantified and
represented graphically. The school's tools, technologies and infrastructure
can be identified, described and analyzed. The citizens' habits and customs
can be traced (and the descriptions thereof can put incredible demands both
upon students' powers of observation and their ability to translate those
observations into precise language).
Formal and informal patterns for social control, for displaying status,
for making decisions and for other activity can be traced and analyzed.
Shared attitudes and assumptions, those which make it possible for the school
to function (always present but almost never verbalized), can be identified
and clarified and their possible origins discussed.
When all the pieces are in place, questions can be raised about relationships
among them. How, for example, are perceptions of the relative power of various
individuals created or reinforced by the physical organization of the school?
Of classroom furnishings? What are the bases for status within the school
and within classes, and what are the costs and benefits of these bases?
What kinds of leadership are exercised? In which situations? How do the
citizens' attitudes and patterns of action change as various instructional
tools and techniques are used? How are assumptions about self and others
related to ways the school is organized and functions?
Other assignments can explore the dynamics of change: Alternative shapes,
sizes, locations and furnishings for the school and for classrooms can be
imagined and the possible consequences of each traced. Hyotheses can be
generated about the probable and possible consequences of various technologies,
of, say, tying together by computer or fax every desk, home, library, school,
church, business and social service agency. New tools for transport or for
communicating can be invented and their potential impacts on the school's
physical form, demographics, student patterns of action and perceptions
of reality can be considered.
Mind-stretching work like this requires no textbook, no equipment,
no larger budget. It requires a reasonably self-confident teacher and a
willingness to experiment.
Mind-stretching work like this requires no textbook, no equipment, no
larger budget. What is required is a reasonably self-confident teacher and
a willingness to experiment. The first such effort might last only a few
days, but the teacher who keeps at it will eventually discover that just
about every major aspect of human experience manifests itself in some form
in the school, where it can be dealt with first hand. It will become apparent
that the here-and-now is a textbook far richer, far more powerful, more
relevant, real, useful and intellectually stimulating than anything a publisher
can produce. (This is not to say that formal instructional materials would
not be of great value. Schools could develop their own situation-specific
reference materials that succeeding generations of students would find useful.)
That reality itself is appropriate for study is, of course, not a new idea.
Eighty years ago, Alfred North Whitehead observed that "the secondhandedness
of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity." John Dewey had
much to say about learning by doing. The whole of the inquiry movement was
a recognition of the teaching power of direct experience. Most of us recognize
that the really complicated things we know we learned through active involvement.
Thoughtful educators, research and common sense testify to the power of
"hands on" experience. Nevertheless, traditionalists will almost
certainly find much to criticize in what is being proposed. Some will consider
it trivial. How, they will ask, can such a focus of study so mundane be
justified? Steeped in tradition and textbooks, it will be difficult for
many to accept that what is being studied is signficant, that the here-and-now
is in fact what life is all about. And the subject matter is real, with
all the attendant implications of that fact for relevancy and student interest.
Finally, to study with thoroughness and precision some small manifestation
of reality is not to ignore the wider world. The student who studies immediate
experience is creating a comprehensive conceptual structure--a model of
reality--which allows events and conditions in the larger, parallel world
of work, of neighborhood and of nation to be systematized and thereby better
understood.
Other, probably more determined critics will maintain that what is being
advocated lacks balance, that it is weighted toward certain disciplines
to the neglect of others. They should note, first, that what I am describing
is a general education core, not the whole of the curriculum. Such a core
would leave ample time for specialized study of the traditional disciplines.
They should also recognize that life itself is not "balanced,"
is not equally concerned with the subjects we happen to have chosen to require
students to study.
The traditional "equal time" curriculum has helped to create a
citizenry of specialists who are often unable to see the larger picture,
unable to discern the trends of the era, unable to grasp the relationship
of their lives or their work to the whole of human experience, unable to
think about significant moral or ethical issues their specialties raise,
unable to maintain a balance between personal benefit and civic responsibility.
What we should be seeking is balanced people, not an arbitrary, artificial
balance of subjects in the curriculum.
The traditional "equal time" curriculum has helped
to create a citizenry of specialists who are unable to grasp the relationship
of their lives or their work
to the whole of human experience.
A few critics will have no philosophical objections to what I am suggesting
for a curriculum--may even find my proposal intriguing--but will be convinced
that it cannot work because school hallways, classrooms, cafeterias and
playing fields do not provide sufficient depth of experience for continuous
intensive and worthwhile study. Those who object on those grounds are not
in touch with the complexity of everyday life. They should give thought
to the old saying, "A fish would be the last to discover water."
Every school is filled with endless opportunities for studies in science,
mathematics, geography, and every other discipline, at whatever level of
complexity is desired.
A conceptual model of reality relates all academic disciplines, identifies
vast and important areas of study not now part of the curriculum, and provides
criteria for selecting, organizing and integrating the content of general
education. Perhaps its greatest value, however, lies in its capacity to
create new knowledge. The basic process by means of which knowledge is generated
it through the exploration of relationships. A formal conceptual model of
reality provides enormous banks of concepts which are potentially relatable.
It is necessary only to juxtapose two or more of them and speculate about
the nature of their intersection.
Is what I am advocating controversial? Who will argue that we should NOT
study our perceptions of reality? That such models should remain unconscious
and unexamined? That for the study of reality a model is not needed? That
such a model should be random rather than organized and systematized? That
a single model is more complicated than the collected, unintegratable models
of the various disciplines? One could perhaps argue that the idea, although
utterly simple, is too unorthodox to implement. That may very well be true.
But how much sense does it make to adhere to something which is not working
simply because it is familiar?
Broad interest in the content of the curriculum is just now emerging. Loud
voices are insisting that the solution to curriculum problems is simply
to teach the traditional academic disciplines in disciplined ways. Other
voices call for the curriculum to support this or that political agenda,
help in the cure of various social ills, or focus on the distinctive needs
of individual students. Some think the important curriculum issues have
to do with race or sex, with course distribution requirements, with the
mix between classical and contemporary content or between process and content.
Of all prescriptions for what ails the curriculum, those most appealing
in eras of uncertainty are those which push "cultural literacy,"
those which demand that the young know what the elders know. It is, of course,
essential that every society have a language of allusion, else it cannot
function. To stop at that however, to base a curriculum merely on what the
"educated" know, is suicidal. The static nature of such a curriculum
would make its implementation relatively easy, but while we settled back
to enjoy comfortable communication with our clones, the sociocultural systems
within which we must function would become increasingly mysterious, propelled
by the dynamics of social change. Eventually, our good conversation would
become quaint. Nothing more.
It is not what the educated know, but what the educated OUGHT to know which
should structure the curriculum. As any good conceptual model of reality
will demonstrate, there is a great deal of difference.
[Note: If I were writing this today, I'd make it clearer that the transition
from a study of the school to a study of anything else is a simple and easy
one, that a model of reality is, well, a model of reality.]
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