learning in progress ….

The curriculum in 2042 is now mostly about how to get a girlfriend or boyfriend, dealing with skin problems, legal remedies against your parents, and how to dress like one of the characters in Star Wars (a series which now consists of 3471 movies, and is the principle component of Western culture).

There are few remaining traces of the curriculum structures of the 20th century, which is now referred to disparagingly as the Knowledge Age. By 2042, we have moved well beyond this relatively primitive conception of education. There was a massive curriculum reform program in the early years of the 21st century, which achieved what was then described as the ‘post-modernisation’ of the curriculum. This program focused on what are being called the New 3Rs: resilience, relevance and generic skills. Pedants have pointed out that generic skills doesn’t start with an ‘R’. Supporters of the New 3Rs have retorted that Writing and Arithmetic don’t either. This has proved a telling argument.

On the standardised literacy and numeracy assessments which are conducted annually by each of the states and territories, in the year 2042 we have reached a very positive position: all Australian students are now well above the benchmarks, and all students are also well above average. Indeed, every Australian student is performing in the top decile. In the ACT, every student is in the top 1%.

makes some interesting points after the humour

I am sure you are familiar with the line that education is working on an industrial model in the information age. I don’t feel completely comfortable with that kind of analysis, because I think many of the elements of the industrial model are important in schooling: high levels of administrative efficiency, clearly defined roles, responsibilities and accountabilities, a focus on results: these are all matters which suit the delivery of education. So I don’t share the view that we should do away with the old industrial model school as the focus of educational delivery.

But there is something to that analysis. What it suggests is doing away with some of the rigidities and inefficencies of the current model. Let me suggest two areas, just as examples, where radical reform might help:

Firstly school organisation: If the research I keep citing is correct, we have to acknowledge that deep learning requires sustained teaching of key concepts for an extended period of time, and that the amount of time will be different for different students. That means that age-grading and lockstep progression are blockages to progress. We need more flexible and learning-focused approaches to student grouping and progression. We have to get better at managing how students are grouped together for their learning, to ensure that each student’s individual progress towards deep learning is maximised.

That implies a move on class sizes: the current arrangements about class sizes are an excellent example of what is wrong with the industrial model. In respect of class sizes, we are at the same stage of development as the automobile when Henry Ford said you could have any color so long as it was black. Setting inflexible maximum class sizes eliminates one of the major potential opportunities for improving student learning. To make the point simply: under current staffing ratios, every class of 50 that you run lets you run one class of 5. If you run a lecture for 100 students, you can run four classes of 10. Why wouldn’t you? I predict that we will have much greater class size flexibility (which doesn’t mean fewer teachers or, on average, larger

from the last link from this conference proceedings. like the Melb declaration, that conference seemed full of nice ideas, 'we must remove inequity from the system' - less clear how its ever implemented.

i like the comment about overdoing the information age and factory schooling comparison, which i've probaby done myself. Some of the assumptions in school do work - clear roles etc - but some don't; notably forcing kids through standardised curriculum at same age level. No-one thinks its a good idea, as far as i can tell, but its hard to really do otherwise given the structure of secondary school and curriculum. Don't know about the ratios comment but there is a need to find better ways to customise learning.

(reading Disrupting Class at the moment, which sees smarter use of IT as a possible way of doing this - not just putting computers in classrooms -  a waste of money if thats all that is done - but using the possibilities for self directed learning, customised curriculum, instant feedback, that they open up.

Sees the growth in home schooling and virtual schooling as the place where these disruptive possibilities are likely to incubate for a while.) 

In less grand terms, we might imagine a cook who produces a book of recipes without any reference to Providence or Creation; and the recipes still work just fine without a pious preface that might have been customary in previous generations. The question is whether this omission is just a question of efficiency of communication - there is no need to mix theology with the instructions on slicing tomatoes - or whether the separation goes to the very core of things - are carrots and communication and commerce all ultimately the blind consequences of dancing atoms, which are themselves the consequences of some random properties of quantum flux - a universe that happened to pop into being - or is there another realm of explanation and integration underlying all this- which all draw on for meaning even while ruling it off as 'not science' ?

Short of positing God behind the Big Bang, the original event, this separation of technical detail from metaphysical perspective is, to a scientific mind set, the most practical way to proceed, science tends to wants only the minimum (and often reductionist) perspective it can work with. And indeed one does not really want an aircraft mechanic or brain surgeon saying – “and this bit is where God comes in”; the understanding needs to holds without predicating that sense of explicit intervention. This is now so well established as to seem unremarkable, vindicated by utility of technology, axiomatic. The only question is how complete is this account and approach... does the separation that makes sense in cookery or astronomy or physics, ultimately need to be reconciled with another frame of reference; indeed does it already presuppose one, however disregarded the assumptions are?

Its true to the history to note Laplace was evidently a theist and Christian. While he is known for viewing the universe as entirely mechanistic, he drives home the point by imagining a mighty intelligence able to stand apart from this and see all of history - and calculate the future - all from the deterministic path of the atoms. This imaginary intelligence is conceived as outside the system - variously described - by others - as a demon or God. This is hardly part of his science - since he disavows that hypothesis - yet his imagination still posits such an omniscient observer to illustrate the point. And while he certainly promoted a deterministic and mechanical view of nature, it is not clear he actually imagined every act of human will was predetermined by the blind and inevitable pathways of atoms. Indeed reconciling a mechanistic universe with any notion of self determination is an unresolved paradox for any single minded scientific view - since even those who are convinced the God hypothesis has been falsified and should be permanently dismissed, like to retain a sense of independent personal action and moral indignation, which hardly emerges from a view of that view of the universe).

Galileo, Descartes, Newton and most of the ‘scientists’ (a 20th century word) also embraced some version of faith... so whatever separation of science and religion we now see in their name, was not necessarily developed in them; that is, while they may have methodologically bracketed off theology from ‘natural philosophy’, it did not rule out general faith in Creator, or, for that matter, Saviour.

We tend not to bother with these aspects of their thinking; we’d rather pull Newton’s laws away from his theology; ignore his lengthy attempts to use his new understanding of the heavens to reconcile dates and appearances of comets with biblical prophecy; just as we leave behind his prolific experiments in alchemy. Poor Newton, genius that he was, evidently didn’t attend popular schooling 101 to see how his science should have ruled all these aspects out of court.

We also take a Cartesian ‘frame of reference’ as to mean a coordinate plane for geometry, or the logical frame of thinking that privileges cognition as a basis for identity- (I think therefore ....) Academics might deplore the divided personality and view of the world that tends to arise from this approach - logical categories and primary qualities (mass, extension) here as the main game, while emotion and secondary qualities takes a much less privileged role over here; but nevertheless assume we can rule off his references to a deity, or his own account of a personal vision.

So popular history – including the science text book version - simplifies and purifies these ‘scientists’, extracts and codifies their science, removes most of the context; removes whatever theism was involved, and often casts them, or at least their science, as the enemy of the ‘stories of religion’. (Just as it truncates the ‘scientific method’ etc.)

Above all we read Galileo’s dispute with the Catholic church as the paradigmatic example of how religion has opposed the ascent and reign of science - uninformed by any subtler grasp of the history. (Peter Slezak, who happens to be atheist, has a much more nuanced view, he notes Gaileo friendships with many of the cardinals, comments on his faith, and sees the real issue behind the issues is who had the right to interpret scripture – so while religion indeed 'got in the way’, both science and faith were politicised in a way that we forget and over simplify).

In any case it is worth distinguishing between methodological naturalism as practiced by many of these ‘scientists’ (‘my method will proceed without direct reference to God; does not need that hypothesis’) and naturalism in a broader more encompassing sense; there is no God. They are not one and the same. Indeed, its arguable that the materialistic scientist in the latter sense, is less common than many assume- - those who follow Newton et al and reconcile theism with scientific method seem more common historically; and while we might not so readily proclaim on nature as a ‘second book’ of revelation today, its notable that many still do not equate their science with atheism. (Claiming that the faith of historical scientists was just social conditioning of their day will hardly do to explain it; one might just as well see the explosion of western science as drawing on an underlying faith in a rationally structured universe, which itself derived from this heritage; i’m not the first to suggest that of course).

I’ve written various ponderous posts here over a few years, without broaching all this; but i’m feeling i need to write on that dimension.

My own faith, for the record, is more immediate than it may appear from these writings, and i have no intention of defending it with reference to history or philosophy; trying to make its seems suitably reflective, intellectual, academically respectable. I’m not really going to make much effort to quote Whitehead, and the deep and insightful commentaries he writes on science, religion and education, as much as i did draw from his insights in earlier days. Nor Plantinga on methodological naturalism, or even CS Lewis, for a clear exposition of the reasonableness of faith, or a recent reading of Latour, on how the crossed out God is part of the modern set of pacts with has left us with multiple omissions in how we see science, society and religion.

Instead of doing that, casting things in that respectable and somewhat academic light I’ve decided to start another blog, which starts with a faith commitment just assumed up front, taken as given, not as needing defence or justification. Simple observation and experiences of faith as conceived and worked out in life, with a reflective edge i guess.