I think a holistic approach is needed to improve education it isn’t simply about schools and school teachers. To me it includes - Unemployment benefits Maternity leave (12-18 months) Step in units (people to help out during a crisis) Family allowance and child related tax breaks Social housing Free at entry healthcare Programmes to promote life/work balance Free or subsidised high quality early childhood education (pre-school) Decimalisation / regulation of drugs Free or subsidised high quality adult education (unemployed people get more benefits for attending) An across the board approach that tries to give everyone the possibility of achieving their educational potential. What are your ideas?
We need a curriculum that will produce the effects you propose. It is the current curriculum that produces the effects we see now. The curriculum I am talking about is not in the histories, social sciences, formulas or theorems that we teach but the underlying existential view. The lesson of competition for example discourages the idea that the weak are worthy of mainstream attention. It is the winners that succeed. This is just one example of the types of fundamental lessons being taught right now. Another fundamental disconnect is that we are taught to conform perform to the producer/consumer model. As soon as something becomes institutionalized it starts acting insanely. I would ask a question of those who seek to reform the system, don't you think that our current learning should be considered suspect by virtue of the current product? The solutions to our problems are creative ones and it is not the current establishment that will effect meaningful change in the future, but the investments of our children's children. Education that is conducive to cultivating creativity in the human creature would be hand eye coordination, physical fitness, this includes education in self induction, martial art, survival training. Language, communication skills, this includes math and science. The arts, this includes engineering and the like. Social sciences, history, politics, government, law, record keeping, and the like are antithetical to the creative nature of the human species.
Thank you dope you helped me remember something, another idea that I’ve posted about before which is – The banning of all advertising aimed at children. Again it might not seem relevant to the issue of education but to me it is not just important what is taught as what isn’t taught. Advertising aimed at children teaches the wrong lessons.
Destroying the corn lobby. Though for the record I think the ideas as a whole fall under the broader category of "how to improve society/country"
>holistic approach I suggest looking up Ken Wilber His holistic approach is deep and he avoids many of the pitfalls that often characterize shallow holistic ideas (which are just boring leftist agenda wrapped up in big words. )
Could you explain the difference between "deep holistic" and "shallow holistic." I've not heard that distinction. The term "leftist agenda" has so many connotations these days it's impossible to know which you are referring to. .
mai I did as you suggested and wasn’t that impressed - the convoluted and often tortuous arguments seem to go around in circles and there purpose seem to be a desire to confuse rather than enlighten. Integral Politics http://www.integralworld.net/wilpert0.html Although cut through the labyrinthine prose and the argument seems simple if not simplistic it’s a basic black and white view of a far more complex situation. And the examples he cites of ‘third way’ thinkers (Tony Blair and Bill Clinton) show how politically naive he is. * Ok so to him there are ‘liberals’ that think one way and ‘conservatives’ that think in another way. The left blames the exterior and the right blame the interior. The interior as described by him is – The exterior as - But think about it and that doesn’t make sense, there are people on the right that sign up to all those exterior ideas and is he really saying that the left have no values or morals to pass on? Anyway Ken doesn’t seem to commit himself to any answers in this article, its more of a statement of the supposed problems which I’m not sure he understands. * But here is another article where Ken’s Intragal politics is explained a bit more clearly. http://in.integralinstitute.org/live/view_ipolitics.aspx Its got Ken’s name at the top but seems to have been written by Corey W. deVos (http://integrallife.com/member/corey-devos/profile) supposedly based on audio data from Ken. The ideas are presented as if Ken is revealing some new truths rather than things people have been discussing for years I mean I remember arguing as a teenager whether humans were progressing through stages of attitude and intellectual development (like a child growing to adulthood) it a really common viewpoint and argument. Kens only contribution seems to be to give the stages a pretty colour, (magenta, red, amber, orange, green, teal and turquoise). But at least in this article the intragal idea for political progress are presented And that great big ideas is….(fanfare)…(drum roll)…. Well cor blimy imagine that, I mean would you adam and eve it, (comic picture of hand hitting forehead), wow it’s a real surprise no one has ever though of that before…. Basically these ideas are piffle rapped up in long words there premise seeming to be that the only thing we can do it hope someone develops ‘enlightenment’ so they can then lead us all into a better world. It like screaming at a monkey that it wouldn’t be eaten by the panther if it just took the bother to evolve, possibly true, but not much use against the big cat eating its leg. Thank you for pointing me in Ken’s direction for no other reason than that I can now from a position of knowledge advise people not to bother reading a word of his tripe.
Balbus. Great Ideas are not always easily explained in a short article. Since we are talking about education I would recommend Wilber's book "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality" These ideas are complex and I don't think I can express them properly in a post on a BBS. Wilber basically took ideas from many realms - psychology, education, religion, sociology amd philosophy and combined them to a coherent theory ,which unfortunately is not easily summarized in a few pages. JackFlash, Deep Holism is where a hierarchy where each stage contains the stages before it. Shallow holism is where each stage cancels the stages before it, but we pretend that we accept them for the sake of feeling better about ourselves.
Mai And some bad ideas are often presented in a complicated way to make them seem more important than they are. I didn’t just read one article but many, as well as listened to the man talk, plus reading up how others viewed his ideas. And I’m sorry to say that in political terms he talks a good talk but his ideas are, when stripped of the hyperbole, basically simplistic and ultimately an intellectual cul-de-sac. People should never equate complexity with originality or depth of thought. Well it’s lucky then that you came to a forum set up for debate rather than a BBS then, isn’t it, you take as much time and space as you want. But if you can’t explain these supposedly ‘coherent’ theories, it’s very likely you don’t understand them yourself. * What? A holistic approach by its definition emphasizes the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts. An approach that didn’t at least acknowledge previous ideas could not be termed holistic. As to “we pretend that we accept them for the sake of feeling better about ourselves” can you please clarify?
