What is Education?- A thread on learning and teaching, the creative process, practice

[marct]

Hi Sam,

Worse though...<sly look> a Canadian called her a liberal.

Well, at least it's with a small "l" .

The strategy of education in our house is that the world is our school house. We offer options (that we can live with) that have to do with learning. We have over 4K books in the house and ANY of them can be read. Right now one of my ten year olds is reading a college text on computer security. It seemed interesting to him. The other is reading the HALO (game) series of books. Next week? Who knows. Museums are where history lives. Lessons in engineering are learned while clearing brush out of the back yard. We've been having a bunch of discussions about the kinetic impact and how the body is engineered regarding their activities in Tae Kwon Do. Math is the language the describes the world. We evaluate the statistics given on the news. I think marct was alluding to a similar experience when he was growing up.

Yup. We didn't have quite as many books when I was growing up; maybe 3k or so, but I was encouraged to read anything that caught my attention. At the same time, a lot of the dinner discussions would cut off with something like "ah, okay, go read Machiavelli's The Prince and we'll take this up again tomorrow". Because both my mother and grandmother had worked at the Royal Ontario Museum, I used to go there all the time, and I knew a lot of the curators and got to look at the stuff in storage.

I think that I probably had more exposure to the Arts than your kids are getting, Sam, but that's probably because my father had been a professional musician (before becoming a systems analyst and consultant), my mother taught acting, and my grandmother was a professional portrait painter who lived in a weird, inner-city Artists Colony .

When talking about educational philosophy I have a basic criteria (agility, endurance, strength, and wisdom). This is applied to walking, running, school, martial arts, reasoning, basically living. In my laboratory there is a sign hanging that says "cognitive endurance required". A philosophy is different than principles of living as suggested by Benjamin Franklin (he had 13, I have 5, honor, honesty, courage, courtesy, and respect). Words have power. Reflect on the meaning of them as verbs and visualize what it means to embody them and changes occur.

Sounds pretty similar, although mine is a touch more metaphysical.

When looking at professional military education I don't see the flexibility I would like but then again the product is supposed to be specific. I don't think the military wants to see a bunch of fully self actualized dream heads walking around talking about the meaning of existence. The military as an organization wants the smartest life takers and heart breakers they can find or create. Then they argue about the definitions of heart breakers and life takers.

While the "product" may be supposed to be more specific, there does seem to be a concern that it may be the wrong specificity or, if not "wrong", then a less than optimal one . I suspect that's why documents such as the ALDS have glomed on to the word "adaptability"; they don't really know what it means, but they will know it when they see it.

One of the reasons why I truly appreciate the pre-Dewey educational system is that it has an inherent metaphysics built into it that is opposed to the mass market, consumerism of the Fordist model. Basically, it requires people to be the best that they can be. The downside, of course, is that it can be "elitist" in the worst sense of the term. All the same, you can get away with being a "dream head[s] walking around talking about the meaning of existence" as long as, when the crunch came, you can act decisively. Remember, this is the same system that gave rise to the phenomenon of the "professional amateur"; someone with all the skills and aptitude to perform a role who does it for love or honour .

So, what type of a metaphysical model should PME develop over the next, say, 20 years?