Draft 11/22/2012 nuet

HUMANKIND TO HUMANITY

Humankind is the name given to the human species as it evolved/emerged from its primate substrate; a recent happening of relatively short duration in our biosphere’s evolutionary history. Humankind and its emergent processes are unique in many ways. The co-emergence of brain/adaptive-body and the development/learning of individuals within their emerging social systems is the focus of this report.

Humanity is the name given to the future humankind when globally sustainable/resilient and in balance with Gaia. In metaphor, humankind remains embryonic and the emergence of humanity is a birthing process. The unique nature of the humankind/Gaia interaction threatens the success of the birth of humanity, if not setting a low initial condition for the birth – a stunted humanity far below its genetic potentials.

Those evolved traits that led to the success of tribal humankind and increases in population became a problem for organizing many tribes/communities of diverse cultures into a society. Not adequately comprehending “human nature”, the default mode of societal organization is what we today call “civilization”; characterized by a small power elite and technical bureaucracies to manage suppressed masses. Civilizations succeed civilizations, as all they have for stability is the default mode.

Only recently does the collective, distributed knowledge of humankind enable the creation of systems alternative to civilization, where communities of vastly diverse cultures can organize in non-oppressive societal systems (humanity). This potential for humanity is not predispositional in our collective genotype; but must emerge in the human collective phenotype via an integration of human learning and human organizing. It is vital that this distributed knowledge be organized to enable humankind to create a nu educational system sufficient for the needs of humankind to successfully emerge humanity.

This is a fully feasible enterprise, although to many it may appear as magical thinking. Planning BIG may actually be more feasible than planning small fragments; once we sweep away the fog of unquestioned assumptions. A complex of paradigm shifts may be easier to achieve than attempting only one paradigm shift while keeping other (inconsistent) paradigms. The potential viability of the whole proposal can only be judged after comprehending the details with an open mind.

We must be open to the emergence of nu organizations to replace old organizations instead of locking into only transformation of old to new. Human judgement as to what may be more viable, transformation or emergence, is highly unreliable when we are dependent on what is.

I use “new” to refer to the novel in the Here&Now in reference to what was. I use “nu” to refer to the novel in the Here&Now in reference to what might be.

LIMITATIONS OF EDUCATION

Learning is a natural process for humans and occurs without organizing; and there are native predispositions for humans to organize when in need. Humans slowly learn-to-learn and learn-to-organize and even may engage in limited organizing for this learning. But, historically the cycles quickly stagnate as intent shifts to control and limiting learning beyond the obvious and immediate needs of “society” or their elites.

A major inadequacy of civilization (in addition to its unintentional destruction of its biospheric base) is the severe suppression of the actualization of potentials present in most healthy newborn humans. This includes members of the elite and the bureaucracies.

Even the most humanistic and positive futures thinkers envision most people having only a “basic education” for full employment and healthy, stable lifestyles; and even this limited vision is viewed as both difficult and taking many decades to achieve.

All scenarios (I know of) for humankind navigating Climate Change ignore the need to get knowledgeable and voluntary participation by most of the global human population. This lack implies an intended manipulation of the masses by the elites for their scenarios, which may not succeed.

“What if our very best is grossly inadequate to our need?” Educational systems are rated only by comparison; there is no evaluation as to need. For the already educated to honestly critique our best would risk discrediting their credentialed expertise. Awareness of the gap between what-we-have and what-we-need can motive humankind to sufficient action.

If the modern human brain is the most complex material system (for information processing) in the known universe, and brains interacting-over-time is even more complex, then an intentional effort to seaf (support, enable, augment, facilitate) the emergence of needed competencies in sysnets of brains must be the most challenging enterprise faced by humankind. Yet, the old cliche still holds: “He who can, does; he who can’t, teaches.” “Education” remains one of the most trivialized human enterprises, even when it is given explicit attention as exemplified by the naive proposals to reform education.

The “technology of education” may be most “advanced” by the elites of civilizations in manipulating the attitudes and behaviors of the masses.

Contemporary “educational technology” usually refers to how traditional educational systems and practices adapt to the new computer/communication technologies. The limiting metaphors of school, rigid curricula, classes, classrooms, instructors & students remain influential, even in experimental online education. These features of education are there for the effective and efficient management of educational institutions and are quite adverse to effective seafing of learning. Ignoring the high relevance of individual differences re learning is a necessity for top-down managed education to be financially viable. Educators in their formal education are led also to ignore the relevance of individual differences.

Although there are now (and have been) serious efforts to improve the learning of humans, each focuses on only a few variables of “education”. Nowhere is the full scope and complexity of “education” attended to. Pure bottom-up, P2P learning blocks the effective use of organizing-for-learning in creating a quality education for all that faces the real needs of humankind.

ORGANIZING-FOR-LEARNING=&=LEARNING-FOR-ORGANIZING [O4L&L4O] {icon needed}

In homage to Donald Michael’s seminal book, On Learning to Plan and Planning to Learn, I have re-defined “education” as Organizing for Learning and Learning for Organizing.
The emergent cycles of O4L and L4O are vital. Each cycle is experimental, and many cycles interweave. Transformation and emergence co-exist. An organization may be viewed as temporary scaffolding within which humans freely interact and learn – and the successes/non-successes evaluated and applied in the design of the next generation of organization scaffolding. It is by learning about how our scaffolding seafs learning that we L4O. We might use the metaphors of scripting and performing (to scripts) where the scripts may call for a mix of precise performance and creative innovation. Scripts for scripting are important.
The organizations called for are much more than “schools”. Our media, our social networking, our work places, our play; all our real environments can contain scaffolding for learning, and the creation and modification of these result from our learning within them.
All environments for the raising of children are essential scaffolding for their development and learning. The early years can both open and close potentials and determine the range of paths open upon maturity. All this must attend to the vast individual differences of each person, which calls for scaffolding for continuous assessment of essential relevant variables throughout a persons life (with protections for privacy and security).
THE MANY FACES OF LEARNING

For many, memorizing is all there is to learning. At the other extreme are those who, with mentored practice, learn deep meditation, and “control” some of their physiological functions and conscious experiences. One might generalize “learning” to include most forms of change in a living being. The forms of change discussed below are not comprehensive and I don’t discuss here the interaction of the different forms of learning, which is very important. There are also many different theories about learning and education, recently being enhanced by brain studies.

ASSIMILATION & ACCOMMODATION. Piaget distinguished assimilation from accommodation. In metaphor, assimilation involves adding new pieces of knowledge to a pre-existing knowledge structure without significantly altering that structure. Accommodation involves modifying the knowledge structure, often followed by a rapid assimilation of knowledge pieces previously rejected by the old knowledge structure. Equilibration is the name given by Piaget for the cycling of assimilation and accommodation during a child’s development. On examination, many teaching practices focus on assimilation with the hope that it will lead to gradual accommodations. In lock-step education, those learners who don’t experience accommodations will experience more and more confusion as new pieces of knowledge presented are not assimilated. Slowly one learns to avoid environments which confuse and threaten.
ADULT STAGE DEVELOPMENT [ASD] Many educators would prefer not to call accommodation a type of learning. Some use the term “development” for sequences of accommodations (each involving more assimilation learning), but often limit it to child development. Yet, there is considerable research into what I call “adult stage development” which can involve a number of very significant shifts in ones frames or paradigm sets. Unfortunately, adult stage development (ASD) is a marginal topic even among the educated and where attempted, facilitating stage changes is very difficult (in the venues tried). Also, Adult Development in formal institutions is negatively linked to Remedial Education – where persons who missed stages in youth development, are assessed and assisted in developing learning-to-learn and learning-to-learn-to-learn competencies. Many adults, young and old, have low levels of these meta-learning skills and there are few programs to assess them and provide educational service for their development/learning. Educators now give lip service about the need for meta-learning and correctly say this learning objective should be in every course. But few teachers are prepared how to teach meta-learning and more research is needed .
PRECISION OF FIT [POF] When there is a “fit” between a person’s learning styles & competencies and their learning environment, leaning can be quality, rapid, and enjoyable. The poorer the “fit”, the poorer and slower the learning – to a point where a person’s learns to avoid future learning. Because of the vast individual differences of learners, each learner must be seafed in selecting their learning environments. This calls for a continuing assessment of every learner, where they are active participants in the analysis. NuEdu (what I will name our nu educational system) will include systems-of-teams designing assessment measures (including analysis of their work/study behavior) and assisting in their use. View this as a continuous census of the learning achievements and potentials of each learner. This will facilitate matching learners into appropriate teams. R&D into discovering best “fits” between learners and learning environments will occur in real learning sessions. You may recognize as an extension of the Montessori Method.
SEEDS SOILS SCAFFOLDING [SSS]. Today there is a great wealth of educational materials to serve the immediate needs of content learning. Printed and online text docs, video and audio programs and sequences, graphics and artwork are waiting to be woven into learning experiences that are relevant, effective, efficient, enjoyable, elegant (reeee). More and better content nodes can be composed, but we need more energy and talent weaving what exists into educational experiences for a diversity of learners at all levels. Yet, almost every concerned person desires to create one more seed to add to the pile; each expecting their seed to go viral. Seeds need fertile soils to sprout, and sprouts need nurturing scaffolding to grow to maturity. Very few are into creating soils and scaffolding – and most seeds don’t sprout and the few that do sprout quickly plateau in their emergence.
LEARNING BY DOING. Those not formally educated adequately frequently champion Learning-by-Doing. We have this competency hardwired as it is the main process in infancy, and is called into play when challenged. Although much can be learned by doing, as commonly used it is a grossly un-reeee process. In NuEdu the design of doing-tasks and doing-projects will be integrated with educational activities. These can augment the learning directly involved in the doing; Or other information and and skills learning activities can be integrated even when not directly related to the primary doing activity.
LEARNERS FOR QUALITY EDUCATION [LQE]. Everyone in NuEdu becomes a learner/educator. While learning they are collectively responsible for everything happening and being created for maintaining and improving NuEdu. Novice learners can assume functional roles in NuEdu; highly competent and dedicated “leaders” are also learners. This is NOT to turn contemporary students into educators/management in contemporary educational institutions. NuEdu will not result from the reform or transformation of our contemporary educational system; which will be replaced by NuEdu. NuEdu will emerge via a mediated interaction/organization of persons; sometimes as “learners”, other times as “educators”.
IGNORANCE. Increasing our ignorance should become a primary objective of NuEdu. “IGNORANCE” is re-defined as a positive type of knowing: KNOWING WHAT I DON’T YET KNOW OR COMPREHEND, OR CAN’T YET DO OR APPRECIATE. Strategically gaining ignorance we learn about our potentials. Although we can’t have detailed knowledge of all relevant domains (for Humanity), we can be competently ignorant of all such domains.
MORE. The above items sample only a few of many variables/domains related to learning and education. A brainstorm led to the following initial draft list of other items that could be added here.
- Therapies. Physical Therapy. Training. Team, Community & Institutional Learning. Learning in Altered States. Group Learning. Learning by Observing and Imitating (involving mirror neurons). Brainwashing and Indoctrination. Learning by Repeated Practice. Learning Through Inner Practices. Neuro -Linguistic-Programming. Holotropic Breathwork (Grof). Parent-Child Co-Learning. Conation. Life Style Changes. Organizational Learning. Learning Through Play, Gaming and Learning. Nature Teaches. Multi-Sensory Education. One-to-One Mentoring. Infant Learning. Learning by Other Organisms. Instruction. Curricula. P2P Learning. Integral Learning.

Today there are many exciting experiments of alternative methods for learning and education. These need to be added to this list. The relationship of the Educational Subsystem and all other subsystems must also be explored.

NuEdu and UPLIFT

NuEdu. The number of relevant variables for a reeee, personal-to-global nu educational sysnet is large and growing. How might we manage and utilize such a challenging human enterprise? Obviously, no single human individual is capable of making “top-level” decisions (whatever that means). A small team may not be adequate. This issue, the true magnitude of our collective knowledge/intelligence, is present in all domains of relevance – not just “educational” (although “educational” is special as it impacts on all other domains).
PRACTICALITIES. We need an “off-planet” perspective of the shallow to deep dynamics on Planet Earth. What are the alternative trend forecasts for our local-to-global nested societal systems and the trend forecasts for how social systems (from persons to nations) will adapt? What also, are the full scope and complexity of the movements for change (revolutionary to emergent) and what are our best estimates of their interaction in years and decades ahead? These are our fundamental realities. Deeper details will be turbulent, blocking useful generalizations for how each “unit” (person to region) will change.A lesson may be learned from what I have heard happened in the USA Apollo program to send humans to the moon and safely back. NASA (in its early, formative days) divided the whole project into sub-projects and interfaces between sub-projects. Those working in each sub-project didn’t need to know any details about what was happening in the other sub-projects. At their interfaces they were given parameters they needed to meet. It was the coordination of the interfaces that led to the success of the Apollo Program.
UPLIFT
I use the term, uplift, to label the emergent process that changes the distribution of cognitive/emotive/performance competencies of the whole global population. I can argue that uplift can contain all other projects. For everything we want to do, we must learn what, why, and how we want to do it. We learn as we do, and improve our doing.
Example: for the interface between the launch propulsion system and the system supporting astronauts during launch all that would be needed was max Gs for launch for astronaut support team and max Gs humans could withstand for the launch team. The launch could involve big rubber bands or atomic bombs and astronaut suspension could involve water or foam. As I’ve been told, this process was abandoned by NASA after the success of the Apollo mission.
Every organization has a structure that enables some processes and constrains or forbids other processes. This is very relevant for educational organization. Every contemporary educational organization enables a few variables in learning and limits progress in many more learning variables. The true scope of education calls for nu innovation in organizing.
According to Second Order Planning, we should plan to keep as many positive options open as possible; not to commit to any specific plan. This competency needs development, which will require learning.

NUET'S NETWORK

EDUCATIONAL SUBSYSTEM FOR FUTURE HUMANITY

Draft 11/22/2012 nuet

HUMANKIND TO HUMANITY

LIMITATIONS OF EDUCATION

ORGANIZING-FOR-LEARNING=&=LEARNING-FOR-ORGANIZING [O4L&L4O] {icon needed}

THE MANY FACES OF LEARNING