Didn't see it coming

We think we're good at anticipating new developments in the things we use everyday. More often than not, we're blinded by what we're already using:

• When we looked on the package for the price tag, we assumed price tags we're here to stay. We did not foresee UPC scanners and RFID tags.
• When we fiddled with the knobs on the radio, television or home movie camera, we never guessed there would be remote controls.
• When we took film to the drug store for processing and mounted the prints of our photos in scrapbooks, we failed to anticipate digital cameras or snapshots that get viewed on computers and TV's.
• When we looked through the viewfinder on a film or movie camera, we never expected to watch an LCD monitor of the shot before we took it.
• When we bought longer extension cords for the wall phone and additional phones for other rooms in the house, we did not expect cordless phones and cellphones to give us unlimited mobility.
• When we looked in the phone book or called 411 for a number, we did not look forward to going online for that.
  

Technology is captivating. We fixate on the things we use, rather than their functionality. We take new conveniences literally and assume there's nothing to get imaginative about. We become so spellbound by the new contrivance, we dismiss what else it could do for us, what it could evolve into or what might replace it.

This pattern of fixation applies as much to incumbent manufacturers, service providers and their rival enterprises, as the consumers in the thrall of the current technology. It's no wonder that, for most people, it's inconceivable we could do without classrooms in school and cubicles at work.

Disrupting educational reforms

Classroom education is always under pressure to change. I doubt colleges and school systems will ever respond to those pressures. There are too many indicators of resistance to change, convictions about already being right and desperate clinging to time-honored institutional models. It's more likely the classrooms will become either "a special treat" like horse rides in a park or "an enduring glimpse at a previous era" like AM radio and analog wall clocks.

Classroom education was based on several design dictates which are getting disrupted:

• the scarcity of information and the limited, privileged access to any advanced levels of knowledge
• the storage of information by the use of ink on paper which necessitated physical facilities and distribution systems
• the automatic trust in authority figures who's classroom education qualified them to serve in licensed and credentialed professional roles
• the apparent shortage of citizens of all ages showing an interest in sharing their creativity, taking initiatives in communities or serving others as volunteers
• the limiting of social interactions to phone calls, snail mail and F2F conversations in physical locations
• the abundance of fossil fuels and atmospheric resilience to indulge in commuting to and from those classrooms
• the stable growth of property valuations and income generation which provided a huge economic surplus to fund those classrooms

In the near future, I expect we will lower the cost of getting an education below what can be delivered through classrooms. We will also reduce the fuel consumption and carbon footprint of delivering an education. We will utilize the obvious groundswell of initiatives, creativity and social networking among the Millennial Generation to get educations provided better. Where teachers were regarded as experts in instructional design, school work assignments and content filtering, students will soon be seen as doing all those better than teachers can. Previous models of offering expertise on the basis of one-to-many will be replaced by aggregated crowdsourced models of many-to-many. Socializing that was done outside the classroom, during travel to classes and after school will become the occasions where education happens.

It will become well accepted that the person in the best position to help someone else learn a new concept, skill or framework is someone close in ability. The person who just learned it will remember what it's like to not know it as well the questions s/he had about it before it became clear. The rewards from making a difference, sharing resources and relating eye-to-eye will provide incentives to contribute. The transaction cost of delivering an education will fall below the most impoverished classrooms' budgets.

One teacher at a time

Educational reforms are more likely to get fully implemented one teacher at a time. Transformation of systems calls for lots of social capital to emerge. As Robert Putnam discovered in his research about social capital formation, the work is labor intensive and individualized. His follow-up book to Bowling Alone: Better Together, explored how much listening to others' stories served as the catalyst for the formation of committed communities. Change agents did not impose their expert solutions on disenfranchised citizens. They nurtured bottom-up, emergent solutions among the citizens. They dealt with changes one citizen at a time and realized lots of initiative, cooperations and personal risk-taking as a result.. The change agents were truly helpful.

In my many experiences of mentoring others, I learned it 's not always effective to be helpful one-on-one. My good intentions do not translate to intended outcomes. What was meant to be supportive of others turned out to be less than helpful. I've learned by experience to watch for the telltale signs of my good intentions backfiring. When becoming less efficient about education reform, we need to assess the opportunities to care for one teacher at a time. Here's what I suggest we watch for:

1. Is my help breeding helplessness? Acting powerful can render others' powerless instead of handing off the possibility of being equally powerful. Providing help can generate dependency, rather than independence.

2. Is the direction of the change congruent with the person's destiny? Helping others change themselves can go against an inner current. People may generate a people-pleasing facade that tells me what I want to hear. The lack of genuine involvement suggests the change goes against who they really are. Giving the espoused changes lip service signals me that they are headed in a different direction in their lives.

3. Is the learning getting integrated? Efforts to change minds, cultivate new lines of reasoning and formulate new responses can get derailed. Too much explaining gets stuck in the idea stage. Practicing new ways to think about challenges can turn into analysis paralysis. There's needs to be time to "just do it and see what happens when you do".

4. Is the given-and-take balanced? Being helpful is a set-up to give too much, care too deeply and invest without limits. This turns into a lop-sided deal that feels compromising and sacrificial. When ever I begin to idealize my caring as some kind of martyr, I know the deal is in trouble. The one-sided arrangement needs more reciprocity to realize the intended outcomes.

When the answer to these questions comes up "no", the situation calls for different change. An alternative change model may apply. A different strategy may be more effective. The context may need attention. The change agent needs to make a different change before working further on the original change.

Conceived by teachers

Educational reforms repeatedly fizzle out after an initial burst of enthusiasm. Progressivism appears to get defeated by conservatism. Why? There are many explanations that address the power of the status quo, nature of bureaucratic governance and the persistence of comfort zones. It recently occurred to me how reforms conceived by teachers are destined to fail because teaching is based upon premises that defeat transformation.

Teachers portray their wonderful educational reforms as something that can be taught. Getting the improved approach depends on learning it from a teacher, expert or authority figure. It's not something one could learn on their own and get it right. It's not something where teaching interferes with learning from experiments and experience.

Teachers deliver their models of improved education through books. They capture the possibility on printed pages that make pronouncements, provide procedures and prescribe methodologies. The reforms don't naturally emerge from "out of control" conversations, communities of practice or coaching each other.

Teachers create reform ideologies that then require pushing against the status quo. It's setup as a tough sell to a stubborn audience who are highly invested in their own habits, perceptions and world-view. There's no way for the possibility to sell itself, solve other problems or seem valuable in other frames of reference.

Teachers imply a story in their educational reforms that perpetuates factory models of schooling. They assume the process of change can be efficient and systematized. They presume that consistent compliance will get the job done. They imagine the change will never happen by deviant discoveries, personal reflections and creative self expressions.

Teachers who initiate educational reforms find out their approaches didn't work. Yet they don't learn from their setbacks. They blame themselves or others instead. They assume it takes power they don't have, budgets they're lacking or elusive buy-in from their insensitive opposition. They don't change their minds in ways that change their worlds. They don't switch to thinking like change agents, community developers or entrepreneurs. They remain as teachers first and foremost.

Restoring resiliency in education

When forests experience an episode of creative destruction, they lose their efficiency, rigidity and momentum toward total collapse. They may endure partial devastation from floods, droughts, insects or fire. They become more resilient as a result. I find this to be a great metaphor for anticipating education reforms.

A resilient forest is less efficient. In social systems, this equates to the constituencies remaining or becoming "high maintenance" and labor intensive. The upkeep becomes more costly. Everything needs more personal attention. More time is taken for outreach, bridging and bonding. There is more listening and relating. The issues are more diverse and complicated. The synergies are less consistent. The outcomes are more varied.

When any system becomes less efficient, there is more creativity, innovation and novelty. The niches that had been locked up in done deals become explorable and exploitable. Experiments come back into the mix. There is more disequilibrium and instability. Yet the chances are greatly increased to respond to the long list of issues that efficient college systems cannot handle.

The loss of efficiency means there are fewer mechanisms that tightly-couple cause and effect or provocation and response. The loose-coupling says "not so fast" instead of "consider it done". The system considers new options and innovative combinations of current resources.

Increased resilience implies the downfall of legacy subsystems. Time-honored arrangements for coordinating activities and resources fall by the wayside. Meanwhile, there's an uprising of new growth, new species and new reciprocities. There's an upside to the down cycle.

When education systems experience episodes of creative destruction from Web 2.0 and cultural changes, these dynamics could easily come into play.

Falling by the wayside

When a time-honored institution, industry or political movement is falling the wayside, it functions as its own worst enemy. Its "stinkin thinkin" drives it to self-destruct. It's sense of the right thing to do is the opposite of whatever could promote its survival, longevity and value to a larger community.

As I've explored for the past two weeks here, opposition to educational reforms appears to me to be falling by the wayside. This downfall of legacy systems can make way for reforms to fall into place. The pattern of self-sabotage is evident in the ways issues of danger, people, logical alternatives, personal dependency, consistency of image, government involvement and challenging work are perceived. The positions taken conform to the following flawed strategies:

• Relying on self-congratulatory feedback: Pleased with the evidence of victory, superiority, conquests and progress. Ever more convinced by the proof that others are wrong, deficient, losers or headed in the wrong direction.
• Beholden to superficial indicators: Taking situations at face value. Limiting considerations to factual content. Sticking to the confirmed indications while dismissing the speculative, panoramic and prognostic inputs.
• Building confidence on self-righteous indignation: Being right at all cost in order to make others wrong. Reacting to system feedback as threats. Dismissing connections between combative conduct and fallout, side effects or backlash.
• Fixated on positional stances: Taking pride in what is already known, decided and determined. Preventing any new growing, changing or learning from occurring.

When these flawed strategies take effect, the well-defended institution appears to be its own worst enemy. It tries harder to make problems worse. It spends more on falling further behind the changing times. It makes superficial attempts to correct deep dynamics of emergent changes. It solves the wrong problems and becomes identified as part of the problem itself.

Digitized current understandings

Over the weekend, I finished reading Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. While reading it, I kept thinking of how it applies to transforming educational systems into pro-learning ecologies. The way Shirky explained power law dynamics brought to mind two of my other favorite books: Linked and The Long Tail.

When people are getting paid to produce inside facilities that are being maintained, bell curves will capture most of what's occurring. Most of the activities will be close to average and extremes will be cutoff. For instance, all the employees who put in an eight hour day will be the norm. Those that are less committed because a very demanding home life will be less productive and far from the norm. Those that are very professionally active (networking, associations, conferences, etc) will also be less productive and far from the norm, but on the opposite end of a scale of commitment to the employer. This kind of production embodies large transaction costs which are minimized by creating organizational hierarchies.

When people are not getting paid to produce and no facilities are provided, the transaction costs are eliminated. Production is voluntary and dependent on personal initiatives. There will be a few exceptional heavyweight contributors and a vast majority who contribute rarely. In between will be a range from a few big contributors to several small contributors. These contributions can come together for free-- due to Web 2.0 tools and server space. Besides the amount of contribution, there are many other facets of this "production without an organization" that portray power law distributions. The size of the audience, subscribers or community members varies from a few gigantic ones to a majority of tiny ones. It's evident in open source software development, Meetup.com groups, Wikipedia edits and the staggering volume of content generators uploading to blogs, YouTube, Flickr and social networking sites. We are free to produce in ways that hierarchies can never be:

1. Hierarchies must filter before publishing to avoid costly failures, dead ends and setbacks. We are free to publish first then filter, which nurtures each individual's contributions.
2. Hierarchies achieve quality by controlling people and imposing rules. We are free to evolve quality by making errors, refining drafts and maintaining "works in progress".
3. Hierarchies must limit the number of contributors due to the cost burden it involves. We are free to encourage an unlimited number of contributors.
4. Hierarchies insist on a minimum amount of production to qualify for the paycheck and office space. We are free to produce within gift and reputation economies for intrinsic motivations.

All of this has me contemplating a delightful possibility for transforming factory schooling with "digitized current understandings":

• What if each learner's current understanding of each current exploration was put online for others to contribute using the tools for digital portfolios to create digitized works-in-progress.
• What if each leaner was in charge of what changes were made in that understanding and considered all the inputs, suggestions and support?
• What if others made contributions to a digitized current understanding in the form of questions to be considered, personal experiences with "getting it", examples of how other's found the understanding to be useful or relevant to something else.
• What if the" digitized current understanding" published an RSS feed that others could subscribe to in order to keep abreast of updates and consider additional contributions.
• What if most understandings had very few contributors, but an occasional one had got a very big response?
• What if all these contributions to each other's understanding followed power law dynamics which gave each learner those freedoms that hierarchies cannot provide.

Imagine that!

Anticipating natural reforms

Can system reforms occur as a natural process like the emergence of a butterfly from a cocoon?
There are many examples in nature that suggest that it's possible for human systems. There are numerous succession sequences -- like a pond that evolves into a wetlands, meadow and finally a hardwood forest. The gestation of embryos into full grown adults occurs in a wide range of species. Vegetation that begins from seed reforms itself dramatically into a full-size plant, bush or tree.

If transformation is such a natural thing, why does it seem so unnatural in attempted reforms of education and other large systems?
The natural world has no fear of comprehensive awareness. It responds to its situation without denials, defensive rationalizations or one-sided explanations. Nature thrives on responding fully to its surroundings and getting responded to in return. Humans get caught up in ego-trips where they need to be right, identify with positional stances and regard holistic awareness as a dangerous threat.

Aren't ego-trips an evolutionary outcome that naturally occurred from a previous condition?
Yes indeed. There's evidence of a pre-egoic or pre-personal phase of human development where people do not form individual identities. They function like swarms, flocks or herds that move with the supply of food and changes in weather. They do what needs to be done for the survival of their cooperative gathering.

Could we outgrow ego-trips into a post-egoic or transpersonal phase of human existence?
Lots of philosophers have anticipated that possibility with fascinating insights. I just finished re-reading Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth" which defines a way to awaken and live differently. It's also the basis for many spiritual traditions where the individual's consciousness is transformed into an ego-less presence.

Can large systems get transformed naturally by changes in consciousness?
Time will tell. The possibility makes perfect sense to me. Here are some of the facets of a natural reform of large systems by a change in consciousness:

• Egos have the sense to see, say and do the wrong thing for the good of the whole. The whole pushes back and deprives egos of access to what is good for the whole.
• Egos naturally congregate together, stick to their own kind and isolate themselves from higher consciousness. These conceited gatherings have the right stuff to self-destruct, deplete their essential resources, discourage their customers and destroy faith in their system parameters.
• Egos naturally make enemies, feed conflicts and escalate tensions. They will find themselves in wars and other forms of hostility which will fortify their ego trips, require further vengeance and devote their resources to fighting.
• While all this is occurring, post-egoic or transpersonal humans will have the sense to see, say and do the right thing for the good of the whole. The whole will respond in kind and nurture further responsiveness from these humble constituents.
• These non-egos will network, collaborate and combine efforts as if "we're all in this together" and as if "acting as one in spirit" brings out the best in each of us.
• The large systems will be transformed by the vanishing of fear, controlling individuals, unresponsive mechanisms and fortified stances.
• In it's place, responsiveness will abound and desired results will come about easily.

Delightful disenchantment

How can the dropout rates of students and new teachers be a good thing?
When unhappy campers endure their misery, they make everyone miserable. No good comes from putting up with so much dissatisfaction. People become disheartened, cynical and turned against exciting possibilities in their lives. However, when unhappy campers leave the campground, transformation of the system is imminent.

What's does the dropout rates signify from a systems perspective?
There's a saying that "it's easy to get Joe out of the trailer park, but it's difficult to get the trailer park out of Joe". When dropout rates soar to 50% of enrollment, it's a sign that "the trailer park is getting out of Joe". The parameters of the system are no longer the parameters of learner. The premises for getting value from education experiences are getting revised. A cultural shift is occurring that expects different benefits and outcomes from its educational systems.

How could such a difficult change come about so easily?
By introducing conflicting educations between formal and informal learning or between educational systems and cyberspace experiences. By causing learners to realize how much, how easily and how usefully they learn when they are not getting instructed. By juxtaposing satisfying successes outside the trailer park with the same old misery inside the same old endurance contest. By giving glimpses of freedom from the perpetual misery of unhappy campers.

What will become of conventional educational systems?
Some will appear totally useless to both students and their parents with their new frames of reference. The systems will refute the disenchantment by clinging to their system parameters and experience a near-complete evacuation. Others will evolve to offer the kinds of freedom, value and satisfaction that learners have discovered outside the legacy system. The unhappy campers will redefine what education is, what good it does and whatever it takes to realize those benefits -- by getting the conventional campground "out of their system". The transformed educational systems will served the disenchanted who have found more value beyond parameters of the system. The last row in the classroom becomes the top tier in the next system operating on the new parameters.

Revising system parameters

What are "system parameters"?
The parameters of a system determine what problems get identified, how they are diagnosed and what solutions are provided. A fast food system cannot recognize a need for winter coats or solve a clothing problem with anything on it's menu. A fast food system does recognize a need for food in a hurry and responds with more fast food. It can solve problems to get more feed to the cattle it slaughters to create the burgers on the menu. It cannot solve problems that require cutbacks in cattle breeding. System parameters call for more of the same thing to get its job done.

What are the parameters of a typical education system?
An education system delivers seats, classrooms and school buildings and solves apparent problems with those alternatives. It will diagnose familiar problems as a lack of seats, classrooms or buildings and solve them swiftly. The system may also deliver additional course offerings, subjects to study and course materials. It will automatically solve problems with those responses and assume more courses are what's required. The system will also provide objective measures of task completion and content retention for measuring progress, advancing students to the next grade level and rewarding teachers. Some of these systems may also provide counselors, social workers and staff meetings to resolve troublesome issues. All these systems operate within their parameters when they seek additional funds through property tax increases or bond issues. The system will then diagnose every problem that erupts within these system parameters.

What's wrong with relying on system parameters?
School systems act incapable of solving problems like student dropout rates or new teacher burnout rates. Those problems cannot be solved with additional seats, tests, courses, counseling or budget increases. The problems exist outside the confines of system parameters. The problems appear impossible to solve and must be "swept under the rug". Otherwise the problems get diagnosed as a need for the solutions the system does deliver. The system will try to fix the problem with additional courses, testing, counseling or funding.

Why don't school systems revise their parameters to become more responsive and effective?
A system cannot revise it's own parameters. It takes something or someone outside the system. We cannot lift a table we are standing on top of, until we get off the table and stand on different ground. We stand on and stand for the system parameters when we are functioning inside a system. We do what the system does and cannot do otherwise without causing a system malfunction. We join in it's purposes, perceptions and premises to fit in, get our job done and meet others expectations.

Why don't systems seek outsiders who are standing on different ground to revise their parameters?
System parameters justify their own existence, make themselves right and refute contrary premises. Proponents of the parameters say things like:

• It won't work with our unique situation -- it has not been invented here.
• It's been tried before and fails to produce lasting change in our kind of system.
• It's not our responsibility to be concerned with that -- it's none of our business.
• It's not something we can afford under our current financial constraints -- it's too costly.

How do system parameters get revised?
Usually by a crisis where the system cannot reboot itself after a high profile failure. The parameters are exposed by the system crash to be dysfunctional, toxic or ill-conceived. People lose faith in the system. The spell is broken and it's suddenly obvious what has been previously assumed without question. The chronic misdiagnoses, neglected problems and obsessive solutions are put into a new light. There is nothing to stand on or for until new ground is established with revised system parameters.

Making reforms happen

Is it possible to make reforms happen by taking direct action?
All of us who want particular reforms certainly wish we could change things right now by taking action. Usually, action gets a negative reaction. (libel, blackmail, vandalism, theft, arson, witch hunts, burning in effigy, drive-by shootings, etc.) Activism produces unintended consequences. Situations calling for reforms are maintained by underlying dynamics which are different from situations for making progress, solving problems, building infrastructure or creating communities.

What causes action to backfire when the active intentions are to create reforms?
Actions send a different message and those "in need of reform" are already traumatized, hyper-vigilant and suspicious of what is being said about them and to them. We're saying we want better educational experiences, more freedom of choice for each student and greater access to outside resources. The audience getting reformed hears a different message like:

• "You're professionally incompetent, indifferent and part of this unacceptable problem"
• "Your conduct is disgraceful, traitorous and toxic to our precious learners"
• "Your value to the future solutions is negligible and highly over-rated by clueless idiots who share your blindness to the real problems"
• "You're in need of an enemy and now you've got one to contend with until you stop doing your job as you have been all these years"

Why do teachers and school administrators read such devastating criticisms into talk of reforms, higher quality and better outcomes?
They're already on the defensive from increased accountability measures, bad press and hostile parents. Their fear-based outlook automatically turns complex situations into divisive stances, categorical conclusions and irresolvable stalemates. They are pre-disposed to over-react and take everything too personally.

Why are their feelings and predictable over-reactions not considered by most reformers who are anxious to take action?
Frustrations run high on both sides of the issue. The urgency to make reforms happen is as great as the apprehensions those reforms evoke for others. Everyone is looking in the mirror and seeing something other than themselves to point fingers at. Emotional intelligence is not usually in the mix. Left brain logic is being used to keep an oppressive lid on limbic hijackings.

How would right brain creativity, insight and non-judgmental awareness play into these dynamics?
The situation calls for an indirect approach that sidesteps the provocation of those predictable over-reactions. Restoring the oppositions' dignity, peace of mind or sense of possibilities often helps. Those in need of reform often need their minds boggled by regarding their resistance -- as a welcomed form of cooperation, significant revelations about the nature of the real problems and an impressive show of commitment to the resolution of the reform agenda. It can also transform the oppressive dynamics to stop pointing fingers and only use "I" statements like:

• "I have concerns about how I'm coming across to you and affecting your states of mind"
• "I'm intending to clarify my passion for education and I regret if I am escalating conflicts with my boisterous love of learning"
• "I'm delighted with the ideas we're getting for our mutual consideration and varied viewpoints"
• "I'm fascinated by the new choices I'm seeing for how to contribute here and to learn from how I'm perceived by the rest of you"

Giving lip-service to educational reforms

What signs are you seeing of educational bureaucracies giving lip-service to the quality, inherent value and long term effects of the education they provide?
Evidence is everywhere. I see it in the declining literacy rate, increasing drop-out rate, and pitiful attendance stats. It's apparent to me in the over-emphasis on testing and other accountability measures. There are signs in the continual supply of ineffective leaders, managers, teachers and every other kind of professional.

How can bureaucracies defy their mandate to deliver high quality education to every citizen in their systems?
By not openly defying their mission. By giving plenty of time for professional development conferences, in-services and continuing education credits. By talking up the fine points of an education agenda when hiring new teachers or every time school board members or Superintendents are getting elected. By going through the motions of change efforts to improve what they do and what comes of it. By putting out fires when students or parents go into crisis-mode. By staging events to give the impression of accomplishments, progress and commitment to quality.

Why is lip-service preferable to integrity, substantive quality and well-deserved respect?
I doubt that lip-service is preferable to most teachers and academic administrators. Lip-service is an expedient, quick fix to silence critics, avoid criticism and appear competent. They are not malicious. They think they would show students and themselves more respect if they had the time and resources. They assume they cannot because they are constantly over-worked, pressured to do more and deprived of acceptance.

Is their a cure for lip-service, hypocrisy and scam-artistry?
There's no cure that can be bought, administered or facilitated. The problem is inherent to the structure of personalities prior to awakening. We naturally become hypocrites as we develop a self-concept, take pride in our accomplishments and feel confident in our decisions, abilities and ambitions. We simultaneously develop a dark side that betrays, opposes and even sabotages our good intentions. We say one thing and do another. We sell ourselves as a picture of respectability while acting out self-contempt "off-camera". We give lip-service to our best intentions and most praise-worthy ambitions. We aim to dramatically please others to compensate with how subconsciously displeased we are with ourselves.

How does lip-service ever go into remission?
The solution comes about by a spiritual crisis, loss of pride, failure of idealism, or nightmare episodes in one's life. It comes upon us like the transformation into a butterfly befalls the fat caterpillar. We give up our claim to fame for an unfamiliar humility, emptiness and innocence. We find within the respect we could not find in the world and the love we need to stop running scared. We stop pretending to be someone we're not and simply be who we are: unique in soul and joined in spirit.

Form and reform

Has every educational reform failed for the past two centuries?
It appears that way on the surface. There has always been a massive amount of talk about educational reform that fails to materialize as real changes. Yet there have been substantive changes from one room school houses and books called "grammars". The changes in support technologies are the most obvious successful reforms.

Why does so much talk of educational reform go unheeded?
Talk about reforms does not also talk about forms. The reform-minded voices "talk at" instead of "talk with" people who comprise the existing forms of education. The forms are disregarded, diminished or disputed while speaking of reforms. The resisting of status quo sends clear messages to educational system to defend, entrench and stagnate themselves.

How can "talk of change" not pose a threat to the status quo?
By speaking the language of the those "who need to be reformed". By understanding why the forms are so persistent, resilient and defiant of reforms. By validating others' faith, reliance and enduring commitments to those forms.

What language do the proponents of existing forms speak?
Most embrace a bureaucratic mindset because most educational systems takes the form of large bureaucracies. Talk of educational reform is unintelligible because education is only given lip-service within the vast policy-driven hierarchies.

How can we speak their language and get on their wavelength?
By learning a different grammar that organizes the opportunities for reform very differently from our own frames of reference. Here's a sample of the outlook of any "keeper of the existing forms":

• Talk of change in a student's experience or a teacher's conduct has to be multiplied by the number of students in the system and quantified to put it into the budget. Bureaucracies exist because the number of people served is staggeringly large.
• Beneficial effects and outcomes from reforms has to be enforced as something everyone will get across the board to avoid favoritism, elitism or discrimination. Exceptional improvements is asking for grievances to be filed and litigation to be pursued by injured claimants in high-profile cases (because bureaucracies are huge and publicized).
• A reform in pedagogy has to be translated into either an executive order, a policy change or a new law from the state or federal legislature. Individuals cannot initiate reforms without getting punished for being illegal, defiant or non-compliant.
• Changes in services delivered has to be accomplished by maintaining constituencies, loyalties, and reputations. Otherwise, talk of reforms is asking beneficiaries of the existing form to sabotage their long term investments and basis for future rewards from the system.
• Reforms will generate: new documents to be kept on file, paperwork that preempts productive work and reporting procedures necessitating more compliance. This added burden only works if it's not going to get people into more embarrassing situations and ugly confrontations.

Conflicting educations

Kids nowadays are getting two educations: one from the culture and one from school. The two are at odds and the students are caught in the middle. This has always been the case, but I believe today's "education from culture" is more profound than in anytime since the start of the industrial revolution.

Every generation learns from friends, shopping, socializing, playing or watching sports and participating in family functions. Recent generations have received a second education from movies, TV, radio programs, recorded music (LP's cassette tapes, CD's) and games. What's different for this latest generation is the immersion and interactivity.

Text messaging and picture phones intensify superficial interactions. Computer games and online shopping heighten involvement, choices and consequences. The ability to customize one's list of friends, playlist of tunes and tags of favorite finds online -- give the current students more power at their fingertips than any previous. The adoption rate of new technologies (iPods, camera phones, Tivo, etc) have soared beyond any previous changeover to new tools and toys. Outside of the classroom, kids are in control of many experiences, getting worshiped as consumers and learning by making choices everyday.

Meanwhile classroom education is changing at a snail's pace. There is a perpetuation of the existing social order by means of schooling. Stephen Downes sees clearly how this occurs:

Perhaps it makes more sense to direct our efforts toward the reform of government and industry, content to allow school to follow. But there is a risk in this. The conflict between new and old is being waged at the level of information: who creates it, who controls it, who distributes it. It is a conflict not of machines and ammunition, but of people and ideas.

Schools - or more generally, education - is the 'ground zero' of any conflict involving people and ideas. If people grow up believing society should be ordered a certain way, it becomes very difficult to change that view. That is why such change takes generations.

Students are now caught between incessant stagnation and rampant innovation -- slow change in school and fast adoption rates for new technologies. Schools and advertisers are both battling for their hearts and minds. Experiences of captivity and freedom are both making lasting impressions. Contradictions abound and questions multiply about which education to value more. Stephen continues:

You write, "The ways industrialized democracies have governed and educated their citizens will not make sense to children raised in the freedoms of vast networks." But if they do not actually have such freedoms, then they will not come to such views.

I'm seeing the children having these freedoms in abundance already. They will come to these innovative and resourceful views naturally, unimpeded by their controlled classroom experiences. I'm expecting cultural learning is winning out over the classroom induction into "asking to be kidnapped".

The freedoms outside the classroom are giving credibility problems to instructor led teaching, content delivery systems and push marketing models. It appears like spin and hype to media-savvy kids. It calls into question what is being taught, how its being sold and the value that can be extracted from it.

We are naturally convinced by what we learn from our experience, especially if it contradicts what we are being told. When in doubt, we follow the feet of the two-faced leader, not his/her flapping lips. Actions speak louder than spin, as if our immediate experiences never lie. The kids are in good hands when they see through the games played out by classroom command and control systems.

Technorati tags: educational reform, paradigm shift, change models

Educational reform

It's not possible to reform educational systems. That's been proven time and again during the past century of failed school reforms. Talk of change gets stuck in the idea stage because education systems are "the exhaust coming out the tailpipe". The engine is government and education is a side effect of how the governing happens. Education will be transformed when governments change regimes.

The industrialized world is governed by industrial democracies. They consistently create results that cannot be produced by agrarian and nomadic societies. Industrialized economies proliferate solutions made possible by centralized controls, applied metrics and systematized efficiencies. Mass production joins co-dependently with mass consumption. The lifestyles in these democracies are materialistic and addictive. The harm to the planet and the disruption of communities are regarded as insignificant: a small price to pay for all this manufactured splendor.

The inability to educate effectively is built into the industrial paradigm. Individual attention is inefficient and too costly. Allowing each student to develop uniquely is a quality control breakdown that lets deviant and defective components out of the factory. Giving the student freedom to explore independently is a regression to nomadic and agrarian (primitive, uncivilized, peasant) paradigms.

The perpetuation of industrial democracies lies in the conformity produced by "big business" delivering textbooks and standardized tests. The unyielding devotion to classrooms, tests, grades and certification is built into every post-agrarian democracy's need for industrialized education. Without that, the jobs would be filled by "a bunch of farmers" who have no clue how to vote in elections about sophisticated, technological and industrial issues.

We are currently in a transition to networked democracies. Corporations will see their charters rewritten as the principles of Capitalism 3.0 (PDF)take hold. Centralized production and distribution facilities will be replaced by distributed and democratized methods. Journalism and broadcast media are currently undergoing that change from consolidation by conglomerates to citizen rejuvenation by Web 2.0. Democracies will evolve into more direct participation with less centralized representation that gets tainted by industrial lobbyists. Quality control will be emergent from the networked, leaderless, distributed participation.

The new institutions that emerge will fit William Strauss's and Neil Howe's model of a "first turning". A preliminary disintegration is a necessary part of the process. Dave Pollard provides a constant supply of insights into this fourth turning. His recent "A crooked broker society" characterizes much of this darkness before the dawn. As Dave says:

It is evidence of a culture in the terminal stages of decline and disintegration.

All this leads me to the following conclusions:

1. It is futile to reform education. It will change naturally when we shift to networked democracies.


2. The democracies will change as the economies, systems and premises of capitalism change.


3. These changes have been initiated by technologies, but will take hold when the next generation takes them for granted as they come into power.


4. The ways industrialized democracies have governed and educated their citizens will not make sense to children raised in the freedoms of vast networks.

Technorati tags: educational reform, education, Capitalism 3.0, paradigm shift

How the revolution occurred

Guardians of established institutions (educational, economic, governmental) were all on guard for threats to their stability, continuity and viability. They knew to watch out for powerful opponents that might gain notoriety in the public press, positions on boards or seats in legislatures. They remained vigilant against those that sought revolutionary changes, disruptive revisions and chaotic situations.

These guardians failed to watch out for powerless, under age citizens. They saw no harm in creating technology, products and sales to those insignificant members of society. They never imagined the revolution could infiltrate though picture phones, text messaging and broadband connections. They did not see the warning signs in the use of remote controls, email and P2P file sharing.

This revolution went undetected for another reason. It's a transformation of the kind Marshall McLuhan characterized insightfully. A subtle revolution is a bias of the popular media or an effect of using a ubiquitous technology. It changes everything because the extension of human abilities created by the technology is so powerful, pervasive and easily taken for granted. These particular technologies are uncontrolled like sounds we hear and tribes that distribute power to each member.

The powerless, under age citizens do not feel powerless. They have learned how to learn in their world of cell phones, online resources and games. Their tools support them acting resourceful, adventurous and collaborative. Their need for delivery systems is minimal. Their potential use of discovery systems is phenomenal. They are being raised on self realizations and personal finds.

Technorati tags: McLuhan, digital natives, transformational change, paradigm shift

Regarding the recent revolution

The infiltration was very successful. There were no casualties reported. The revolution occurred off radar and undetected by the vigilant gatekeepers. The new regime won the war without a battle. The changes have already been accepted in the courts of public opinion, diplomatic channels and economic alliances. The outcome was not deterred by the obstinacy of failed states, systems or reforms. The "post-war" education system, economy and multi-lateral governance structures are emerging.

As Pete Reilly suggests, the situation calls for outreach, diplomacy and new-found respect. Battles, counter insurgencies and escalation of hostilities is senseless. It is also senseless to act as if the revolution has not happened. We do not need to make the changes occur. All that really remains is to get on board, see how everything has been transformed for us and join in the fun.

Citizens of the revolution are "under-age". They cannot vote or drive cars yet. They do not yet have control of the education system, economy or governance structures. Their impact is low profile among power brokers and corporate control systems. These revolutionaries can text message and take pics with their cell phones. They can go online to play games, shop and socialize like it's second nature to them. They are "listening to the beat of a different drummer", inside a new paradigm and living life on different premises.

Respect for these under-age revolutionaries and the mostly undetected transformation -- is a big challenge. Those of us with pre-revolutionary outlooks have a lot to learn. We will do a better job of that if we approach what we're not seeing -- with curiosity, self confidence, self-motivation and creativity. If we think of ourselves as learners, discoverers and adventurers, we will fit in much sooner than identifying ourselves as powerful experts and defenders of correct stances. Thinking with questions will get us a lot further than thinking with familiar answers.

Technorati tags: digital natives, education, reform, transformational change

LCB April Question - Leave a clean corpse

The big question for April on the Learning Circuits Blog is: ILT and Off-the-Shelf Vendors – What Should They Do? My answer: Leave a clean corpse.

Now that we realize that most learning occurs from conversations and coaching, there appears to be no more use for outsiders: delivering content or helping us to talk among ourselves.

Now that we've gotten far better results from giving us more feedback and less instruction to build skills, it makes no sense to pay instructors to give us no feedback -- and then give them feedback on how they performed.

Now that we know that intended learning outcomes depend on long term evaluation, it's far cheaper to shortchange the classroom segment and spend more money on follow through with the team, supervisor or internal customers affected by the outcomes or lack of results.

Now that we've had so much success teaching ourselves how to use lots of new toys, technology and software, it seems quizzical to act like we need to be taught methods by someone else or another click2death module.

Now that so many of us have built up meta skills (for problem solving, changing strategies, collaborating etc) in online and computer games, it seems silly to teach a concept, skill or policy change as if it's not something everyone can figure out for themselves or team-up to knock out in a jiffy.

Now that we've had years of experience getting better at most everything we do, it's astonishing that someone we've never met could identify our shortcomings, break our habits and overcome our inhibitions -- better than our colleagues, friends, mentors and ourselves.

Now that we are on a roll of learning from internal blogging or subscribing to RSS feeds, tags and searches -- it seems antiquated to pretend that identified skill gaps from a training needs analyses could have a clue about what can be cooked up today, between us, to get better results than yesterday.

Now that "communities of practice" has taken on new meaning (as we find so many others with parallel passions in the horizontal city called the blogosphere), the struggle to make formal instruction more informal, immersive and interactive seems futile.

Now that I have pictured ILT and Off-the-Shelf Vendors as obsolete, the question remains how long their customers will pretend the world has not already changed this dramatically.

Technorati tags: informal learning, blogging, elearning, communities of practice