This is what is at stake: we are at a crucial time in our human evolution, our emotional maturity, our ecological stability, our personal and social health. Never, perhaps in human history, have we developed such technology and access to knowledge. Never, perhaps in human history have we been so far behind in our ability to actually organize knowledge, get beyond old ways of understanding learning, and innovate how we construct larger institutions and forms to facilitate learning. We are being invited to challenge our own individual perceptions and habits in tune with an emerging social intelligence which must simultaneously provide a capacity to fulfill our individual dreams, bring societies together, and create a healthier world.
Attempts to "solve" this situation from the outside have largely made the problems worse. Policy makers, experts, from all areas tend to prescribe solutions from a position in which they have very little direct day to day contact with the situation on the ground, and even less personal stake in the outcome. In the education bureaucracy and policy world, recommendations can be made into law affecting the entire nation (as with No Child Left Behind) without ever consulting a teacher or spending a day in a contemporary classroom. I'm less guilty than others, having spent quite a bit of time in mainly non-traditional educational settings, teaching teachers as an education professor, and analyzing and writing on policy. However, I am still too far removed from how theory meets practice in the expanded classroom of the internet, slam poetry contests, social media, volunteerism, etc.
So, I'm going back to school. I have a Ph.D. in philosophy of education, and I'm going to teach high school and to learn how the best of past knowledge about learning can be integrated with the exciting forms of learning emerging today and extending into the future. In so doing, I hope to contribute to a movement of learning that is not simply "instilled" in young people, but which is generated by them and made available to a world that sorely needs it to survive and thrive. This is "reform from the inside". In these posts I may talk about other kinds of social reform, but mostly education reform which recognizes and develops social media, the ability of young people to initiate and generate their own knowledge, and the emergence of what I call a "social mind" which transcends the limitations of individual cognitive thinking and which requires a new way to understand intelligence and think about learning. I'll offer examples from my own practice. I'll make comments on my new re-education, teaching while I get officially certified in California.
I'll have the benefit of foresight, having developed methods and conducted projects ("Learning as a Public Policy Concern") which anticipate new kinds of learning. I'll narrate the struggles and disconnects from what is being demanded now of education and what is actually needed for the future. I'll be critical and creative in looking to the possible frontiers of learning. I invite you on the journey. I will try to post an insight each day or two, depending upon time. I fell it will be insightful for both of us. This interesting journey (and perhaps an interesting life) begins with this step moving forward into untold possibilities.
