The Epistemology Unit
Since I've met the new Superintendent in Great Falls as well as Denise Juneau (I only met her once, during her first campaign, but we have a lot of mutual friends, and we're FB friends), this may be an opportune moment to suggest a curriculum tweaking. I'm proposing a week at the beginning of each school year devoted to issues in epistemology (the theory of knowledge) -- intelligent speech, meaning, truth, scientific inquiry, logic, "linear programming", and the like. In other words, teach the students the importance of what they are doing, why they are there, why it's good for them to be systematically studying the world they live in, its cultures and literatures, etc. "Learning how (and why) to learn," as they used to say....
Believe it or not, most people (and obviously most voters and office-holders) don't understand this. Not only do they not understand what a legislature or even Government writ large is there for - what it is supposed to do, what are the rules, etc. They don't often understand what they are "managing" or paying for, either.
(Consider our local nuclear arsenal, for an example. We must be the only people in the world who want to have the "option" of destroying human civilization under a single command and from one particular military base).
Apparently, our leaders (and far too many "educators") don't know what "education" is, or even whether or not it is a good idea. They know about training, coercion, regimentation, obedience, discipline, etc. But they don't seem to understand or care much about learning, and assimilating what we've learned into our behavior - both individually and collectively - in order to make the world and our local community a better place.
Worse, they couldn't care less whether their laws, policies, programs and bricks and mortar "institutions" are useful and productive. In fact, the more problems and crises that occur, the more power they (the Technocracy, the Prison-Industrial Complex, Gangster Capitalism - whatever you want to call it) will have and the more "resources" they will have at their command. Thus, perpetual war are posed as "the solution" to a declining resource base, declining economic expectations, and indeed, the end of democracy and our constitutional Republic, as well. Perpetual War for Perpetual Slavery. Isn't that the correct motto for the USA, today?
Although I'm from an "educated" or maybe "petty-bourgeois intellectual" family and background, I never really envisioned teaching, although I might have become a professor on a slightly different timeline. But I could see what was wrong with our institutions, government, foreign policy, etc. If we understood it, couldn't we change it?
When I saw and understood the need for epistemology in regular education courses, I endeavored to promote that - first, by joining Mensa (which has "gifted ed" as its pet charity), and then by earning a teaching credential (Broadfield Social Sciences) in the early 1990's. I made some effort at trying to develop high school courses in economics and philosophy, and I finally got a chance to do that in a private school.
Many states already had certification in teaching k-12 philosophy and economics, but not Montana. With all the interest in the arts and humanities, and the continuing pressure to upgrade science and math instruction, there was little concern about the "social sciences" or the more abstract questions and issues which philosophy addresses.
The main thing I learned from this experience is that we can't just do one course in high school. We need to interweave this thinking in everything we do from Day 1. (Cf. Freakonomics - once these economics tools and insights are mastered, they can be applied to anything). We want students to become critical thinkers. We want them to question authority, and particularly the insidious messages of commercial advertising and government war propaganda.
So, what would the Epistemology Unit look like? Here's a sample:
This is a school. What does that mean? Why do we have schools? What functions do they serve? Whose needs are they supposed to be serving? Are they to be child-centered education - Montessori, A.S. Neal, etc. or must we have totalitarian Prussian-style "guns and factories" school systems, or the Benthamite Panopticon - everyone under constant surveillance, 24/7, and every aspect of the educational experience dictated by the State, as though the students were in prison?
What different kinds of schools or learning environments have there been? What was their purpose or function? What do you like or don't like about our present school system? What would you change if you could?
This is the approach taken by Bill Glasser, who was a big name in EDU reform 20 years ago and more. He also invented "Reality Therapy" as a clinical psychiatrist - an important school of humanistic psychology in the 1970's - much of it derived from his experience as a prison shrink in a woman's prison, if I remember correctly. The main idea is student self-government and empowerment, organized in open meetings with everyone sitting in a circle, and discussing openly any issue or problems they might be having. The other less frequent meetings are about "big questions" the material encompassed by philosophy and scientific understanding.
So, it's the same idea. And he had marvelous success for many years - too much, it would seem. People don't seem to want that much "value" for their "public education dollars." They'd rather spend the money on prisons, so they feel "safer," I suppose.
So, let's put together a "unit" which will cover the first week of school. It doesn't need to take the whole day, but a lot of this time is already allocated as "orientation" or whatever. This is simply a more comprehensive attempt to really orient the students to joys and best practice in learning and "development."
Develop minds, not mines and pipelines. The way to a man's heart is NOT through his hot rod. Children want to learn new things and experience the world on their own terms, not through the filter of a police state or the drug-induced stupor of anti-depressants and other highly-toxic behavior-modifying prescriptions forced on them by a school system which is obsessed with conformity and obedience.
Make school into a human place. That's the bottom line
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The other big deal for me has always been languages, even though I can barely function in German and the Romance Languages, and speak or write no foreign languages fluently. I know what the rest of the world does, and how much more successfully they can compete on a global scale. We are the retarded idiots of the world, except perhaps for the top 5 % or so of public schools/student, and various private schools or programs.
Take the International Baccalaureate system (IB). If I remember right, it's two foreign languages for like 8 years - total fluency, in other words. And math through calculus, etc. Advanced science, massive readings in literature and the arts - it's designed to prepare the student for any university in the world, and it doesn't take a school to do it. Originally, it was designed by Europeans who might be missionaries or development specialists, scientists, engineers, etc. in remote areas. Their children were taught at home, but prepared to go back to Europe and enter a top university. Now, many public as well as private schools use this curriculum and testing which is recognized everywhere.
They're doing the IB program in Missoula already, with a public high school (Hellgate) and a private IB k-8 school. Since the material is all on-line, every school district could offer it, and allocate that student's share of the school budget to tutoring, culture tours, etc. One teacher per 20 IB students would probably be quite sufficient - these are already motivated, organized kids, right?
Still, only a small percentage are going to want to do that - for the foreseeable future, anyway. But as the value and even beauty of such understanding spreads, standards for everyone will rise - not enforced from without, but because people crave excellence and truth, not the blind, mechanistic programming they are receiving today in most of our schools and universities...
It's the regular public "high schools" (originally envisioned as a career-preparing "higher school" or Hochschule to follow "grammar school" or Gymnasium) in the rest of the world that really put us to shame. I wouldn't be surprised if there are U.S. school districts which discourage exchange students, simply because they are so much more advanced - usually several years ahead of their age cohort, here. Of course, they usually come from middle-class backgrounds, and might have been sent to a boarding school or whatever, anyway. This is a way to do it on the cheap, and learn about the fascinating American politics and culture. Only the feeling, now, is more like horror than fascination, I would venture to say.
Still, we're at least pretending to be the good guys. But we don't know how to do that, and how to be honest, truthful, rational, scientific, ethical, and otherwise prepared for the future which now promises to be little more than an unmitigated nightmare of poverty and resource depletion, while a few burn up the labor of billions on their stupid, contrived wars, mandated by a totalitarian police state.
