In the ancient world, if all roads did in fact lead to Rome, it would not be much of a stretch to decide that Rome was the place where those who took the time and expense to travel likely needed to go to. Likewise, if every K-12 education reform that I know is part of the mandatory classroom vision has the same actual or intended effect on the human mind and a student’s personality, we can conclude that the global transformationalists we met in the first two posts of this trilogy need a certain mindset for their success. In fact, I considered naming this post “Becoming a Plant” after the video game Reach for the Sun where students will be “challenged to ‘become a plant’ and balance resources like starch and water. “Extend your roots, sprout leaves, and make your flowers bloom before winter hits.'”
Now if I had described that “learning activity” before Christmas and linked it to the Arational Mind push we have been noticing going back to this post http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/blending-sustainability-and-education-to-gain-arational-nonlinear-minds-and-new-behaviors/ , I would have had the makings of a good freestanding post. Knowing the goals of the global CIFAL Network, the desire to use ICT to extinguish the Left Hemisphere’s historic dominance per that Global Village book, plus the explicit goals transformational goals laid out by ValuesQuest and the Institute for the Future, and the new vision of the role of the law globally, just make it so much easier to grasp why fact-filled, analytical minds would be regarded as barriers to all that planning and collective transitioning.
We have been having a discussion in the comments about the federally required MPOs–Metropolitan Planning Organizations–that push metro-wide transportation projects and how they are now being urged to explicitly get into economic and workforce development. I have noted that one of the things WIOA requires is that all students be trained in ‘systems thinking.’ At a DC conference this week the federal Transportation Secretary Foxx proclaimed transportation plans as the ultimate “system of systems” that merited a 30-year lay-out of plans. Into all this planning about us, our future, and using our money, I believe it’s no accident that videogames and digital learning are being pushed into classrooms. http://www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/news/MindShift-GuidetoDigitalGamesandLearning.pdf
Paul Ehrlich’s co-author of that 1989 New World New Mind book discussed in the linked post above, Robert Ornstein, wrote a 1974 book The Psychology of Consciousness pushing a desire to move away from the rational, analytical mind fostered by phonetic reading and traditional math, science, or grammar to a holistic right brain orientation that would perceive the world in interdependent, relational ways. Very helpfully he tied the ability and need for such a shift to the world now being in a position to meet everyone’s ‘biological needs.’ Time then for a more collaborative, communitarian focus to global problem-solving. Needless to say, K-12 education would need to shift and Ornstein saw great possibilities once “computer-assisted instruction” was able to “take the ‘state’ of the learner into account.”
What would such instruction, maybe called ‘personalized learning,’ look like? How about the Mindshift confession that “When it comes to assessment, many games have robust back ends that provide assessment data about the students who play them. That data can be extremely useful, providing information about your students that is applicable well beyond the game itself.” Information the students themselves may very well not be aware of. Data that adaptive learning ICT platforms need if they are to have the desired effects of changing the child’s perceptions, values, beliefs, and attitudes as the new focus of student-centered K-12 education.
Fits the Ornstein desire for educational activity with the student “embedded in the environment” perfectly, except most people would not be familiar with the Ornstein or Marshall McLuhan work we have looked at. They would simply accept the sales pitch that games-based learning would “replace a points-based extrinsic motivation system with a contextualized hands-on learning experience.” Not being in the habit of reading federal statutes like WIOA or federal agency plans, they probably would not appreciate the significance of the confession:
“Keep in mind: The common attribute of all effective learning games is that they simulate systems [or real-world social structures the trasfomationalists want students to believe are systems comparable to how the heart and lungs reliably interact]. They teach students how to understand academic concepts in relationship to the world around them. Certainly this increases engagement [what Ornstein called Being in the Moment that he tracked to ancient Asian religious practices] and retention, but what really matters is about using knowledge in interdisciplinary ways. [Don’t feel under control just because your personal use of knowledge is being prescribed in advance].
Digital or analog, game-based or not, good teaching and learning [Remember obuchenie?] is also about building social awareness, considering the individual’s impact on the wider world.”
Now won’t that latter effect work well with the Sustainability aspirations for the future laid out by the UN CIFAL Network, ValuesQuest, and that Institute for the Future Toolkit to prepare students for new forms of governance? We covered all the proposed role-playing in history classes as part of my AP US History Trilogy, but MindQuest proposes teaching American Government by having a student “role play a member of Congress.” A new form of Governance in utter disregard of the US Constitution is highly likely once curriculum is an “immersive experience” where “students sponsor bills, trade in influence, awareness, and approval. The game simulates meeting with lobbyists, donors, and volunteers. The object is to get reelected to office.” Now that certainly suffices as allowing “teachers to present academic concepts in a contextualized, experiential way.”
Interestingly enough, precisely what Ornstein said a Right-Brain oriented curriculum should be doing if it intends to shift the focus from intellectual content to personal knowledge. Oh, our joy at effective school reforms that will raise student achievement in meaningful, authentic ways knows no bounds. Why did I start this post’s title with Bogus Excuses? Well, should we buy that games-based learning is OK for the classroom because “a generation of gamers has grown up without a civilization collapsing”? Someone was not listening when their English teacher covered the dangers of hyperbole. How about this rationale? “Positive mood states” or empathy “toward people from another country.” I am also afraid that being told “the way corporations, foundations, and research organizations are thinking about games and learning” is no justification when they are all on record seeking transformational social change using K-12 education.
That’s it, isn’t it? K-12 education globally must be shifted to producing a mind and personality suitable for a collectivist orientation. The simulation will prime the students to act in predictable ways without being in a position to recognize that real world consequences do not follow the prearranged instructions of the software developer. It’s no accident that Jane McGonnigal of Institute for the Future is quoted on this point of how students will come to see the real world, without noting her IFTF affiliation. Only that she wrote a book called Reality is Broken that I covered here. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/when-gaming-intends-to-shape-and-distort-our-perceptions-of-everything-around-us-viva-la-revolution/
If you want a transformed economy, then push education based on “connected, networked ways of knowing that will dominate the digital future. Sharing and collaboration go hand-in-hand with integrating non-competitive and non-commodified ways of playing games.” Will that lead to a shareable economy? Maybe but it will be necessary since so few graduates in such a vision will have the mind or skills that have always been necessary for wealth to arise outside of war and just taking.
Is it true that “The way students play and learn today is the way they will work tomorrow”? Maybe, but they will be quite poor in such a world unless they can get elected or appointed to office or get a tax-free job in the UN System. Mostly the gaming is prepping for the student to be a participating member of a planned and controlled system, blindly accepting from a deep emotional level that increasing levels of material deprivation are inevitable and not a result of predation by the public sector.
Instead of declaring war on another country for wealth this is a system of predation on citizens. For those of us with a base of history knowledge not grounded in role play, it’s what the nobility did when they imposed serfdom. People exist for the use and benefit of those with power and are not free to make their own choices. No thanks. Another bogus excuse is that “the distinction between STEM and ELA is an arbitrary and superficial one” since they are each “simply forms of expression.” That really is someone determined to extinguish the analytical, rational mind for reasons laid out in Chapters 2 and 3 of my book. “All good games offer challenges in intuitive ways.” Want to guess which side of the brain acts intuitively and which does not?
Another bogus excuse? Gaming needs to be a part of early childhood education because it “teaches those students to associate screens with refined cognitive skills.” In other words, those children are to never know what rational, non-designed, grounded in facts, spinning out of various scenarios and likely consequences actually feels like. And won’t that be helpful to all our self-confessed transformationalists and futurists?
I am going to close this with an update to what has been one of the most controversial Values Clarification exercises for decades. It is called the Lifeboat but gaming lets a similar scenario, and obligation to reach a consensus, be visual so that the body’s physiology gets pulled into the plight. It will respond as if it is actually in a Life or Death situation as Willis Harman recognized in the 80s in his Global Mind Change book. Carried out as part of a Zombie Apocalypse in Norway classrooms, MindQuest ends on that example of a “sociocultural view of learning” where students and teachers “believe in sharing and constructing knowledge together.”
So they and others can build a new kind of economy and society together. Never appreciating in time that none of these things actually are ‘systems’ ready to fall into place like a game.
I have little idea what real world examples they are referring to with the gaming and ‘digital literacy’, etc. I assume the worst, given the accompanying gibberish words and thoughts. I always try to argue both sides of an issue in my head.
Random thoughts:
1. I think simulations are a good thought tool and a learning tool, but it depends on what is portrayed in the simulation.
2. Enacting Valenzuela type ‘reforms’ in a game would be OK if they lead to current Venezuela economic conditions. I.e. accurate results. Ditto Argentina, ‘Red’ China decades ago, Soviet Union, etc.
3. I recall that games like Sim City and Age of Empires (of many years ago) were good learning tools (for home, not really for school) because they demonstrated cause and effect, complexity, and unpredictability in the world. In Age of Empires o build things you need to chop down trees, mine things, grow crops, defend against invading armies, etc. In Sim City if you did not build power plants you had blackouts, no industry, lost tax base, etc. Many people now believe you can close coal plants etc. and still have electricity come out of the wall receptacle forever. In Sim City everything was a trade off.
4. Students should be provided with many examples of ‘futurists’ past future predictions. Then they should be asked to guess how accurate their current future predictions are likely to be.
5. Doing less with more’ never seems to apply to the govt class. It never means no step increases in pay for simply being alive or higher pay and benefits.
eclectic-did you read the McGonigal link I put up? She states that virtual reality is about changing how people see the actual world.
The Gamestar Mechanic game cited “requires that students learn systems-based problem solving.” About things that are not actually systems. http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/life-sciences/genomics-bioinformatics-and-systems-biology/systems-view-life-unifying-vision is another example of what systems thinking is about.
This is what Bela Banathy stated his intentions were. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/who-granted-permission-to-spearhead-societal-evolution-to-a-global-cooperative-consciousness/
Other simulations involve climate change so that the visual catastrophe depicted sticks in the student’s mind. Fits with this paper from the American Psychological Association that just came out that wants to use psychology to force the desired beliefs. http://www.apa.org/print-this.aspx
Software may not always do what the creators want it to do, but it will always do what it is programmed to do. It is a closed system.
Did you see this link I put up yesterday? http://www.edudemic.com/minecraftedu-and-simcityedu-blazing-trails-for-interdisciplinary-learning/
Remember how important the visual is as well to cybernetics. Concepts, associations, visual images they are tied to. There is a reason UNESCO’s digital learning initiative remains headquartered in Moscow, using a lot of that untranslated into English research. What’s been translated is graphic enough.
This is another gaming push that involves the Gordon Commission and is thus tied to the Opt Out strategy’s actual purpose. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/students-must-see-themselves-as-active-participants-in-social-change-and-designers-of-social-futures/
I did read the McGonical link material now. The scariest parts to me are those below.
1. President Obama said he wanted to end the “you’re on your own” society or some such. He did not talk of helping the less fortunate and safety nets; instead he used those words.
2. Obama also said he wanted to return to the sense of collective feeling as in wartime.
3. See the Borg from Star Trek.
“Not influenced in the least by the fact that the creator of the game or textbook publisher openly acknowledged that as “we’re making these games, we dream of the other revolutionary things swarm intelligence might make possible. Low-carbon futures, mass creativity, living happily with less.”
…
“The experience of awe is about finding your place in the larger scheme of things. It is about quieting the press of self-interest. It is about folding into social collectives. It is about feeling reverential toward participating in some expansive process that unites us all and ennobles our life’s endeavors.”
Eclectic-I have read every page of her book as well as the one her boss at IFTF, Marina Gorbis, wrote. . To say these people have plans for us would be putting it mildly, especially when tied to the IFTF ties to KnowledgeWorks and its ties to the High Tech Network, Competency-based education, the lawyers for CCSSO and so many school districts, the Carnegie Corporation. These networks all exist though to force the implementation in the desired direction without it being obvious. Unless, like me, you track by legal authority from the get-go. As I explained to a friend, what makes it all binding, also makes it unambiguously traceable.
This is another old post that in retrospect, is trying to bind and reorganize the brain using gaming and supplied categories. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/cultivating-understandings-of-consequence-to-guide-daily-life-and-prompt-desired-behaviors/
there is a tag in this link and this is what sociocultural means.
Subject: Obuchenie in High School Physics Classrooms: A study of students’
“This study conceptualizes teaching and learning as two sides of the dialectical process of obuchenie. Following Vygotsky ”
http://scienceinthemoment.cedu.niu.edu/scienceinthemoment/reports/vygotskyandphysicsaera12.doc
Also,
somebody ( high bloviating acdeminal) on a blog or site talking about Obuchenie said that vygotsky found new meanings for words, which reminded me of all the Piaget et al etc i had read and how one needs an alternate dictionary to follow the doublespeak of all these creepers.
MM-so not the point http://www.learningfirst.org/safeguarding-student-data-everyone-s-business
Between the data privacy bill that is not the real problem and the NCLB rewrite, 2015 looks promising for explaining how remedies can either evade or make a problem worse.
Somebody has to read the small print.
As usual Oregon is there. We have had an Oregon Trail game that is based on systems thinking for years. I’ll see if I can track down exactly when it started.
Have a look at this and the graphics.
https://www.google.com/urlsa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=aiK5VJjxJoqoogTkooH4Aw&url=http://www.sustainableschools.org/documents/eventFiles/WorkshopPacket.pdf&ved=0CDUQFjAH&usg=AFQjCNGHRNwRuLfDP0syB7IjC0CxmNZ_RA&sig2=ZpSBdOb3zzM6GeK_Akq56w
Is that the one that wants to make sure the kids are aware of the cannibalism episode?
Why yes and here’s the proof. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHe1JPn5ixQ
Your link does not work. Try again and I will edit.
Try this one.
http://www.sustainableschools.org/documents/eventFiles/Workshop-Packet.pdf
More on changing how the world is seen.
http://faculty.wagner.edu/jason-fitzgerald/courses/teaching-in-the-21st-century-lectures-and-thoughts/creating-system-dynamic-simulations/
That’s a great confession to the points I am making on altering belief systems and engaging emotions to force a readiness to push for transformational change.
Several of my newsletters promoting such change this week have touted that Peter Senge Stanford article you brought to our attention in the comments to the previous post.
“Mental models, therefore, serve a number of purposes related to what one believes, what one
sees, and what one thinks (or hopes) might transpire. Thus the persistence of mental models,
even when challenged, must be accounted for in any educational effort to foster learning.
So the mental models which students bring to class are resistant, boundless, incomplete,
and unscientific. The educational process must first become aware of the existence of resident
mental models, their components and functions, and then provide suitable and powerful
educational experiences to allow students to engage in the process of changing their mental
models (learning).”
ftp://www.clexchange.org/documents/implementation/IM2001-04ChangingStuMentMod.pdf
Home with the sniffles tonight. Doing some reading and came across this.
LL–good quote from that Jay Forrester group (Club of Rome systems modeller and Peter Senge’s declared mentor).
What adaptive software and personalized learning do is ferret out the mental models resident in the Left Hemisphere. Then lenses, core ideas, essential questions, Enduring Understnadings etc can be inserted as the classroom ‘knowledge’ to become the categories that guide perception and interpretation of daily experiences.
I know much more than what is in book or blog, but we all kind of have to get used to the level of this deliberate public sector assault.
I can relate to the sniffles. My sinuses seem to have declared war on me.
Good thing I save. The link is broken already .
Now that I finally found that document (go to http://www.clexchange.org/curriculum/ and search for “Will Costello”) I can say it’s an amazing confession.
Linear thinking is presented as “machine age thinking” and now we’re in the “systems age” in which we realize that “‘Analysis’ of a system is futile”. This supposedly has something to do with quantum mechanics.
As someone who has studied both systems theory and quantum mechanics, I can say the above is the despicable blathering of an entitled idiot about things he does not understand. It’s nothing but an excuse for followership: the system is unintuitive so “this” is how we’re supposed to think about this system. Rather than undergoing the years of study and work until that system starts to seem more intuitive.
Scientific types should be out denouncing this garbage in the strongest and clearest possible terms. It really would be good to organize such a movement of real experts, about how this “thinking like an expert” stuff is just nonsense.
David-I frequently tell my “I love physics” husband all the things being attributed to Chaos Theory and he rolls his eyes. He has also reminded me that most of what Newton figured out still applies in almost every condition we are likely to encounter.
It’s all just further examples of forcing inapt metaphors to try to get us to believe that a change is necessary when it is not.
Reme,ber my post on Flyv? Thinling like an expert is using the disciplinary concepts and core ideas inductively and acting on them are using them as the metaphorical lenses to interpret experiences. You lack the underlying knowledge from physics, history, great literature, etc to appreciate why the comparison is inapt under the facts.
And right on cue a confession that is in Mind/Shift but that I failed to highlight. http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/01/gone-home-a-video-game-as-a-tool-for-teaching-critical-thinking/
Making the game play fulfilling the ELA standards and treating video or gaming as just as much a “text” to be interpreted as a book. Given our journey through McLuhan’s work, we recognize that one is Right Brain experiential and the other uses the analytical Left Brain unless one is reading by guessing from context and whole words.
You can see why I have come to the conclusion that the Right Brain is to be as dominant as possible while the Left Brain needs to be a combo of empty of facts in Long Term Memory and using chsen categories the rest of the time. Guided, in other words in a controlling and predictable way.
Aren’t you beginning to feel a clarity in what is going on between the book’s revelations, the blog, and what keeps being announced next.
And AT&T turns out to be a sponsor of the new White House Future Ready Schools initiative. Too bad neither of us is likely to be invited to one of those 12 regional summits.
And KnowledgeWorks came out with this push yesterday as well. http://www.personalizelearning.com/2015/01/creating-personalized-learning-for.html
If you click through, among other things it says “the community” should “own learning”. I guess that can go with Blair Levin’s commons insistence.
Try this one.
http://www.sustainableschools.org/documents/eventFiles/Workshop-Packet.pdf
Here is a little more proof, the ‘transformation’ is working.
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2015/01/eugene_teens_who_sued_gov_john.html
Eugene is a leader in this, and one of the scariest stories I have ever heard on education came from a student in a IB program in a Eugene High school. Literally took Macey and I days to deal with that story.
This link is gone hope you got screenshot
Anon-all of LL’s links are still working just now for me so let me put them up. All are worth looking at as there is no dispute about what we are discussing here. Only ire that we are good researchers and able comprehenders of what we read.
http://www.sustainableschools.org/documents/eventFiles/Workshop-Packet.pdf
ftp://www.clexchange.org/documents/implementation/IM2001-04ChangingStuMentMod.pdf
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2015/01/eugene_teens_who_sued_gov_john.html
Here’s the one from the am. All still good. http://faculty.wagner.edu/jason-fitzgerald/courses/teaching-in-the-21st-century-lectures-and-thoughts/creating-system-dynamic-simulations/
Still doesn’t work for me.
So a reader sent me a Critical Theory, Radical Pedagogies book off-line that I am looking at. It started bragging about the Rouge Forum and what it was doing to push education in a decidely Marxist direction in its own words. So I decided to see if the Rouge Forum is connected to Opt Out. Why yes it is. http://www.rougeforum.org/SleepMEAP.htm
Or this as more up to date http://www.richgibson.com/blog/?p=12286
By the way, did you know Eugene, Oregon is now the exemplar of the Human Rights City Project? http://www.humanrightscity.com/
Trying to make the 1947 UN Declaration of Human Rights an actual reality.
http://www.mlive.com/opinion/muskegon/index.ssf/2013/01/two_viewpoints_should_students.html
It has always been of notice to me that the BATs and united opt out have chosen the closed fist as their logo much of the time. What are the chances of the nclb rewrite forcing the new type of assessments?
You mean apart from the explicit language about Competency, performance assessments, using formative assessments, measuring student ‘growth’, and a purpose for the rewrite of closing the achievement gap between high-performing and low-performing students? Quite high in other words.
Basically it is everything UNESCO has ever wanted from the US to adopt the ed vision of the Convention on the Rights of the Child even though we have never formally ratified that treaty from 1989. Clinton did sign it in 1995. I was doublechecking that point when I saw your comment.
Both Randi Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers and the Center for American Progress have issued statements on having the statute explicitly mention measuring social and emotional skills annually instead of that being inferred from the meaning of High-quality education and Growth. My guess is Lamar is hoping that no one picks up on the true meaning of the terms used. As you will see, I have already.
Portland is quite mild compared to Eugene. The University of Oregon is a place you would send your child expecting a complete personality change when they return home. Very radical.
The second (middle) one of the three on Student Mental Models doesn’t work for me.
Try this
http://www.clexchange.org/curriculum/doc_search.aspcategory=alldocs&searchstring=Will%20Costello
That RSA story that they have been drafted to develop the ed vision for The Next American Economy for the Roosevelt Institute made me want to see who else was involved. http://nextamericaneconomy.squarespace.com/participant-bios/
Marina Gorbis, the head of IFTF, Gar Alperowitz who is quite open about the nature of the revolution he intends, two different reps from SEIU including Andy Stern, lots from MIT. It’s worth looking at.
That didn’t quite work, but here’s what works:
Go to http://www.clexchange.org/curriculum/
And search for “Will Costello”. One document will come up, that’s the one needed.
It was the google ling further back up. I will try it again
FWIW, all of the links I’ve tried here have been working.
Happy reading mike or watching.
Another commenter has sent me this link http://www.lucistrust.org/en/service_activities/world_goodwill/key_concepts/education_in_the_new_age . She accurately recognized how close the actual implementation is to what Alice Bailey pushed so long ago.
This is the original Alice Bailey post from December 2012 http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/are-the-new-3-rs-and-the-student-centered-inquiry-driven-classroom-a-means-to-eastern-spirituality/
Knowing much more now than I did then, the answer is an emphatic yes and the reasons are the same as what is being laid out for strengthening the hoistic, intuitive right-brain responses via the classroom and ICT practices while “guiding” the Left Brain when it does get a chance to be analytical. The radical Leadership Conference, in its statement on the NCLB rewrite, insists that ALL state assessments of students MUST measure “higher order thinking skills”. A defined term as we well know and I have repeatedly documented, but also a further confession of how crucial guiding and circumscribing the abilities of the Left Hemisphere of the human brain is to those who view the 21st century as another opportunity to impose utopian collectivism. Honestly that’s the only way to describe what is in these UN reports like the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development and the Post-2015 declared plans.
Plus I have been piddling around at the Swedish site where the Belmont Challenge is busy pushing all these ideas that were hatched in Maryland in 2009 with the push of the Obama Administration and the UK. http://www.stockholmresilience.org/21/research/research-news/3-13-2012-governing-within-the-planetary-boundaries.html
That Lucis Trust link is really something. Much worse than pushing eastern spirituality, after describing the rational mind as the “lower mind” which education has been stuck on for too long, it says:
“Little by little this disastrous state of affairs has been changing, so that today in many countries the welfare of the state itself, the need of the nation, is held before the child from its earliest years an the highest possible ideal. This is a definite step forward in the expansion of consciousness which the human race must achieve, …”
Worship of the state as the highest good!
David–this school district may even be close to you. https://custom.cvent.com/D16609C6836C4A0C8E8AB8A6DE04D99A/files/2acf94d953a54b53ac14d9d47ff5ae94.pdf
You should also watch this 8 minute Science of Character video that premiered last September. It is based in part on Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset, Angela Duckworth’s Grit & Perseverence (both grounded in Vygotskyian sociocultural if you go back far enough in their work) as well as the Happiness work Martin Seligmann is pushing for positive psychology.
http://www.letitripple.org/character
Did you know positive psych has been billed as a way to cultivate a Marxist consciousness that changes its perspective and mental models as activities and inputs change? I have quite a book shelf on all these concepts. It also relates to the NCLB rewrite story I should get up today.
The Eugene law suit against the governor is absolute dialectics straight out of this document…
Education for youth brigades of activists and the efforts to get UN Convention on the rights of the Child into every government and country so they can bully their way through the chain of adults spouting their Rights… Divining the carbon free future, futuring. Its absurd and illogical but evidentiary efforts linked above tell the true story.
Spoke to superintendant of one of my kids schools yesterday and he used the phrase critical thinking in the way it is pretended to be. I asked him if he was familiar with critical theory or pedagogy and he really was taken aback at the idea that he indeed was a propagandist dupe, good guy but young and naive.
No history background… His kids are under 5.
Anyway check out the desires for education in this link.
http://www.iol.ie/~isp/agenda21/wssdyout.htm#
A. Advancing the role of youth and actively involving them in the protection of the environment and the promotion of economic and social development
Anon-in the next post I am going to show how the proposed NCLB Rewrite as submitted by Republican Lamar Alexander last week, regardless of the frequency of ‘testing’, which is still in dispute with the Dems and Arne Duncan, adopts the entire UN ed agenda going back to the DeLors report.
It also mandates Uncle Karl’s Human Development Society because of what the terms in the bill actually mean.
The kindest thing I can say is that Senators naively defer to the recs of their Staff, but there is no dispute on the meaning of the language used.
I am distracting myself from my anger by reading Hollywood Traitors which is quite fascinating.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/desiring-a-radical-dialectic-change-in-social-reality-necessitates-enduring-misunderstandings/ is still the best discussion of what ‘critical thinking’ actually means apart from what’s in my book.
Ilyenkov’s Ascending from the Abstract to the Concrete just keep coming up in the actual classroom implementation once we are familiar with it, usually via euphemisms like “apply abstract concepts to real world problems” or “use core disciplinary ideas to explore the meaning of real-world events”. The Left Brain must be guided and controlled in other words.
Reading various material on mental model assessment over the weekend. Too easy to find for my comfort.
http://mentalmodelassessment.org/card-sorts/background/
How about a paper that says that creativity is necessary for the workforce and should thus be the focus of 21st century schools and then grounding it in Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi’s definition of it ? http://core.kmi.open.ac.uk/download/pdf/10886339.pdf
They left out that Csik is the creator of what Excellence actually means and was a founder of the General Evolution Research Group–GERG–we have looked at that is now touting the Holos Consciousness for all students.