Please. Oh, please, can I opt for a Door Number 4 as I continue to track down the actual planned social, political, and economic transformative vision for the future? Global and using so-called education reforms as the vehicle. Without our consent and apparently without our knowledge. Modelled on of all things, Soviet psychology and philosophy, but now renamed and spun in terms of Confucius or transpersonal, Integral, philosophy and the ever present systems thinking. Because of course the mindsets that the Chinese leaders find appropriate for their “under our thumb” (to the music of the Rolling Stones please) citizens is precisely appropriate for a US or Australian or Korean classroom. Anywhere I suppose where anyone with political power dreams of looking at the masses of taxpayers and voters and assigning a role of permanent subordination.
Mystical Marxism. That’s what Ken Wilber called his Integral Worldview that explores, honors, and acknowledges “all the dimensions of men and women’s experiences–sensory, emotional, mental, social, spiritual.” Now Ken has actually been on my radar for a while because Harvard ed prof Robert Kegan seems to like partnering with the Integral Life philosophy when he is not pushing “Lessons of Systemic Change for Success in Implementing the New Common Core Standards” with Peter Senge and Hewlett Foundation funding. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/viewing-education-as-the-prime-lever-for-international-social-change-community-organizing-everywhere/ . But I do not talk about people on the periphery no matter how troubling the implications of their views. No I was following up on the definition of Global Competence and the Smithsonian’s involvement with both Understandings of Consequence and Big History.
Which caused me to take a look at the SHOUT education conferences Smithsonian has been sponsoring with Microsoft and another entity I was not familiar with. TakingITGlobal–Inspire, Inform, Involve. It turns out to be a student social media site promoting Global Citizenship. Disturbingly to me, their Theory of Change http://www.tigweb.org/about/why/change.html is “inspired by the integral philosophy of Ken Wilber, which posits that there are 4 areas (quadrants) where progressive development can occur: Interior Individual, Exterior Individual, Interior Collective, and Exterior Collective. Through our programs and project, young people move along a linear path through each quadrant …(A) Youth Development; (B) Youth Action & Participation; (C) Social Movements; and (D) Societal Values.” There’s more specifics on that site to help inculcate that individual and collective common core that prompts transformative action. Parents happily thinking their children have become involved in service learning may want to search out Wilber’s aspirations for Achieving Binding Democratic Global Governance.
Part 2 of our title comes from more detectiving around this issue of Global Competence and its integral (couldn’t resist because it’s true) part in CCSSO’s vision of the Common Core’s actual implementation. Turns out in 2009 the Gates Foundation funded a CCSSO project called EdSteps to essentially obscure the key implementation components that might be controversial. Mustn’t allow any disruption of the political narrative being used to con the public on what was coming. It’s the EdSteps frameworks then that announce that the Common Core is about “a nation transforming its business and education systems in response to the evolving global economy.” That would be the Capitalism 3.0 or what Shoshana Zuboff called distributed capitalism and the Aspen Institute the fourth sector/for benefit economy.
http://edsteps.org/CCSSO/SampleWorks/EdSteps%20Framework-08_29_12.pdf is the framework. Virginians and Texans may want to note their involvement with EdSteps as more proof you can get the common core implementation without the actual math or ELA standards. The Five EdSteps skill areas are the key implementation components that no one had been previously and systematically assessing: Creativity, Problem Solving for Learning, Analyzing Information, Global Competence, and Writing. Now honestly as EdSteps describes all these areas they will go a long way towards training students to Ascend from the Abstract to the Concrete or what Paul Ehrlich called organizing around Big Ideas and Concepts that will instill a compulsion to act. But you now have those Frameworks and my earlier posts. I need to move on to the even more troubling ideas behind the EdSteps screen.
EdSteps is a partner in yet another entity, world savvy, framing transformative curricula and practices for the 21st century student. And without the above link you would never see the ties to CCSSO. http://worldsavvy.org/assets/documents/uploads/WorldSavvy_ComponentsofGlobalCompetency.pdf lays out the Knowledge, Skills, Values & Attitudes, and Behaviors to be instilled in students. It’s all troubling but it’s the Knowledge component we need to focus on now. Especially as it primes for Big History or something comparably false and influential.
In particular the phrase “Historical forces that have shaped the current world system.” We don’t have a current singular world system. If we did it would by definition be totalitarian. The aspiration for one was a huge part of what drove one side in the Cold War. As long time readers know, I have been describing what appears to be an effort by UNESCO and other UN agencies to use initiatives like the Belmont Challenge and the Future Earth Alliance (still have not seen anyone involved in tights with lettering on their chest) to get to a singular world system.
That phraseology in the Components of Global Competency tells us a lot about the assumptions inherent in meetings none of us have been invited to. It also indicates all these transformational reforms are being driven either by some woefully ignorant people or idealogues enthralled by Utopia. Not to mention the Champagne Tastes and Caviar Dreams of being a connected Business in this vision no longer worried about consumers or competitors.
But a key component of this social vision starts at the city or regional level. Where it is much easier to get all the relevant politicians on board and bought off with grants and revenue sharing to finance a transformation. At least in the short term. It’s called the Learning City or Region and shifting the US towards it to dovetail with its Asian push is the purpose of both the Metropolitanism initiatives we have covered several times and the planned shift in federal revenue sharing we covered here http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/well-no-wonder-no-one-listens-to-common-core-complaints-if-it-is-tied-to-federal-revenue-sharing/ .
But inexplicably the mayors and city councils always leave out the key component of the vision about “building mental software conditions for human wellbeing.” Or that learning cities and regions are the vital first step in “building the structural concept of a ‘learning society’…based upon an emphasis that ‘a society should be rewired and re-constructed in a way that human learning is put at the very front and maximized to fulfill the idea of a whole person.”
Well that sounds outlandish and remember learning means changes in values, attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. I seriously doubt UNESCO’s or the Chinese vision of a whole person would be ours. And again aiming at those personal traits is essential to anyone with an aspiration of an integral human system. Local, national, or global. Bad track record people. And the above links have the Common Core in the US linked to at least two strategies for such a totalizing vision of personal and collective transcendence. The one Hewlett paid for in that previous post and Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory of Change.
It will be no fun to be an individual in a “complex adaptive system” being reorganized and centrally directed. Which is probably why the 2010 UNESCO document I am pulling this global Learning City vision from is quoting from Korea, Shanghai, and Changzhou, China versions. Where “education is an instrument to rebuild the community” around the planned vision. A community where “all” is so “co-related and connected to make a whole complex ecosystem of human learning. It is like a human body which cannot be detached from other parts. If so detached, the human simply dies.”
There’s no place for the genuinely autonomous person in that UNESCO-inspired vision of the Lifelong Learning Community (LLC). And if you think nothing like this can happen in the US or other countries like Australia I suggest you read this Leading Learning Communities report to be an effective elementary school principal. http://www.naesp.org/sites/default/files/LLC2-ES-1.pdf . That LLC vision is supposedly necessary “as we face squarely the challenges inherent in the transformation of our global society.” A learning society. One where, to once again quote UNESCO and a Korean prof of Lifelong Education in Seoul:
‘learning functions as a key attribute and defines what a society should be [functioning like what the Chinese Communists used to call ‘thought reform’ and others had a darker term for]…a key apparatus of social production and reproduction [which sounds better than the reality of social engineering]…In sum, a learning society is a self-organising emergence [in a centrally planned and dictated sort of way] where new patterns of social fabric and learning systems are merged and deployed. Here my point is this: a learning city is not just an old-timer’s economic project, but a whole new idea where a whole new learning system emerges, revolves, and grows to lead economic, social, and political development as a whole.”
How totalising. No room for the unitary self there. No wonder john a powell said that the Regional Equity Movement in the US and its accompanying education vision was not just looking for distributive justice. Not when you can join a vision where “learning is considered an authentic and generic DNA for cultivating the post-industrial society as a complex adaptive system. In this vein, systems thinking is the key mode of planning and implementing the whole situation in action.”
Which would explain why systems thinking just keeps popping up. All the function and little of the notoriety of the M word.
Explicitly treating all of us as if “cultivating a forest of learning systems, which needs patience, systems thinking and collective minds.”
No I am not done yet. But that is quite enough to chew on for today.
Robin,
An amazing post today.
With regard to the 2010 Shanghai Global Learning Cities, I listened to some interviews from the Expo (w/ Irina Bokova, Mr. Singh) and they left me wondering if there is a concerted plan to get people into megacities? Getting them out of rural areas and into cities?
That in mind, today, in the news media, I heard the common refrain that many Americans ‘won’t do certain jobs,’ and thus the migrant worker situation and immigration problems. Many would rather take government welfare than do the work the migrant workers are doing. And the availability of welfare programs (esp. in urban areas) might serve as a magnet for drawing people out of rural areas and into the cities.
I am just wondering if herding-people-into-cities-for-sake-of-efficient-management is part of UNESCO’s vision?
The answer is yes. By the way I understand Ms Bokova is Bulgarian and was very politically connected behind the Iron Curtain. The point is the agenda has not changed that much. The stage has.
The Agenda 21 expert is Rosa Koire and there are plenty of interviews with her on YouTube that can walk you through what is involved there. Rosa also recommends my blog to her readers as having tied the Common Core definitively to Agenda 21. I have but I have more.
Also look at the Smarter Cities agenda that IBM pushes in all sorts of online videos. Their System of Systems marketing slogan seems to be used more abroad than in the US.
In Australia you see whole areas that are now off limits for settling. This Bioregionalism post from October will also help. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/why-make-the-long-sought-goal-of-anarchists-and-socialists-the-21st-century-education-ideal/
I wonder if Vancouver residents know it is being referred to now as an Asian city? At least in those UNESCO documents and not disparagingly.
Thank you for your kind words. I pulled together a lot of important and quite related material. I wanted people to appreciate I am not stretching here. I will bring it back definitively to the US again in the next post and to the Global Cities Education Network. Remember the Council of Great City Schools is where the standards stayed in motion between 2000 and 2008. The urban schools have been working on the mental software. Now they are coming after the suburbs including mine.
Have you read Stanley Kurtz most recent book? It covers the regionalist movement and also rosa koire of http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com, is a good source for regionalist info.
In rosa’s area she has ABAG and in Phila we have the DVRPC. These are orgs that were once for transpo and bridge infrastructure management but have been taken over as purveyors of A21 regionalism, helping towns and counties relegislate through phoney revitalization and redevelopment projects changing zoning injecting regionalism by stealth through the usual alinsky methods of organizing, buying off stakeholders for credibility, grantgetting,and
Making public private partnerships to slush around tax and grant money for implemntation and insertion of UN desires. Playing to the enviro, social justice people, gender equality implementing human right commissions etc… Very fishy. Getting towns hooked into the UN’s ICLEI and the other international monitor of regionalism, the IISD. There is crossover between the 2 and you can find docs with your local regional ops leaders reports there.
Herding people into the cities is to get them into stack n pack housibg to control the learning communities, in otherwords lifelong learners are lifelong workers until as dictated by some UN docs and leaders, the collective says time for you to go. As put in the dystopian novel ” the Giver”. You are” released”. No body in the community knows its a needle to the brain. The y have a party say goodbye and are waved to as they walk through a special door.
The ” community ” has no real understanding of death because they are tightly controlled in a fake system, having been carefully coached and history hidden from them, much like where these schemers want us to go.
Check outt info about wildland project part of reason for luring folks to cities to get seanky welfare swag.
Mad Mommy-
http://www.livingcities.org/blog/?id=130 on Whose Responsibility it is to Provide Jobs to Low Income Communities is expressly about Philadelphia.
Plus this is another Green Infrastructure/Public Sector Union jobs for Disadvantaged Communities. With Rockefeller funding this is a real vision. Of course it is only sustainable while OPM exists. It is actually consuming wealth, not adding it. http://greenforall.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Staying-Green-and-Growing-Jobs-April-2013.pdf.pdf
As you can see Philly is one of the listed cities involved.
Hi all, on active duty with daughter lead in school musical this weekend! But yes robin, philly is in the thick of it. I found common core after 2 years of researching my local govt scene, got the connection when the kids got a bit older and a few weird things, unacceptable curriculum occurances required my attention needless to say i found common core as a plank of a21, the green stuff another plank…. Our local are highly connected to the regionalist movement. One of our council was at the WH meeting subject of stanley kurtz book, spreading the wealth, he was an orgnizer in chicago and worked for shorebank…. Then showed up here got right on council, 12 years later its all a mess, but know the whole shabang…
Its a long and interesting story!
Meanwhile catching up on my reading, found a great book on piaget, somebody debunked him as another hegelian deceiver, it explains the duplicitous multi meaning words and vague phrases of this whole movement, meant to create subterfuge, distraction, confusion and wobble. Applies to all planks of a21.
Seems common core is breaking through better than the redevelopment plank. Common core brings out tiger moms!
Fondly, madmommy
Madmommy,
Thanks for that link. The podcasts on that site will help me catch up on Rosa’s thinking.
Desuetude,
Take a look at this federal report commissioned with the Urban Institute that shows the federal DOT, EPA, and HUD working together to push Regionalism.
http://www.livingcities.org/knowledge/media/?id=109 and once again Portland and Minneapolis-St Paul are the furthest along but two of our GCEN cities, Seattle and Denver, are also cited as well known exemplars of a regional, de-siloing approach. De-silo sounds better than sying you can no longer escape to the suburbs.
I read the introduction to the Urban Institute document. But look forward to uncovering what the rest of it contains. This struck me:
“Our approach has limitations. We interviewed only current and former insiders in the federal agencies, and even then only a limited number whose positions led them to take a generally positive view of the Partnership and the Regional Planning Grants. Similarly, at the regional level, we interviewed mainly those who have been involved in the Regional Planning Grants . . .”
You think they would have sent the rest of us a post card announcing that were about to be added to their list of victims.
Thanks for letting me know about Rosa Koire – I had no idea. Most people just don’t know about this. (Agenda 21 and ICLEI). I’d say 99% of teachers don’t know about this but they’re plugging away on that environmental stuff. This summer a local school district is offering 4th and 5th grade teachers ‘training focusing on the integration of mathematics, science, and environmental literacy. Specifically, erosion and runoff issues that school properties have on the Chesapeake Bay watershed.’
If only teachers knew that under full implementation they would have to move out of their private homes, give up their vehicles, and move into the cities (which they hate).
I really liked Rosa’s explanation of the term ‘consensus’:
“The real meaning of consensus is to take away your voice and leave you feeling as if you are the only one who has some problem with the results.”
You’re right – it’s tough to bring this topic up without having people dismiss you immediately.
That’s why it is so important to do the homework and see how everything fits.
Someone who heard Rosa speak on the West Coast told me about her saying she has done to Agenda 21 what you have done to education. Since I understood how much bigger than ed my story really was, when I listened to Rosa I could see where everything fit.
If you really want to understand the why, look at the Board composition for Living Cities. Foundations and investment bankers who would get to run the books on all bond offerings. (I was actually a big firm corporate and securities lawyer before moving into healthcare. I have written quite a few bond prospectuses).
These public-private partnerships are a boon for the connected and this rebuild the Inner City and aspects like that Project 21 I already wrote about encourage Clientalism. We provide it all and they turn out to vote reliably.
As the mad mommy links make clear though this is a welfare state with all it perverse consequences and lousy incentives hiding under the cloak of Green Growth. It’s a Ponzi scheme to take from prosperous regions and shift to the Blue Hells that corporations have fled in part because of such poor urban management. As someone from a Blue Hell area put it when they saw this stuff “There’s no incentive here not to be a Blue Hell. But Blue Hells consume wealth instead of create it.” There’s no prosperity here and then there is the related Mind Arson and fervently holding influential beliefs that are deliberately fostered falsehoods.
What a mess if the story were to have remained untold and unlinked.
First, I suggest that everyone read Agenda 21. After today’s post, I pulled some old books from the shelves on Systems Theory. I’m now getting ready to reread them. I stared studying systems theory and management after being exposed to a radical behavioral psychology training program for teachers in 1978.
I wrote an article in 1984 titled “Our Children: The Drones” which was published in a small newspaper, Wisconsin Report. It was republished on NEWSWITHVIEWS.com, Nov. 2012. About the same time, Charlotte Iserbyt’s 5 part article appeared on NEWSWITHVIEWS, part 3 is titled “Death of Free Will”. Both may be googled. Anita Hoge recently published “B. F. Skinner’s Perfect Laboratory – Race to the Top” http://capitolhilloutsider.com. I actually know nothing about these webs, their associations etc., but Anita Hoge and Charlotte Iserbyt are excellent researchers.
I think I’ll try and write something else on “Science Gone Mad” after I finish rereading the following three books:
General System Theory, by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Revised Edition, 1968, George Braziller, New York.
Megatrends, Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives, John Naisbitt, 1982, A Warner Communication Company, New York.
Schools of the Future, How Amierican Business and Education Can Cooperate to Save Our Schools, Marvin Cetron, with Barbara Bariano and Margaret E. Gayle, Sponsored by: American Association of School Administrators, McGraw-Hill Book Company, NY, St. Louis, San Francisco, Toranto, Hamburg, Mexico, 1985.
I have several more to reread. One must question if what is happening in our schools is ethical and moral and especially if it is un-American.
Ann,
Anita actually left a comment two days ago on the Treating Western society post so hopefully she can join in.
One thing that was in a different UNESCO story from that 2010 expo involved restructuring manufacturing and getting senior executives business degrees from Sloan. Cited by name. Which is of course where Senge and Otto Scharmer are lecturers.
I can now definitively link the 21st century skills movement to that 1960 rework of Dialectical Materialism beyond Engestrom’s work. I just have not written it up yet but what I have is quite definitive and a published journal. And it relates to what was put into EdSteps.
When you redefine or set up a sub you obscure. You also make intentionality clear.
That 1985 book which I have not seen looks consistent with Marc Tucker and Ray Marshall’s 1992 book Thinking for A Living: Education and the Wealth of Nations.
I spent most of yesterday spinning the order in my head on how to tell this in a non-off putting way. This is tragic but as a historian there is nothing unprecedented about this attempt. We just falsely assumed our Constitution protected us. It does but not if it is not known or understood accurately.
I majored in History and Secondary Education and obtained a B. A. Later I obtained my M. A. in Reading, so I did a great deal of reading and studying history when I was subjected to the radical behavioralm Skinner program for teacher training. The USDOE lied about the method and lied and said children were not timed with stopwatches- this was after I send them pages and pages from the teaching pods. The vested interest lie to the people. The Common Core has a “tool-kit” just like America 2000 had for every element of our society, and the “free-press” was not left out. It tells you what to do, what to say, and how to act. If one reads carefully from several different publication, one can see the same propaganda over and over. It actually appears as thought none understands the Constitution any more.
The Constitution has little or no value when it is ignored and when the laws are waived as they were and continue to be to implement this destructive plan. The waivers first came under Bush’s administration, and Obama has just continued in Race to the Top. One must ask “top of the cliff, and then go over”? I was stunned when I read waivers of laws and regulations in national and state legislation. But, as long as the Constitution stands, these waivers are not worth the paper they are written on…only when fools follow the waivers. Grant money is the catch-22, and choice and vouchers for naive parents. One would think some parents would ask “What laws, rules and regulations were waived?” Are their children’s constitutional rights waived?
I think laws and regulations had to be waived in order to implement the charter schools and the New American Schools Development Corporation’s radical design teams. I think it is strange that we do not hear anything about these desgins now. Have the names changed?
The charter schools are stripping away any constitutional representative government at the local level. Local and even state departments of education are being run by unelected councils. This has been planned for many years and unless citizens wake-up it will continue until every word in our Constitution becomes null and void.
Go on the web and pull up a teacher training program called Relay. It is vague, but people can see through it if they have ever studied SR/S-R-S and systems technology.
I have an office running over with current research from the web. If you have not seen this before check a report by Microsoft “A Vision for Life Long Learning –Year 2020”, introduction by Bill Gates, and compiled by Randy Hinrichs, Group Research Manager, Learning Science and Technology, Microsoft Research. Pay close attention to “Virtual Mentors” to see what the scientists have planned for children, teachers and parents. We may already be there from what I have printed out recently.
Of course this total plan with the update of modern technology is based on the old USSR educational system. This is one of the first things I read. They used Pavlov’s S-R method and Skinner just updated it. Training children for the workforce is right out of Russia except it was more humaine that what I’m seeing today in the USA ,and was more open to the people.
The USSR system of education was actually devised out of need because so many soldiers were killed in WWII, they had to train young children for the workforce. Some portions had been around before but they tried to make it more democratic later. We have no excuse except the ones manufactured by the vested money making interest “privateers”. I try to remain professional, but find that difficult to do at times.
Our first agreement with the USSR was under President Eisenhower in 1958, and continued throughout the years, except some things were put on hold in the 70’s for a few months. In 1985, an Agreement was again updated under President Reagan. George Schultz signed the agreement, and we gave the Carnegie Corporation of New York a foundation, the right to develop joint computer softwear with the USSR.
Training children for the workforce then spead to Hitler Germany, Cuba, China, etc. etc. etc. Back to my reading!
Thanks Ann. Good overview. You will like this old post. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/if-the-system-seeks-to-destroy-the-ability-to-think-can-james-madison-save-us/
You keep reading. I just finished carpooling a bunch of 9th graders to the Fox Theatre for Sister Act at the height of rush hour. I feel like a pudding brain and I think I know every back road around.
The remixed DM gets beyond behaviorism as does that Ascending from the Abstract to the Concrete that also pushes systems thinking. What we are dealing with is a few conceptual beliefs that will motivate action to change the need. Because these kids are going to be submerged in the need for change.
Have you seen this post? http://www.newschools.org/blog/common-core-spiracy . So cute and clever says both Fordham and EdWeek. Classic case of wrapping the truth of the millions in taxpayer money to be made from all these public private partnerships as well as being a preferred service provider in a reimagined Crony Capitalism under its various names. Enclose it in mentions of the Illuminati and then ridicule it all as a conspiracy to try to make every attack at the Common Core appear absurd.
As if it is not classic rent seeking and regulatory capture. And if I say it’s an organized effort, I can prove it.
Hello people. What do you think people with claims on taxpayer money and a different political vision will do if they do not want to make their case to the voters or their customers?
Clever Riley. Thanks for calling my attention to the New Ventures Fund. Again. Came in handy today when someone asked a question about the National Institute for School Leadership and I saw that New Ventures was an early funder. Of that NCEE sub. What was really interesting was discovering Robert Kegan who I wrote about in this post helped in the organizational meetings for the NISL vision. Around 2000.
Small world.
Ann,
If you and other veterans of the 80s and 90s could look at this I would appreciate it.
http://www.teachingforexcellence.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/LansingMIBrochure8.5×11.pdf
This is what my children’s school and district is using for professional development. Brain-compatible. Reach children you have never reached before.
I have written about PEAK and EDSteps has Csik as a Creativity advisor so of course there will be alliance with the assessments. Rogers says his work is based on Csik’s Flow.
I cannot even get the PTA or school foundation to look at the materials where Rogers cites Mao Tse Tung as an example of leadership. Or what it means to be relying on a Flow or Peak experience in the classroom. Bill Gates is certainly getting obtuse loyalty with his PTA funding to support the Common Core.
So I am dealing with this in real time too.
In his lecture, “Technocracy, Sustainable Development, and the SMART Grid” (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnreDu_nTNs&list=FLd3KwQN9L-SLakhVVnTdpCw&index=1) , Patrick Wood argues that we are, in fact, in the midst of a Technocratic revolution, rather than being steered toward Socialism (as is commonly thought) or Fascism (as I had originally thought). As I read your article, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between you and Wood.
I easily get bogged down and distracted by details, especially in the early stages of the learning process (as many of us are re: Common Core). When this happens, I find myself losing the forest for the trees, so to speak, and it helps to refocus my attention on the Big Picture, the end goal. Simply put, do you think that the ultimate goal is the creation of a global Technocracy? If not, what do you imagine it might be?
Susan,
I will look at your link tomorrow. There is nothing you have brought up that I have not thought long and hard about. There is what I think is a funny story as I delved into the footnotes and ordered a book from the 30s on collectivism. It was written by a Christian Science Monitor reporter who was in Moscow and interacting with Mussolini and that German leader (who I will not quote by name lest it get in the way of the story).
When the book arrived there was a yellowed scrap of paper from the Cleveland Plains Dealer newspaper from 1956 or 57. Last time the book had been opened.
I really am tracking this in incredible detail. Before looking at your link, I can tell you that the political theory and historical progression is that technology changes how we think. And that necessitates how we organize society and the economy. I think that is wrong. ICT can change how we think but some of it is not healthy and certainly not something to apply the accelerator to.
But ICT is the supposed golden technology that Uncle Karl and his benefactor Engels kept looking for so long ago. And all their admirers since.
There are so many moving parts here but they are consistently wearing an identifying tag once you appreciate the various elements involved. Which is what I am trying to do. It’s education as a vehicle that encounters virtually everyone for a significant period of the most malleable parts of their lives.
Political schemers knew that. It’s time we all do too.
SMART Grid is Cisco. ATC21S and PBIS coming in through a very creative interpretation of federal disabilities law.
There is probably nothing in the video I linked that you don’t already know. The information is fairly basic, but hits the nail on the head in a clear, concise way, and in a way I hadn’t considered (at least not so…globally) before. I wanted to clarify that I am barking up the same tree as you are (I’m just not jumping as high), and I think I am.
To think, this is what Charlotte Iserbyt warned us about…and she was called crazy!
Susan L.
Charlotte Iserbyt, another name I was unfamiliar with. Thanks for bringing her up. What she describes as the Devils’ “Four-Pronged Fork” – gradualism, semantic deception, endless supply of tax-payer money, and use of the Hegelian dialectic – is very interesting.
The 4th one, the Hegelian dialectic, got me thinking about the $17,000,000,000,000 national debt. What will be the new normal when that is finally viewed as a problem in need of resolution?
Desuetude-
Think of the Dialectic as changing what it comes into contact with to create what has never existed before and its role for political radicals makes sense. I have some links that will put it into context and show why creativity and critical thinking make such good goals for someone planning to impose that kind of transforming interaction on a classroom.
So I’m guessing trans-disciplinary research/learning is dialectic. It’s role is dialectic – to create what has never existed before (e.g. a belief in Global Warming). In elementary STEM education this would not be about producing a new or improved widget, but simply about producing new thoughts, feelings, and actions among students. That is pretty slick.
The framing beliefs that guide action. I spent yesterday reading a book published in 1998 by Harvard Press on creating psychological tools. Guiding behavior from the mind. Rather creepy when you think about it but there’s no ambiguity on what is up. Today I am mulling which aspects of what I have to use to tell the next part of the story. I always have so much more than I use.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/making-race-and-class-oppression-the-locomotives-driving-the-positive-school-climate-mandate/ is a post from November that also explains how this works. Those 10C’s that Harvard Ed is pushing as is ACSD become framing concepts. The student will learn to ascribe causation that is not there and unfortunately likely learn to hate groups that are not at fault.
But I had an epiphany yesterday about how well the 10Cs work if we also consider them to be Understandings of Consequence.
With all the mind games going on in education it’s no wonder we read of violent attacks at educational facilities.
On another note, I don’t think RTTT has anything to do with ‘racing’ here, there, or anywhere.
Lynn Ericson – do you think she really believes that stuff or she’s just riding the gravy train? Complaining that the world is too complex because of technology and climate change . . . it just seems like an asinine justification for new experimentation with students.
Given her involvement back to 1987 as a Project Director in Federal Way, Washington I would be very surprised if she is not at least familiar with John Dewey’s aspirations for Social Reconstruction using education.
There’s no question of the Soviet origination of so many of these psychology and pedagogy practices but that is not widely known unless you are involved with CHAT. But her use of ascend tells me that she has spent time with someone who has since explained the theory to her. But perhaps not actually related it to Davdov and an update of DM.
It’s not that they want to experiment with students. They just want to change the adult beliefs that will guide future voters and what they assume to be necessary or even acceptable in terms of the powers of govt officials. I am off reading her CSCope social studies presentation at the moment and it is not based on the Constitution or history. But who will know?
Wow. Erickson was really pouring it on at the end of that Powerpoint. “As we strive to inspire young people to think deeply, question openly, risk personally, care for others, and act globally.”
Despite all the encouraging words I wonder if she’d shoot down the student that offered this generalization: ‘sh_t happens.’ And yet it’s probably the best fit given the subject matter she offered as an example. Occam’s Razor.
This YouTube of Lynn Erickson should also help. IB had her as their Keynote Speaker last September in Madrid speaking on using these concepts so that students use them in 0their day to day encounters.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUwKGv-mL3A
Oops it was the Hague in 2011. http://www.ibo.org/ibaem/conferences/speakers/documents/LynnErickson_IB_Kynote_Hague_Oct__2011.pdf
Here’s one more. http://www.schoolimprovement.com/resources/video-summaries/Concept-Based-Curriculum-Enduring-Understanding-Dr-H-Lynn-Erickson/ . Notice the language about “ascending” to an enduring understanding. Also that it’s about existing relationships that can then have timeless, universal application in other situations. Wouldn’t Davydov be proud at the enduring use of his philosophy? Too bad for us it is ideological thinking with a checkered past and a troubling purpose.
I love Charlotte, she knows where all the bodies are buried and has all the books and papers from her Dad. I hope they are secure as history is being rewritten. My experience in washington and dgree in internationalstudies and the soviet union and origins cause me to put puzzle peices together and prick up my ears, however i do fear the label of fanatic although i know i am dead on. Like Charlotte this info has fallen on dead ears for so long and has so many moving parts. Grassroots cannot grasp it in the presented context, so how to distill. Liz coleman davids mom is a cold reality, but like a cartoon villain she is telling us like it is. She is a casualty of the frankfort school and atheistic judaism, who could blame them for wanting to take down the system, however liberation theogy keeps the wounds open. The synagogs have their own brand, Catholics have friere….
Anyway gotta go chauffer 6 8th gradets to their play
Keep it up ladies
Cheers have some wine tonight
Thanks anon. Already pouring.
You have to appreciate that as detailed as my research is, I have SO much more I have not mentioned. My standard for determining that at some level we have active organization at duplicity amounts to locating the declarations.
I learned from the book though you have to let people get adjusted to the idea that their prevailing assumptions are not correct.
Plus that is another reason to interject humor even if it is only snark at a dark topic. Believe me. I think long and hard about how to interject jokes.
I have a zinging sense of humor and intend to keep using it. I think that is the importance of weaving in the history and economics and political theory. And who came up with it and why. We have political radicals, naive business people, not so naive but wanting to preserve or expand their revenue stream. And theories that when they get bound up in degree programs create many change agents acting by script with no inkling that is what they are doing.
Collusion and power are what we are dealing with here. All at taxpayer expense. Which can be a very lucrative, little demand, way to live for some. And doing by stealth what would be disallowed in the light of day. My job has been to go into the darkness where the planners and naifs are talking among themselves and learn the actual intentions. And then drop those intentions into the actual plans. And then give some idea of the history of comparable attempts.
Robin,
It appears the announcement of my retirement from commenting on the website, made a few posts back, was slightly premature. The reason for the postponement is that an annual supplement arrived yesterday in our newspaper. It is a magazine titled Best of [our city] and it names the most popular selections for virtually hundreds of items in numerous categories. I don’t intend to identify here the city or the names of the schools that follow, but I will be happy to make them available to you off line if you want to verify what I am saying.
Best Elementary School: The charter school I helped to found received the Gold, or top, award. Blurb: “Kids come home from this school and astound their parents with knowledge and skills. ‘A totally different school experience than any you’ll find in [city]. They set the bar for academics and character high, and kids find it a joy to not only meet those expectations, but exceed them. Add that to the fact it is one of the culturally and socioeconomically diverse charter schools in the city, and you’ve got one amazing school.'”
Silver award: The charter school for which I am now doing consulting work.
Best Middle School: Gold to the same gold winner stated above, middle school division. Blurb: “Voters said the academics are top-notch in the city and possibly the state. ‘My nephew is in [school name] and it amazes me all the knowledge he has.’ The academy is well-known for its strong college preparatory curriculum.”
Silver award: The school cited for silver, above, middle school division.
Best High School: Ditto. I don’t take credit for this, at least not directly, since the high school was built out after my departure from the board. So I’ll skip the blurb.
Silver: The school cited for silver, above and above.
Note for context: There are 129 elementary, 64 middle or junior high and 51 high schools in our city. It is a fair-sized town.
Now, there are four possible explanations for these results, as I see it: One, certain groups of parents stuffed the ballot boxes in a concerted campaign, and therefore the vote is invalid. In this case, however, one must ask what motivated them. Why go to the trouble? Two, it is a lie. You can quickly confirm that it is not, if you wish. Three, the parents at these schools have been brainwashed like their offspring, having the illusion that their kids are bright, self-confident and exceptionally well informed when in reality they are cognitively abused and damaged automatons reduced to reflexive responses that bypass cognition. This is going to excessive lengths to reconcile the facts, I think.
Four, the most plausible explanation, there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of some, if not all, direct instruction schools. Given the sentiments expressed here recently concerning DI, I thought that this hot-off-the-press information deserved to be shared.
Deborah
Ideological blinders often go unrecognized, and they create dilemmas when they collide with evidence that challenges them. Some prelates and theologians in the Catholic Church (far from all, as assumed in the popular account) rejected Galileo’s contention that the earth revolves around the sun. Galileo is said to have muttered under his breath following his censure, “And yet it moves.” On the subject of direct instruction, I am tempted to take a leaf from Galileo by concluding, “And yet it works.”
Deborah
Deborah,
I am glad you are back and rejoice whenever schools are working well for the children.
I understand this issue but I have not lived it. I think in some ways there is a DI and a di as in explicitly teaching the relationship between sounds and letters and showing most children how to read anything.
If the kids are doing well and enjoy reading, that is far too unique in this day and age.
Welcome back.
Robin, thanks for your gracious reply. DI is a lot of things, including intelligent lesson design and skillful lesson delivery. Its great success with the teaching of reading is only one aspect. The great irony in this entire kerfuffle is the respect that the DI researchers have for the intellects of the children they are serving. Engelmann, for example, started out working with the younger siblings of Head Start students in some of the most deprived areas of urban Illinois, kids whose cultural environment was utterly impoverished. He ended up raising the IQs of those kids by 23 points on average. There is video available of his teaching; it is simply astonishing what he does with those children.
Anyway….this is a detour in your major trajectory, but it’s important, at least to the thousands of kids who have been saved by going through good D.I. schools.
All the best,
Deborah