Education Guide

There were six kinds of apples, there were exotic melons in several pastels. 

Everything seemed to be in season, sprayed, burnished, bright. People tore filmy bags off racks and tried to figure out which end opened. I realized the place was awash in noise. The toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and coffee-making machines, the cries of children. And over it all, or under it all, a dull and unlocatable roar, as of some form of swarming life just outside the range of human apprehension.

”Everything is concealed in symbolism. . . . The large doors slide open, they close unbidden. Energy waves, incident radiation . . . code words and ceremonial phrases. It is just a question of deciphering. . . . Not that we would want to. . . . This is not Tibet. . . . Tibetans try to see death for what it is. It is the end of attachment to things. This simple truth is hard to fathom. But once we stop denying death, we can proceed calmly to die. . . . We don’t have to cling to life artificially, or to death. . . . We simply walk toward the sliding doors. . . . Look how well-lighted everything is . . . sealed off . . . timeless. Another reason why I think of Tibet. Dying is an art in Tibet . . . Chants, numerology, horoscopes, recitations. Here we don’t die, we shop. But the difference is less marked than you think.” White Noise Don DeLillo

This passage aligning the sterility of shopping with the art of dying from Don DeLillo’s White Noise always makes me think of schools … where everything is also concealed in symbolism … where everything is sealed off … and for the most part timeless …. and our OECD stats on 16 to 19 year olds suggest that many of them  find “the difference is less marked than you think”

I am still reading Jonathan Zittrain The Future of the internet and how to stop it and am currently enjoying thinking around the ideas in Chapter 4 – The Generative Pattern.

For starters I like Zittrain’s term for the quality of the Internet – generativity.

Generativity is a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.” (p70)

As he notes “Terms like “openness” and “free” and commons” evoke elements of it, but they do not fully capture its meaning, and they sometimes obscure it.”

Zittrain describes the five principle factors at work in generativity as:

1. How extensively a system or a technology leverages a set of possible tasks;
2. How well it can be adapted to a range of tasks;
3. How easily new contributors can master it
4. How accessible it is to those ready and able to build on it; and
5. How transferable any changes are to others – including (and perhaps especially) non experts

If we accept Cuban’s suggestion that school is a technology (or way of doing stuff) then perhaps we can use Zittrain’s notion of generativity and the five principles as criteria to help us develop more generative ways of “doing school”.

Generative thinking that might be quite useful for those School Plus folk who are charged with writing policy around

…. transforming secondary schooling to encourage young people to stay and complete qualifications, and strengthening partnerships between schools, tertiary education organisations, employers, industry training organisations and non-government organisations to extend the learning opportunities available to students, and to connect young people to their next steps beyond school.

It sure sounds like they are after a system that facilitates changes … that they need a  generative system that will provide…

1. Unanticipated change: innovative output new things that improve people’s lives
2. Participatory input – a life well lived is one where there is opportunity to connect to other people, to work with them, and to express one’s own individuality through creative endeavours 

Given that it is likely that it is our existing school systems sterility, has contributed to The Land of Milk and Honey’s distressing OECD demographic for 16 to 19 year olds not in school, not in training and not in employment implementing a transformation towards generativity is no small task.

And in truth we probably need to do all this whilst maintain some measures of sterility within the technology of school …. for as  Zittrain notes about generative tools …. they are  individually useful but not inherently better than their sterile counterparts … could just as easily be claimed for generative systems – the tools and practices that develop among large groups of people.

Generative tools are not inherently better than their non-generative (“sterile”) counterparts.  Appliances are often easier to master for particular uses, and because their design often anticipates uses and abuses, they can be safer and more effective.  For example, on camping trips, Swiss Army knives are ideal.  Luggage space is often at a premium, and such a tool will be useful in a range of expected and even unexpected situations.  In situations where versatility and space constraints are less important, however, a Swiss Army knife is comparatively a fairly poor knife – and an equally awkward magnifying glass, saw and scissors. P73

Just imagine for a moment that you were charged with both developing the programme logic and overseeing the implementation for the following outcomes. 

A.  Change the behaviours of young people so that they:
1.    Stay in school
2.    Complete qualifications

B.  Extend the learning opportunities available to students by strengthening partnerships between schools and:
1.    Tertiary education organisations
2.    Employers
3.    Industry training organisations
4.    Non government organisations

C.  Connect young people to their next steps beyond school.

I am puzzling about what will go in all the programme logic boxes …and whether the limitations in thinking through boxes - all that subjectivity in problem identification, policy imperatives, political sensitivities, complexity and heterogenity and absence of an evidence base stuff will mean the whole initiative will be yet another case of  “The difference is less marked than you think”.

Source: Artichoke