Education's Ecology

Why Teaching, Textbooks, Testing & Technology are Not Enough.

Education’s Ecology

A book by

Bruce Lindgren

(c) 2024

Self published or using Kindle and Amazon

Nominally 268pp @ 425 wpp …

First Compilation20230306 …

Current Compilation 20240229.

Preface

This is a book to get a jumble of ideas out of my head and into a form that can be transmitted to other heads. I have no doubt that the majority or readers will be disturbed and that is as it should be because these ideas have been disturbing me for nearly two decades. When I left a position at a Community College in 1997 there was an enormous frustration over the direction higher education was taking and with my role. After 32 years as an instructor to over 10,000 students, delivering lectures and supervising laboratory studies, it became clear that I was not on the same thought tracks as colleagues, administrators and most of my students. While I was seeing new horizons for how education could impact lives, others were looking in a rear view mirror and hell bent on continuing to do what they had seen in the past and now expected to see in the future.

What follows is my thought about education that now goes beyond my limited direct experience. A part of that experience has been as a biologist, educator, ecology activist, a parent and a constant observer. I've worked, more recently in Economic Development, workforce development and community development as a consultant.

I've had opportunities for leadership that have been gratifying but never compelling in the sense that I felt either obligated or driven to stand in front and take responsibility for a groups direction. I generally felt comfortable going with the flow and consensus of what a group wanted. Along the way I have come to love history, philosophy, sociology, writing … and of course, a lot of reading. My amazement with the biological sciences is unabated.

Although I wrote this book for myself, my hope is that it is also for everyone who loves education but is frustrated and disillusioned by systems that are stagnant for lack of ideas and commitments for innovation while the status quo dominates what should be important conversations to develop alternatives. Those who don't want any change should stop here.

I apologize in advance for creating a book with a dearth of documentation based on the literature from academic educators and scholars. That was simply beyond my capacity. One result may be a document that sounds a lot like shooting off my computer keyboard. It may sound that way because that is in fact what has happened over the last ten years. My mornings are replete with writing and accumulation of my thoughts; journal-like but without, for the most part, proper, thorough documentation. Tallying up my daily efforts over just the past five years, rounds out to around 200,000 to 400,000 words per year. Not bad for an old fart.

I hope that what now remains represents my own thinking and writing, but it is possible that the work of others has crept in however inadvertently. For any of that, I sincerely apologize and will gladly append sources when they are discovered. For this I will use my website www.educationecology.net.

Acknowledgments should go to many more people than I will ever remember so apology to so many that I will miss. But that said I want to thank Wayne Becker who shared my early enthusiasm for an alternative approach to biology instruction with maximum emphasis on laboratory studies and minimal attention to the routines of lecturing. Wayne was a constant inspiration for quality teaching; his enthusiasm for biology and our students was always above and beyond. My focus on instructional design was aided and abbe\ted by Dr. Chris Odionu, Dr. Heather Huseby, Dr. Tina Stavredes, Dr. John O'Brien, Mary Jacobson who helped me begin before 1997. After 1997 my contacts and inspirations in NW Wisconsin included Dr. Jerry Hembd, Jane Silberstein, the late Dr. Fred Tidstrom, and the late Supervisor/Councelor Bob Browne. Environmental work was stimulated and supported by Dr. Nancy Langstrom, Lissa Radke, Dave and Dr. Jan Schnell, Dr. Ron Sundell, Rev. Jon Magnusson and many other members of the Lake Superior Binational Forum.

Since leaving Bayfield County, Wisconsin, I have been very fortunate to rekindle friendships with retired faculty from Normandale Community College in Bloomington. They were then and remain great sources of stimulation. Were it not for encouragement from a few of them recently this effort to make the content of Education’s Ecology available in this web published form would not likely have happened. It is for many of them that I have chosen to release the content as Open Source with a Creative Commons license requesting attribution if any of the content is used for contennt in another format. My intent is thaat all of the book’s 39 chapters, introduction and epilogue will eventually appear on this website.

Finally I thank my family including Brent & Erin Lindgren who never failed to stimulate discussion about education, Erika Lindgren Rivers & her husband Pat, Steve Lindgren, Dave Lindgren, Mike and Mark Nelson, Jennifer (Nelson) & Rob Schierman. Five grand-kids (Hunter, Sawyer, Wyatt, Kiera & Riley) are frequent sources of great joy and contributed to much of my thought on education. And, of course, none of this would have been possible without the wonderful love and support of my wife, Patricia Nelson-Lindgren.

Introduction

The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.

Barry Commoner

Much has been written about education since 1983 when “A Nation at Risk” flooded the consciousness of educators, politicians, economists and anyone with a patriotic passion for the United States of America. The frame of nationalism that pervades writing, research and delivery of education in the United States creates borders for thinking about education that locks in systems that were created to serve another time. The pervasive system of schools was built for the Industrial Age is and will continue to leave too many people, young and not-so-young, behind and still egregiously at risk. These are People at Risk.

Concerns for education are no longer dealing with A Nation at Risk. Our global society must deal forcefully, immediately and effectively with A World at Risk.

The world is at risk because our global human population is exploding; growing exponentially, and will, if it already hasn’t, exceed the carrying capacity of the earth’s ecosystems. The vast majority of this large and growing population has been excluded from a share of the world’s wealth. The growing inequality fosters significant migrations of people seeking a better life and avoiding the despotic actions of oligarchs on almost every continent.1 The human population has transportation, housing,and food production systems in place that are dependent, directly and indirectly, on fossil fuels while the uses of these fuels are increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and causing climate instability as a harbinger of global warming that will massively disrupt, first, coastal cities and eventually villages worldwide. The chemical industry is producing tons of cheap plastic that is overwhelming ecosystems, most notably our oceans, as plastic residues of discarded Styrofoam, polyethylene, vinyl chloride, polychlorobiphenols, and dioxins accumulate in the tissues of animals to disrupt coordination and reproduction.

Risk is increased with political systems that are stagnating, unresponsive and increasingly undemocratic. Networks of people are increasingly disrupted through ambitious politicians and their affiliates who are more concerned with marketing and money than with democracy that broadly protects the worth and dignity of diverse segments of the global human population. We have, it seems, thoroughly confused individual libertarianism with democracy that is inherently social. Thank you Ayn Rand.

The exclusion of a massive majority of people from a share of worldwide wealth has been systematic and egregious. There is a small minority that really believe that inequality is inevitable because of differences in personal qualities including but not limited to intelligence, moral character and evolution. This minority accumulates wealth and uses it for privilege and power while believing that the remaining majority is eager to serve their esteem needs for subordination and servitude (and even slavery in its many guises) as they relate to others.

—

We must focus not only on childhood education but also and emphatically on adult education because the school failures of the past have given us a social and political culture that cannot cope with the realities of a contemporary world and worldview that is sinking our life boat. Spaceship Earth is in danger of losing the support systems that our species and most other species need for survival. As our air is increasingly saturated with green house gases, our waters are polluted with industrial and agricultural wastes, our soils are depleted of essential plant nutrients, and our oceans are contaminated and inundated with tons of cheap plastic crap. We are a world at risk.

We are increasingly at risk because we have created systems for learning that are artificial and block the natural learning that is built into our individual selves and has supported social stability. The open society envisioned by Karl Popper has emerged but only partially. Its conjectures and experiments began in America and have influenced social and cultural relationships in many places across the globe. But other forces and passions—particularly for privilege and power—have subverted and restrained a recognizable path to the open society.

We will not, to paraphrase Albert Einstein, solve the problems of schools today with the same thinking that served yesterday’s industrial age schools. A new consciousness embracing the fundamental worth and dignity of all individuals must co-evolve while world population declines as new social systems for population control emerge. Entirely new systems supporting democracy, justice, civil society and, indeed, our survival as humans will enable us to live—even thrive—as humans while protecting the diversity of the life forms upon which our own survival depends.

Education Ecology is fundamentally about human development and includes or embraces everything that contributes or detracts from developing knowledge and skills by individuals and institutions. Education Ecology is a powerful path to build useful new thinking about how social systems can be designed with and around education to foster change in the way we think about our human relationships and responsibilities for environment, economics and education. Survival is not assured by oligarchs acting as neo-gods and demagogues. We humans cannot thrive along with massive human poverty, gross political and economic inequality and the catastrophic losses of biodiversity. Our human future will emerge from a new vision. Unfortunately that new vision is many decades behind and very likely many more decades away, unless we begin to transform education along with all of society now. It is not either, or; it is both, and.

—

While it may be argued that the industrial age has passed in the United States and in many of the developed countries across the earth, there certainly is a case to be made that in the developing world, the skills and mindsets of the industrial age may still be needed. Yet the paradigms for the application of industrial age methods to economic development must be brought into compliance with the realities of contemporary earth science and global political imperatives. The industrial age schools provided many worthwhile attributes for the building of a workforce—punctuality, standardization, conformity, that supported a top-down hierarchy honoring ownership and management. However a new ecology of education may build upon these attributes, a new paradigm based on a planetary imperative must emerge. This imperative, encouraging and enabling parallel development of an industrial ecology that recognizes, and that is compatible with emerging concepts such as a Circular Economy, will be both imperative and inevitable for humanity's very survival.

—

Anyone who thinks education can be separated from social justice is living with their head where the sun does not shine. Anyone who thinks education is independent of economic and environmental values needs to wake up earlier, breathe deeply and watch the sun rise.

The answer rises every morning.

We exist on planet earth as guests of the green plants and we humans had better be sure we take care, really good care, of the soil, water and air that plants need to give us life. Natural systems have served life on planet earth for over three billion years. If we don’t soon develop a mindset to mimic these systems, life in many, but not all, of its forms will become extinct. A World at Risk emphatically includes humans. Our age, the anthropocene, opened recently on a geologic timescale, but it is at risk of closing quickly on even a human timescale. In the words of the late Senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson; Economics is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. Our sun's warm daily glow, an open society, and respect for the worth and dignity of every living thing must become an inseparable value for education as well as economics and ecology.

While education may be regarded as about knowledge and understanding it is deeply rooted by our values. We are too ready to treat education as an instrumental value intended to support the economy and the economic needs of capitalism within a framework that steers clear of biological foundations, most notably neurobiology, evolution, development and ecology. Action before inquiry and without reflection for human development has given us a system of education based on schools and schooling that no longer promises to meet future needs. Values are rooted in relationships and aside from instrumental or intrinsic values, the values of education are fundamentally relational. Our arrogant and high-handed thinking—or perhaps thoughtless—approach to education entails hubris that borders on belligerence. Education, even with lip-service to complexity, has been reduced to simple considerations in a world that is complex beyond the capacity of our contemporary consciousness to comprehend.

Education Ecology is an attempt to refresh and reorganize our expectations for education. Building a new consciousness for and about human development is fundamental to our human future. What we casually and almost thoughtlessly call learning2 should be a natural process of human development and is a constant across a lifetime. Learning may begin at birth ( and some evidence suggests learning may begin in utero) but it is certain that development begins with conception. Development continues until death, which may be our final learning experience. We will experience that with death there is something of consciousness beyond death; or, that with death there is nothingness. It is, of course, highly doubtful that we can ever know. Our stories about afterlife are not based on evidence. Death is beyond teaching, testing, textbooks and technology.

Education Ecology is all about relationships. One could, arguably, say that life is all about relationships. At the organizational level of ecosystems, life in the biosphere is a matrix of relationships that engage the atmosphere, soil and water to support plants, animals and microbes. The immunologist Sir F. Macfarlane Burnett famously said that all of ecology could be reduced to the simple fact of eat or be eaten; certainly an expression of a Darwinian view of competition within the broad scheme of natural selection. Yet a century after Darwin, Lynn Margulis stunned the world of biologists with new evidence that life at the cellular level in multicellular organisms is the result of cooperation among bacteria that created a whole new and more successful form of life. For more than three decades, Dr. Margulis studied and wrote about the role of symbiosis; cooperative living in biological evolution, building a path for new thinking and understanding how cooperation and competition merge in natural and sexual selection to support the evolution of life’s millions of forms populating our planet.

Relationships in education build an ecology. These are relationships that, I will argue: 1.) emphasize pedagogy with teaching as guiding and development as discovery; 2.) support action inquiry that expands knowing; 3.) acknowledges and embeds physical, intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual dimensions or domains of changing lives across lifetimes of individuals and institutions; 4.) are aspirational; 5.) integrate knowing across time; 6.) celebrate change; 7.) enable immersion and flow; 8 ) lead to self-esteem and self-actualization; 9.) expand consciousness. 10.) connect and construct personal and institutional skills, knowledge and positive attitudes to support benificial actions.

—

Society is in a quandary about aging and maturation of children. The option has been to base, seemingly, everything on age. School progress is measured by age in the grade-level system was adopted by virtually every schooling system. This despite near overwhelming evidence about differential rates of maturation among male and female youth not to even mention or consider differences in developmental readiness or capacity among a group, cohort or cluster of individuals that are of a similar age.

Emergence is another consideration for Education Ecology. Emergence flows from relationships and is also a property of organization that these relationships foster. Emergent properties are the result of organizational relationships of the parts assembled at a place or space in time. Components of a system interface with other systems to form systems of systems. Relationships may be plotted in a diagram of a network and indeed the nodes and links of networks diagram relationships. Where nodes of one network connect with a need of another network; we see the emergence of a networks of networks. We begin to see that linear depictions of relationships are uselessly simplistic.

Education based on linear progressions and measurements fits the definition of simplistic. With due respect to the KISS principle, there are definitely times when it is necessary and desirable to jump into the deep end of the pool. Society has opted for such a linear system to make the education of children manageable. That is, cheap and effective. It has been said that to do anything it can be done cheap, fast or with high quality. It is also well recognized that you can have any two but not all three. Somehow that doesn't sink in to those entrusted with a system of education based on schools. High quality should be a sine qua non—an essential condition—for education. Quality in the absence of immersion is ludicrous. The teaching of foreign language could serve as a case in point. We expect competent linguists in a system where we teach the language for part of one hour a day often for several years. Yet nearly everyone who has mastered a language will tell us that mastery came from immersion, often living in a foreign country for seeks or months. So our schools trade efficiency (and probably lower cost) for high quality. Efficiency comes from the clustering that is essential for a school to even be possible. Imagine a situation where a student could go and live in a foreign country for a year learning by doing and reflecting on what is being done.

As levels of organization in living systems are studied, what becomes more evident is that at each level—cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, organisms—new properties are revealed that cannot be a simple sum of the parts. Life at all levels including the supra-organismic levels of populations, communities and ecosystems, continuously and wonderfully reveals that life is more than the sum of its parts. Populations of organisms interacting or relating within a biological community display emerging characteristics at all levels even including the molecular and cellular levels.

—

Water quality serves and reserves the quality of life. And it does so in highly complex ways. The hubris that we know everything that can be known about a simple molecule of water, H20 is ludicrous. A single molecule of water is chemically simple but no water molecule exists that is isolated from other water molecules and from a border with other matter. Water molecules interact with themselves and as they do, new properties emerge. We have all be told from simple science in the elementary grades that water has three phases; solid (ice) liquid, and gas. Well! … it may not be that simple at all. Dr. Gerald Polack, working at the University of Washington in Seattle has provided very compelling evidence that water has a fourth phase—an exclusion zone—that changes everything we thought we knew about water in living systems. This is because, it turns out, water in life is not only essential as a solvent, it is part of the very capacity of DNA, RNA, Proteins to do what they must do to sustain life. Without water in its fourth phase, cells would not divide, muscles would not contract and nerves would not coordinate anything.

What I hope this book will accomplish is to challenge and change the way we look at education impacts everything related to life. This will emphasize that our current paradigm of schooling for education is a relic of the industrial past and no longer fits the conditions that have emerged in the digital age. I will focus throughout on the central argument of the book; that the framework of schooling for education is out of date and out of touch with the contemporary realities of life on earth; human life to be sure but to a considerable extent all forms of life. An ecology of education is demanded now, not because of our awareness of ecological vulnerability, important though that is, but because education is embedded in a planetary system that is imperative for sustainability across every aspect of our human planetary existence. To say that the planet Earth is in a planetary crisis may seem an overstatement to many. But that is because ignorance of the condition of the Earth’s systems that sustain life and are essential for sustaining life are interdependent systems, never, ever independent systems. Human life is only one such system, which we now know is changing conditions for all life on planet Earth. Agriculture and the industrial age ushered in conditions within which the human population is exploding and humans now dominate and destroy virtually every known habitat and niche on Earth.

The chapters of the book are divided into seven parts. In Part One we will identify first a series of problems that beset schools and that a culture has developed that has alienated society while society has heaped more and more on the bureaucracy of schools, and schools have assumed a role as a social services agency. Accordingly our systems of schooling have abrogated the social contract and the contract should be annulled. Part Two makes the case that teachers are unable to fulfill social expectations because they have been subordinated to a middle-management position in a hierarchy that is fundamentally authoritarian and undemocratic. Expectations for innovation are fraught because of schooling structures that are maintained by well-meaning but misguided actors. Ten chapters of Part Three develops the theme that entire societies in the form of communities of geography and interest are moving fast, likely way too fast for the ancien regime of school to cope, adjust, innovate or transform. Seven chapters of Part Four make the case for refocusing our thinking about education as a process of change rooted in biology and the biological principles of Evo/Devo or Evolution and Development. The chapters of Part Five we will dwell more inclusively on our global problems and the planetary imperative for education. Part Six focuses attention on technology and the emerging peril and potential of artificial intelligence across growing forces of capitalism as well as an unchecked autocracy or oligarchy that is anything but democratic. Finally in Part Seven two chapters are devoted to our near universal neglect of spirituality in education and how it needs to be embraced in a system that is fully secular and untainted by the rituals, practices and traditions that were established in world religions long before the reckoning of contemporary science. In the Epilogue I will make or stake a claim for new ways of considering education in the future. All of the potential for education's futures will call upon a new paradigm based on Education’s Ecology. Enabling the future will call for making just one change—begin with questions in a planetary dialogue and evolutionary developmental conversations.

My constant question is: What should education look like and how should it function in societies of the world? Let's discover together new ways that out thinking can and should develop.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Chronicle of Higher Education. Higher Ed News and Opinion. https://www.chronicle.com/ Subscription required for article access.

EdSurge — Education technology news and resources. https://www.edsurge.com/ Parent Organization: International Society for Technology in Education. Free content.

EdWeek — K-12 education news and information. https://www.edweek.org/ Publisher: Educational Projects in Education, Inc. . Subscription payment required for access to most articles.

ERIC — Database and search engine from the US Department of Education. URL ERIC is a free search tool but articles may require subscription to a particular journal or access to academic journals through an academic institution.

Hechinger Report — Covering innovation and inequity in education. https://hechingerreport.org/ Special Reports cover a broad range of topics. Most content is free. The namesake, Fred M. Hechinger, was education editor of The New York Times, an author of several books and an advocate for public education.

Inside Higher Education — Higher Education News. https://www.insidehighered.com/ Monthly limit on article access.

Teacher's College Record — Scholarship in Education. Columbia University Teacher's College. https://www.tcrecord.org/ Monthly peer-reviewed journal. Subscription required for search and access to current and most archived articles. A newsletter provides time-limited access to selected freely available articles.

The 74 — News focused on K-12 https://www.the74million.org/ Founded in 2016 by former CNN correspondnet Cambell Brown, The 74 refers to the 74 million children under age 18 in the US. Newsletter highlights current articles. Free newsletter and access to most citations.

Part I

1. Schools Must Go

In Part One we will identify first a series of problems that beset schools and that a culture has developed that has alienated society while society has heaped more and more on the bureaucracy of schools, and schools have assumed a role as a social services agency. Accordingly our systems of schooling have abrogated the social contract and the contract should be annulled.

In this part I will affirm that our current or contemporary paradigm for education is untenable. That is to say that what we do for education is by-and-large a mess that has been created across more than a Century. The system of schooling for education has not fundamentally changed and, I will contend, it cannot change. Efforts to fix or reform schools are fundamentally wrong-headed. In the following four chapters I will argue that schools have taken on far too many problems that are societal and not at all inherent to schools per se. Schools are an embedded social dogma, accepted and sustained without questioning. Our social contract has been broken by slavish schooling and doing the same thing while expecting better results is social insanity.

Chapter I—Schools have Massive Problems—our public schools accumulated such a broad range of challenges had have been too overwhelmed to deal with an ideal of equality.

Chapter II—Schoolism & Schoolists—identifies the vested interests in maintaining the tenacious paradigm of schooling.

Chapter III—Our Social Contract—fostered the role of schools responding to social issues and other social agents have not emerged.

Chapter IV—Expecting Better Results—we keep doing the same things and expecting better results.

Chapter I

Don;t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Anton Chekhov

Schools Have Massive Problems

The problems of schools are intrinsic, to be sure, but then extrinsic problems are piled on by a society that has no other place to turn. The result is that dysfunction of schools expands. The result is social injustices that are beyond societies capacities to remedy. To make schools a source of solutions is to denigrate the role of schools.

While schools certainly play an important social role or roles in enabling individuals to achieve qualification for a place in the economic sectors of society, schools are much less fit to secure a broad pattern of socialization that fits with the grand intentions of democracy as a social experiment. Schools could be places for the practice of democracy but they are not and perhaps never could be democratic places because of an intrinsic hierarchy and ubiquitous authority that too often resembles an autocracy or even a severe dictatorship. The trickle down is a disaster for democracy, not to mention any aim of adjusting inequality across broad swaths of society.

Schools are organized around premises that are poorly defined and were probably never subjected to rigorous definition or debate. The basic notion of a school is to accommodate the social, family and individual needs of children. Its earliest form involved private (parochial) schools with religious support. The secularization of schools emerged with publicly supported schooling with broad egalitarian aspirations and citizenship. The result is schooling organizations, based on age and readiness for participation in a school environment. The school as we know it is mostly defined by age; readiness is a secondary factor; even an afterthought. From this starting point children pass at annual intervals from grade to grade until they reach a arbitrary point of emancipation as functional individuals in a community and society. There is little in the way of persuasive argument that age 16, 17, 18 is a defensible universal standard for turning a person loose from mandatory schooling to join the military, take a job or begin raising children of their own inside or outside of marriage.

College? Although this book and this chapter will focus on K-12 there is at least another book needed to deal with the ecologies of two-year, four-year and research institutions. The K-12 system from beginning to end is a selective exercise, a filter, leaving way too many lost and behind for life. Community colleges are a transition tool for social adjustments needed for job qualification or more education for better job qualification. College entrance examinations serve to select admission from the ranks of high school graduates. Aspirants to so-called elite colleges may be welcomed or rejected, yet many find other opportunities for “higher education” in a vast array of state and church supported institutions.

A few states are entertaining legislation to make school attendance mandatory until age 18. The arguments of an association of school principals tend to make sense if the whole premise of schools and schooling is accepted without question. What has happened to arguments to lower the age of emancipation, perhaps to 14 or even 12? It was certainly not that long ago that completion of the 8th grade at about age 13-14 was considered enough to be liberated to support the family or one's self if the family didn't require more labor to make subsistence possible. Leaving school at age 13-14 was common across much of America just a little over a century ago. The one-room school was even a stretch for the last year or two when teachers were often eighth graders themselves when they left for additional schooling on how to become a teacher at a “normal”: school, which was not too far from home, perhaps a day’s ride by horse or buggy. After normal schooling, the teacher aspirant often returned to their own community or to a community close by to pass on to younger children the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. This path most commonly involved young wormen.

Some communities asked more of their teachers such as lessons in history, a new, unfamiliar (foreign) language: native languages of the community spoken by parents, preachers or priests. Topics like hygiene were expected to be developed at home. Literacy often was measured by the recitation skills following religious texts or available sectarian books.

Music more often was rudimentary in these small rural one-room schools unless the teacher was able to play a piano that may or may not have been available. Teachers may carry with them musical skills including singing, guitar, banjo, harmonica or other instrument that was more easily portable. A school day might start and end with music much of which was considered appropriate across all ages and may carry religious themes or nationally adopted lyrics. The national alliance or identity may have been American but not infrequently another ethnic link from the community. Sometimes the religious music substituted for or accompanied other religious rituals including prayer or readings.

The problems of education are huge and the list is long. While differentiating extrinsic and intrinsic problems may be useful it is often not easy to do since there are fuzzy borders between schools and society. The very processes of schools can make for or exacerbate social problems and vice versa. Every listing of “school problems” is fraught and open to criticism. Criticism is good when it leads to additional conversation to clarify the nature and details of any articulation or expression of a problem. What follows is not exhaustive but hopefully will open conversational threads inside and ourside of communities. I'll put some labels on each of the problems as athey are listed below, but other labels may be substituted.

Monolithic View

There are almost pervasive monolithic views of education as a system apart from society. Systems are embedded in all forms of education. Yet there is a dearth of thinking about how systems inside and outside of education interact and drive relationships across an ecology of education. Operating schools as “one size fits all” has been a monumental, undifferentiated mistake. The problem may well be monolithic. Solving this problem will not occur by continuing to do what we have always done.

Viewed from many perspectives, it is clear that the education of any individual is an experience different from any other individual. Even the environment of a classroom cannot be identical for each student present. The simple physical scan of a classroom should readily suggest for an observer, that the child in the front of the room has a different, even very different, experience than the student in the middle or back of the room. The unquestioned view that a child's experience in a classroom is monolithic is a serious myth leading to a multitude of problems for the entirety of education. Education is massive and not at all diversified. That is the very definition of monolithic; made of only one type of stone, comprising of one piece, solid and unbroken, total uniformity, rigidity, invulnerable.

Yet paradoxically a characteristic of all systems is that they are anything but monolithic. They are complex and responsive to the conditions for which they have evolved across time. As they operate across short or longer time-frames, by responding to the conditions of which they are a part, the systems change or adapt. This is not to say that schools are unresponsive, but responses are consistent with a framework or paradigm that schools are satisfactory even good for everyone who enters. It is abundantly obvious that everyone does not enter the school door each day with an identical capacity to be involved in the series of programmed experiences (aka, lessons, curriculum) provided, top down, with the best of intentions. Teachers plan activity for a group, a class, and not for individuals. In a monolithic environment, diversity is an enemy of planning.

Child Diversity

No two children are alike, not even mono-zygotic twins. An individual's ecosystem establishes individual personality and capacity that is largely incompatible with a monolithic school environment. The school environment demands conformity and mandatory attendance regardless of readiness for some externally defined schedule of events hour-by-hour, day-by-day, … year-by-year. Even within an hour attention may wax and wane. Each child in a classroom experiences the teacher, room, other children from a perspective that is not personally controlled or controllable. Child diversity is a fact that is beyond even the most well intentioned and optimistic practitioner of education in a classroom setting.

The range of challenges for personalizing education are excessive for the conditions present inside and outside of schools. As one important instance, consider autism, which is estimated to be frankly diagnosed or diagnosable in 3-5% of children. Autism is now regarded as a “spectrum” of disorders, and this is completely out of whack when labeled with a single term—autism. The Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) embraces such a broad range that it requires an army of specialists to distinguish high-functioning adults with autism bordering on characteristic genius to fully non-communicating children, unable to socialize and with repetitious behaviors, some of whom are unable to sustain basic practices of personal hygiene. And that is just one identified condition standing in the way of personalized education. The lessons delivered in a classroom by a teacher—with or without assistance—are daunting even before more subtle diversities among a class of students are contemplated.

Paying attention is a pretty essential prerequisite to development of skills requiring memory and good choice. Handling the demands of studying content across a span of academic subjects, requires ability to concentrate across time periods ranging from minutes to months. Processing complex relationships between objects, subjects in different environments and establishing a long-term memory sufficient to perform at an acceptable cognitive level requires coordinated functioning of multiple brain centers. Children with diverse attention spans are expected to easily handle the differences in the classroom environments they encounter.

Social and emotional differences and disabilities are poorly addressed. Schools are social engines for socialization. Capacity to control emotions inside and outside the school environment is highly variable and schools are now dictated to add delivery systems (lessons) for social emotional learning (SEL). A part of this mandate is the result of classroom disruptions that cannot be adequately managed by the classroom teacher. Skills for SEL teaching can be fostered through continuing education (professional development) programs, the typical classroom teacher likely remains poorly equipped by training and experience to find effective solutions for dealing with a diverse array of children, including those who are socially and emotionally maladjusted in or out of the school environment.

Birth defects and accidents are, regrettably, mostly unavoidable. The range of disabilities is enormous even as the absolute numbers are small, yet disabled children are expected to be accommodated by the school environment. This is because of factors outside the auspices or control of the institution of schooling in society. Put another way, what cannot be dealt with by parents and society at large, is referred to the schools and reasonable accommodation is required politically and by extension, legally. Much of this is driven by the inherent role of schools to provide for socialization. By and large, society has no other alternative. Yet any and all pejorative considerations of alternative consideration for these children is socially, ethically, morally unacceptable. The operating label of special education, has almost never been adequately, let alone fully, supported.

Knowledge of individual nutritional diversity is almost non-existent. We all grew up with basic physiological reactions to food that are largely dictated by the parental choices made for a young child. Yet it is abundantly clear that genetic differences among individuals are present, perhaps beginning with sensitivity of our taste-buds. Science is catching up with developing disciplines of nutrogenomics and nutritional genetics but those early studies are not yet particularly enlightening about deep nutritional diversity. School-based and school-biased nutrition programs are almost totally unaware of these individual differences while they administer breakfasts and lunches. Little wonder that food waste is ubiquitous and is exacerbated, not by student indifference, but by choices that are driven by economic, social and biological factors—all of which are essentially unknown and perhaps in any practical sense unknowable. Nevertheless individual nutritional differences are diverse and massive; and, for the most part, almost totally unattended.

Incompetent Leadership

The principal drivers of education are ostensibly parents; the voices seeking and demanding where necessary their vision for what is best for their child. Unfortunately too many parents are simply incompetent in dealing with the challenges of raising a child. Yet all parents are ostensibly afforded autonomy their child’s welfare. Over compensation by a single parent or a parental coalition can take many forms. Little to nothing is done to differentiate among parents regarding their competence for influence and leadership. Belligerence on behalf of a child is not uncommon. Parents may or may not show up for conferences, meetings and voting. Being clever rhetorically and when necessary, loud and belligerent may pass for leadership. That may occasionally be true of even parents with the best, most laudable of intentions. There is a thick dogma that parents are always right for their own child. Leadership should be more than a loud mouth.

Unfortunately too many parents struggle with the challenges of parenting and the result can be devastating when they inadvertently or intentionally, but incompetently traumatize their children without knowing potential consequences. Neglect, humiliation or other abuses, certainly including corporeal punishment, whether occasional or frequent can have important consequences. These consequences are now identified as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and well known to have immediate as well as long term affect. ACEs continue with the child into adulthood with influences on health and behavior. How many parents were themselves abused as children We'll leave the topic of parenting for another chapter because it may well be too far beyond anything that schools can do anything about. Yet parents are important political drivers of leadership in communities. This cannot be excluded or exonerated from the conditions in which they, themselves grew into adulthood. Nothing protects schools or children from parents who may act dangerously incompetent even with the best of intentions.

Into this mix or morass, superintendents, district administrators, and principles, as well as their associates and assistants, are themselves schooled in the mechanics of running a district, school or cluster of classrooms. Their schooling follows myriad paths leading to certification. What is not on the path and is not seen with good visual acuity is what may or may not lead to productive application in a particular, complex school situation. Because so much of leadership is psychological and biased by personal choices, the so-called school leader may be locked into making sense in only a very narrow context of their responsibilities and defined role. This will potentially and perhaps inevitably preclude relationships with both colleagues and subordinates that are able to follow a common vision for operations, innovations or further advancement of a broad mission. As with parents, these school leaders are often, even mostly, well intentioned even as they are guided poorly from training and experience to keep the school running smoothly. Competence is so hard to define and can almost never be comprehensive, that virtually everything is or can become, in some way or another, incompetent. Judging the quality of teachers is critically important, yet rarely handled with skill, knowledge and an attitude consistent with positive outcomes.

Poor Teacher Quality

The range of expectations for teachers far exceeds their educational preparation. Compare for example teacher-education to that of a physician. A physician masters the structures and functions of around ten (10) body systems and learns to perform tests or read the results of testing to ascertain whether function is normal or abnormal. Years of use of these tests has provided the entire profession, not simply individual physicians, with standards that are relatively unambiguous. Each result is evaluated in the context of a patient's current situation and history of medical issues and problems. The physician is empowered by virtue of certification to make judgments about next steps to support the patient's health always shaddowed by peer expectations of high standards drilled and enforced in medical school.

Yet we ask teachers to apply untested methods according to their personal judgment. Peer review is largely absent for most teachers most of the time. The whole notion of empirical evidence for the application of methods is fraught, to say the least. These limitations are built into the system(s) of schooling. Accordingly teachers cannot achieve a level of quality in supporting the range of diversity represented by the children placed, arbitrarily, in their classroom.

Given that teachers are expected to accomplish tasks for which they are poorly prepared, we should not be surprised that teacher loss in the first five-years is extremely high as compared with professionals in medicine, accounting, business management, dentistry, etc. There is little if any coherent recruitment of individuals into teaching. At best, recruitment is very uneven. It is rare for teacher-education institutions to recruit at all and even then the criteria are uneven. Teacher selection is mostly self-selection.

Engagement of teachers with the community is almost non-existent. Teachers are, for the most part, prohibited from engaging in the electoral process. Elected school boards rarely engage teachers in decisions as the board hires managers to provide leadership. While a few of these leaders have a history of outstanding performance in the classrooms of a school, many seek their leadership positions, or are selected for leadership positions, for reasons that are unrelated or weakly related to education.

Classroom management competes with education at the level of teaching. It is widely assumed that in the absence of good classroom management any worthwhile teaching is impossible. Behavior of children assigned to a classroom has to be controlled. In the absence of control, there may be remedial measures taken by school leaders; principals, curriculum specialists, superintendents, or even school board members. Remedial action may add resources in the form of special education staff or, at an extreme, firing of a teacher who is unable to sufficinetly manage behavior of children assigned to a classroom. Teachers are too often asked to manage what is not manegeable.

Teachers may be better positioned to improve the quality of what they do with young people in schools if there was greater opportunity for innovation. This may likely entail potential for flexibility in planning and management of the classroom, not to neglect the importance of adequate resourcs and the numbers of children assigned. The rigidity of the school environment has now become so entrenched and fossilized that the space for innovation is blocked form access by teachers and the few administrators who are sensitive to the problems inherent in public education and want to find different paths. When these alternative paths are blocked by externalities, it is a huge challenge for a teacher to feel any sense of mastery.

Curriculum Confusion

STEM is on the minds of many as our schools are charged with supplying the workforce of the future for commerce and industry. Schools are criticized for offering too little Science Technology Engineering and Math; while at the same time there is criticism for too much STEM and exclusion of the arts. STEM gets STEAM-rolled. Lately STEM and STEAM have morphed toward the addition of computer science, STEM-CS. The lack of racial, ethnic, gender diversity in commerce and industry is blamed on schools. Teaching STEM is sequestered in departments with narrowly defined expectations and confusing, poorly defined standards for diversity. The STEM curriculum is imposed on schools by state mandates and industry expectations for graduates. Adding to the confusion are frequently articulated needs by industry and commerce for so-called soft skills; socially defined as empathy, teamwork, or leadership. Confusion is exacerbated through actual or perceived neglect of performance (music, drama) and studio art (painting, sculpture, ceramics) as well as language skill development. Any of the above will potentially or actually deprive students of the tools essential for personal growth and career success.

Direct instruction for vocations not requiring a 2- or 4-year degree have been systematically excluded from the school curriculum. Another related issue is that Home Economics classes and courses have been dropped and is only rarely available as an educational option. One important result is that junior and senior high students are less able to cook and sew, wash and iron clothes. Even maintaining basic standards of hygiene in a home environment is uneven or completely neglected. It is not an unreasonable leap to consider that this may be related to a leap in asthma. Sooo, should some asthma prevention instruction now be added to the curriculum?

Schedules

The “Yellow Bus Syndrome” is a serious problem, which stems from the collection of students from neighborhoods to assure that they are able to attend and that they are required to attend. The bus sets the schedule for the school day. There is essentially no capacity to make the needs of individual students a priority in this part of a schooling system. Tweaking the system to make a start time a half hour later and extending hte school day by a half hour is nonsense. The adjusted schedule only serves poorly a slightly different cohort. Better schedules to serve students may well require a thorough relook at school schedules including the ubiquitous school-associated Yellow Bus. Much more is needed than a different color of paint.

The operation of transportation systems for exclusive use by schools is considered necessary but at the same time is likely wasteful of public money that could be spent much more directly on learning and teaching. Consideration could involve a comprehensive assessment of public transportation in a community. Yet the inflexible Yellow Bus Syndrome is clearly unresponsive to individual needs of students. Egalitarian development of public transportation with all of education—not just schools—in a high priority position could be a win-win for cities and communities. Digital technologies are making workplaces much more flexible and schools should also be benefited. The day of driverless, autonomous, on-demand transport is coming, perhaps none too soon.

Safety is a central concern. There are admittedly worthy concerns about child safety if they are riding buses with adult patrons who may be of questionable moral character, it seems that at least after the age of nine or ten a child could be capable of assuring their own safety if the critical transportation occurred after or before rush hours and the transportation device was also populated with monitors and, when necessary, enforcers of rules of decorum. As for the years before ten, we will forge new ways of thinking about education that is above and beyond the realm of transportation.

Schedules and scheduling within education is, of course, not all about transportation. The school day is driven by schedules of many sorts. None of it is characteristically flexible and emblematic of prioritizing student;s freedom and the dignity of choices. The array of factors determining schedules are too many to be elaborated on here. Nevertheless as we consider other aspects of education’s ecology, schedules will loom large.

Schedules also call attention to vast underutilization of public-owned property. Schools closed in the summer and virtually unavailable before and after a six to seven hour workday for teachers is deplorable. Extra-curricular activities notwithstanding, school buildings are egregiously underutillized because of school schedules.

Retention

The drop out rate is only counting the students who stop attending school on a regular and required basis. It is entirely likely that within the cohort of regularly attending young people there exists a notable cluster who are going through the motions of attending because of legal or parental expectations. These “virtual dropouts” may be the “students” who account for poor scores on mandatory standardized testing and constitute the “gap” for which schools are held accountable. Yet schools are only one part of a multi-variable problem. If a child is in school they are counted as enrolled even though they really don't want to be there and are far from being attentive and engaged. Retention becomes a multi-edged instrument that cuts both ways; for and against the best intents of the school as well as the individuals ensnared in the web of schooling.

The rationale for mandatory attendance has historical roots that may no longer apply. The age-based criteria certainly are incompatible with known variables of physical and psychological development. Raising or lowering the age of mandatory attendance is fraught when the choice is a state enforced mandate rather than a response to individual human needs. Getting at those needs for individuals is a complicated and expensive undertaking that usually seems to lie outside of a school's capacity. Retention is mostly meaningless and only a number, when attendance is mandatory.

Finance

Fincncing of schools is largely based on enrollments and attendance. Formulaic allocation of fixed budgets for education are a function of enrollment and attendance. The formulas are increasingly arcane and attempt to include line items for all manner of variables, yet fail to enable schooling systems to meet the needs of individuals. This is largely because the number of variables is so incomprehensible that assigning numbers is fraught, unreliable and, for the most part, utterly mindless.

Public school finance has become more complicated by the good intentions of the Chartered School movement which now competes for limited school funding. Chartered Schools are public schools and were intended to foster innovation and an enhanced role for teacher's as leaders. The result has been market-based commercialization of public schools and transfer of funding from the more traditional approaches of public education to corporate for-profit management schemes that have little or no obvious connection to the original aims of innovation and teacher control and innovation. Though putting Chartered School money back into the traditional public support for education would not likely make any substantial difference regarding the original aims of chartering schools, it would improve the overall funding of school districts.

Sufficiency of funding is almost always relative to the choices and pressures to make choices that exist in a school's environment. Allocations of available funding are choices and budgets reflect both values and pressures. Schools have accumulated a broad range of curricular and extra-curricular obligations that have extended well beyond the original justification. While physical education is a worthy element of education and a part of public schooling, the rise of athletics as an embedded part of the public school mission is now almost locked into the environment of the school. Choice for funding based on these self-locked enterprises, and athletics is only the big visible one, we have attached to schools is a monster eating at the public trough in the school space. The notion of “full funding” has become a shibboleth that cries out for debate, discussion, dialogue—anything that will make spending on schools display better sanity. Yet schools keep spending more and promising better results.

Socialization

That socialization has become a part of public education cannot be denied. What may be worthy of reconsideration is whether there is any neighborhood or community opportunities that are being missed for lack of institutional engagement. Religious institutions have been instruments of socialization but have carried the serious liabilities of adherence to practice, tradition and dogma. Unfortunately some vestiges of these liabilities are carried (back) into the school environments.

Bullying & Cliques – would be a good place to begin to consider the role of social insecurity and inequity in public schools. Children (and adults) placed in a classroom setting will somewhat naturally find others to associate with and develop relationships that foster their feelings of belonging. Exclusion is an almost inherent condition for the existence of these groups. Intergroup and intragroup dynamics are factors in the advancement of antagonisms that challenge group coherence. In a school setting these antagonisms may become sources of esteem. Pushed toward extremes a group may engage individuals and other groups in physical and psychological combat or competition. Physical violence and psychological violence can be a highly disruptive result.

The decline of civics in public schools may be nowhere more evident than in the decline in voter participation and the electoral successes and failures of a recent presidency. It is likely that an anti-democratic bias is built into the very fabric of our systems for schooling. Yet few would argue against the basic notion that supporting democacy is an inherent function of schools. When have you heard that maybe the last place civic education should be attempted is in schools as they are presently formulated and operated? Socialization carries enormous weight for democracy.

Democracy & Management

The management of schools is imposed from society without ongoing and intense practice of democratic principles. About the only element of public schools having a tangent with the bubble of societal democracy is in the election of school boards. While there are board members who are sensitive to the public, there are also members who are essentially devoid of a democratic focus as they push any of a huge variety of special interests.

The raw imbalance of managers of the myriad array of mandated requirements for schools far outstrips the employees assigned and committed to the delivery of content and practice of sound pedagogy. Every administrative position in a district organizational chart seems to have associates and assistants paid to prepare deliverables (aka, reports) for district and state mandates. When the ratio of teachers to administrators exceeds 1:1 it is past time to examine the bureaucracy of public education from the local to the national level.

We'll next turn attention to the social structures that are pervasive in schools. Myths and dogma are embedded in the history of schooling for education. The needs of society in the past are of marginal value when schools are expected to fix problems that are a modern expression of societal developments that could have never been anticipated even as little as three decades ago.

Sources and Recommended Reading

The problems outlined in this chapter are sourced from many of the same publications listed in the Introduction so I won’t repeat them here.

For those with access, I recommend the Teacher’s College Record for a host of articles providing insight into the problems with schools and the challenges of management.

The US Department of Education and its Institute for Education Science supports the public database called ERIC. Any of the headings in this chapter may unearth articles and books worthy of providing additional insights defending and challenging schools and schooling.

These Descriptors (aka, key words) will get you started and you can add many others. Simply adding problem, issue or controversy to a descriptor will narrow your search.

monolithic view; child diversity; special education; leadership; teacher quality; teacher preparation; curriculum; standards; stem; schedules; retention; gaps; finance; school finance; socialization; democracy & management

Chapter II

Don't let schooling interfere with your education.

Mark Twain

Schoolism & Schoolists

Schoolism and Schoolists are emerging terms that cry out for definition and explanation. In this chapter we'll attempt to do that while treating both terms is a way unique from other uses. My intention is somewhat nefarious because, in my view, the terms are intended to be pejorative but with the value of poking into a system for education that has definitely seen much better days and is in somewhat urgent need of replacement.

We'll be looking at myths and dogma that surround our very concepts of schools and schooling. We’ll will be directed toward a look at the history of education and how schools have been developed to meet social needs that by and large no longer exist in a world that faces far greater challenges than could have been foreseen as little as 30 years ago. Yet we have embedded and franchised schools with a plethora of social considerations that are monumental. These include social equity, critical race theory, poverty, technology leadership, and economic development as well as workforce development to mention a few.

One place to start is the ancien regime of the trivium and quadrivium. We'll follow with a section on the enlightenment that was fostered by the technology of Gutenberg and the protest of Martin Luther and others who saw a new future for humans even while adhering to the authoritarian past. John Dewey and Horace Mann as well as James Bryant Conant saw an emerging America but from different perspectives while all were influenced by Eastern elite universities as the agriculture age gave way to industrialization of America. Today we are confronted by a system of schooling that is increasingly recognized as incompatible with much of contemporary American life.

What I hope to tell you in this chapter is why I realized: that schools are deeply engaged with all but the commercial-industrial (including financial) sectors of society; that schools are a distinct system that is kept separated from other societal systems by a mindset that resembles any dogmatic social system; that the ideals and principles of education as a system of schooling cannot or will not respond to delicate and important social issues; that there are almost no people attached to education that have malicious motives; that there are negative forces unrecognized by the rank and file of educators; and it is possible to recognize and clearly label the roles of makers and shakers in education. I'll begin with the process of naming, which will open windows that will admit fresh air for education and, I believe, ultimately enable a new framework for education to emerge. As a new paradigm emerges, schools will begin to disappear and the process of disappearing will accelerate.

Conspicuous drivers and stabilizers permeate education. Almost every institution of society is implicated in the processes that sustain the schooling model of education. The tip of the spear is administration at all levels from top to bottom. It is time to begin an in-depth study of all so-called leadership entries in colleges of education across America. Educational Leadership is a widely recognized specialty focused on preparation of principal's and superintendents of our school systems. These named leaders perpetuate our pervasive systems of schooling. For the most part, these leaders are individuals with credentials from advanced degree programs offering options for Masters and Doctoral degrees. A search of the ERICDatabase from the Institute for Education Science, will reveal a plethora of what these leaders are studying and writing. While it is possible to pursue degrees in educational leadership at many of the top American universities, there are now a host of doctorate level programs at former teacher's colleges (now “universities”) that aspire to some, often legitimate, training in research. Unfortunately this research is laden with a framework or paradigm that is based on schooling for education.

School is clearly the dominant form of delivery of education. Accordingly, those we call schoolists could also be called educationists. However, not all schoolists are educationists, and we can certainly realize that not all educationsits are schoolists. I count myself as an educationist but exclude myself as an unabashed supporter of schools. While alternatives are evident to some observers, they represent a minuscule slice of the education pie. Home-based or family oriented education, mostly labeled homeschooling, dominates alternatives. An “Unschool” alternative is making inroads across the country following the successful demonstration by the Sudbury Valley operation in Massachusetts. Montessori and Waldorf are still called schools but depart from the traditional framework of public schools with significantly newer shapes to their philosophical undercarriages. One could and should entertain questions about why these philosophical differences have been so infrequently used in public school systems.

The public schools are not the result of great philosophical breakthroughs, although the followers of John Dewey and perhaps also Horace Mann, are candidates for consideration of philosophical breakthroughs. While greatly appreciating some of the writing of Dewey, I won't attempt to climb aboard his wagon. It was important for the beginning of the twentieth century but cannot be usefully equated to the circumstances prevailing in contemporary America. That is not to say that everything he wrote should be dismissed. His emphasis on active engagement may actually be more relevant today, but, of course, in a hugely different context of a highly urbanized nation.

Dewey, Mann and James Bryant Conant as well as the acolytes of Andrew Carnegie created a popular and penetrating interest politically and economically in public support for schools. The country was changing from an agrarian base to an industrial base. This change was not subtle or comfortable. Through the early 20th Century farming was being mechanized and the need for child labor was much less important than it had been. The one-room country schools still followed schedules dictated by agriculture as well as the ethnic islands scattered across rural America. Summer was too hot for sitting in a poorly ventilated school room and there was plenty of work to be done around the farmstead for both boys and girls. Planting and harvest time was unique to rural regions and when fields were dry enough, school was suspended to plant crops using a lot of hand labor. When plants matured for harvest, schools were closed to provide needed labor.

The growing industrial centers of America and Europe also required a workforce but its cycles were different. Mechanical skills were prized and farm kids often came to the city with a penchant for mechanical things if not the precise skill set needed. At least the kids of the farms were well oriented to the routines of physical labor. Dewey recognized the changes afoot in America and began to build schools to adapt to change. These changes impacted education profoundly. The result has been described as an industrialization of schools. These industrialized schools became a model and method or mechanism for shifting of critical social functions to schools. The result was a new paradigm of schooling for education.

The result of the shift was a profound development across multiple levels of a social movement that I prefer to call schoolism. Centering education on and in schools has a long history. The assumption is that it is OK to take a group of children of a suitable age and readiness and put them into a situation where they are introduced to basic foundations for getting along in a world that currently seems to exist and is imagined to exist at some future, but vaguely defined, point in time. In other words adults determine what is “good” for the future of children.

This is, of course, a role, but not an exclusive role, for parents, custodians or guardians of children. Those who give birth to a child are widely regarded as the “owners” of the child, conferring on parents what is essentially property rights; my child. Preparing a child for the future becomes mixed with many elements that sully the interests of the child in favor of elements that are mostly not in the child's immediate interest. For instance, a parent may believe that religious indoctrination (instruction?) is in the child's best interest. This may be advanced for the parent by a religious leader, who invokes metaphysical nonsense persuasively and encourages the parent to provide direct support at home for the creed, preaching and tenets of the church. The church's interest comes before the child's interest. Similarly, a child may be used for labor in and around the homestead. This may be accompanied by abusive enforcement that is pronounced confidently to be good for the child.

Religious leaders in a community may have considerable suasion with parents. The religious leaders are most typically, but not always, deeply steeped (indoctrinated, educated?) in the major practices and traditions of a particular religion; following the teaching of elders and immersed in personal interpretations of the accepted written religious documents as well as the predominant stories supporting the views of a church, synagogue or mosque. The leaders take on a role in community development that is consistent with the current religious values. When the number of children exceeds capacity for personalized teaching, the leader may form a set of rules to advance instruction. This may be as simple as a set time for religious observances such as prayer or meditation to as complex as a weekly schedule of attendance, perhaps even mandatory and enforced through corporeal punishments.

The model of religious instruction influenced a growing sentiment that, particularly in America with prohibition by the Constitution of promoting any religious preference, the public should stand in for religion and religious leadership.

But the basic notion of The School, was well planted by religious leaders and followed by the public. Establish a suitable place or location for instruction and bring to the community a person trained at a higher level to “teach” or guide the children toward the important foundations of reading, writing and arithmetic. Readiness for building these foundational skills was agreed to occur around age six and a child of suitable age was admitted to the first grade of the school.

Now before going forward it may be time to make something clear. I am not about to blame religion or homeschooling (for religious purposes) for the current condition of our systems of schools in education. I am not a religious person; in fact I am highly skeptical of almost all religious practices and dogma. However, it is important to me and I hope to readers to emphasize that there are important religious influences on the history of education and that those influences are embedded in where we are today, which is actually a system that due to our Constitutional First Amendment, eschews a role for religious instruction in publicly supported schools. Religion has been wiped out of our schooling systems in the United States and I hope it will remain that way. Religious dogma has no place in a system that calls itself education. In the final chapters of the book, I talk about the futures for education and I will return to a theme that I consider very important; namely the matter of human spirituality, which I firmly believe is not inherently religious or even important for religion. But, I'll leave the reader to mull on that while I continue with the theme of this chapter, which is the role of schoolism and schoolists.

SCHOOLISM, like every other “ism” is ideological. It takes its place alongside of socialism, capitalism, communism and, perhaps most appropriately – booster-ism. There is a broad swath that believes deeply in schools and that schools are the only “right” path toward education. What is done in schools is education. What can follow from this is that what takes place outside of schools is not education. A person has to attend school to be or become educated. Schoolism is supported by schoolists.

A schoolist is a person who deeply believes in the idealistic view of schoolism. The schoolist is a supporter of a dogma regarding schools in society; any part and all of society. It is a reflexive stance and is assumed without question. Like every dogma, the paradigm of school is accepted without question. School is the place for education and attending school is essential for education.

Schoolists are pervasive across society. Almost no one questions schools as instruments for education. Schoolists certainly include those credentialed as educational leaders. The principals and superintendents, the presidents of universities, the boards or directors or trustees who are credentialed by virtue of election, or by appointment by an elected official of a governmental body. The vested interests of these schoolists should not require much elaboration. However, I'll provide a few thoughts to simulate yours. The superintend of a school system in a major city will command a considerable range of power and influence in the super-community of any city, large or small. She or he is paid very well, typically a nice multiple of others in the system, especially but not exclusively, principals, teachers and staff of schools within the larger system. The superintendent is sought out for memberships in civic organizations and is frequently asked to speak or report to the community on the status of district schools as well as the status of education broadly conceived. The superintendent is supported by staff and line officers in the school district organization. Accordingly s/he is charged with responsibility for uses (and avoiding abuses) of physical and financial resources that may range up into $billions.

And, interestingly, in another part of the spectrum, schoolists are also those who attend schools and even thrive in the school environments; good environments to be sure but also school environments that may be considered bad or poorly developed but attended because they meet human needs at the most basic levels of providing water, food, shelter and safety. Take away any or all of these necessities of life and attendance will quickly fade for everyone. Think about the roles of schools in many impoverished regions whether local or global, and schools are sources of these basics. Even the most affluent parents will send a child to a boarding school to assure safety, shelter and nutrition that is dependable and regular. And is believed to be better for the child than what could be provided in the castle (I mean, of course, to say home).

Between Superintendents and Students the array of schoolssts can include principals, teachers and various teacher supervisors, coaches, mental health specialists, nurses, police officers (School Resource Officers or SROs), cooks, janitors, bus drivers, and many others. All have a keen interest in schools and schooling for reasons that range from the simple status of a job to a deep and abiding commitment to the welfare of youth that are served by the school. In a point of fact, these are, by and large, people who deeply believe that the school is the most, or at least one of the most, important institutions in the community and in all of society for that matter. They would find it, almost or actually, impossible to imagine society without schools.

Schools are important in society and it is welcome for society to include a vast array of supporters. It is the sheer vastness of this support that assures a base of funding that includes local gifting and taxes, state appropriations, and a massive department of the federal government. Philanthropy distributes vast sums of money to schools and the universities and colleges that are committed to support for the workforce broadly, but also needed to sustain schooling.

Schools are fodder for media of communication. Stories about schools and schooling are attractive to the members of the schoolist class, which is huge and inclusive. Journalists with the education beat follow what happens and is happening in schools locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Their narratives can be critical in p;positive and negative ways that check on the mistakes and excesses as well as making the case for meeting school needs more broadly. Journalists are both critics and advocates. Why not? They have all, with few exceptions, benefited by their experiences with schools and generally want those benefits extended across all of society.

The funding of schools is so vast that it attracts another category of schoolists; vendors of products and services that serve school needs; or at least perceived needs of schools. These needs are fostered by advocates for schools at all levels of the hierarchy of schoolists. Children want and need lunch, teachers need textbooks, parents need communication of what is happening in the school of most interest and in the district that runs their school, bus manufacturers keep the Yellow Buses running daily with safety and some comfort, publishers and printers practice their craft through a throng of writers, reviewers and vendors of books and other material for instruction, and on and on to include all of the commercial interests I have missed.

Lately, of course, vendors of technology in all of its guises have emerged with a strong financial interest in providing equipment and services (including software) for schools. Technology is a massive driver in education and the legacy of the traditional structure of schools is a deep part of every business plan of every firm that considers schools to be their customers. They market their wares to schoolists top to bottom and bottom to top. Little is excluded that may make a difference in their bottom line and it is always well to remember that it is their bottom line that is paramount; education is only a route for revenue enhancements. You can look objectively at these vendors by asking, who is their customer? In the ecosystem of schools, schoolists and the paradigm of schoolism that is a powerful but crazy complex question.

Technology is important for education. In my estimation digital technology is important as a vehicle to take education into a new era. It will, in my estimation, leave schooling behind as a paradigm and enable a new paradigm to emerge that will make the very concept of schooling, schoolism and schoolists obsolete. I would encourage any reader to contemplate the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) as a change agent. The complexity of education is so immense that no teacher, let alone others among schoolists, will be able to fathom what will or what should happen as education moves forward, as it inevitably will.

The social construction of education is a continuum that digital technology will shift. There may be useful conversation about what the design of education should be in a digital age. This likely means a very different role for those schoolists who are called instructional designers. Their context will shift from the classroom to society writ large. Chapter III will look at our Social Contract.

Sources and Recommended Reading

Collins, Allan & Richard Halverson. Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution & Schooling in America.

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. 

Dewey, John. The School and Society and The Child and the Curriculum.

Goodlad, John I. ed. 1987.  The Ecology of School Renewal. 

Reigleuth, Charles & Jennifer Karnopp. Reinventing Schools: It's Time to Break the Mold.

Chapter III

It is dangerous to be right in the matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Voltaire

Our Social Contract

The Social Contract is about governance and the inherent or natural rights of those governed. It recognizes conflict and balance. It is my stance that schools have overwhelmed natural rights. Freedom is a natural right. The structure of schools overwhelms balance in favor of governmental mandates. These structures begin with buildings to house sources of instruction that is only minimally responsive to those forced to attend regularly. Hardly a condition of freedom. The structure is hierarchical and assumes children are objects to be filled with knowledge needed to fulfill expectations of social entities and support commercial, economic interests ranging from family to nations without deference to a more natural path for human development. The enlightenment is not an historical artifact but remains an invitation for everyone to be respected for worth and dignity. A right of respect is Our Social Contract.

Regrettably, the current operation of schooling falls far short of respect at nearly all levels. Children are victims of mandated instruction when they could and should be architects of their own development. Schools too often stand in the way of natural development by imposing schedules and standards of behavior for which a child, or an adult, may be ill prepared to accommodate successfully. That is to say they are unable to direct their own expectations about developmental progress.

In this chapter I will attempt to draw together thoughts on what may be called a sociology of education, but consisting of a look on schooling from an historical perspective … .

Human History

The human species is biologically distinct but has evolved across at least the past 200,000 years, along the way forming a diverse range of species with diverse characteristics but thriving today as a single species. Migration has energized and exploited this diversity providing adaptations that meet conditions of diverse environments across planetary continents and the great oceans of earth. Aided by at least two common capacities, human migration was enabled through many solutions to local challenges as well as multiple conditions of global climate and local vicissitudes of weather. These solutions required or were greatly facilitated by and through cooperation. It is not my intent to recount the full evolution of humans. However, it is not possible to place human society into a modern or contemporary perspective without acknowledgment of human evolutionary history.

The building blocks for survival of all forms of life are adaptations that are possible when genetic endowments are changed through mutation to yield new forms or variations. Human survival did not follow an extraordinary or new set of rules. Our survival as living entities undoubtedly crossed many barriers and surmounted many challenges that individual and tribal environments presented. We know that survival occurred but we remain at a profound loss or ignorance as to when and how these solutions prevailed. The stories and speculations are provided in many books and articles in the fields of human anthropology, physical and cultural. Ignorance is only temporary once it is recognized. With recognition comes first questioning and then motivation to explain, test and adopt the ideas, stories, concepts and principles that constitute our understanding of human history on earth. Science is a tool for testing explanation.

Schools are of course, a fairly recent addition to our history. It is entirely likely that before about 4,000 years ago, tribes provided for the delayed developmental needs of youth and passed along among all members the best practices for survival; how to best hunt, gather and store the nutritional requirements for life. The capture of fire and the making of tools has a much less certain time of origin but the impacts led to an age of agriculture beginning around 10,000 years ago that dramatically changed the capacity for survival.

Humans are not the only social animals. Every species forms a population of individuals that occupy a unique habitat and prevail with a niche or way of making a living. This is to say every organism must meet basic biological needs that include water, food, shelter and safety. Several million solutions to meeting these needs have evolved. Many potentially adaptive solutions turned out to be unsuccessful and are now extinct. Socialization was an extraordinary and successful adaptation and has been recognized by biologists in many forms of invertebrates including insects as well as fish, reptiles, birds and mammals. Human socialization is exemplary among animals in many ways not the least of which is tool-making and language. Other species find or make tools and express communication with their form of language. However, the successes of our human socialization have enabled, unlike that of any other species, the extraordinary expansion of the human population across virtually every conceivable habitat found on earth. We have used our language and tool-making skills to do so. The result has been global changes in habitats for which we humans are uniquely responsible.

Social skills come with obligations. Humans have been able to exploit these social skills to control many undesirable tendencies, which seem to be built into our existence. It is abundantly clear that humans are capable of good deeds as well as evil deeds. Balancing good and evil has demanded justice in the application of rules for living together. These rules spell out with language of highly variable clarity what we as humans are permitted to do and what we are prohibited from doing to and with one another.

These rules form an agreement or contract. Nowhere is this contract more important than with the most basic of human interactions—the matters of reproduction. The requirement for mating has always been present for humans just as it has been for almost all other organisms. By adapting rules for sexual behavior, humans have made human life more orderly. Yet we well know that all is not good. Evil lurks around almost every facet of our existence as male and female members of the human species. The drives that enable sex and mating are powerful and poorly controlled. Rules are not only needed but are essential. Without rule there is anarchy.

Anarchy is potentially avoided if systems of rule-making are able to emerge. Human groups all across the planet have evolved methods for urle-making that range from the temporary to permanent appointment of an individual who is afforded near absolute powers of a dictator or monarch to systems that provide for consensus about rule-making. Rule-making sytems may hinge on the formation of adopted language and the formation of documents to advance the permanency of language. Writing and the ability to read are critical prerequisites for success of these consensus systems—not so much for dictatorial systems.

With those thoughts in mind, I will advance a few ideas about our social contracts that find expression in our systems of schooling. This will establish a foundation for the assertion of this Part I that Schools Must Go. I do not come to this conclusion lightly and after more than a decade of thinking and reflecting on the problems of schools and the dominating impact of schoolism and schoolists, I intend to examine how our social contract has butchered and bastardized the development of not just children but also adults throughout their lives.

Social contract 01

The construction of the social contract continues. Philosophers such as John Rawls continue to refine and develop the principles established by Voltaire, Rousseau and Hume, among others. The unfolding of the foundations of our democracy continue because the evolution of our society continues, yet schools have not committed to the processes of innovation and change that enable continued unfolding of our thoughts in an open and transparent approach to understanding what it is that education and human development must deliver for the future.

Our democracy was a promise, not only to America, but to the world. Yet social evolution, and even the evolution of consciousness would continue through expansion of education to all with a full flourishing of human potential. However, our contemporary schools have abdicated that role in favor of support for other elements of political expediency that are almost exclusively focused on expansion of commerce. An unfortunate consequence of this growth mentality has been the expansion of inequality. This expansion must recognize if not outrightly castigate the bastardization of schooling. As an avenue for for human development, personal development, schools fail to support critical social values including openness, an open society. Governance with high levels of transparency is too rare.

When we endorse political control of our schools by elected leaders, elected persons who are only focused on their own egos and advancement, the schools and their role in supporting democracy is inevitably diminished.

Schools today have become time-suckers. Seat time is demanded not for learning but to serve administrative convenience. This is in no small part due to the accountability measures demanded by the public and lawmakers. Rigid rules reduce direct, daily involvement of “educator-administrators” with their constituents. This is a very unfortunate condition of schooling, but is nevertheless what now characterizes the operations of our public schools and limits their functional interaction with society. This condition cries out for immediate attention. It is, it seems to me, more than abundantly clear that our social contract and the important benefits it should deliver are no longer delivered by public schooling as it is currently constituted.

Social contract 02

One trouble with Social Contracts is that the term is fuzzy to say the least. The fuzzyness has grown worse rather than improved our focus about our expectations for education and about where and when those expectations should or must be met. Even the works of Voltaire and Rousseau are laden with ambiguity as they attempted to chart new considerations for how societies manage to manage. Two hundred years later, society continues to struggle with what our cocial contract should say.

Time and now the emerging digital technology, have changed our social circumstance so thoroughly, intensely and immensely that it makes no sense any longer to persist with the industrial system of schooling that we now support with such incredible resources. And, we must say, greatly wasted resources. Money is of course, one part of this, but , the biggest loss is human resources—particularly teachers who are not able to teach to their full potential and not only children but too many adults that are not able to reach new levels of creativity, and personal fulfillment.

The idea of a social contract is attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and has many commentators, contributors, apologists and explainers across over two centuries. Consequently, any meaning of a social contract is complex and a stimulus for questioning and dialogue. It may be foolhardy to attempt any definition of a social contract and it is not my intent here to make any such attempt. The very concept of contract is laden with arcane legalities and, of course, society has been studied and described across more than two centuries by sociologists ranging from Max Weber and Emil Durkheim through contemporary professors and students of sociology.

While we may each have a personal vision or idealized model for society and kind of know it when we see it, there is always plenty of room for at least some of us to doubt whether our personal concepts of society are sufficiently mature to express and argue. The concept of society is applied too often without thinking or attempting to elaborate on its dimensions or borders. In fact, it may be argued that society is at once global, regional and local. While that may carry some satisfaction it is not likely to be particularly helpful if or when something as important as freedom or liberty is either dependent upon or related to our meaning when using society in any assertion or question. Yet, it would be painful to extract the term from conversation. Consequently I'll continue to use society with some hope that there is shared meaning and that ambiguity will not unduly poison communication.

A contract can be a simple as a nod and a handshake or described with complex language requiring so many pages that even carrying the boxes of explanatory documents is back-breaking. This is then laden with “fine print” that only lawyers with theiir own tight-knit contract for payment of fees will fully appreciate. Pete Seeger said, education is what you get when you read the fine print, experience is what you get when you don't. Fortunately a nod and handshake agreement will often work and nothing more is needed. Unfortunately when it doesn't work the lawyers get called.

Our social contract requires some precision of language in the form of written documents—constitutions and statutes—to guide the making of administrative frameworks or legally binding statements—aka laws—that work fairly and effectively for all. This “all” means all; majority and minority across many people living in large and small tracts of space and over short and long periods of time. Laws are the very definitions of what people are allowed to do, expected to do, and/or prohibited from doing.

The social enforcement of these laws begin with the definition of penalties. The aversion to writing a social contract was deep and entrenched in multiple authoritarian structures and institutions. Churches made laws and maintained a theocracy through interpretation of holy documents. Monarchs made laws arbitrarily and sometimes capriciously claiming divine right. The magna carte limited monarchs by crafty coalitions between church and state created and ancien regine that ruled in France and continues in new iterations across the depth and breadth of social institutions through authoritarian and hierarchical organization. Schools are one embodiment of a modern form of ancien regime. Parents and community adults are essentiallychurch-like. Superintendents and Principals are monarchs. Corporations in most all of their manifestations are another form, where shareholders are the church and the C-suite houses the court of the monarch.

Enforcement of behavior within institutions can take on many dimensions including loyalty, fealty, favors and reciprocity to mention a few. With fealty, trueness, allegiance and loyalty are related. Trueness includes verity and truth. Allegiance involves commitment, dedication and cooperation. From any old or new ancien regime these enforcements assure some maintenance of hierarchy as they point to and permit authoritarian structure. Democracy be damned!

Fealty, of course, carries a historical legacy of fidelity to a feudal lord by a vassal who seeks use of land in return for rendering homage. The vassal was often required to bear arms in defense of the lords manor, which could also contribute to defense of a kingdom. The contemporary notion of a subject, subordinate, retainer or follower takes on new connotations for fealty. For instance, when a lawyer accepts a retainer, s/he agrees to remain loyal in service to the source of payment, often in amounts of many thousands of dollars for some well defined period of time. Our system of education, for the most part, sets aside land for designated buildings that are exclusively rendered for schooling. The lord-like board and their hired administrators build the buildings with an architecture to embrace and include classrooms for vassal-like teachers to, by contract, do the bidding of administrators; a lord-like arrangement if ever there was one. Does this remind anyone of our contemporary movement to require that teachers carrying guns? Is anyone anticipating the teacher pointing a gun at a recalcitrant student in their classroom. Oh god- and lord-almighty, NO! Not in this social contract.

Equality and equity are logical or mathematical concepts. The equation at its most basic is A = B where A and B have defined qualities, usually a number works reasonably well. When numerical values are assigned or identified, it becomes possible to conduct mathematical analyses to determine whether the resulting equation is either simply true, simply false or an inequality. Complexity is represented through expression of the number of terms used to define or refine the entities A and/or B of the equation. Our social contract calls forth some semblance of equality and/or equity. Unfortunately that is never as simple as A = B.

Democracy, I’ve heard, can be treated through mathematical reasoning as it has been with the 2014 book by Andranik Tangian, a Russian mathematician, political economist and musical theorist. Tangian produced two monographs regarding the mathematical elucidation of the meaning of democracy. How he was able to embrace such elements of democracy as respect, dignity and value or worth will have to await a close reading of these monographs. Meanwhile it may be of some comfort that an attempt to erase some of the fuzziness surrounding the concept of democracy has at least been attempted.

Voltaire (1694-1778, age 84) and Rousseau (1712-1778, age 66) were contemporaries with their active lives overlapping for a about four decades. By the time of Rousseau's birth, Voltaire was just beginning to emerge in French society as an author. As an advocate for free speech, Voltaire also supported separation of church from the governance of states and nations, a position later embedded in the US Constitution. The writing of Voltaire was so prolific that it was inevitable that Rousseau would find it and be influenced.

Arguments about controversial topics and the freedom to engage controversy are important elements of our social contract. The contract is breached when there is censorship. While the presence of censorship is very uncomfortable, there are circumstances where it may also be comforting. For instance, when ideas are grating against opposing ideas, it may be comfortable to ignore or, even better, not to hear contrary ideas.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the dogmas of religions. Freedom of religion and freedom from religion are not fully resolved in spite of 200+ years of Constitutional democracy in the US, which clearly extols separation of the secular and the sacred or ecclesiastical. Yet, our schools and teachers are troubled by an intrusion of religious doctrinal pressures to limit what teachers can teach and what students can read. Unfortunately this is not new, it is only louder now. Democracy is threatened by our modern versions of ancein regime where church and state are too cozy.

I originally called this chapter Social Construction. The implication in relation to the current title, “Our Social Contract,” is that construction is an important theme for education. From the vantage point of of epistemology, there is an important case to be made that all knowledge is “constructed” as a result of our social connections and relationships with an almost infinite array of objects and subjects. Construction builds on foundations. Indeed our trusted beliefs become increasingly justified through experience. Accordingly knowledge—justified true belief—rarely emerges as whole cloth; yet it becomes the fabric of our social contract.

Public Schools operate with authority of the state holding suasion over the autonomy of an individual. We should ask: How legitimate is that authority and what is its source or sources? Consent by individuals to surrender authority, and consequently some measure of freedom, may be tacit or explicit. Maintaining a sense of order across society is at the cost of relinquishing some amount of freedom or rights that may be legal or natural. Accordingly, the matter of a social contract involves distinguishing what are natural rights and what are legal rights. Supposedly natural rights, like natural laws, cannot be surrendered or changed. Political legitimacy hangs on an explicit agreement or contract with those who are governed—democracy. Accordingly all schools, or at least public schools, should model democracy. But they don’t. Hierarchy and authority dominate, mostly with lip-service, but little pretense at democratic decision-making. Elected local school boards only replicate limitations of representative democracy at other levels.

Political authority has been elucidated differently by theorists. Thomas Hobbs eloquently recognized that in the absence of a modified state of nature, life would be brutal and short. Conflict would be essentially endless and without resolution. Everyone would have a right to everything and property would mean nothing. Violation of another persons body by rape or murder would not be curtailed and plunder of property would be an endless battle of offense and defense. Natural rights, if followed without limits, would lead only to anarchy.

Government was, in Hobbs view, essential to prevent a state of anarchy. Civil rights, differentiated from natural rights, occur when individuals accept an obligation to defend the remaining rights or freedoms of others. Consequently all government requires relinquishing some amount of freedom. Natural rights stand in the way of civil rights, which are only obtained through creation of a human-to-human contract. Where these contracts begin and how far they may extend is a matter of choice; hence, another quasi source of freedom.

The theory of tacit consent is an important driver of social contracts. This may be a result of recognition of basic human needs for water, food and shelter. Being naked in nature is a state of vulnerability and much more so for women than for men. Clothing, of course, hides nakedness and is a form of shelter. Imagine, with me, being forced to be naked as happened to slaves at market. What was the slave's place in the contract that was about to ensue between a buyer and a seller? Clearly there was no willingness of either buyer or seller to yield to the slave any form of dignity or freedom. Slaves were emancipated; school attendees are not. After being picked up by the yellow bus and until dropped off by the yellow bus, emancipation is absent or attenuated. Schools operate on tacit consent that demands uniformity and conformity. Being naked takes on new meaning.

The reach and extent of a social contract cannot be unlimited. Social contracts are never firm or letter tight. In other words social contracts are not like a business contract that can be enforced in a court of law. To Hume they were convenient fictions created to guide human transactions and relationships. Obligations under a social contract are fuzzy and open-ended. Yet across time and many transactions social contracts require some measures of justice—often a matter of knowing when you see it or don’t feel it.

Hume referred to the whole notion of a social contract as a “convenient” fiction. The contract is never as real as a contract related to commerce where there is an offer and an acceptance of the offer, whether in writing or by virtue of a nod and handshake. Transactions are not afforded in anything resembling real time and in a sequence where the elementary components of the transaction can be duly noted by either party to the contract. The result is a tacit agreement or consent. Tacit consent is, of course, subject to ambiguities leading to misinterpretation. Explicit language rendered in constitutions, statutes and laws can lead to a consent that is minimally free of such misinterpretation.

Social contracts must be consensual. Consensus means that parties are willing to engage in some measure of give and take, while recognizing principles of social justice. Yet, social contracts should never be taken lightly. Although there have been numerous attempts by writers to extol the virtues of individualism, it is abundantly clear that our social existence is dependent upon sustaining a pattern of rule-making which makes virtually all of human life possible. And, because human life is much to often focused on evil deeds the imposition of better rule-making seems almost inevitable for our survival, and particularly the capacity to deal with the planetary imperative that will be addressed later in the book.

Unfortunately we are not living with a perfect social contract. Far from it. Progress has been made since the contributions of Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume and more lately John Rawls. Yet our political systems have never been able to come to grips with the range of human potential and misery. Education across many centuries has held out hope and many individuals have been able to rise in the tides created by education.

But the hope has been to see a much more universal extension of potential across our human social order and state of our existence. It is time we recognize that what we have been doing in all good faith with education in the form of schools, has simply failed our sociall contract. We cannot, paraphrasing Einstein, keep doing what we have always been doing and expecting better results. That may reflect the deficiency of human mental health. It is time to change. It is also time to recognize that we humans, and we alone, in a universe of ignorance and unknown, have the capacity to redirect our evolution if we only have the courage to use our power.

Recommended Reading and Sources

For this chapter I have relied on many secondary sources including the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Wikipedia for summaries of the work of many philosophers including Rosseau, Voltaire, Hume and Rawls. While the primary works of these authors are accessible and considered classical foundations of our democracy, it is worthwhile to consult secondary sources from reliable interpreters.

Chapter IV

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

Expecting Better Results

Albert Einstein said that the very definition of insanity is doing the same thing we have always done and expecting better results. Education is, simply put, insane. The insanity is a paradigm of expecting schools to lead the way to a better future. Schools, I will argue, have reached the end of what they can accomplish for a society of the future; what a society of the future will require for our species, Homo sapiens, to survive and thrive. Humanity has, of course, not a single future but multiple futures. These futures are connected and will require solutions to inequality and planetary sustainability. Until we are able to see education as an ecosystem, solutions will continue to be elusive.

This chapter had a huge problem and, in an early draft, was not going to fulfill the promise of its title Better Results. This may because the premise embedded in the title is wrong, suggesting a prescription of sorts. So I have changed the title to Expecting Better Results., which reflects an aspiration for something beyond what we currently have. The original title seemed to promise a way for education to become better or to improve, but improvement will require a close look at why schools do not work for a highly complex society that includes a wide range of complex individuals and stuffing them into a classroom is doing the same thing we have been doing for centuries. Classrooms, perhaps used to fit a perception of what society needs, but that perception is changing massively and rapidly. If we want education to change we must change our Expectations.

Society is really troubled by education. What we have just doesn’t seem suited to the complexities that contemporary society seems to be demanding. Unfortunately we are baffled by what those demands actually are. Every list, no matter how carefully and thoroughly annotated is going to be both incomplete and inconsequential. We now have this monolithic establishment of schools, with teachers and educators and public processes electing boards of education or school boards, and making inflexible laws mandating attendance of any person between the ages of six and sixteen.

We don’t have any clear ideas about the distinction between school boards and boards of education. School borard claim an education for schools, while a board of education establishes schools for education. That confusing state of affairs is compounded and confounded by enormous ambiguities about who or what is “in charge?” Is the responsible party a local district board, or a state level department of education with either an appointed or an elected leader, or is it a federal department or one of several federal departments exercising an influence on education.

Our federal Constitution is silent on education. Policy for education, state by state, and even across a given state, was was a mess with uneven conditions district to district. In 1955 the Department of Education was established by an act of Congress aspiring many good intentions to even up the disparities between and among the various states. Sixty plus years later education policy is still a mess and getting messier by the day, month, year or presidential election cycle. The last three, four or five Secretaries of Education have created clever slogans lauding “charter schools;” “no child left behind;” “race to the top;” “parents rights”, “vouchers” and “freedom;” and under Betsy DeVos in the first Trump administration “hel-bent on supporting more private—read Christian—education:” Then along ame the the covid virus and a pandemic that caused havoc across all levels of policy and expectations or aspirations or at least the polemic political statements of someone’s aspirations for education.

Education itself is battered and torn into fragments that can make it harder to recognize. Is it so many little cherubs sitting at desks in a classroom? Is it what these cherubs and their growing successors are supposed to have “learned?” Is it what teachers do? Or, is it the rules and regulations that dictate the sequences and standards of student, teacher, and administrator conduct? Education is, of course, all of these and a great deal more. Learning is, it seems, central to what education is supposed to provide. Yet try to find a coherent and comprehensive definition of what “learning” is or should be. Good luck!

And now we continue to expect better results from systems that have been unchanged for centuries. Education, as it is popularly denoted as schooling, is focused on a small slice of life; roughly individuals age 5-25. This cohort is expected to untangle the messes that have been made across time spans that are completely borderless; the beginning is fuzzy and the goals are nearly invisible.

So what should be done is never going to be clear until and unless we gather some useful insights as to the societal conditions and the states of education. Naming the problem can be a simple as “school.”

This schooling insanity is reflected in the range of problems in our schools. Removing these problems will require looking with a new vision on what education should be in the absence of schools. This happens to be my perhaps biased but unrepentant view. I have grown old, cranky and am not particularly concerned that some may react to what I have to say and declare that I am insane. I'll take that as a good start toward a conversation that could provide a new vision for education. An emerging vision will only happen as we talk about what it may be.

If we don't start talking now, there will certainly be a future time with no new change in neither education nor in our socially conscienceless pursuits of education. We will keep doing the same thing and expecting better results. Change is, I will submit, essential to what we will deliver under a rubric of education; conditions for sparing the further destruction of our only home in the universe—planet earth.

Chapter One identified more than a few problems with our schools. Chapter Two recognized the status of schools, schooling and schoolists. In Chapter Three, an attempt was made to recognize the ambiguities inherent in reaching agreements on society and forming a coherent “contract” to guide all of us collectively into the future. The remainder of this chapter will enlarge or expand on a few roadblocks to progress. … education science (v. medical science)… diversity and the variables of complex systems …

Education Science.

Science & Education are very likely in different spheres or, as Steven Jay Gould would say as he did for science and religion; magisteria. Knowledge (as justified true belief) is formed by vastly different means in science and religion. Religion invokes the supernatural to justify its beliefs; science eschews the supernatural and looks elsewhere for justification. The arguments regarding the distinction between the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, physical anthropology) and the social sciences (psychology, cultural anthropology, economics, political science) is not at all irrelevant when considering a science of education or application of the foundations of science—conjecture and refutation, paradigm shifting—to education and schooling. A cadre of educators may be steeped in science-like disciplines and with all good intentions including faith in their aspirations, acting professionally to formulate educational principles resting on scientific foundations.

At some level the problems of schools may resemble engineering problems. Indeed, education’s problems may, taken selectively, be reduced to engineering-like testing and products that are of economic, commercial and social value. There is activity aplenty to provide education and its schoolists with products and services that have been tested and, ostensibly, found safe and efficacious for classroom applications.

It is an important task of an engineer to test limits. The engineering tests often push a material or a process until it breaks. When something breaks you acquire knowledge of limits. Some materials are highly resilient and others are quite brittle. That is discovered by testing under controlled conditions. An important objective of any engineering test is to make the test conditions conform to conditions that may be as consistent as possible with the actual conditions of a materials use. Obviously test design requires a good deal of technical expertise. Designing is often as much an art as it is a science. Choices are involved.

Education rarely affords conditions like that of the engineering laboratory. The classroom is not a laboratory in any sense related to science or engineering. Teachers may push students collectively or individually to discover their limits. But students are not inanimate materials that can be easily quantified. It is, in fact, more than slightly reprehensible to think of students as objects to be tested in a lab. Attempting to apply anything resembling controlled conditions is so nearly impossible that what emerges is often artful or art-like rather than anything resembling science.

Yet Education Science is now a label on buildings at many major universities. The science inside those buildings bears some resemblance to psychology but there is often a considerable gap requiring modification and interpretation between the laboratories of behavioral psychologists and educators. Of course there is a legacy of behavioral psychology that still pervades the corridors of education science buildings. The work of classical behaviorism pioneered by Watson, Skinner and others still holds some suasion among a select set of contemporary workers in education. Students are not (ever) pigeons or rats. Scanners like fMRI should be damned in more ways that I care to enumerate or list, although I will argue in later chapters that neuroscience should be an expanded ground for understanding human development and its population variants.

A very basic challenge is the individual differences of the subjects (aka students) that are studied in education science. They are highly variable. Attempting to match the characteristics within an experimental cohort is fraught. Age and gender are usually a starting point. But it is also recognized that even within an age group a range of characteristics may be represented. Assuming that these differences are minor is also troublesome. Similar considerations may apply to age, gender, ethnicity, race, disability, living conditions, and on and on. Socioeconomic backgrounds as well as a multitude of matters may be, and should be, considered. It is often much easier for a university research investigator to seek out volunteers from among the student body rather than rummage through the community for a cohort to study. Again biases creep into the selection process. When a cohort is obtained decisions are needed to select experimental and control subjects. That may be simply random choice or criteria may be applied.

One consequence of all these potential variables is that results will require statistical analysis. Statistics will reveal similarities when appropriate formulas are applied to the data. Large data sets are most reliable. The classroom teacher may have some knowledge of statistics in her or his background. But reading the papers describing the research methods as well as the results and conclusions may leave more questions than can be confidently answered. Few classroom teachers will be able to do their own testing when they are inspired by a published result.

The path from the education science building to the domain of the classroom is rarely comfortable.This is especially true when the classroom teacher has to first focus on the management of those 25 people assigned to the class. We’ll deal with this impediment in the next chapter.

When it comes to the US Department of Education, I’m not sure whether to agree with those who want to dismantle it or those who want to expand its reach across and above state and local governments. The Education Department’s own Institute for Education Science may be both steps in the right and the wrong directions.

Grand Challenges.

Grand challenges facing society include transparency, explain -ability, accountability, inclusivity, potential adverse bias and effects, mitigation strategies, algorithmic advances, fairness objectives, validation of fairness, participatory design, broad access and utility. Anyone could pick out one and turn it into a lifelong passion. With much help from technology, particularly on the information side of technology, progress could be made. The needed technology is rapidly arriving in the form of Artificial Intelligence. In the next decades, Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds promise for increased decision support systems that may find broad societal application and implication. That education can remain outside of the future changes wrought by AI is farcical at an extreme.

Complexity & AIML.

If you pause to think about the complexity of education it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Yet we pack 25 kids in a classroom with a teacher and expect good results. And, it must be conceded that the results of classroom teaching are actually pretty good when all 25 kids come from the more affluent neighborhoods of a school district. Speculate as we might, and as we definitely should, about why we say results are “pretty good,” it is for many more reasons that the teacher has brought to the classroom. But when a five-year-old arrives for the first day of kindergarten and tells a first year teacher at the school to “go fuck yourself” you know that what follows is not likely to be the result of a teacher's best efforts. By the way, that teacher didn't return for a second year. Surprised? The kid's surname was not Carlin.

Dealing with complexity anywhere now demands help from computers. But before anything useful can come out of computation, the right information must be fed into the machines. Machines are now being programed to continuously adjust their algorithms to find patterns from incoming information—that is to say the machines are in some sense “learning.” The result is that computers are increasingly able to deal with big data. A foundation for AI is natural language and Large Language Modeling (LLM) Yet, we say “computers” as though some single machine is doing the computational work, when in actuality it is not a single machine but clustered devices that, running with a coordinated set of instructions and memory, can be anywhere in The Cloud. These clusters and clouds of computing crunch massive amounts of data per second. Searching for stored records is only a first, but necessary step.

Big data is here. Storage is cheap and is getting cheaper by the month. New tools for storage are being invented and tested. The human genome project was once thought to be beyond possible. Today a relatively compact laptop computer with an Internet connection can reach out into the cloud and retrieve matching data for anyones genetic data and do so in a matter of just a few minutes. The complete analysis of an individual's genome is also relatively inexpensive—typically well under a grand. As yet there is no known application for handling this massive amount of data for education. We are not even contemplating the development of tools for generation and analysis of an individual first grader's data-set. If we could get by the moral and legal prohibitions, we wouldn't know what to look for. But before we run off the mouth about some future utopia for education it may be well to pause and think about all that we don't yet know.

AI programs providing for facial recognition, speech recognition and creating speech appropriate to an inquiry, as well as prediction are already well developed. Mechano-electrical devices are in use in both ordinary and unusual situations as robots. What will humans do when there is nothing that robots cannot do? When robots have access to massive data sets, the condition of the world will be at the mercy of professors at Carnegie-Mellon University, MIT, Stanford and, perhaps universities in Beijing. Google Home, Alex or Miss Apple will just turn off the lights at your appointed bedtime. Truth be known, you were in the dark well before bedtime. That is the ubiquity of our ignorance.

Ignorance.

A favorite comment in support of education and funding of teachers is If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. This is egregiously stupid—and one form of ignorance.

It is time for educators including all of the schoolists to come to grips with ignorance. What we don't know is massive. Ann Kerwin3 wrote about a “taxonomy of ignorance.” She identified six categories including: all the things we think we know; all the things we don't know; all the things we should know but don't want to know; all the things we know we don't know; all the tings that we are prohibited from knowing (taboo); and, all the things that cannot be known.

Yet so much of life proceeds and perhaps has to proceed with all the confidence that goes with ignorance. If we wait until we are certain about knowing it is entirely possible that we would simply never be able to get anything done. We often have to proceed in the face of uncertainty. Planning is often engaged and not infrequently planning is belittled because of the inevitability of uncertainty. (Men plan; God laughs.) It is just not possible to be certain. What we can do is reduce uncertainty to some acceptable level.

In the preface I alluded to a change in my own system of thinking when I said that thanks to the self-publishing revolution I don't have to be concerned whether you or anyone agree with me. I can avoid the gatekeepers and publish when my spirit moves me to publish. I don't have to adhere any longer to moral dogmas that have tipped the scales toward uniformity, authority and some consensus interpretation of what is right. George Packer4, who alerted me to the notion of moral dogmas, said, speaking with his own version of nearly pure dogma, learning in a classroom with a teacher and peers is better for all children. With first cablecasting of programs, then Internet with streaming and the blog-o-sphere for anyone, followed by every more wacky versions of social media, gatekeepers began to disappear. The disappearing act was spread across media and then began to enter education. George Carlin challenged the gatekeepers of the airwaves when he used his comic show stage to repeat the “seven words you can't say on television.” I won't repeat the banned words here but nearly everyone uses some of them daily.Back then (1960s) these seven words couldn't be used on radio or television. The Federal Communications Commission was the gatekeeper preventing profanity. It worked a little like prohibition and was about that successful. Not long after the comedy club shows, video tapes began to appear regularly on cable shows not subject to the ban and now can be seen by anyone on YouTube.

In later chapters I will argue for a different arrangement based on recognizing potentially new structures and relationships within education, and medicine, which I will argue holds potential for better results. Which is certainly not to say that medicine has everything right; it definitely does not. But there are promising steps within medicine, which are invisible for me within education.

What we have for education are systems that serve enough of our human population to carry forward, sometimes with spectacular success, the aspirations of a few. It is hard to ignore the incredible accomplishment of sending humans to the moon and bringing them safely back to earth . And, we humans did this not once but several times. We are really damn good! We, of course, is not all of us; in fact just a few of us. Dreamers who were persuasive and sufficiently powerful politically and intellectually to persuade a government to commit massive resources. The result was spectacular on many levels. The view of earth from space enabled a vision of spaceship earth, our little blue orb, isolated in the blackness our universe. That was my level of involvement; just call it awe. My closest friends at the time were at a different level and went beyond their awe. They pursued their degrees in engineering, physics and the business of building rocket engines in order to be more actively and directly involved. But we all benefited in different ways as we found our paths on earth. Our educations were stimulated and supported by a massive national effort to reach the moon.

But conquering space travel managed to do this incredible feat while leaving our planet and its atmosphere in a greater mess. We did it collectively while remaining almost totally ignorant of the range of poverty and human disaster across too many continents. Our “educational” systems left us without any real skepticism or doubt about going to the moon. Postponing the moon shot for a few decades or even a few centuries would have been OK if we needed the time and resources to adjust our draining of irreplaceable resources while we protected our atmosphere from accumulation of devastating warming gases. But our visionary leaders said Go to the Moon. The brain-power of aerospace engineers could as well been turned to finding solutions to massive human reproductive overruns and management of limited nonrenewable natural resources. We went to the moon for the reason to simply be first. What a shame. Shame on us.

We could have been driving electric vehicles and living in more energy efficient buildings three or four decades ago.

We can be better!

There are a few specifics that come to mind as we look across the broad spectrum of education. And, we will highlight some of these specifics. However, what is needed now more than ever is broad brush-strokes to begin a vision to carry education forward. The Epilogue will deliver my specifics. ANSWERS of sorts.

Future chapters will highlight alternatives to schools as we have known them for too many centuries. None of these alternatives are proved to be better, but what we need most now (today) is something we can believe will be better because is is different—not the same things we have always done. Education needs its own moon shot, delivered with a hot, square needle right in the gluteus maximus.

Recommended Reading and Sources

1. Part II
2. Teachers Can't Teach

Teachers actually know a lot about how to teach, but they operate in a system for education that privileges too many elements that have little to do with education but are called forth by the management of schools. Management begins in the classroom.

Part Two makes the case that teachers are unable to fulfill social expectations because they have been subordinated to a middle-management position in a hierarchy that is fundamentally authoritarian and undemocratic. Expectations for innovation are fraught because of schooling structures that are maintained by well-meaning but misguided actors.

Chapter V—Classroom Management—opens a window about why teacher’s priorities are not development of their students.

Chapter VI—Systems for Innovation—highlights why teachers lack incentives and tools for innovation.

Chapter VII—What is missing?—signals gaps that need attention.

Chapter VIII—Being Critical—will highlight how we block potential for change.

Chapter V

When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding job in management consulting for a job that was even more demanding; teaching. I went to teach math to seventh graders in the New York Public Schools.

Angela Duckworth

Classroom Management

The first thing a teacher must do to teach is let the classroom participants know that they must sit down, sit still and shut up. That is the beginning of classroom management. Fortunately for teachers most kids get the idea quickly. But more than occasionally a few don’t

Teachers are hired to manage classrooms. Think about this. In public schools the administrators assess the number of students, pupils, learners, scholars—call these young people or whatever you find comfortable—they are labels for units that must be processed everyday to some end vaguely defined as “learning.” What ever “learning” is it is supposed to happen in a classroom and is generally regarded as unable to happen unless the decorum and activities of the people in a classroom are managed. Accordingly the school administrator at some level or another, most typically the school principal, must hire another class of people to fulfill the requirements for classroom management of decorum and learning—in that order.

The language surrounding a teacher's position may convey something couched in the language of pedagogy, but the usually implicit or occasionally explicit message is about management. At some level those who are hired have been trained to manage classrooms, sufficiently skilled in all manner of methods, to deliver a proscribed curriculum to a group of age-matched people. Successful management is judged by a supervisor, typically a principal. The judgment is based on a broad set of characteristics related to pedagogy. In the absence of a judgment that classroom management has been adequate, employment as a teacher may be terminated. In the worst case a popular teacher may be promoted to a new level of incompetence to supervise other teachers; the expectation that popularity will maybe rub off on others.

Though a teacher may declare that they are not in a popularity contest, their rhetoric may shroud their deep sense of knowing better. Typically these teachers are superb classroom managers labeling what they do as “character building,” which is loosely defined under a rubric of “discipline.” What ever the subject to be taught, the first step in teaching is to require discipline and get it with personality adjustments that begin with the teacher, attitudes and all, that make top down autocratic discipline de rigueur, current classroom etiquette. Imagine the growing chaos if this were not so.

To label teachers as classroom managers is likely to be seen as pejorative. It certainly will be and perhaps should be seen that way by active teachers, particularly in the K-12 sector of education. I will argue that it applies no less to faculty in institutions of higher education, with some space left open for graduate faculty who are also engaged in research and service. Their teaching is quite different from colleagues assigned to teaching undergraduate courses. Even at some of our major universities graduate faculty will encounter an occasional assignment to teach a large lecture course to first or second year students. It is also noteworthy that a few high flyers in academia actually seek assignment to teach a large enrollment course. Robert Sapulsky at Stanford is one such example. For a time just before receipt of the Nobel Prize for the DNA double helix model, James Watson, taught the beginning undergraduate biology course at Harvard.

Faculty at community and technical colleges are most assuredly tasked with classroom management, although their students, much like those at university rarely require behavior interventions and management. Management may focus much more on retention as many students at two-year institutions are prone to drop out. Retention efforts occurs through meeting the myriad remedial and personal needs of their students. Those attendance rules, schedules, assignment due dates, assigned reading, test dates and grade requirements distributed on the first day of class—as a syllabus—are notable as management documents.

Lee Iacocca said management is nothing more than motivating other people. As a corporate CEO at Ford and Crysler, Iacocca possessed motivational tools not available to any classroom teacher. He passed out money, lots of money, every Friday afternoon with an infectious smile. He got what he wanted; productivity. Although paying kids to behave and learn has been tried, Friday always seems too far off to matter. Friday signals a break in the classroom routine, and something fun is expected to follow with friends and family—a break from management.

Motivation through reward and punishment was brought into classrooms along with some of the early teaching machines developed by B.F. Skinner. Kids in class were regarded, not always light-heartedly, as larger version of lab rats and pigeons without wings. The paddle hanging on the wall behind the teachers desk was a frequent reminder of consequences of misbehavior. Its use by more than one or two horrific examples, was enough to keep all of the class well managed. This “lesson” could include failing to deliver an on-time assignment or simply not remembering a detail from a prior lesson that a teacher expected to be remembered because s/he told the class to remember it.

Time Management is the province of the teacher in a classroom. When a pupil attempts to take over the time frame for a scheduled activity through a behavioral outburst or deviation from expected norms, the teacher is duty bound to bring the schedule back in line with the allocation of time for what has been planned for the day.

A first rule of management is to delegate. Teachers delegate the “learning” task to their students. There is little or nothing the teacher can do if the pupil is unwilling to put forth the effort in the form of attention and choice to concentrate on practicing a skill or memorizing a fact in whatever form that may be designated by a teacher to take. For instance, memorization of a poem, a formula or a table of facts may take a different form from participation in a project. But in either case it is the teacher who stipulates what the student is to do and places an objective on what is to be done by the student. A new and popular learning tool, Project-based learning or PBL, simply shifts the activity—not the role of the teacher in managing what happens in a classroom.

In emphasizing their management role, I may seem by certain readers straying too far away from mainstream thinking about the role of teachers, particularly regarding their lofty status as champions of kids and sterling examples of scholarship. Let's look at what some literature from education has to say about classroom management.

The search (7/5/2021) of ERIC using descriptors Classroom Management yielded 16,321 articles … of which 8,061 were peer-reviewed journal articles … 6,094 were on classroom techniques, 3,922 described teaching methods, 3,275 focused on elementary and secondary education, and 2,075 dealt with teacher attitudes. Interestingly 2,037 involved classroom management in higher education.

From the above it is hard to avoid a conclusion that classroom management is a ubiquitous concern for educators. This concern is certainly not confined to the United States as there were 3,115 citations from foreign countries.

One paper's abstract (#) mentioned “ traditional domains of classroom management” that were contrasted with “cultural responsiveness.” Classrooms with low levels of classroom management were more likely to demonstrate elevated levels of negative behaviors. This paper included a line about “teacher's classroom management profiles.” These profiles include establishing expectations, monitoring student behavior, anticipating and reacting to student needs. “Effective management” techniques have been associated with student achievement, productivity and accuracy of student work, decreases in off-task and disruptive behavior, higher levels of classroom engagement and attention, and more pro-social behavior and positive peer relationships among students. These authors state “Although classroom management strategies differ from pedagogical techniques, classroom management and academic instruction are inherently linked … the need for reactive classroom management is reduced as instructional quality increases (Gay, 2006 is cited)”

Establishing and enforcing expectations is regarded as an important matter for being culturally aware and responsive. This loads on the back of teachers a host of practices such a communicating with cultural consistency, incorporating family backgrounds and building personal relationships. In other words socio-cultural participation in an authentic environment. The goal, of course, is to reduce racial and social injustices in the classroom. These practices are laden with overtones of a predominantly white environment.

In addressing the matter of socio-cultural teaching and its relevance to Native American students, Kaylee Domzalski wrote:

Cultrually responsive teaching or culturally sustaining teaching is really about what we teach and how we teach diverse populations. It's a combination of pedagogy, curriculum, actual instructional delivery, but also thte attitudes and belief I think that we bring to the classroom. (emphasis added) And really it's about a responsibility to know, understand, respect the various backgrounds, cultural heritage, sociopolitical [orientation]—whatever it is students bring to the classroom—and to have an awareness of that and to utilize students' prior knowledge, which comes from their families and homes and the communities. 5

Now pause a moment to imagine the degree of omniscience that must reside with a teacher to deliver on Domzalski's idealistic view for “culturally sustaining” 25-30 or more 10 year olds in a 3rd or 4th grade inner-city classroom.

Quite obviously the capacity of a teacher to respond to the cultural and behavioral circumstance in the classroom will be reflected in the teacher's confidence or self-efficacy. As confidence declines on the part of the teacher, students will sense the decline and may begin to take behavioral liberties that may otherwise have been manageable.

Many facets of the classroom may be important considerations for teachers to manage. The physical components are obvious enough but, of course, some classroom conditions may be totally beyond the realm of what a teacher can manage. For example, window (natural) and artificial lighting across a school day, temperature and humidity, paint color, floor coverings, etc. all of which can greatly influence attitudes of students as well as teachers. As simple a thing as cleaning the classroom may be either imposed on the teacher, or completely outside the teacher's sphere of influence as it is done “after school” by a janitorial staff that s/he never sees. School authorities may select the furniture and even insist on particular arrangements of the furniture not to mention appropriate and inappropriate uses of desks, tables, chairs, maps, projectors and on and on. Teachers may be only expected to manage avoiding any damage from kids being kids and to justify this as “learning” respect for property of others. When a kid carves initials on “my desk” there will be thunder to pay—called management intervention.

The academic or intellectual domain is ostensibly managed by the teacher. But, again, there are uncontrollable outside influences to which a teacher may be duty bound to respond. The curriculum adopted by the district or state is certainly one such influence. Quite simply there may be outside conditions imposed on time spent on particular subjects. Too much time on one element of the curriculum—kids are engaged and having fun—may have to be compensated by restriction of another element's time. Small deviation may be teacher controlled but being off schedule by an hour could cause disciplinary action, particularly or especially when the deviation from expectation is recurring.

Emotional events occur throughout a typical school day. Many of these are outside of teacher control but must be responded to (managed) nevertheless with empathy, sympathy or restriction. Consider the classroom where students with a broad range of disabilities may be assigned, supposedly at random, and create a new set of situations that must be managed by the classroom teacher. Fortunately, there are certain funding sources so that there may be assistants in the form of paraprofessionals to support both the disabled student and the classroom teacher. These resources are controlled top-down and outside the perview of the classroom teacher-manager. So-called learning disabilities are denoted for additional staffing inside and outside the classroom. Assignments within the classroom typical fall within the range or limits of authority of the teacher for management of the paraprofessionals involved. It likely goes without saying that this may be dicey or delicate when top0down rules are ambiguous.

Humiliation has too often been a tool used by teachers for classroom management. Parents and religious leaders have also made liberal use of humiliation to control behavior. Stress levels can elevate across an entire class if one peer is subjected to retribution by a teacher. There is also a regrettable history of using capital punishments for classroom management. Fear on the part of both teacher and students runs rampant across too much of education's history. This may be reflected on teachers without regard for gender differences. And, invocation of religious imagery as in “Jesus is watching you” may work in some situations but would and should run afoul of keeping religion outside of the classroom.

A teacher is subordinate to many considerations that are not pedagogical but are managerial. Classrooms are only manageable for a very limited number of objectives and only rarely for broad goals and vision. Accordingly it is unlikely that a teacher can be viewed either internally by students (and conceivably by their parents in some limited way) or externally as a leader. General Russell Honore recognized; leadership as working with goals and vision; management is working with objectives. When the educational environment is that of a school situation where authority is top-down, objectives can dominate management at all levels. At the top level, an education board and superintendent of schools will be drawn toward objectives that lead to effective management. Although a vision and mission statement my serve up lofty language of learning aimed at good public relations, which are necessary for both board members and their appointed Executive Officer, objectives become the essential management tool and leadership is lost to execution. The executive officer is provided not only a lofty salary but a bureaucracy to support the mission. Little wonder that tangible results are demanded. Those demands are passed down the chain of command. Control is the order of the day. Quality and teaching are often used in the same sentence to emphasize where the buck stops. It is not in the executive suite.

Recommended Reading and Sources

Management Professor Deborah Ancona6 from MIT clearly saw that leadership must articulate a vision, while Peter Senge7, also from MIT, emphasized on how successful groups must possess a shared vision.

#8

SEE PDF Evaluation Rubrics …

Chapter VI

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a Shepard. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

Winston Churchill

Systems for Innovation

Innovation is not likely to happen in society unless there is a combination of powerful desire or need and systems are in place to support and advance new approaches. This chapter will look at alternatives for education that represent or purport to represent such systems for innovation. The best of these provide new roles for teachers and change the conceptual elements and equations for education.

The entire chapter carries a subordinate theme that a new role for our teachers is needed. This will be the primary theme of the next chapter entitled What is Missing?

Cybernetics is a part of science that involves communication as well as control. What has emerged is a related science of systems, systems thinking and engagement of machines in the form of computers as well as in living systems at all levels of organization. Inherent with systems is both capacity and actuality for change.

What are Systems?

The notion or concept of systems has fairly recent origins and mainly come from biology where understanding how living organisms manage to survive has led to recognition of organs and systems of organs that constantly adjust the internal conditions of the body and enable the body to respond to opportunities and threats in its environment. Most organisms, those that survive, are really good at recognizing threats and making adjustments. These adjustments involve systems of muscle and bone, sense organs and nerves, circulation of blood with hormones and, of course, the nerves—muscular system, skeletal system, nervous system, circulatory system, and so forth. Biologists recognize that systems are open, that is to say they extend beyond individual organisms to include environmental elements. Systems of one organism interacts with the systems of other organisms; animals, plants and microbes that provide for food systems through a constant flow of energy, mostly from sunlight. At this level we speak about ecological systems or ecosystems. Recent advances have recognized that every animal’s body involves not only its own cells but the cells of other species, particularly bacteria, fungi (yeast) as well as single celled and small multicellular animals. This microscopic world within a body is called a microbiome. Connections among and between systems are both huge and important.

Society has a multitude of systems to sustain itself. These systems include economic, financial, political, spiritual, agricultural, transportation, government, and, yes, education. Each system is composed of unique elements and those who study these social systems recognize a multitude of interactions and overlap that are often given compound labels such as political-economics, agricultural-transportation or governmental-finance. With all systems there is overlap; some overlap is immediate and obvious, some is subtle or even hidden from observation. Importantly systems regulate other systems. The result is that systems rarely, if ever, operate in isolation. This means dependency.

Body systems are the most obvious case of dependency. When one systems fails, such as when the circulatory system fails,the heart fails in pumping blood to the lungs for oxygenation needed by cells and release of carbon dioxide generated by these cells. Without oxygen, other systems, importantly including the brain, immediately begin to fail. The result is downward spiral of functions that end in death of the organism. Although this is complex enough within a single organism, the social systems that emerge within populations and biological communities, also fail and lead to catastrophic losses of function.

Feedback is an important feature of systems at all levels. The study of feedback, and feed-forward, is called cybernetics. These elements are also referred to as positive (feed forward) and negative (feed back) control systems. Systems adapt and evolve as conditions change because an element of any system is feed back and feed forward.

The classic example of a negative control system is the thermostat that controls the heating and cooling of a home. When a set-point is 700 and the temperature drops below that the furnace turns on to supply more heat. When room temperature reaches the set-point the furnace turns off. An air conditioner (cooling system) acts oppositely.

Positive feedback systems occur when the system accelerates. A disturbance, often small, causes exaggeration of a system or part of a system, Panic in a crowd is a good example. One person in a theater sees something resembling a fire and screams FIRE! Others respond attempting to escape and people are injured or die because they are trampled. A worthy social reason to limit speech and prohibit yelling FIRE in a dark theater full of people.

For another instance, school districts have a system for transporting children to school and taking them back home at the end of a school day. This transportation we may call the ubiquitous Yellow Bus System, requires specialized vehicles that are ostensibly safe, fueled; routed and scheduled; all with capable drivers. When a Yellow Bus vehicle is is observed swerving across a roadway center-line, feedback from the community makes demands on officials responsible for controlling the system. Corrections engage systems of administration that retrains or fires a driver and hires and trains another driver. The system is restored to safe standards.

But, what if, through innovations, being pioneered by Elon Musk, driverless vehicles were to become reality. The Yellow Bus System may acquire a whole new look to service education and the community very differently.

Going forward we will continue emphasis on cybernetics, control and the potentials for change. When we deal with the pace of change or moving too fast, implications for science and education will be developed in Part III. Sophistication in cybernetics is huge and growing as a result of innovation.

What is Innovation?

Fifteen years ago I gave the colloquial expression TGIF a different connotation and meaning—Taking Great Ideas Forward. I wrote weekly essays with emphasis on innovation as about the future. Innovation is about what we don't now know but would like to re-present or be present in some future condition. This requires ideas. Ideas are always about the future. It is ideas upon which innovation is based. Someone has a thought or reflection on making something different; easier, safer, widely needed, more profitable, and so forth. Most typically a condition that is both different and better than the current or some past condition. The state of things is not static. Rocks and concrete walls don't change very much. Living organisms change constantly but may appear to stay the same. Change is a condition of life. Development is change—designed and guided or random and unguided.

In economics, politics, social institutions, it is people who do the guiding. An engine of social innovation is dissatisfaction. The way things are is not serving actual or perceived needs. A different way of doing is needed. Action is required to relieve the dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction may be minor or major. Major discontent may be sufficient to be disruptive. One key to relief of discontent is to look for the cause of discontent and remove the cause. This is, of course, a common solution in a business situation when an employee is failing to do a job as it is expected to be done. The employee is fired and a replacement is hired and trained to do the job more efficiently or effectively. The manager is faced with a problem and finds a new solution. Innovation? Maybe, maybe not.

Innovation is another ambiguity of language that can cause trouble. That is, like many, many other words and phrases, tossed around as though everyone may believe they know the meaning, and at some level they do have and maintain a sense of what the word means. But because of ambiguity, there may be trouble ahead.

In living organisms it is a combination of genes and environment that do the guiding. Adaptation to a change in the environment has both short and long term implications—survival. On the short term life or death of an individual organism; on the long term continuing reproductive success or extinction. Survival is an unambiguous criterion for success of living organisms. Adapt or die.

Innovation is adaptation. Innovators see the environment in a new way. With education it is too often difficult to see the totality of an educational environment—an educational ecosystem. The complexity of education ecology is obscured by too many of the structures that society assumes are essential. Looking at education in a new way may suggest alternatives to continuing with what seems to have been a successful adaptation or system. For education, dissatisfaction is a very important driver, but unfortunately it seems to be a driver of more dissatisfaction, an example of positive feedback. For education, perhaps more than other social systems, a search for the causes of dissatisfaction is almost imperative. Yet because causes are complex and laden with obligation to other important social standards, not the least of which is democratic principles for operation, even defining the cause is fraught.

One result is that innovation in education is piecemeal, limited, and relatively small in scope. We may be well advised to keep it that way. It may help for schools to get out of the way.

School Choice

School choice should be juxtaposed against a situation where there is no choice about attending school or which school to attend or a choice of not attending any school. Because we so firmly attach schooling to education, we may lose sight of education entirely. Perhaps we should actually emphasize “educational choice” and recognize that the environment or ecology of education is and should be unbounded by a concept—school—that is too ambiguous for real value. Of course, as it should, this will beg for an answer to the question “What is Education?” I’ll beg off answering that for now because the “answer” is, in my mind, a long and complicated one.

Mandatory schooling has been in force for a long time in America. The expectation that children will attend a school of some type or another is certainly longstanding as a basic condition for youth. Schooling is assumed and the assumption has been codified in mandatory attendance statutes almost universally in the United States. Exceptions are rare. For instance, a highly gifted child may be exempted from the mandatory schooling laws if there is a persuasive argument that the child will benefit from a musical or acting immersion that carries important developmental (career) potential. For some athletic pursuits this may also apply, Olympic level gymnastics comes to mind. There are, of course, detracting arguments that state law advocates do not accept and judges may not ignore. A highly talented athlete or musician may be forced to attend a school until they reach a specific age, usually between 15 and 18.

When school choice enters a conversation or debate it is usually not about whether to attend but whether there is a choice about where to attend. Public or private is one such choice with parochial religion-based schools definitely a part of the choice mix. More rarely are circumstances in which parents want to send a child to a boarding school. These schools may have capacity to support development of a child's capacity for a broad range of subject areas with or without specialty such as science, math, computing, and so forth. Obviously the cost of private schooling is a severe limitation on choice, particularly for boarding schools. Costs include transportation as special arrangements for busing or other transport must be made.

Bending the rules locked into mandatory attendance statutes would certainly be of itself an innovation. Yet there are important questions to be answered by anyone advocating for dropping mandatory school requirements or lowering the ages to a younger 12-14 rather than the current 15-18. Unfortunately the alternative proposals are, by the school principals association, headed in the opposite direction; to raise the age for mandatory attendance to 18. Appeals to the Congress are underway to make mandatory, attendance until age 18, or even 19. Some would, perhaps even mount an argument that requiring attendance at a Community College would be a form of innovation.

What follows are some thoughts about systems or schooling alternatives that already exist in our systems of education. Much of what follows is drawn from common and readily available sources, including websites and encyclopedias. I would encourage anyone or everyone to examine details of these alternative approaches to schooling. Your favorite search engine will keep you and your mind very busy.

Montessori, Waldorf and Reggio Emilia

These schools tend to be student centered and recognize that knowledge is constructed through cooperative learning activities. Development of the child is managed through distinctive curriculum executed by staff that are certified and trained to guide young people using the particular method for the school. Many facets of this schooling are intentionally self-guided. The Montessori system involves building on the natural interests of young people through activities that are often informal. Waldorf schools, while academically rigorous, integrate art into educational planning on an individual basis. Reggio Emilia approaches education through the arts including drama, dance, music, puppetry as well as painting and sculpture.

Home Schools

The alignments of this structure to support religious dogma is, to my thinking, lamentable, regrettable and deplorable. However there is other virtues of the home-based model for education that can work and will tie into a neighborhood development basis to be described later. Restrictions on home-based education are uneven among the various states. This means that time and curriculum may or may not be mandated by state stature or by a regulatory body such as a state department of education.

Parents may, nevertheless, be able to control the education of children through adjustment of time on task, for example. Children in a home-based system for education may be afforded certain freedom to choose what they learn consistent with their interests and passion. They may be able to pursue new experiences unavailable logistically or financially through a partnership with a public school district or even private schooling for that matter. Parental resources are not an insignificant element in the choices made. More affluent parents may be able to retain services of experts to lead or advise both parents and their children regarding some aspect of science, art, music, travel, language acquisition and so forth. As an extreme case, imagine the circumstance of children of the multibillionaire 0.1% who want to learn art. The family may be able to use the family's private jet to spend a few days in Paris at the Louvre with a knowledgeable curator who has been asked to accommodate a potential patron.

Children in home-based education are relieved or potentially relieved of certain stresses that are a normal part of public or private schooling. While parents may impose very strict deadlines for getting assignments completed, they also have great flexibility in making exceptions when anything is not going according to plan for the child. One home school alum was asked about learning math at the high school level. She related that when she encountered difficulty with trigonometry, her mother, an accountant comfortable with math said “Oh, don't worry about it. We'll get back to it later.” A few weeks on the 16 year-old returned to the study of trig and everything was managed just fine. Can you imagine that ever happening in a traditional public high school math class? Neither can I.

Home-based education can and does provide important alternatives that foster innovation when it is right for the child. My reservations regarding the uses of homeschooling to foster religious instruction notwithstanding.

Chartered Schools

The original intent of the proposals in Minnesota to establish Chartered Schools as public school alternatives was seen as an important opportunity to innovate in education; try out new ideas and enable children to learn and teachers to learn to teach in ways that focus on the child rather than the mandates of statutory language. What has happened, of course, is that Chartered Schools have proliferated across almost all states. The federal government has made Chartered Schools a well supported part of the federal budget, with most funding aimed at innovative approaches recommended by start-ups. Unfortunately with the blatant and irresponsible commercialization of Charters that has emerged, educational innovation has taken a back seat in favor of strategies to raise test scores and limit dropping-out.

One important idea of the original Chartered Schoo l proposal was to empower teachers to do what they believed to be best for their students. This could extend to innovations in school management in which teacher could form cooperatives to run the school directly through shared management. A great idea to move education forward. With this potential for innovation came a plethora of Charter Management Organizations that took control of the Chartered School framework to install much too rigid management systems to foster successful test-taking. Chartered schooling has been nevertheless misplaced because it retains the paradigm of schooling. A Chartered School is, after all, still a school.

Unschool

We can't seem to escape schooling as a paradigm so this innovation is also flawed but definitely a path toward—a worthwhile goal of freeing students to develop on a time schedule that suits their primary needs. Sudbury Valley School started in New England but has now proliferated across America. An early supporter of the Sudbury school, Dr. Peter Gray has written rather extensively recognizing the value of this innovation. Sudbury schools do not follow a curriculum and eschew the whole notion of grades and grading. Students are allowed a huge range of freedom to pursue their personal interests and engage at will with other students to pursue projects of their choosing, or not. The school day is retained but it is highly flexible with regard to start and end times. Younger enrollees (as young as 3yo) are more managed or guided but staff may be more concerned for safety than a particular direction for activity. Gray and others have documented comparable successes of students by pointing out their admission to many elite colleges and universities.

Neighborhood based Community Development

Getting back to basics, a neighborhood is an important place to begin meeting even the most basic human needs. In addition to providing food, water, waste removal, shelter and safety, development can begin by recognizing economics up front and centered rather than at the margins as a nuance and nuisance. The realities of finance are ever present. It has been increasingly customary to rely on central governments to supply funding for education. Vouchers seem to constantly rise to replace mandatory taxation for school funding with rhetoric of parental choice. Vouchers are hardly an innovation, but rather a reactionary mess of conflicts. Community Wealth Building (CWB) is still small but international and is a foundation for self sufficiency at the neighborhood and community level. Through agriculture and animal husbandry; through practices such as transition towns, permaculture, aquaculture and hydorponics, CWB can become a centerpiece for education’s ecology involving all ages. This means that adults become guides for development through partnerships that practice self-sufficiency, personal mastery, visioning, teamwork and project management that recognizes the reality of local, regional and global imperatives.

Adult Development

It may be a very laudable extension of community development, to foster engagement of adults with children in making neighborhoods much better places to live. Existing buildings of many forms could be exhaustively used to situate much of the needed development. And lifelong integration with a focus on what is really important … reciprocity with children is a great foundation as every adult is also a foster parent in a community—making best use in a new economic model of the circular economy may take society in a worthwhile new—innovative—direction.

Recommended Reading and Sources

Senge, Peter. 2010. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. . …

Senge, Peter. 2017. Schools That Learn (updated and revised)

Gray, Peter. 2020. Mother Nature’s Pedagogy: Biological Fundamentals for Children’s Self-Directed Education. (Gray has several other books related to his work with the Sudbury Schools.

Community Development. There is a vast arrary of titles of interest. Ledwith, Margaret. 2015. Community Development in Action: Putting Freire into Practice builds on the work of Paulo Freire.

Mollison, Bill. Permaculture; A Designer’s Manual.

Hopkins, Rob. 2014. The Transition Handbook. Transition.

Hopkins, Rob. 2013. The Power of Just Doing Stuff.

Homeschooling and sociology of education … choices in these categies is huge. Bogart, Julie. 2019. The Brave Learner may be a worthwhile start.

Chapter VII

Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.

William Butler Yeats

What is Missing?

Looking across the landscape of education it has been easy to spotlight some important problems and challenges that have yet to be met. Out. Out task is to begin looking forward to find what is missing and create and innovate to fill gaps and move education forward in a positive series of steps. The stakes are huge. No one should expect instant solutions. Political rhetoric is always in favor of educational reform but it is a rare event when someone says that is time to look for an alternative to schools with their grades, groups and rigid schedules. One of the biggest missing pieces is an orientation toward the futures for education. Schools seem to have a blind spot about the future because every child in our schooling systems is there to prepare for their future. Nevertheless, it seems that there is no impetus to look at the schools and supply good thinking about alternative future directions.

What follows in this chapter will highlight six frames for the missing pieces. First we'll look at our thinking about how future fit our schools now are. Making new frameworks for education will demand that society begin a process to focus on design for education that meets our future societal needs. This is much more than simply preparing students for “jobs of the future” because in the accelerated age of digital economy it is a really hard problem to project with any accuracy what those jobs will look like and what skills will be the most needed. At another level the lack of flexibility will be discussed to improve our understanding about the variability that will assure readiness for an uncertain but essential state of future affairs. Fire, Freedom and Finance will round out our list of what is missing. Without passion there is little remaining for the exercise of skills and knowledge that develop across a lifetime. Stuffing a head full of facts and procedures is not enough to excite much of any action.

Future Fit

When we remodel an old building every effort is made to bring it up to some contemporary standard or local building code. This often means providing new windows, insulation, plumbing, electrical fitting, new appliances, flooring upgrades and a new coat of paint inside and out. We call this retrofitting, when in fact it is all about the future; we are making the building future fita9 suitable for what will happen across time going forward. Every change is an idea about a future condition.

Education is missing a framework of ideas to enable the future. When we cling to the past—retro methods—there is little room for respecting the generation of ideas to fully support whatever the future may require of education. This may demand that we become comfortable letting go of what has been suitable for past conditions.

Future Fit means taking steps to restructure what is being done in the name of education to assure flexibility and freedom as well as a much better approach to financing individuals, communities and institutions that are able to contribute to highly functional strategies that are really able to leave no one behind. Schools with their rigid, top-down paradigm cannot and will not ever be able to do that. Furthermore the planet will continue to face challenges that are pervasive and must be met with a whole new strategy for making the entire population of the planet future fit. That will mean changing the way every individual sees their personal responsibility to protect, preserve and restore the ecosystems within which they live. Ghetto life is unacceptable. Providing necessities is, in the final analysis, the responsibility of the people who live in the ghettos of the world. These people may well be oppressed from many sources for which they have had and will have little or no potential for control. Yet the future is their future.

A framework for for taking ideas forward means leaving dogma behind. The future often begins with questioning. Perhaps it should always begin with some healthy skepticism about the ideas that have shaped our contemporary thinking about origins, knowledge, aesthetics and ethics; the traditions and practices that are expected. To be sure, these past practices represent beliefs about which much passion is attached. This can make questioning very uncomfortable and even dangerous. The danger is a perception of disrespect for sources and uses of knowledge. This may mean a very delicate balancing of respect for the dignity of difference alongside the idea generation capacity of people in an active community striving to thrive. Leaving dogma—our unquestioned beliefs—behind may be pretty tough on some institutions in the community that are beholden to perpetuating a set of beliefs that have not been questioned; sometimes for centuries.

Letting go of certainty and recognizing that uncertainty combined with ignorance is a reality of life. No one ever has enough; not billionaires or homeless vagabonds. Yet limits do, in fact, exist. Knowledge is always limited, yet everyone has certain basic biological and psychological needs—food, water, shelter, safety, belonging, knowing. Energy and transportation is built into our anatomy and can be developed physiologically if our psychology is reoriented to exclude the modern means of fossil-fueled transportation.

Commerce and industry develop and grow through finding a panoply of new and never conceived needs. The marketing mantra is “find a need and fill it.” If a need is vague, make it seem real. Near instant communication and access to knowledge is assumed as a new contemporary right. For the future to unfold, assumptions about past practices should be openly identified and challenged.

Focus

Attention carries a host of considerations, not the least of which is locality. We attend to what is close at hand. For an increasing part of global population, that matter of locality is or involves an increasing and continuously developing array of devices. Cell phones certainly come to mind. When the phone rings, answer it. Focus is shifted.

There is so much going around us in the worlds in which we live. Our perceptions of these worlds is a function of many things but it is nearly impossible to exclude media in its many forms. Journalism writ large is our window on worlds that are beyond our immediate bubble of existence. With the modern tools of communication including but not limited to broadcast and print as well as the Internet with its browsers and electronic mail, we are almost inundated if not overwhelmed by a barrage of information in the forms of narrative stories, visual stories, and access, through search engines, to images and data.

In a recent conversation with friends, a question, answerable with a fact, was raised. One friend, Mike, a really bright guy with a prodigious memory, reflexively reached for his cell phone. Another friend, Jack, every bit the intellectual equal of Mike, tapped Mike’s shoulder and said; “No, no I know the answer, let me think of it.” I’ll let the reader guess how often this anecdote of reaching for the smartphone is repeated everyday, but is expected and accepted without objection.

Global news is now nearly ubiquitous or at least potentially ubiquitous. Unfortunately ubiquity does not extend to our most immediate neighborhoods. Local stories are usually missing from the sources on which we mostly rely. Accordingly we take what we get and leave unattended what is local and could be or, perhaps, should be the focus of our existence.

This should not be any great surprise. Afternoon conversations with a neighbor over a shared yard fence are gone in favor of relaxing in a cushy chair with a lite or crafted beer and the large, flat-screen television tuned to a commercial-filled version of the evening “news.” We have little or no focus on what is brought to our attention. Our individual lives are almost totally independent of local resources to meet our most basic needs, water, in some localities, being a slight and sinister exception. Food is delivered, often from hundreds of miles away; far enough away that we frequently have no clue as to its origins. If the local grocery and our budget is sufficiently stocked, we don't have to worry a wit about sources. Store managers take care of that. As long as we have an independent source of transportation, access is pretty easy, if not particularly cheap. On the other hand, if transportation is not easily available, we may live in something resembling a food desert.

The result is missing a local focus. Systems for delivery of food, water, energy in the form of electricity and liquid fossil fuels are dependent on infrastructure including roads, wires, and pipes. Resources are brought in and waste is taken out. Change is not possible until a local community, a neighborhood, is afforded an opportunity to change from dependent to independent.

Nowhere is relation of dependent and independent more evident than with electricity, although liquid fuels and the Internet are not far behind. Electrical generation is poorly distributed. In spite of increasing use of solar energy capture, there is still a dominant framework of central generation using fossil fuels including coal and natural gas. Clean energy is still a long way off. We are still almost entirely dependent upon the electrical grid. Yet with functional storage (batteries, including hydrogen fuel cells) it will be possible for neighborhoods to generate and save their own electrical power.

What would make this possible is a focus on local development toward sufficiency and connection. To do so a neighborhood would require development of the hard skills needed for installation and maintenance of modestly sophisticated equipment, unfortunately now, most of which is manufactured outside the immediate neighborhood and even outside the country. However, that could be temporary on the scale of 20-50 years. What is now doesn't have to be forever.

Every neighborhood is capable of making self-sufficiency a focus. This will turn on critical thinking skills and taking on the tasks inherent in development of these skills along with the critical theory of how to enable the communication and collaboration needed. This is doable if the community / neighborhood is adaptable and sufficiently flexible.

Flexibility

Another missing link may be rigidly clinging to the way it has always been. There is no need for casting much of anything in stone, like a cemetery monument. Doing that almost automatically demands a monument whether it is real or virtual. Stone monuments can be bulldozed or taken way. Virtual monuments are not so easily removed or even seen.

Our existence is as a living entity on earth. Our survival individually from day to day and as a species demands adaptation to conditions that are changing like the weather. Getting out of today’s thunderstorm is no less important than anticipating, planning and storing provisions for seasonal change. Flexibility is a function of choice or choices about the economy of life … making a living, that is enabling continuation of life within the environment (habitat) in which we live is a measure of everyone … all the rest is frosting to make life seem better, sufficient, OK, and, ostensibly, enabling awe, joy, fulfillment, a sense of belonging, some measure of esteem but in the end entails our personal self actualization.

Flexibility is very likely underwritten by some perception of safety or security. In the streams or rivers of life, going with the flow is easier and more comfortable than fighting the current and attempting to swim or paddle upstream. Yet not everything needs to be a constant struggle. Sometimes it is actually better to just be carried forward with what has been long accepted.

Early in life there is dependency and little room for choice. As individuals advance beyond dependence and seek experience, choices become both more abundant and challenging. Making a choice carries consequences that may or may not be known or predicted. Error is not only common but a part of the process of developing skills and knowledge that enable progress. Acquiring skill in making worthwhile progress is a matter of individual preferences that are rarely unlinked to past experiences. The extent to which past experience guides and influences choice has a great deal to do with flexibility.

Individuals acquire or shun flexibility according to perceived value. Valuing flexibility in choice is an element of freedom that arises from practice. So it is likely that freedom is a practice derived from or made possible because of education. Rigidity may also be a choice but is hardly considered characteristic of freedom. However, it may well be that making valued or good choices is characteristic of freedom. This also means that freedom is joined or linked with responsibility to self and others.

Fire & Passion

Education is said by William Butler Yeats to be not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire.

Sitting in a classroom and following directions laid out by the teacher according to a lesson plan is anything but conducive to encouraging passion. Ringing the bell to signal another lesson time is a sure fire killer of passions for anything. So how is it possible to assure that buckets are filled with something more than a lighter fluid—sustaining a passion for acquiring new skills and relevant knowledge? I will submit that teachers play a rather minimal role and if the fire burns from within. The lighter fluid will only singe the surface leaving a blister that eventually goes away, perhaps leaving a bit of temporary scar tissue. Lighting a fire is not for the faint of heart. Hardly a condition of the classroom that a teacher can manage. When it happens, serendipity perhaps best describes the magic of a moment.

Personal mastery is a source of joy that is awesome while releasing energy to flow in a nearly self-perpetuating cycle that needs only an occasional injection of additional fuel. The added fuel may be the accolades of others, rewards for hard work and sizzling performances that dazzle. Mind and body merge and time is irrelevant.

Yet the behavioral explanations always seem empty and incomplete. Time is an element but only part of the story of success. Hours of repetitious practice pays a dividend in self-actualization or self-satisfaction; a feeling that declares to the self that all is well, surpassing the “good enough.”

It may well be true, that nothing external can ever equal the actualization or satisfaction that burns brightly and everlastingly from within. Education, in this sense supplies the hottest fire sustaining passion across a lifetime. Skills and knowledge are necessary but not sufficient. Attitude may be everything and can’t be “adjusted” by application of external forces. New values emerge from within.

The adjustment of attitude comes from doing, repeating, failing and adjusting for small improvements. One step by faltering step at a time. Laying down stepping stones. Turning a lump of clay into a meaningful form. The recognition that it is really you, and you alone, that wants the finest possible measurement in millimeters or micrometers. It is really you that wants to be carefully tuned for the next bit of action that is a highly personal choice because it is purposeful and effective. It is sustainable because it is at once immediate, global and synchronized with the universe.

In other words, it simply and continuously feels just about right.

Freedom

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. Lyrics sung by Janis Joplin in Me and Bobby McGee has raised provocative questions and has been variously interpreted regarding the real and deep meaning of freedom. But “freedom” is ambiguous with many meanings. If you say that you have nothing to lose, you may actually mean that you will not suffer if your action is unsuccessful, so barge ahead with abandon and an attitude of “What the hell! Or “Why should I care?” Perhaps it is that sense of abandon that is missing for both leaders and participants in education. Our educational ecosystems seem built on containing protest by a tacit message that you have much to lose, if you act without success. Freedom to fail is missing.

This perspective on the meaning of freedom carries connotations crying out for new thinking and greater, more critical, understanding of the characteristics of freedom. This may open a framework for communication, developing a social meme for freedom that could spread rapidly enough to change a fundamental element of our humanity that is currently in outstandingly bad, shockingly short supply. Too many people experience life with nothing left to lose. If you don’t even have food and water, freedom is too far away to be seen or valued. If you don’t have a sense of freedom for yourself, it is likely impossible to see its value for someone else.

Emancipation may be what everyone is, in one way or another, seeking while thinking both romantically and critically about freedom. In some sense we are slaves to systems of restraint and, I must reluctantly say, responsibility. My reluctance is that divorcing freedom from responsibility is a nonstarter in my mind; they are as linked as a hand in a glove. Yet being drilled and reinforced regarding responsibility without perspective or care may be as fraught as unbounded emancipation and freedom. Or, even poisoned by an in ability to be frank, open and, yes, outspoken to a point of assuming boldly an idea, concept or action that others may decry as irresponsible or an outright falsehood. Being labeled a liar is discomfiting for most of us. Being a liar in actuality should be discomfiting for all of us. Responsibility seems to sneak in through a sense of consciousness about the basic morality of truth.

Passion and creativity probably depend upon or require freedom. Imagination needs freedom and means taking liberty from existing mental models or dogma. James Watson and Francis Crick, co-discoverers of the DNA double helix, found freedom as a capacity to see the rather arcane, esoteric x-ray crystallography structures in a unique way. Their competitors, at the time, Linus Pauling and Rosalind Franklyn, saw a triple helix that was egregiously incompatible with the known biology of DNA —cells and organisms duplicate, not, triplicate.

Perhaps intrinsic to all the other framing of freedom is the matter of choice. Choice very likely lies at the base of our humanity. It is well regarded as a fundamental element of what neuroscience recognizes as executive function. All of the other conceptual or cognitive frames are likely subordinate to choice. Choice seems to be superordinate to other features of executive function. This rather soundly puts choice in the bullseye in any discussion of freedom.

One could defend a statement that everything about education should be aimed or oriented toward establishing a personal foundation for making good choices. This in itself carries an important implication for the meaning of good and what we may need to know about good or being good. Not an insignificant issue for ethics and aesthetics in philosophy. We may ask; Good for who and good for what? Why is anything good or not good? An obvious extension is the matter of determining when something is right and that drives our conversation into other realms of ethics.

Freedom and ethics then are almost inextricably linked through a panoply of choices about action, power, restriction, all worthy of comment and contemplation.

Any discussion of freedom will almost inevitably intersect with liberty and libertarianism … The extent to which this can be accommodated in a classroom in a manor that will satisfy a broad range of stakeholders is very problematic. Once again we struggle for useful distinctions and definitions.

We are still way too committed to the notion that education is about filling minds with facts and procedures and once filled minds will be able to contribute to personal and social goods. Our industrial factory model for education puts a premium on how much mind-filling we are able to accomplish in some rigid, non-negotiable period of time.

The implication is that freedom is irrelevant in far too much of schooling. Students should do as they are told and become more and more habituated to following directions. This begins early with exercises standing in line, hands on the shoulder of a person in front of you. The line moves at the teacher's direction toward something that may or may not even be known to the pupils. The result is building commitment to conformity. With age and “maturity” there may be opportunities for placing rules in perspectives such as safety, memorizing, recall and recitation. But there are ways for all of that to develop rationally without tyrannical declarations and actual or implied nasty consequences that say, in effect, say stay in line or get the switch, and elicit a tacit “holy crap, I better stay in line.”

There is something much deeper about freedom as an individual may experience it and as it may be a condition for others. We seem to be missing an opportunity to open minds to possibilities and generating a pattern of open mindedness, accepting conditions of restraint and responsibility, while at the same time pushing the envelope to find what is possible inside and outside of education.

Freedom has been missing from education. Paulo Freire has recognized freedom in light of oppression and emphasized how the pedagogy of oppressed people must constantly emphasize ways to practice freedom. I find this compelling in any attempt to define education.

Recently Timothy Snyder has carefully elaborated five conditions essential for freedom. These conditions begin with recognition of the sovereignty of an individuals mind-body. He then proceeds to consider unpredictability, factuality, mobility and social solidarity in shaping a meaning for freedom.

Yet bringing together Freire’s practice and Snyder’s conditions calls forth consideration of wealth and worth as contributors to freedom and dignity.

Finance

There are plenty of schoolists who will argue—persuasively with passion—that what is lacking in our current system of schools is money. Of course, the argument is not about the money directly but is about the benefits that money is expected to bring. Pick any one of the problems besetting education and someone will certainly include more money in the solution. Sometimes throwing money at the problem is actually the top and only solution—build new buildings, hire more people, buy better equipment, make something and everything will eternally be equal. The assumption is that with more money sloshing around more teachers or more administrative staff will generate a way to advance toward a solution. The facts are usually that the school district or state agency has either no solution or just a few fragments that they conjecture will work. Guess work begets action when money is no object and good management be damned.

Capitalism and its benefits cannot be ignored. They push the boundaries of education. Most vendors of school material won’t ever let you ignore the benefits their product or service will bring to someone, somewhere. However, capitalism does not automatically mean bigger is better and that competition is somehow essential for progress, innovation and a robust profit stream to be filled through innovation or freedom to innovate. In fact it could be highly beneficial to begin questioning the meanings of progress, innovation and profit in the ecology of education.

Economic considerations for education are likely more than finance and more money. Economics is built on choice and as suggested above, choice is paramount for education also. Leveraging existing community resources may provide important routes to innovation. For instance, enabling new technologies to emerge focused on a new look at how education can emerge in a community or, even better, in a neighborhood ecosystem built around continuous improvement. The missing element may be opportunity for creativity and finding new passion for better living.

Every neighborhood is its own economic engine. A circular economy or a hydrogen (energy) economy or a sustainable economy can begin anywhere and anytime. Resources for building community wealth are built into every neighborhood in the form of people who want to meet basic needs and seek improvement for status quo. Throwing money into neighborhoods will contaminate and waste resources that could be sources for development of a new economy rooted in happiness and satisfaction for all. What is missing is a new economic wave based on choice. Our narrative on education’s ecology will return to how we can fill the missing pieces.

Recommended Reading and Sources

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Snyder, Timothy. On Freedom.

Chapter VIII

I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent [person] than to the thoughtless approval of the masses.

Johannes Kepler

Being Critical

Skepticism has its benefits but it can't ever be or represent the whole show. There is an important virtue in taking the world with a grain of salt and particularly asking, almost constantly, is this or that true? We all need to be asking about meaning of words, phrases, slogans and assertions that constantly surround us. Beyond meaning is also a matter of evidence and relevance. How do you know? What difference does it make?

America emerged from a pandemic and a presidency that overturned much of what we took for granted as little as five years ago. Now as that presidency is reemerging it is a good time for all of us to be critical.

Journalist George Packer has written Last Best Hope wIth a goal to provide perspective, describing Four Americas representing a worthwhile model for what must be done to balance skepticism with reality in order to provide a framework for advancing great ideas. Packer’s Four Americas are: Free, Smart, Real, and Just. America deserves to be characterized but with economy of words that Packer doesn't afford as he manages to expand on these four, perhaps to the exclusion of other components of American life. I will submit in this chapter that there is also a Critical America— perhaps part of Smart America—that is both worthy of description and fostering a new wave of action to stimulate needed conflict (discussion) and dialogue. For this education cannot stand alone and there is no room in a school filled with classrooms and classroom teachers to manage or guide the development of the people assigned to the classroom toward any of these Americas. Being critical is a burden and unrealistic expectation for teachers and too often leads to a circumstance where a teacher can't teach.

We'll now look a a few aspects of being critical. First distinguishing between being critical and being cynical.

Cynics & Critics –

Criticism may mean any of the methods of studying texts or other documents in the form of film or video, a dance or opera with orchestra for the purpose of dating or reconstructing them, evaluating authenticity, analysis of content or style. Criticism may be considered an art form analyzing and evaluating the quality of an artistic or intellectual exhibit such as a painting, dramatic play, or a scientific publication. This form of criticism may be and frequently is accompanied by a written document—a critique. The overriding elements of criticism are to make judgments that add to the work in both or either a positive or negative way. Criticism includes assessment, commentary, critique, judgment, opinion and review; and could also mean appraisal, elucidation, examination or evaluation. In fact, criticism is an assertion or statement of positive or negative value.

By contrast, cynicism is typically and wholly negative. The Cynic may be sarcastic, pessimistic, distrustful and often bitter; often misanthropic toward gender, race, poverty or any of other human characteristic or activity. Music, art, athletics, or even science and engineering may be denigrated as worthless. These cynical comments may be made in defense of some ideology or religion that depends upon dogma—unquestioned assertions. Cynics convey a negative attitude through pessimism with an acid tongue. The cynic displays a doctrinal practice that flows from belief and becomes embedded, seemingly, as a trait of character.

The history and rationale for literary criticism sheds additional light and is a worthy form of scholarship. Book reviews are common and may range from a few well chosen sentences to many paragraphs that include exposition of how a particular work of literature is related to many other works of a related type or genera; novels compared to other novels, essays compared with other essays, et cetera.

Unfortunately a cynical display is too often confused with criticism. The cynic and the critic are not the same.

The teacher is often, perhaps too often, caught on the horns of a dilemma when trying to teach because they can't be critical of certain things such as biblical passages, the rituals of a church, mosque or synagogue, the practices of a city council, legislature or Congress, the provisions of the Constitution, the advertising practices of a firm using cable television, and so forth. Criticism is easily misconstrued by students in a classroom and by a parent receiving a second-hand account of what may or may not have happened in a classroom. Consequently a teacher may be prohibited or feel a certain intimidation by circumstances in a community, school or a classroom in dealing with certain topics. Not the least among these topics are politics, religion, sex and race. Honest criticism in any of these spheres is touchy while cynicism is not only unwarranted or unjustifiable but may bring down justified sanctions. The teacher may have a fully justified role in providing criticism, but playing out that role can put the teacher in a very untenable, not to mention uncomfortable, circumstance with their employer and community—becoming a threat to their livelihood.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking was been defined by a former colleague 10, as the way we determine the truth of assertions. During my tenure with the Minnesota Community College System, Critical Thinking was a central focus for faculty development and I was privileged to work with outstanding colleagues who contributed important thought and writing. Joel Peterson developed a FIRE Model of Thinking that emphasized effective thinking and includes; factual thinking, insightful thinking, rational thinking and evaluative thinking. The simplification may be helpful but is hardly worthwhile except to fix four point in the mind of a receiver; essentially a mnemonic tool that is limited and ultimately limiting. It is a definition with limited value. Lawrence Litecky11, a faculty union leader promoted Centers for Teaching and Learning that led him to write a book on Active Learning that embraced Critical Thinking as sine qua non for teaching. His definition “the active, mental effort to make meaning of our world by carefully examining thought in order to understand content.”12Active mental effort cannot be that of the teacher, but must be a construction of a person engaged in sense-making.

The teacher can't teach sense-making, but a student can develop a skill to do that. I will concede that a teacher can, on just the right occasion, the teachable moment, enable a student or a small cluster of students in a classroom to begin a process of examining their own thinking. However, I will argue that this is rare, happenstance and elusive of any effort to plan ahead of execution in a “teaching situation.” Of course, there are beautiful exceptions—a source of joy, even exilaration, for a teacher when the exceptions happen. I know how I lived for these moments, and never achieved a routine for making them happen. In a large class or from year to year to year, perhaps enough of the se moments occur to leave an impression that a teacher has a magical skill and ephemeral knowledge to make those rare teachable moments happen.

In the mid 1990s I was engaged with a group of community college faculty who were charged with a project ot infuse crItical thinking across the curriculum. While we did some good things, including a Compendium of Critical Thinking Terms that ran to around 25-30 pages, there was minimal impact on our colleagues. They were all holders of graduate degrees and considered themselves adequately credentialed to know critical thinking when they encountered it. Sometimes it took a stretch of imagination to grant their self-served license as critical thinkers. Their loud, long, sometimes nuanced and detailed arguments were sometimes persuasive when they were not simply boring or off-putting.

There may be as many definitions of crItical thinking or higher-order thinking as there are people who think critically about what critical thinking means. That is probably as it should be and it becomes necessary to not rely on a tidy definition, as good as one may seem, but to simply recognize critical thinking when we experience it. Critical thinking may embrace criticism and it may not. There is considerable scholarship available to help us understand what critical thinking means. We just have to sort through and adopt a view of critical thinking that is practical as well as worthy and valued—worthwhile. That I must submit, is not a teacher’s task but is everyone’s lifelong and lifewide task.

To that end it may first be helpful to highlight what is not critical thinking. It is not distorted, prejudiced, or incomplete. It does not rely on unquestioned assertions. It is not presented with half-truth or no sound factual evidence. It is not an attempt to be dismissive of alternative conclusions and sound particularly complete in some sequential and seemingly systematic way. This, of course, raises the spectra of articulating thoughts to fit a particular audience or circumstance to persuade a course of action—a sales pitch of sorts. In the midst of a hostile environment, composure may be very elusive leading to unforced errors in thinking and making an argument; hardly a worthy example of critical thinking.

By some tacit definition, critical thinking is a people centered process. It is what you do or do not do and what I hope I am doing. It related to me and to others. That is, critical thinking does not merely happen in a vat; it is highly socially relevant. While a pure thought experiment may seem otherwise, it is intended and communicated as a rhetorical tool.

Rhetoric is an art form with persuasion as a goal; thus making a persuasive argument whether spoken or written. Accordingly we may ask what are the elements of successful debate and argument. This often means that the origins of critical thinking are not only self-directed, and self-monitored, but that there is a certain command of the way communication is processed as it is delivered. This is often a result of a mindset that has developed across time and a range of experiences. In this sense it may recognize problems through definition and seek solutions consistent with neutrality that eschews ego or social convenience.

Above all, critical thinking emphasizes and honors questioning. How critical is the argument? What evidence is there for accuracy and precision? Why is the evidence fully relevant or significant? Where is the argument fair and logical and where is it not? Above all who is responsible for advancing more questions than providing pat answers? Is the person making the argument credible? Why or why not? Are relevant principles recognizable in the formulation of conclusions? What assumptions have been recognized, and how does a point-of-view bear on credibility?

Given the potential for elaboration on one or more models of critical thinking such as that described by the late Theodore Paul and Linda Elder13And the elegant output of their Foundation for Critical Thinking, it may behoove us to describe the impracticality of managing a classroom for the practice of critical thinking skills and its myriad components. Schoolists of the administrative caste, seem content in providing lip-service and an occasional professional development experience for teachers. It is granted that there are a host of advocates among teachers for infusion of critical thinking into classrooms. That is, broad agreement of the need for more critical thought. The tacit expectation is that these crumbs will enable a broad cohort to emerge after a few years as critical thinkers. That is dreaming. (Now I am being cynical.) Unfortunately the dream has been decades long and we awake to a society that increasingly displays no substantial critical thinking. Witness the gravitation of millions to cable television in all of its forms and features; political news as entertainment (charitably—presented in an entertaining style), followed by a cleverly entertaining comedian. That, of course, followed by a tease to bridge and hold attention through airing of commercial messages, that are themselves designed to foreclose any critical thinking, but elicit some action (ask your doctor, call us now … ).

The tasks of critical thinking are central to our contemporary society. This is an unfortunate reality since we depend upon critical thinking to uproot bias in our news and political communication. Propaganda is an ever-present element in the messages that are sent and received in the millions of instances in our contemporary milieu of social media. It is simply not possible, legally or practically, to flag and remove propaganda from the likes of Twitter (now X), Facebook, YouTube, to name just three of literally dozens to hundreds of less obvious applications of the Internet's great capacity for communication. The result or consequence is a pressing need for society to itself develop resilience in the form of ubiquitous critical thinking about the wide range of issues of our time.

One should think that facts matter. They sometimes do and sometimes don't. The matter of what constitutes a fact is not always easy and straight forward. Witness the nonsense of “alternative facts” and the fall out that seemingly made no difference in the credibility of the Trump White House staff or the former President himself. Lest I be accused of political bias, and I sometimes rightfully will be, I must say tht I believe Trump is the tip of an iceberg that way too many politicians and appointed public officials, from all parties, to often gleefully and reflexively exploit for instant personal and political gain or a momentary power advantage.

Practicing thinking in a classroom is elusive and especially so when the lecture is so frequently employed to fill the assigned classroom time. As one practitioner put it “the laziest and least effective way to teach anything.” The time devoted to nugget after nugget of information cast as wisdom—the knowledge content—is ideally just a fraction of the time in class. But lectures are manageable and can be entertaining through stories, humor, jokes, seemingly Socratic Questioning maybe should take a majority of assigned time; well justified by teachers and accepted by students. Worthwhile “learning” time. Time contributed to development of intellectual skills. While a classroom experience may be designed for thinking and understanding, active participation, one key to development of intellectual skills, may remain superficial at best. Done in combination with other group strategies, active learning and even critical thinking can prevail. But, to repeat, this is not an engineering problem.

Metacognition or thinking about thinking and how one thinks is likely dependent upon the depth to which a discipline has been experienced and the trials attending that experience. Trials may take many forms including formal summative examinations. This ultimately means personal ownership that cannot emerge de novo from a teacher, but must be a result of what a student experienced and internalized. The student—and only the student—may embrace and experience de novo the aha-ha moment when they “get it.” The implication is that every teacher is fundamentally limited in what they are able to teach. Teaching for thinking, critical thinking or higher order thinking is fraught and organizing a classroom to bring it forward is fraught.

Critical Theory –

Criticism and even cynicism of our social situation is inherent in reflecting on power structures that control the existence of people in various social circumstances including economic, political, religious, labor, and, I will add, education. The later giving rise to the critical pedagogy movement fostered by the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, author of the well-known book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which followed an earlier book Education as the Practice of Freedom. Without stretching too far, Freire is a case in point about why teachers can't teach. While teaching in Brazil, he was arrested, jailed and then exiled to Chile for five years; excluding him from those he considered greatly in need of his teaching—oppressed peasants of rural Brazil. I must also ask, How are teachers doing in the colleges and central city schools of Florida?

Recent developments have brought fragments of scholarly critical theory to a focus on the contemporary race relationships in the United States. The political implication have become highly polarized with legislatures, so well populated by geniuses, weighing in on how schools should conduct classes at all grade levels up to and including colleges. Teachers are expressing concerns about the constraints on teaching being imposed by legislative bodies to regulate teaching of concepts related to race as well as gender. A central concern is interference with first amendment and contrary to our culturally embedded and legally ratified free speech. Does accepting a contract and paycheck really impose legitimate sanctions on talking and teaching?

Elections are emphatically not a democratic tool simply because they are almost never proactive and political candidates for public office rarely state how they will vote on a bill because a specific bill has yet to be introduced. Former Ohio Senator Ron Santorum, gave me a case of the heebyjeebies (a clinical term) by a reminder that he said, years ago, that democracy is not a good way to determine public policy. I have not gotten over my clinical condition but can’t shake some recognition that Santorum was raising a fruitful point sorely in need of serious dialogue.

Elections deal most effectively with representatives that have actually voted on bills. Contrary to some perceptions of what constitutes “the public interest” we remain with a lot of uncertainty about issues enabling democracy to resolve or deal effectively with public policy. The mistakes are pricey and painful, especially when products of our public schools are treated like products to be processed by our industrial age schools. Democracy needs much more than what these schools have delivered.

While bills directed at K-12 are probably legal enough given the legislative power to write laws and determine curriculum, there may be contrary and controversial reasons for legislators to think twice about the impact of these bills on the flexibility and freedom of teachers to respond, particularly to questions brought to the classroom by their students. Legislative restraint could enable teachers to think independently and actually try to do what they believe is best. While there are, no doubt, plenty of things happening in schools with regard to race and gender that need to be addressed, it is probably a big leap to expect legislation, no matter how carefully crafted, to actually and inevitably deal in a positive way with important societal issues. Solutions should not be partisan. Teachers are caught between a rock and a hard place. There may well be plenty of language in existing state and federal statutes that could bear on how teachers conduct lessons about race and gender, yet broad statements of best practices should guide doing what is right and do so much better than legal language that is open to interpretations where penalties for unintended consequences can rear their ugly heads.

Critical race theory has ignited a fire of applications to race but also inequality, poverty, controversy surrounding critical race theory in public schools. The controversy surrounding the teaching of critical race theory in schools was touched off by the publication in the New York Times of an article entitled 1619, which characterized slavery as an economic platform on which the United States was built and exposing the Constitution with its first Amendments as fostering the conditions that strain our contemporary division between Blacks and Whites as well as Latino, Asians and, of course, Native Americans. The controversy is laden with considerations and even demands for social justice in the form of reparations.

Perhaps I should have warned Mr. DeSantis that this book contains dangerous ideas that some readers may find very uncomfortable.

Recommended Reading and Sources

Robert Ennis. 1962. A Concept of Critical Thinking.

Limits of Lecture – Chet Meyer and Thomas B. Jones 1993. Promoting Active Learning.

1. Part III
2. Moving Fast

Part III is the real heart of this book. If biology is not your core interest as it is mine, you will benefit from these ten chapters as you find a new light shining on the practice of education. This Part defends my assertion that nothing in education makes sense except in the light of biology. In this part we will look at advances in the biological sciences that will have an impact on education's ecology and education's future. It is not intended to be comprehensive but should point the reader into areas of education where the light of biology will greatly aid understanding and make meaning of so much of what happens across a lifespan.

Part Three develops the theme that entire societies in the form of communities of geography and interest are moving fast, likely way too fast for the ancien regime of school to cope, adjust, innovate or transform.

The ten chapters of Part III include:

Chapter IX—Education is Slow—education seems so tardy in catching the wave of change in science, especially across the most recent decades.

Chapter X—Human Needs—our understanding has revealed the vastness of our ignorance and all of myriad opportunities for recognizing our place in nature and the universe.

Chapter XI—Biological Bridges—establishing bridges between neuroscience and educational psychology will represent our challenging path for stepping into a new future.

Chapter XII—Autopoiesis—our understanding of human origins link our existence to evolution.

Chapter XIII—Trauma & Humiliation—what happens to our feelings when educators remain oblivious to the basic biology of hormones.

Chapter XIV—Limits & Neuroscience—we have come a long way but what does the future hold and what is unrealistic?

Chapter XV—Affect & Control—social-emotional development is a massive challenge for educators.

Chapter XVI—Psychology & Evolution—in the light of evolutionary psychology has merged with the biological sciences to energize research.

Chapter XVII—Genetics, Genome and Epigenetics—manipulation of the human genome is increasingly possible and highlights concerns for the pending potential of a biotechnology tied to education.

Chapter XVIII—Harbingers of Understanding—learning disabilities are likely to become windows for understanding the importance of development and dependency in early life.

Chapter IX

Changing the world is not easy, but its pursuit will change you profoundly.

Leroy Hood

Education is Slow

The Biological Sciences are moving very fast in the wake of completion of the Human Genome Project in the early oughts. The implications for education are potentially enormous and we have to pause and ask; Is education simply too slow? Education certainly seems tardy in catching the wave of change in science, especially across the most recent decades. Nowhere is this more emblematic than for the biological sciences where we find the most direct connections with education across a lifespan.

There is little easily recognized and described pursuit of new scientific insights by educators at any level. Parents are a first line and far too many are unaware of all but the most basic biology including even understanding conception. Of course, they connect copulation and conception but beyond that thinking is fuzzy. Colleges of education in a multitude of universities have established divisions or departments of so-called Education Science hoping to catch a wave of something worthwhile. And, indeed elements of science and the scientific method are applied forthwith around statistical inferences.

Expectation that science can deliver concepts and principles worthwhile to educators run very high in some quarters. In this chapter we will attempt of follow some contemporary science that may be relevant for educators. This is with an intent to foster further expectation and perhaps drive some new thinking to light up the corrodors of education buildings.

Along the way we’ll raise a few questions such as: What does a search of ERIC reveal about even the study of such obvious connections to the biological sciences as Learning Disabilities accompanying such conditions as Autism (Autism Spectrum Disorder or ASD), ADHD, ADD, Dyslexia and others? How is the “science of education” still mired in the trenches of psychology and the legacy of Skinner?

Child Development –

If ever there was a case against schooling it must lie in the direction of development. The psychological community has been teaching and ostensibly learning about child devlopment informally and formally for over a century. It has had no substantial impact on schools because, schools wait for children to attain a certain level of maturity before there is an effort to teach them the basics needed for living. For the most part, schools receive people who are so far along in their development, about the only thing they can do is either live with the consequences, or screw everything up; or both.

The most important part of child development occurs in the first trimester of pregnancy and continues through birth to around age two or three. We pay so much attention to birth as a beginning of life that there is almost unanimous neglect of what happens following conception. The study of human embryology has taken many decades to catch up with what has been learned through the study of development of other animals such as the frog, chicken and mouse. While it must be acknowledged that ethical restraint is entirely appropriate, it took years for techniques of human reproductive biology and biomedicine to enable the study of early embryos. Even today that study is still constrained by a set of beliefs that there is something sacred about a human conceptus and embryo. (reference GW Bush and Stem Cell restrictions)

The conceptus and embryo are a mass of cells that become organized into discrete layers from which critical tissues and organs form. This period of organ formation extends through the first two to three months or the end of the first trimester of pregnancy. After the organis are formed and in place, it is proper to refer to the developing individual as a fetus, which is normally carried through birth. Fetal development expands the capacity of critical organs until they are fully capable of supporting independent life. One implication of this is that before about 20-22 weeks of gestation human life cannot be sustained without the most extraordinary support using highly sophisticated knowledge and exquisite emerging technologies. Of course these technologies are constantly expanding and some extremely rare and very expensive develepments have enabled the most advanced medical centers to support ex vivo (outside the uterus) fetuses at ages of 15-17 weeks. (citation?)

Some organs mature faster than others. When birth occurs normally at around 40 weeks of gestation in the uterus, organs are sufficiently mature to assure survival if there is a maternal support system. Maternal nurturing enables critical organs to continue development. All are important but the context of education commands attention on brain development. This may be unfortunate because the brain develops in alignment with essentially all of the other body organ systems such as the muscles and skeleton, digestive system, circulation and immune systems, hormones, skin as well as all of the sense organs.

It is now abundantly clear to biologists that brain development is most dramatic in the first three years following birth, or about the the first four years of life when a new life is counted from the time of conception. This is not particularly popular with the pro-choice crowd but there is no other way to describe the biology. Interestingly in Korea, conception is considered the date of an individuals origin.

Life, of course, most likely has only one beginning and that was approximately 3.5 billion year ago. Everything since then has been a continuous elaboration on the fundamental properties of life; autopoiesis (organization, self-perpetuation) and metabolism. All of these fundamentals include cells as the most basic units of life and includes the egg and sperm which combine to form a new individual organism. Egg and sperm don't come from anything magical. They are products of cellular development to do a highly specialized function—reproduction.

As we move on to future chapters and Part IV, we'll return to details of development. These details together with evolution form the most important foundations for all of biology. It was once said by Theodosius Dobzhanski that Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Today biologists collectively engage in what is referred to as EvoDevo—evolution and development as linked, inseparable phenomena of life. We will follow their lead.

Learning Disabilities –

I am fraught using “learning” and will argue for replacement in our vocablulary with development. But details of the argument will be hanging unattended for now. Suffice to say that my decided preference is to call learning disabilities “Developmental Disabilities” or something similar clingling to the concept of development.

That some children and adults are severely handicapped when it comes to development has been well known for decades. Since schools are such an important element of society and fully surround the years from 5 to 25, it has been a practice to send all children to school. This means that schools are expected to “teach” everyone irrespective of their capacity to benefit from the teaching that is done in schools. The days of segregating children with disabilities in specialized schools are by and large gone. Even children with the most severe disabilities of vision, hearing, musculo-skeletal and functional lbrain limitations are enrolled and parents expect the best for their beloved children from “educators.” That dictated or state mandated expectation is too often inconsistent with the state of knowledge about both biology and education.

It is not our intent here to get into the debate about children with the most severe disabilities, although my remarks above may convey a sense of my position. I will return to this in the Epilogue as I look at the futures for education. For now though, I want to concentrate on what is a whole other category of disability.

The catalog or taxonomy of disabilities that impact a child's performance in a school setting is long. It partially includes such conditions as Atention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD), Attention Deficit Disorders (ADD) without hyperactivity, Dyslexia, Dysphonia, and Autism Specturm Disorders (ASD) or Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC).

Autism is a very illuminating condition. It is most typical in boys and is usually “diagnosed” by about age three. Autistic diagnosis, then, initially recognizes children that are most often unable to socialize and that demonstrate some form of repetitious behaviors. Each of these two features or conditions of autism occur in a broad range from barely noticeable to highly obvious. In the most severe cases parents and other caregivers are baffled raising a multitude of questions. They are for the most part concerned with causes and treatments. Schools have, again for the most part, developed special education programs (Independent Education Plans or IEPs) with personnel (Special Education Teachers) to support these children in school. The science surrounding Autism and its associated spectrum of disabilities, disorders or conditions has been moving very rapidly with important contributions from genetic biology. Rapidly developing tools have identified literally scores of associated genes, though as yet none are firmly linked to any of the conditions and many have only been studied only in mouse models where certain tasks can be related to so-called normal development’ and where the mouse model has forms of abnormal or excessive repetitious behaviors such as grooming, scratching or screeching. The mouse models may seem a stretch to link with human traits in diagnosed ASD, but ethical considerations intervene whenever human subjects are involved. Consequently investigators use animal models to develop skills and knowledge related to a particular laboratory observable condition.

Autism, it is argued by Lynn Waterhouse14, is not a single disorder. She emphasizes that the brain structures related to socialization constitute a highly-complex network and that genetic markers of autism are also associated with other disorders. She leaves no doubt that autism symptoms exist but that the disorder remains elusive. It may well be that in attempting to deal with these autistic symptoms, schools are simply, if not inevitably, overwhelmed. Schools, through hiring of special education faculty may deal with momennt-to-moment and day-to-day vissitudes of young people within or “on” the spectrum, but they hae few tools such as markers or monitors to inform their daily ministrations. Research is making what often seems to be amazing progress in sifting through the symptoms and finding potential markers to aid diagnosis and potentially provide new treatments. Solutions to autism and the Spectrum of conditions (ASC or ASD) will remain a challenge for schools.

It is conceivable that as school personnel continue to deal with the full range of learning disabilities or learning disorders, medical sciences will come to the rescue with important links making progress inevitable. Is it conceivable that school personnel will at some future point team effectively and equal standing with medical professionals?

Neuroscience –

There may be no more important link between the biological sciences and education than through neuroscience, a rapidly developing fusion of many formerly isolated academic disciplines. This interdisciplinary work is paying huge dividends and investments continue to grow from governmental and philanthropic organizations as well as the private sector, which, of course, sees profitable applications. Neuroscience has grown from affiliations of biologists and psychologists through what has been labeled psychobiology or biopsychology. The medical specialties of neurology and psychiatry are related through a multitude of links. The central player is, of course, the brain; an organ of enormous curiosity and complexity. It was not many years ago that educators were highly attracted to behaviorism and inclined, or even encouraged, to treat the brain as a “black box” just looking at inputs and outputs. That is no longer the current framework. Looking inside the brain is now common through fantastic advances in dynamic imaging tools. CT (computerized tomography) Scan, fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), PET(positron emission tomography) in combinations with electrophysiology (EEG), and even tiny cameras implanted in brain regions to send images of a single cell’s activity. Tools for study of neuroscience are, simply put, amazing. Brain imaging has matured to higher and better levels of detail or resolution, enabling neuroscientists to look at very fine detail in tiny parts of the brain.

Around 40-50 years ago light began to show a path toward cognitive and emotional links that could not be ignored. Clearly the black box had been opened. Anatomists had long recognized the intimate connections between the brain and the body through studies of the spinal cord and the myriad peripheral nerves. Slightly over 100 years ago, two Nobel laureates, Santiago Ramon y Cajal and Camilio Golgi argued intensely about how neuron, the major cells of the nervous system, were connected. It took the invention of the electron microscope 50 years later to establish the ubiquity of gaps between nerve cells which we now call the synapse. In 2000 Eric Kandel was awarded a Nobel prize for his discoveries about the role of the synapse in the formation or development of memory.

There is no longer any justification to doubt the importance of brain development in enabling us to do what we do—our behavior in every aspect is influenced by connections. That fact poses highly important questions for education. The brain and many parts of the nervous system are undergoing constant change. There is now recognized an inherent plasticity as connections are formed and destroyed, often in fractions of a second as we go about our daily lives. How is that an underlying foundation for the changes in behavior and cognition that education seeks to understand and control? That make the whole notion of control daunting beyond anyones imagination. Our ignorance is easily overwhelming and should be dramatically and dynamically recognized when ever our hubris puffs us up believing we have found a solution.

Another interdisciplinary fusion of sorts has happened between psychology, neurology, endocrinology and imminology. Psycho-neuro-endocrinology and psycho-neuro-immunology are joined at the hip with psycho-neuro-pharmacology. Endocrinology involves the study of the myriad hormones that circulate in blood and body fluids to influence the function of cells at distant locations. For instance, insulin produced in the pancreas enables cells all over the body to use sugar (glucose) for essential energy. Immunology of course, is well known to defend the body against invasion by microbes such as bacteria and viruses. What was not so well known until a couple of decades ago is that our mental state is a factor in how immune cells discover and destroy pathogens. Pharmacology provides drugs for interference with many pathological conditions, and it is now well understood that many drugs are “psychoactive” and influence brain functions both positively, as in control of mental illness, and negatively, as in fomenting anxiety, depression or even suicide.

Addiction to drugs is better understood than ever. Insights about the way the brain processes pleasure and pain are enabling better uses of prescribed drugs and understanding of why illegal drugs are so attractive.

Trauma that is physical and psychological has been shown to influence the balance of hormones. Over long periods these hormone imbalances can permanently impair ability to cope with trauma and create maladjustments that permanently affect health and well-being. Children experiencing Adverse Childhooe Experiences (ACEs) have been shown through a multitude of studies to experience, as adults, more heart disease, mental instability, strokes, addictions and to die—sometimes by suicide—earlier than expected. (Cite Fekete; Keratekin; Burke-Harris … ).

Chronobiology –

Biological rhythms have been long vaguely recognized but it was around 75-80 years ago that Dr. Franz Halberg, at the University of Minnesota coined the term, circadian rhythm—body changes that occur at about a day. His laboratory in the medical school disclosed over the next 50-60 years that our bodies establish and respond to a multitude of rhythmic changes with measured values rising and falling with regularity. Today the administration of many drugs are timed to coincide with these biological rhythms.

Our biological rhythms are built into every cell of the body and are synchronized and coordinated by a master clock that resides in a specific part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. It has also come to light that there are important individual differences in how certain basic biological rhythms are expressed. Children and, of course, many adults are forced to adapt. For children school schedules are no less inflexible than are the ordinary and customary schedules of the workplace. The scheduling of school is a reflection of the dominance of schedules throughout our very lives. A need to examine objectively the physiological impacts of unwarranted scheduling in the lives of children should reveal why some kids thrive in school and others never seem to adjust adequately to meet the demands of schooling schedules. In spite of the science of time in our lives, almost no current attention is afforded in education to this emerging part of science.

Big Data –

Unless you are living in a cave, ignoring the Internet and its massive access to data and its propensity to track seemingly everything to produce data, is impossible. The giants Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, X (formerly Twiter) and many lesser lights are keeping track of our every mouse click and scroll wheel move. Face recognition is out of the box in applications as innocuous as our family photos to as frightful as knowing who attended a public protest on a city street. While access to more and better information is amusing, useful and delightful, it would not be possible without instant access to big data. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is able to assist the management of these huge datasets and its computers and algorithms with brain-like circuits, actually “learn” about patterns inherent within the data. While one may debate the meaning of intelligence in this sense, the realities of machine learning, large language models and natural language pattern recognition as well as or along with predictive value has refocused our grasp of reality in our lives.

An emerging element in AI is its uses for decision making. It is already informing financial institutions like banks about risk of making loans and enabling those officials who are charged with loan collections to decide whether a foreclosure or a repossession is a smart business decision. How far off is the uses of this kind of big data to help a principal or even a teacher to decide on whether a particular punishment, detention or expulsion is the best thing to for a student in a school setting.

Our genetic data is already being processed by the tools of big data. Ancestry dot com, or Twenty-three and Me, is probably the tip of an iceberg of information that lies out of sight but is potentially useful to someone if not to meet our immediate needs. Old records required a process of digitization, but almost everything significant is immediately digitized and available for analysis and dissemination across the Internet.

Of course, it is not only people that are connected by the Internet. Devices or “things” are also feeding date into the cloud for storage. This is the Internet of Things (IoT) that can take control of heat and lights in your home anytime the “public” needs to save energy. Global implementation of a big brotherhood. (cite Shoshana Zuboff).

Storage was a bottleneck in the past but that has now been rectified through Cloud Computing. The Cloud is more than a storage tool. It is also used for massively parallel processing of mountains of data. An instance in computational biology has involved the massive computations needed to decipher the structure of protein. It turns out that prtein structure is not a simple result of the sequence of amino acids but depends on the environment in which the protein is manufactured inside the cell. Prediction of the 3D structure of protein has provided for new understanding of drug interactions that have been life saving.

Massive data is being generated for studies of health and disease through tools like Genome Wide Association Studies or GWAS which is an approach used in genetic research to associate specific genetic variations with particular observed conditions (phenotype) including diseases of individuals. How much longer will it take to apply this type of technology to seemingly intractable problems with individuals or particular groupings in education? Probably not much longer at the pace of biological research and the power of using big data.

Personalization –

An ideal for education has been to provide assignments, lessons and evaluations for precisely what an individual person needs to advance. The old grade-book was very clumsy and restrictive and is now egregiously outmoded as a tool. Lately digital badges have become of interest. These are tools for certification and credentialing that are highly personal and provide a massive amount of information that a grade of A, B or C could never supply no matter how finely tuned with plus or minus signs.

Yes, Education is Slow. The potential for adaptation to new developments is unlikely as we cling to schools, classrooms and teachers who are hardly positioned to keep pace with change in many related and even seemingly unrelated fields that have potential impact for practitioners of education. Perhaps practitioners will begin to realize value to be gained by picking up the pace of advancements in these related fields. Education could emerge from its past as an important social design to meet the full range of human needs.

Recommended Reading and Sources

Zuboff, Fekete, Keratekin, Burke-Harris, Halberg & Chronobiology,

.

Chapter X

Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

Lou Holtz

Human Needs

Life has one unambiguous criterion—survival. What we need is to sustain life. Full Stop! Humanity be damned, if life is not sustained or if a human life is considered to be unsustainable. Yet throughout much of human history, a baby born with obvious defect was abandoned, and abandonment was socially accepted without lingering regret. We’ve come a long way, baby!

Development is instructed, not by human teachers, but by our DNA and the environment within which the DNA resides. When we fish DNA from living tissue with a bit of alcohol and a thin glass rod, it just looks like so much snot, and it doesn’t do one damn thing. It needs a lot—a massively complex collaboration with literally thousands of other chemical forms and structures.

Collaboration tends to a full range of human needs, the complexity of those needs is most likely not possible to know, However, it also seems not unlikely that, whatever the full spectrum of needs, the neuroanatomical foundations are formed in utero. Babies outside the womb simply don’t survive. They need collaboration for survival.

Abraham Maslow, identified a hierarchy of human needs and published useful papers that have found wide application inside and outside of education. Maslow was a psychologist but recognized that important human needs are fundamentally biological. It is at least hypothetically possible that even the “highest” levels of human needs are also deeply biological. An important part of this chapter will be to look carefully and even critically at Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs. We will argue not about the reality of the needs Maslow identified, but whether education is particularly well served by treating these needs as a hierarchy. We will concede that there is, perhaps, some sequencing of importance. The adult is built into the child through emergence.

If there is a biological foundation for human needs, meeting those needs throughout the earliest stages of development, beginning in utero, may mean that there is no second chance to make a first impression. Development is first and fundamentally an anatomical process enabling function and behavior to unfold. Yet we argue that form, for the most part, follows function. We are what we are, because of what we must do to survive in an environment that is both nurturing and hostile. It is during development that the structural attributes or foundations for life are established. With all vital organs in place, maturation continues throughout the body. No part of the body is separated for special treatment or consideration. That separation only happens in the minds of those who study the processes; perhaps a form of necessary omission. That omission has a significant tendency to focus on the development of the nervous system, with great emphasis on the brain. It should come as no surprise that courses on human development are taught in universities by the psychology department and not the biology department. Hence, development is tied to our brains and behavior.

Yet it is clear to anyone who has studied physiology and thought about the big questions and problems of philosophy, that the brain does not exist in a vat. Somewhat isolated and protected by the cranial vault, the brain is continuous with the spinal cord and connected to all parts of the body through an elaborate array of peripheral nerves. Brain tissue, like all other body tissues, requires oxygen and nutrients, which must be supplied for metabolism, which, in due course, produces waste, which must be removed before reaching toxic levels. Oxygen is needed for brain cells to burn the carbohydrate, glucose, and the result is accumulation of carbon dioxide, which is a powerful toxin because it acidifies tissues and blocks the essential energy generating reactions of cells. Without energy from oxygen and glucose, brain cells quickly begin the processes of death.

We may be surprised to find how much death is a necessary part of development.

In what follows we'll consider: Maslow's hierarchy, alternative views, missing elements, uniquely neonatal needs, safety and trauma, quality of how needs are met, individuality.

Maslow's Hierarchy

The hierarchy of human needs formulated by Maslow in 1948 has become a foundation for practices in business and management, marketing, parenting, education and, of course, psychology. Although it is widely adopted and seems almost intuitive, there are those that claim it is categorically, sequentially and holistically wrong. We'll look at alternative views after we examine in a bit of detail what the hierarchy looks like following Maslow.

Classical listing for Abraham Maslow's original treatment recognized categorically physiological needs, psychological needs and self-fulfillment needs. At the base of a pyramid (illustration???) are the physiological needs of food, water, elimination of waste in the form of urine and feces. Initially food and water are supplied through breast feeding and later by other liquids and solids supplied by the parents. A second layer of safety includes warmth and shelter from elements of sun, rain, wind, and of course, predatory animals as well as potential pathogens from soil, air and water. These latter threats to safety are also met by innate immunity and the passive immunity provided through the antibodies of the mother's milk. Two layers constitute the psychological needs. These include a layer of belonging, which likely begins at birth with the attachment of child to mother and, to some, perhaps, optional extent, the attachment of the child to a paternal parent. The belonging need is met and enhanced by the child's recognition of their own importance or esteem. At the apex of the pyramid is self-fulfillment through achieving greater and greater potential and eventually an elusive “full” potential which may increasingly mean taking control of the environment through varieties of creative imagination.

Illustrations of Maslow's Hierarchy almost inevitably include their depiction as a pyramid with the physiological needs at the base. While these illustrations are widely available and likely familiar to the reader, I'm of mixed mind about including another pyramidal illustration here. (If you want to see a pyramid illustration, check Maslow in Wikipedia.) Part of my ambivalence is a reluctance to foster or advance the concept that human needs can or should be represented as a layered hierarchy. My sense is that this is misleading and presenting a conspicuous potential cultural bias because the order of fulfillment is anything but rigid. Maslow, himself, emphasized that the order is not fixed.

Other students of psychology and human development including Jean Piaget have adopted some features of Maslow's thinking but eschew his hierarchy and dwell on variations that occur in order of fulfillment. Well-being of an individual is subjective and the notion of hierarchy probably only obfuscates by its inherent suggestion of some elusive objectivity. Self-actualization is widely misunderstood and generates much debate and discussion with an occasional dialogue searching for meaning. There is also criticism due to lack of empirical evidence for each category or level, although much of this seems to me, a lot of hand-waving when the obvious biological foundations of water, food, shelter and safety are considered and included. According it is not entirely unfair that Maslow is criticized as telling a “story” that has limited standing as science. This means it is helpful to look at alternative views.

Alternative Views

Alternative views may represent real differences or just modifications of Maslow's theory and what began as his study of motivation. It is not surprising then, that psychologists have found a need for individual renditions. These may occur particularly regarding self-esteem, efficacy and actualization. Educators often find that the hierarchy of needs cannot be divorced from Bloom's Taxonomy of Education.

The hierarchy of needs is criticized because it does not differentiate between the social and intellectual needs of those individuals raised in so-called individualist or libertarian societies from those raised in in collectivist, socialist, communist or left-wing “hippie” societies. While this criticism may have held some political persuasion in the era of the Cold War, it is, perhaps, both more and less important today. More broadly it may be considered that Maslow's formulation of needs fails to account for social and cultural differences between individuals from the same family, society or cultural milieu.

Human motivation, a huge consideration for education, may arise from entirely different considerations from the rank-order of needs outlined by Maslow. Motivations are viewed as a psychological concept, while drives seem to herald a more biological orientation.

Missing Elements

Safety is not missing but is a level above so-called basic or physiological needs, not the least by virtue of our psychology including the emotion of feat and perceptions of danger or impending trauma.

The structuring of self probably well deserves elaboration not possible with the simplicity of the pyramid presentation. In fact, the pyramid presentation itself creates a layering with physiology and safety occupying a conspicuous visual base that may poorly represent relative importance; particularly with emancipation, the acquisition of obligations in adulthood and certain challenges of advancing age.

It is reasonably argued that without a social milieu, there can be no survival or provision for meeting the physiological need for food, water, warmth, and shelter for safety. Connections are built into this delivery of foundational needs. That mother and child engage in a form of collaboration may require some nimble, esoteric thinking but is nevertheless a fully defensible proposition. Teamwork has likely been at play since well before emergence of primates. In fact, evolutionarily, teamwork has emerged in multiple phyla including arthropods with conspicuous expression in bees, wasps and ants.

A need for emancipation from bondage is probably not unrelated to the matter of self-actualization. After all it is almost impossible to see how anything resembling self-actualization could even begin without elements of freedom and emancipation from bondage or dependency, is, at least, a beginning of expanding on those first feelings of self and relationships with other, whether “other” is physical or fully organic. In fact, one may argue that a drive toward emancipation that initiates self-actualization. Of course, to make that argument, a much better understanding of what is meant by self-actualization is essential, yet a functional characterization is elusive. A sense of agency may be an element of that characterization. Agency bears relationship with a sense of security that likely occurs when safety needs are fulfilled. An infant crying for food is building agency, perhaps acknowledging that foundational biological needs are linked to a higher order of human needs.

Needs are part of our ecology, the systems with which we live. With systems thinking hierarchy is difficult to accommodate in anything resembling a pure form in which one layer is entirely independent of a layer below or above it. In Maslow's Hierarchy for example, the layer of belonging is just above safety. Yet it is quite clear that the belonging need is met first by the attachment of child and mother in even the first minutes following birth, and, in fact is likely an extension of the intimate placental attachment of the fetus to the mother's uterus.

All of these missing elements need to be considered when looking at human needs. This is done in full recognition that much can be said in a similar way for the needs of all placental mammals. Expression of needs takes on a multitude of dimensions that are all, for the most part, fully warranted for attention by educators in a biological context.

Uniquely Neonatal Needs

Given what has been said above about the ubiquity of human needs in the earliest stages of development, it may be difficult to argue there are needs that are unique to the neonate. Yet that is what is done as an almost axiomatic view of early human development. We will concede for purposes of this section, that there are human needs that are most prominent in neonates. We will also recognize that when these needs are unmet or poorly met the potential for a lifelong deficit is too important to ignore. Furthermore, it is very difficult to make a case for esteem and self-actualization needs in a crying infant, when the all too obvious need that must be met is a dry diaper and a bottle of warm milk.

Psychologist Harry Harlow at UW-Madison was a graduate adviser and mentor for Abraham Maslow during Maslow’s short tenure at UW. Harlow established a laboratory at UW that studied primates including the Macaque or Rhesus Monkey. An early series of experiment revealed that if infant Macaques were separated from their mothers at birth, the consequence could be lifelong. Other studies have revealed that maternal separation can lead to dependency, social isolation, deficits in care giving, companionship as well as deficits of social and cognitive development. Affection and attachment are considerations for building of critical brain regions providing executive functions.

Quality Of How Needs Are Met

Quality in meeting needs is arguably more than basic or more essential because of its impact on the sense of dignity and worthiness. We probably have much too great a tendency to substitute quantitative values for qualitative values—quantity over quality.

At some level this boils down to economics, but not the economics of academic economists and their banking and business friends inside or outside of government. The Economy is fundamentally rooted in human behavior, which cannot be separated from the way our brains interact with the activities outside and inside of our bodies. Life is a series of choices and it is the executive functions of the brain that responds to and even predicts our needs that enables the making of choices enabling an individual to survive and thrive.

Quality of our experiences that we value is the result of myriad experiences and the memories of those experiences. Memory is engaged and retained when attention activated elements of emotion and the delivery of pleasure or pain. Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is certainly an important element of quality of life itself.

Individuality

Taking self seriously takes a village. Self is never isolated. No one lives on an unihabited island, though perhaps, at times, we wish we could.

Ayn Rand wrote a couple of very popular novels (cite) that have been adopted across generations as guides for living as they emphasize an inherent individuality for each and every human being. As novels they are entertaining but the author was a tragic simpleton. Anyone clinging to her simplistic views of life fails to deal with the complex realities that confront humans as they seek to understand their place in the cosmos, which is their place on this earth with the rest of humanity. Put another way; readers of Ayn Rand need to grow up.

Our need for self-actualization does not happen in a vacuum. Our individuality never is neither entirely subordinate to others nor entirely distinct from relationships with others. Education’s Ecology recognizes relationships while asserting choice and self-directed development within the fabric of our relationships. Our individuality and our social contract are a unity.

Safety And Trauma

I don’t want to leave this chapter without recognizing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), mentioned earlier and will be drawn out more fully later. A deficit of safety is traumatic and has consequences for building a healthy self-concept and self-efficacy. The relationship of mother and child may well be irreplaceable for healthy development. We will return to these considerations in Chapter XIII.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Abraham Maslow. 1987. Motivation & Personality.

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. The Evolving Self and Flow: the Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life.

See Also: Critics of Maslow. For instance: Sarah Felding. What is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-research

Harry Harlow’s Primate Lab … Described in Wikipedia and chronicled elsewhere; easily discovered through Internet search.

Ayn Rand. The Fountainhead. Atlas Shrugged.

Chapter XI

We build too many walls and not enough bridges.

Isaac Newton

Biological Bridges

Every bridge needs an sturdy abutment or it will have a very limited life regardless of how sturdy the actual span may be. The basics of building abutments is fairly straight forward. They must be massive and strong, anchored on a stable foundation. Biology is now a massive and increasingly stable foundation for building knowledge across all of the elements and systems embedded in society. Work on this knowledge abutment for a useful bridges is ongoing but we can begin to design some early details for the abutmnets and bridges. Of course each of a safe bridge needs its own abutment. This likely will entail work on both ends of a bridge. Interdisciplinary efforts must be provided on both sides.

The following paraphrases and adds emphasis on a Federal stimulus to build bridges across “silos of scholarship.” Biology and education certainly represent silos with egregiously separate scholarship. Medice and education are sometimes a bit closer but nevertheless are rarely interactive.

A program of the National Science department ncludes an annual request for proposals supporting diverse and collaborative teams of researchers investigating questions that span muliple disciplines at all levels of biology and beyond biology. Well established research entities attached to biology are explicitly encouraged to search and find collaboration with research and scholarship in fields that are traditionally considered to be “non biological.” Creative efforts are encouraged to bring together or bridge spaces that would otherwise remain in separate silos of scholarship.

Funding is intentionally over longer than normal times and at levels that actyually anticipate the inefficiencies that are typically attendant when creative intnet is sought.

All levels of biology are recognized as having important potentials for integration inside and outside of academia. Legal issues, for instance, are incumbent in molecular and cell biology involving patents for potential drug developments …

This chapter will begin with some known biological standards and speculate on knowledge that may span the gap between the biological sciences and the various habitats and niches in an ecology of education. We'll be looking at existing bridges with human development, health sciences, educational psychology, human needs fulfillment, social-emotional development, languge and linguistics, population and biodiversity.

It will be important to recognize that these bridges are not ephemeral, whispy or pie-in-the-sky but are actively part of ongoing efforts in the US and in other countries. The dramatic advances in the life sciences provides foundations for building robust bridges with important facts of human existence. Education will inevitably enter this arena of science through applications based on empirical evidence that under gird principles that are never far from the spotlights and floodlights of new biological knowledge. Expecting solutions to problems of contemporary educational practices will emerge, merge and evolve across sturdy, beautiful bridges and built on robust abutments.

Human Development

Embryology has been a foundation class in medical schools for well over a century. Pioneering work dates back to the refutation by Louis Pasteur and Tyndall of the whole notion of spontaneous generation. Pasteur published his famous “goose neck flask” experiment in 1859 and John Tyndall satisfied skeptics with his recognition of heat-resistant spores which caused lingering doubt about Pasteur's experimental results because of occasional failure to replicate his results. The concept of biogenesis now stands firm among biologists and has had important implications for understanding human development.

Discovery of egg and sperm was accompanied by debate about which cell type dominated development. Ovists and spermists argued until more was known about fertilization and the combination of chromosomes from both egg and sperm to form the zygote or first cell of a new individual. Reproduction is now universally seen as a recombination of genes and chromosomes with contribution from both parents. The only remaining debate relates to a few, but important, genes contributed solely by the egg through continuity of tiny energy processing cell particles called mitochondria. The mysteries and misconceptions yielded to sound biological knowledge.

The zygote divides to form a ball of cells. Every cell has the same genes and development of cell layers, tissues and organs proceeds to unfold through differential expression of the genetic instructions in each cluster of cells. Migration of cells enables formation of first a digestive tube from interior cells and then a neural tube from exterior cells. Cells of these tubes continue to migrate and differentiate until all of the organs are formed including the brain and spinal cord, the sensory organs including tissues for receiving signals for smell, vision, sound taste and touch as well as the actions of muscles through an elaborate system of peripheral nerves. The brain and spinal cord retain much of the central functions of coordination and integrations of what is happening through the new body.

Coordinated development of the brain and body continues through normal gestation time of 40 weeks, but is now well known to continue to develop after birth, with the greatest intensity of development throughout the first three years after birth.

This bridge may embrace virtually everything else, because if we connect human development to every facet of life, we may follow a path toward living in a more sustainable earth. Elsewise our path will continue to be laden with barriers.

Health Sciences

Start with anatomy and physiology, throw in germ theory, and cell theory, add virology and voila! certain diseases are manageable. We are routinely driving huge trucks across a new bridge that was for centuries of human existence mired in ignorance of biology. Artistic rendering of dissection and the development of the microscope enabled concepts of cellular pathology to emerge that changed the direction of medicine from an low art to a high science. Germ theory championed by Pasteur led the way but the studies of Rudolf Virchow on the origins of tumors or cancer fully recognized the role of cells in the scientific studies of human disease—pathology. Virtually everything since has sought an explanation of disease in terms of what is happening to change the growth and functioning, as well as death, of cells. Dramatic changes called inflammation occur in tissues when a tissue, an organ or the entire body is challenged from either external or internal disturbances. These disturbances may be external as with microorganisms such as bacteria or viruses, or from internal expressions and changes in the functioning of body cells> The result of these disturbances is inflammation in any or all of its classical characteristics of redness, heat, swelling, pain and loss of function. Resolution of inflammation may occur spontaneously in a few days. but intervention with an incredible array of drugs including antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs including steroids is now a finely tuned art based on science and practiced by most physicians.

Unfortunately the extension of the germ theory and cellular pathology to mental illness remains elusive. Causes of brain disorders are ongoing challenges, particularly those disorders of mind that interfere with acquisition of new skills, enhancement of knowledge and even recognizing the value of attitudes—aka “learning.” It may well be that conceptual bridges to thinking more effectively about mental disorders is mired in quicksand and need abutments that do not yet exist. Nevertheless medical research continues to advance our understanding of brain functions through studies of injury, imaging, and surgery, as well as psychoactive drigs. A bridge is being built involving psychiatry and psychology but the abutments are still wobbly.

Educational Psychology

Psychologists in schools are faced with daunting tasks related to the mental health issues of students who are unable to participate in the usual and customary activities of schools and the needed rigor of strict classroom management. These are certainly the virtual dropouts and explicitly include the actual dropouts. The virtual dropouts are thos kids who stay but are not engaged. They go through the motions of classroom routines, even occasionally passing muster of testing by teachers, but they have no real interest in what is going on very likely because they see no benefits or applications in their own lives. Their lives are crowded with concerns that have little or nothing to do with what is going on at any given moment in the classroom. They may still be dwelling on a tiff between themselves and a parent or between a parent and another sibling. Community events may be more compelling than the classroom activity. Some of the community events may actually be relevant and important. This may be particularly true for extracurricular activities including but ceertainily not limited to athletics.

The school psychologist is hard pressed to provide a pigeon hole consistent with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Volum Five (DSM-V) stipulations of an assignable mental disorder. But that is not to say that the situation is outside of biology. Biology and biomedical technology with advancements in information processing and machine learning hold enormous promise for new approaches with digital processing of data from body function sensors built into wearable devices.

Physiologist Ivan Pavlov contributed conditioning to the study of physiology and may be regarded as the progenitor for an important new direction in psychology and psychiatry. It is worthwhile to recognize the physiology involved in Pavlovian conditiong. It is, indeed, why psychology has flourished and expanded into a crucible for merger with the biological sciences. Pavlovian conditioning foreshadowed the work of B. F. Skinner and other progenitors of contemporary behavioral science including the Nobel physicist Max Plank who provided a link or bridge to the world of physics, probability and even relativity while supporting quantum mechanics. Behavioral genetics has a mixed history embedded unfortunately in measurement of intelligence using the Stanford Binet IQ testing protocols or a modern or abbreviated variant. Gross distortions followed.

Complexity and variability of intelligence has yet to be widely acknowledged and a thick walled silos continues to exist. We should not be surprised when school psychologists use a tool that is efficient even when it harbors questions of efficacy. Openness and testing of new approaches will yield new actionable knowledge. Somebody in the wings or corridors is holding a stopwatch and becoming ready to cast aspersions on time-spent and results-obtained. False starts are to be expected to provide educational psychologists new relationships with others seeking improvement through innovation.

Human Needs Fulfillment

Abraham Maslow built an important link between biology and psychology with his analysis of human needs that included the most basic of human needs; food, water, shelter and safety. In his hierarchy the bridge structure embraces needs for belonging but extends to esteem and self-actualization, both of which seem to be almost wholly intrinsic to what happens between our ears—brain-based as it may be designated in pure, old-fashioned psychology.

The most basic needs for food, water, shelter and safety were becoming evident with Maslow's mentor ar the University of Wisconsin, Harry Harlow who conducted studies of primates (Rhesus monkeys, or Macaques) where infants were deprived of contact with their mother. A surrogate mother was provided. These surrogates typically were mere wire frames or a wire frame covered with a layer of a bath towel. Sometimes these surrogate mothers provided the infant with a bottle of milk to suck on. It became clear from these studies that physical contacts with a real mother had a longlasting effect on the behavior of the infants. Other studies have expanded on our understanding of the improtance of attachment in the first days of infant life. In California Schoor has compiled two decades of important evidence that attachment in early life has lifelong implications for health and wellbeing. Another California researcher, Patricia Churchland, has tied a blue ribbon around how neuro-hormonal influences—oxytocin—prepares the brain for a lifetime of love and caring as well as the foundations for empathy and ethical foundations of morality or the moral foundations of ethics. This is hardly to say that Churchland or Schoor have filled all the gaps in our understanding. But it is to say that as we look to fill these basic gaps, we should begin with sound knowledge of underlying biology.

Meanwhile, of course, there are at least two levels of human need identified by Maslow that continue to elude understanding. These are needs for esteem and self-actualization. Although one could probably dismiss biology as contributing anything to these needs, we should pause before rendering a hard and fast judgment. For instance, biologists are beginning to focus, along with some classical economists, in building a new discipline of neuroeconomics. Economists have long seen individuals as agents in the economy with theories such as game theory, attempting to explain behaviors such as making choices about a vast array of life-important matters. It is becoming increasing recognized based on laboratory research with animals and field studies involving human subjects that choices can be attributed to much more than considerations of simple conditioning. When a discipline is less than five years old and is growing rapidly, it is foolish to ignore.

Social-Emotional Development

The field of neuroeconomics recognizes that not all choice is fully rational or based on pure logic backed with empirical data and mathematical analysis. Not even the most rabid game-theory aficionados are willing to ignore the affective or emotional domain. Compartive anatomy and embryology provide insight as to the development of brain regions. These studies reveal that the parts of the brain concerned with emotion are the more primitive; said to be reptilian. These are sections of the brain that provide the most basic life support functions including breathing, heart rate regulation and the flows of hormones needed to assure survival in situations where stresses or threats are highest.

In the school environment, control of emotions is important to say the least. A child unable to control emotions is often not far from being unable to control other body functions. A rigid condition for schooling is control of bladder and bowel. This is a major reason for limiting the start of school until age 4-5 as it is expected that every child will have been suitably toilet trained by this age. Similar considerations apply to emotional development and to social development.

Reward and punishment play key roles in social emotional training. Schools are unfortunately the last to be involved. If parents are deficient in their training duties, it is not at all unlikely that a child may arrive at the school door at age five unprepared to handle the simple responsibilities of using the toilet at appropriate times or be able to contain emotional outbursts.

Biologists are just beginning to recognize that the microorganisms in our GUT play a role in emotional regulations. It may well be that the little person who inappropriately can't wait her or his turn is dealing with a lopsided array of bowel bacteria. Who's to know?

Languge and Linguistics

Noam Chomsky linked language to our physiology and brain development with a theory that is still sprouting roots even as it is being debated and remodeled to mesh with growing knowledge of brain development and complex concepts of neurophysiology. Some would argue that the jury is still out or that the science is not settled. I have to side with this argument but recognize that the debate is healthy.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson teamed up to write two important books that continue to influence new students of linguistics. These books take a more than mild issue with Chomsky.

Stephen Pinker, a vibrant and prolific student of Chomsky, and has expanded psychology with his arguments in support of an evolutionary foundation for psychology and what he has called the laanguage instinct.

The consilidation of these contributions to science, education and our sociology has an important future for bridges and abutments soundly linking language skills with our accesses and uses of knowledge. What is already clear is that windows for language development open and close with important variability and is a round peg can’t be forced into squaare opening.

Population

We do not live alone. Sorry for the need to reiterate the obvious. But there are among us economic philosophers and their theological cousins (maybe it would be better to call them knee-jerk sophists) who can’t shake the crazy notions about freedom and independence – we might calll them the Don't Tread on Me or my ideology crowd. Limits are real and biological. We have no ideas to deal with what is enough. Time is not at all friendly and the treasures to be extracted from the earth are limited and becoming more and more expensive. Part of that expense is the ever-present danger of violent conflict.

We remain baffled in attempting to control the size of the human population that is in danger of exceeding even the wildest predictions about the carrying capacity of earth. Combined with our propensity for technology and invention of new ways to pollute our planet with cheap plastic crap ruining our ocean ecosystems and building dangerous of carbon dioxide and methane in our atmosphere, rising human populations globally threaten way too much of future human existence.

Demographics is a severe biological problem to be faced very soon with bridge building projects involving economics and politics together with much better grasp of our global vulnerabilities.

Biodiversity

To repeat with emphasis, not only do not live alone, we are dependent (uterly, absolutely) on the broad range of animals, plants and microbes that share living space with Homo sapiens on Earth. There may be no more important bridge for biology to build than to recognize the important dependence of all life on other life. The Rabbi Martin Buber, who wrote the famous Ich Und Du (I and Thou), called attention of the cognizant world to the importance of recognizing Other. Buber was focused on other humans, but his dictum is much greater. Other is all other and means every form of life on our planet. Biologists have unequivocally established that life on earth is dependent on virtually and in many cases actually, every other form of life. We are extremely fortunate that there are literally millions of different life forms. The dependence of almost all animal life on the green plant is well established. If green plants disappear, so too will almost all animal life. What little animal life will remain will certainly not be recognized by the last living human being. We exist on this planet as a guest of the green plant.

But green plants are not enough. The life that has existed on earth for 3.5 billion years has always been dependent on biogeochemical cycles and in fact, has created and stabilized these cycles. Out atmosphere has a critical mass or volume of oxygen that has formed a balanced chemistry that would change dramatically were green plants to disappear.

For biodiversity the science is settled even while continuing to expand. This demands a new and very different structure for bridges and abutments, because it is not merely rational or intellictual. It involves caring and affective relationships that may well lie outside the reach of biological research but within the remaining mystery of our humanism.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Buber, Martin. Ich du

National Science Foundation BII – Biology Integration Institutes.

ADD to recommended reading … J. Singh. S. Mukherjee, NEJM, PubMED,

Schoor

Churchland …

Sapulsky ???

Lakoff & Johnson

Psychologist on valence in emotion …

GUT microbiome and neurotransmitters …

Chapter XII

The internal machinery of life, the chemistry of the parts, is something beautiful. And, it turns out that all life is interconnected with all other life.

Richard P. Feynman

Autopoiesis

For readers who think they know what autopoiesis actually is, it may be possible to skip the rest of this chapter. For those who don’t know about autopoiesis, hang on and hang in there because we’ll let a decent definition emerge after a modestly deep look at molecular and cellular biology. This is good stuff and much of it has emerged across just a few recent decades. It is good because we are able to see life in a new light that should shine into some deep caves and crevasses of education. Not the least of these dimly lit and poorly understood spaces is our cognition, consciousness, emotion and spirituality. The hope is that what follows will enable education to make sense in the light of biology. While I can’t carry the lantern across all of the rocky spaces of education you most certainly can. However we are not so brave or fool-hardy to even suggest yet that your questions and curiosity will be fully satisfied. This is not that kind of book. I’m not a big fan of hubris, particularly when it is my own.

Many high school biology classes, begin with a listing of 10-15 characteristics of life, discussed with a few provocative questions. These characteristics are and questions are typically presented as obvious enough and certainly fill in explicit descriptions of what living things—organisms—do; elements that distinguish the living from the non living. Movement, digestion, excretion, reproduction, growth and development, sensing, responsiveness, coordination, adaptation and, even evolution are easily recognized, described and memorized in the first week of class. Attributes of life such as energy capture and use of carbon-based materials are saved for later weeks before the concepts of metabolism are introduced.

Before Darwin there was no biology, per se. Zoology and Botany were dominant disciplines with detailed descriptions of animals and plants respectively filling the available books, many including valued illustrations of life forms on earth. Ever since Darwin a science of life, biology, has been unified along several lines of thinking with Charles Darsin’s evidence for evolution dominating discourse on life. His proposal of a mechanism for how evolution could happen by natural selection and survival of the bext adapted individuals to pass their traits on to offspring. In addition to the idea of evolution itself, natural selection touched off a flury of wrong-headed interpretations about society, economics, politics and even raised questions about religious traditions and practices.

Almost contemporaneous with Darwin was the discovery of patterns in hereditary by Gregor Mendel. Probably taking some clues from chemists, Mendel recognized the particulate nature of inhritance in plants. Druing his lifetime, Darwin did not know about Mendel’s work and he, Darwin, was simply wrong when he guessed about a mechanism for inheritance. After the rediscovery of Mendel’s papers after 1900, and replication of his work in animals as well as plants, interest in Darwinian evidence for evolution resurged with a new synthesis of evolution and genetics. This resurgence continues to this day. The contributions from philosophers of science and practitioners of medicine, has been more smartly informed and increasingly succinct without superseding earlier observations, debate and conclusions about the question “What is Life?”

Few writers, historians and philosophers of biology doubt the impact of a 1944 book titled What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell, by the quantum physicist and winner of the Nobel prize, Erwin Schrodinger. The book focused on questions of how the reality and characteristics of life could and would be explained through physics and chemistry. (cite Margulis and Sagan) By the end of WWII, biochemists, geneticists, microscopists, virologists and bacteriologists and others were ready to tackle these questions. The result across several decades was a whole new approach to biology that guided enormous progress in medicine—molecular cell biology. By the first anniversary of Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species in 1959, the trajectory of biological sciences was headed in unexpected directions.

However, controversy surrounding evolution intensified. At issue were interpretations of anatomy, embryology, biochemistry and paleontology as well as geology. Natural selection, which emphasizes competition for survival and passing “genes” to offspring stimulated considerable debate among biologists, which was unfortunately interpreted to mean that biologists didn’t agree, even among themselves, on the reality of evolution itself. What was debated was not the fact of evolugion but the mechanism of how evolution could occur.

Into the thick of this debate was a discovery made with the electron microscope about cells. With a vixible light microscope, detail is limited to about 1/1,000 of a millimeter. At this limited resolution all cells seem to have basic similarities of appearance. With the earliest election microscopes resolution was increased about 1,000 fold and details of the interior of cells were observable. Amazingly, it was found that bacterial cells do not have a distinct nucleus. Accordingly two fundamentally different types of cells were named: prokaryotes and eukaryotes—literally before nucleus and true nucleus. This raised important questions about the evolutionary origin of eukaryotes.

The details how the answers to these questions were answered are fascinating, but for interests of space and time, we’ll recognize Lynn Margulis, who in the 1960s showed with strong evidence that eukaryote cells, which are found in virtually every animal and plant, arose from cooperation or symbiosis—living together—of prokaryotes. Margulis’ book The Origin of Eukaryotic Cells was said to be the most important publication in biology since Darwin. Perhaps hyperbole but nevertheless a discovery that enabled biology to advance with deliberate speed in new directions.

By 1950, the evidence linking DNA with the function of Mendel’s “gene” was nearly irrefutable. In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick published their finding that DNA was a double helix, which they predicted would explain replication at the molecular level in a way that was fully compatible with knowledge about reproduction, and supported the origins of multicellular organisms, including humans, through development from a single fertilized ovum or egg. One should have hoped that the mustery of development and evolution would have been clarified but that is still unfolding more than seventy years later. Later, I’ll introduce readers to another term unfolding in importance in contemporary biology—EvoDevo, which seeks explanation through linking evolution and development. It is the development part that flourishes in the laboratories of contemporary biology and which, I will argue, will alter education, perhaps to a greater extent than it is already altering the practice of medicine.

Stay tuned! Don’t go away. I’ll return after a short commercial break.

Development is inherent in life processes. This chapter will emphasize the autonomous continuation of the three primary characteristics of all life forms; organization, metabolism, and self-perpetuation. Autopoiesis and metabolism have been identified as central characteristics and perhaps represent the most basic way to consider life’s amazingly wondrous characteristics. Contemporary biologists venture forth with explanations that unify and link all living organisms across evolution and development recognizing that all of human ontology, including our consciousness, cognition and affect holds together a common frame at the molecular level of organization. The fundamental question so philosophy “Where did we come from? and Where are we going? now emerge in a new light while enabling a new perspective on our fundamental ignorance. This is a special offer on cosmology you can have by reading on.

Human minds have developed tools for adaptation including a whole range of physical skills, but more importantly language as a tool for communication of our needs and wants and a cognitive capacity to solve challenging threats to survival. In short, Homo sapiens is first, last and always a creature of evolution. What other fine or evil traits we possess as a species, have evolved. There is no exterior metaphysical (supernatural) source of our life or any other life. Life is a self organizing development and is self-perpetuating through metabolism and development. The next three sections of Chapter XII will explain things now known beyond high school biology.

Organization

Organization and Structural Biology are linked practically and philosophically. Life, at least on this planet, Earth, is a fascinating and fantastic phenomenon that is increasingly understood as highly dependent upon structure, which in turn is a determinant of function. Every structure of every living entity, thing or organism is or represents an adaption that enabled survival at some point in the past and by and large continues to provide an essential function even while certain structures and their functions has been superseded with new structures and functions. While it is easy and convenient to attribute a purpose to some part of a living thing, biologists much prefer to talk about function because to say that a thing has a purpose is to suggest or imply that it is the result or consequence of an outside force making it that way. The biologist’s view is to attribute form and function to an evolutionary process or processes. It is also delicately axiomatic in biology that form follows function. Yet it is also acknowledged that every function must be built from or upon some prior form that has descended with modification from its own prior forms through an evolutionary chain of connections passed down generation by generation to the present time without interruption or outside interventions or insertion of anything new or novel from beyond nature.

Looking at the totality of life reveals that it exhibits levels of organization and each level provides emergence of new properties or characteristics that are greater than the combined sum of all prior levels. These levels surround the organism, which is the unit that lives. Below the organism are sub-organismic levels and beyond are are supra-organismic levels. Every organism includes molecular, cellular levels, while multicellular organisms as well include tissuse, organ and organ system levels. Every organism, every species, is supported by others of its own kind, a population. Populations a species exist with populations of other species to form communities. Communities in specific locations form ecosystems. At a planetary level we see collected ecosystems, biomes and a thin layer of life surrounding the earth—the biosphere. Each of these levels may be rather easily and logically further subdivided into other levels. Beginning at the molecular level (which in turn includes subatomic and atomic levesl) and working upward, we could as easily begin at the planetary level and work down or begin with organisms and work in both directions. Working our way up has the advantage of enabling a somewhat easier and more obvious recognition of emergence.

When moving from higher to levels to lower levels we would need to coin a clumsy antonym for emergence—perhaps something like demeergence, dismergence, or antimergence. That may be hard to get used to, even though it probably suggests some actual reality. This is not like a philosophical problem of time running backwards.

Molecules are composed of atoms. For whatever is living, there are six predominant atoms or elements; Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Sulfur. The atoms of these elements combine with each other and with a few other minor but critically important elements such as Iron, Calcium, Sodium, Potassium, Chloride, Manganese, Zinc and a few others to form and enable the function of larger molecules that make up the material substance of life. These combinations yield important properties or functions. For instance distinct combinations of carbon and nitrogen may borm alaline functional groups, or combinations of carbon and oxygen may form acidic functional groups. Various functional groupings may confer attraction or repulsion of water, which is crucial to the organization of cells and their membranes, because cells all live in a water environment.

The conspicuous pattern is that small molecules with an array of functional groups of atoms combine to form larger molecules and these larger molecules form even larger molecules. The largest of these molecules are technically called polymers as they are made of many, that is hundreds to thousands of, subunits. To use a non biological example, polyethylene, the common and ubiquitous plastic of our grocery and waste bags, is made up of long chains of ethylene subunits. The subunits are often said to be like a string of beads. The “beads” are held together by bonds formed between the atoms of one subunit and the atoms of another subunit and so on. So within the molecular level we identity atoms, micro-molecules and macro-molecules.

The macro-molecules of life include proteins, polysaccharides, lipids and the nucleic acids—DNA and RNA. We'll enlarge on some details of these biolgical molecules when we consider metabolism as a separate component of life below. But here we need to emphasize that at each level of atoms, small molecules and large molecules properties emerge that would not be easily, if at all possible, to predict from properties of the atoms of which they are comprised. As an example, the solid metal sodium (Na) and the gas chlorine (Cl) react and form the common table, ocean and body salt sodium chloride (NaCl) that has properties of solubility in water and crystal formation that does not resemble properties or either sodium metal or chloride gas. Similarly the way a simple sugar such as glucose combines in starch and cellulose results in large molecules (polymers) with vastly different solubility than glucose alone. These properties of combinations are known as emergent properties.

Cells are fundamental units of life. That is when we examine material for the properties of life—organization, metabolism and perpetuation—it is at the cellular level of organization that we first find all of these properties. Furthermore it is also recognized that all cells come from pre-existing cells by processes of cell reproduction that is possible because cells are where metabolism occurs. It is through cells that the distinct characteristics of each living form is transmitted from generation to generation. Each cell is organized within an external barrier or membrane. Membranes are composed of fats or lipids that integrate phosphorus as well as cholesterol to provide flexibility and, most importantly, a very selective exclusion of water with strictly limited movement of other atoms and molecules either inside or outside of the memberane. Accordingly, membranes are the sine qua non for all of life. Thin and delicate, membranes are the gatekeepers and the identity for the cell.

Membranes are extremely thin and delicate. Even the early electron microscopes found resolution of membrane details both difficult and controversial. For several years, biologists and biochemists debated the reality of membranes. The debate was resolved and today membranes are not controversial; accepted because of massive evidence, as real.

Inside the membrane is what early biologists saw with their relatively crude and simple microscopes as a formless substance they called protoplasm or the “first material” of life. Cells when examined with more modern microscopes are found to come, as mentioned above, in roughly two unique types; prokaryotes those where protein, nucleic acid and some carbohydrate seem to be rather loosely organized and eukaryotes, those that exhibit elaborate internal organization where the DNA is meticulously organized and isolated inside a distinct, double membraned nucleus. The protoplasm surrounding the nucleus—cytoplasm—is also elaborately organized exhibiting internal membranes organized into a dozen or more distinct functional units or subcellular organelles. These tiny particles provide organization for important cell functions including construction of the hundreds to thousands of different proteins that make both structure and function unique to a particular type of cell. These organelles are called plastids and given many names but include mitochondria in all eukaryotic cells and chloroplasts in plant cells, which are essential for providing the cell with energy for its collective and complex activities.

Organisms may be simply a single cell. This is particularly characteristic of the prokaryotes, although there are important exceptions, including single-cell eukaryotes such as protozoa and algae, and multicellular colonies of many different jprokaryotic and eukaryotic cell types. These colonial formations may have been harbingers of multicellularity with its evolutionary advantages. Multicelular organisms are the more ubiquitous, familiar and commonly observed plants and animals. Characteristic of multicellularity is the formation of distinctive tissue and the assembly of basic tissues that cover, connect and provide movement and coordination into organs which then constitute new levels of organization above the cellular level; namely tissue and organ levels. Properties of tissues and organs begin to emerge that often require differentiation of cells into unique types with different shapes and functional capacity to produce different products enabling the cells to join and stick together uniquely. All of these unique properties are possible because of cellular communication and adhesion molecules that are selectively arrayed within and/or secreted and received by the cellular membranes.

Differentiation of cells enables the emergence of different unique types of organs and systems of organs that provide distinctive functions for the organism. For instance a system of muscle organs attached with tendon tissues to bone organs held to gether with ligament tissues enable motion or changes of position. Essential nutrition is supplied to the muscle organ from a system of blood vessels and pump that circulates oxygen and nutrients while also carrying away waste from metabolism. Meanwhile a flow of signals from nerves transmits sensory signals and assures coordination of muscles to provide functional movement of the organism's body. Again levels of organization provide functional attributes that would not be present in an organ alone. We begin to appreciate emergence and higher level functions at higher levels of organization.

Metabolism –

The characteristic of Metabolism includes the inherited chemistry of life—biochemistry—all predicted broadly by Schrodinger to be compliant with known principles (laws) of physics and chemistry. Life functions within the very same parameters as the energy of a steam engine—namely the laws of thermodynamics. No biologist can get away with an assertion about life at any level that is non compliant with thermodynamics. That means everything going on in a cell must be explained by a mechanism. No miraculous vital forces are recognized.

Life is organized with an array of complex chemical forms that are constantly reacting and changing from one form to another form. Parts of one form interact with parts of other forms to create forms different from either prior form. Forms A and B react to yield ( → ) Form C or, perhaps, forms C and D. Conversely forms D + C → B + A. Or, we may write A + B ← → C + D. It is the task of the biochemist to make sure that all of the atoms comprising forms A, B, C & D are accounted, together with all of the energy involved. These basics are taught in every high school chemistry course, and every biologist and medical research physician applies these basics in every aspect of their professional lives. Educators, regrettably, not so much.

Energy is essential. Energy may be classified in many forms and in different ways. On the one hand energy may be potential or static. It may also be kinetic or dynamic. Energy can change from one form to another; potential or stored energy may become active or kinetic. Energy that is electrical as in positive and negative charge, mechanical as in motions and forces, chemical as in chemical bonds, light as in sunlight or the glow of an electrical bulb, may be changed from one form to another. Electircal energy is routinely changed to light energy in an incandescent or LED bulb. The energy of sunlight is routinely changed to chemical energy stored as starch in the cells of green plants. Energy from starch is converted into mechanical motion and force by our muscles when we eat good-for-you, deep green spinach.

Metabolism is a biologist’s term of art for all of the chemical changes or reactions that occur in the cells and bodies of every living thing on Earth. A formal definition of metabolism is that it is the sum total of the chemical reactions occurring in and controlled by organized elements of cells, tissues, organs and bodies of every living organism.While it is recognized that many chemical reactions important to life occur outside the body of a living form, if control falls outside of some one or another living creature, it is not, strictly speaking, a metabolic reaction.

This then raises the important consideration of what are the reactions of metabolism and what are the chemical entities involved? The answers to this question fill volumes of biochemistry texts and journals. Our knowledge of metabolism is constantly developing. The full scope of biochemistry of metabolism would vastly exceed this chapter. However, a few generalizations are now very well established.

Living cells and organisms are basically composed of four types of large molecules, or, macromolecules: Proteins, Carbohydrates, Lipids and Nucleic Acids. Each type of macromolecule is made from smaller subunits or micro-molecules. Proteins are made from about twenty types of Amino Acids. The large forms of Carbohydrates—polysaccharides—are made of simple sugars such as glucose, fructose and so forth. Lipids include very complex molecules and a number of forms. Fatty acids are important and a sugar-like molecule connects fatty acids and sometimes a bit of phosphate; else wise lipids include cholesterol which, in turn, is related to important signaling molecules including common hormones like testosterone and estrogen. Finally Nucleic Acids—DNA and RNA—are made of subunits called nucleotides.

Nucleotides also play an important role in metabolism bu shuttling energy from one location where it may have been mobilized to another location where it is needed. One form called adenosine triphosphate—abbreviated ATP—is often regarded as the energy currency of the cell —like money in our economy—ATP is required for many transactions at different cellular locations. Those places demand energy to enable critically important chemical—metabolic—reactions. Typically very short lived, ATP is a high energy molecule that is constantly being made and broken down on a millisecond time-scale. All of the ATP in a human body would easily be held in a teaspoon and measured in milligrams. Yet, if it was possible to accumulate all of the ATP molecules formed each day, millisecond by millisecond, in all of the body's cells, the weight would be measured in tons. It is hard to express more graphically how dynamic ATP is for a living organism.

Protein holds many functions at the cellular, tissue, organ and body levels of organization. The overarching importance of controlling the biochemical reactions in cells cannot be over emphasized. The control of chemical reactions is mostly a function of the energy exchanged between molecules as they react. The reactions can be classified as energy yielding (exothermic) or energy requiring (endothermic). Every reaction of metabolism can be caused to happen by putting the ingredients together in a test tube and either waiting a long time (days or months, maybe even years) or by adding heat from a boiling water bath or the ubiquitous Bunsen burner on the lab bench. Life basically, for the most part, takes place at modest temperatures. Yet metabolic reactions must occur with split-second accuracy to provide the essential coordination needed to constantly produce (reproduce) the cell's full complement of protein, lipid, carbohydrate and its DNA and RNA for new cell cycle intervals ranging from minutes to hours or more. All of this is possible because essentially every biochemical reaction is catalyzed. The catalysts are, for the most part, protein.

Catalysts in living cells are called enzymes. Essentially all enzymes are protein (a tiny few are RNA). Enzymes are able to speed up biochemical reactions by reducing or capturing the energy flow when reactions to occur. Endothermic (energy-requiring) reactions may be supplied through an enzyme that may be assisted by ATP, while exothermic reactions may yield energy that may enable formation of ATP. All of this is possible because of the unique way proteins are built from twenty different amino acids. It turns out that biologists understand that it is the exact sequence of amino acids that confers a distinctly unique three-dimensional structure on the protein. When this 3D structure is exactly right, metabolism proceeds, beautifully coordinated. If even a single amino acid is misplaced, a dangerous or deadly bottleneck in metabolic coordination may occur. To ignore the importance of proteins is to remain ignorant of the most important component of life itself.

Virtually—or vitally—nothing in a cell happens without some measure of control by an enzyme. Everything assembled, synthesized, made or manufactured by a cell requires an enzyme, and everything that breaks down, is destroyed or digested by a cell requires an enzyme. Given the laws of matter and energy, nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever did and nothing ever will. There is no away. Accumulated waste is deadly because it interferes with enzymes or creates a bottleneck for the flow of energy and the formation of ATP.

Getting instructions correct for making protein from amino acid sequences is the main function of the nucleic acids—DNA and RNA. The incredible story of DNA and RNA in biology is only about 80 years in the making and the full telling is still underway. But what a magnificent story it is and will continue to enlarge as it unfolds. While the stories of DNA-RNA biochemistry is fascinating historically and technically it is too far beyond our intentions here and has been told eloquently elsewhere beginning with many introductory biology textbooks, with enlarged detail in thick volumes of biochemistry textbooks. DNA, and even RNA with COVID, has become as routine in our vocabularies as ecology. But no harm done as long as we remain mindful and fully open to development of greater knowledge. Indeed the story of DNA-RNA is the details of our genetic inheritance. We basically inherit a set of instructions for making perfect proteins at precisely the right time—millisecond by millisecond—without end until our final, final, final end.

What humans call death is only the start of a process that proceeds at the cellular and molecular levels of organization. In that sense death begins a process of terminating all of life. It is complete when carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur return to water, soil and atmosphere for recycling as new life.

But this doesn’t occur in isolation. It occurs withing the confined, complex, chemically crowded, dynamic, constantly buzzing spaces of a cell. This is fundamental to the idea of autopoiesis. And, we will build on that going forward.

(Self-)Perpetuation –

This dynamic picture of metabolism is applied to thinking about all of the biochemistry taking place millisecond by millisecond in virtually every body cell. The range of influence is huge. Yet to all external appearances, everything typically looks all the same. It typically requires gross observation over months or more; years or decades to see the changes that develop across time. Assumptions of identity are an illusion. Biologists look at a range of time frames from milliseconds to epochs and attempt to see or envision dynamic change. Growth is an easy, simple observation. Development is often hidden in the dynamics of cellular changes built on the complexity of metabolism. Evolution, rooted as it is in metabolic change, is development across vast stretches of time where even a thousand years is but a blink of an eye.

The characteristic of self-perpetuation includes homeostasis, reproduction and evolution.

Homeostasis

Organisms maintain an internal environment that sustains life processes in cells, tissues, organs and organ systems of an organism. This is a guiding principle of dynamic balance reverberates through everything in physiology and medicine. Studies of this internal balance or dynamic equilibrium of constancy across body functions continue to reinforce its importance in biology and medicine. The priciple of homeostasis applies at the level of the cell as well as at the level of the organism. And, of course, we now fully recognize the role of the nervous system with its myriad feedback loops that coordinate virtually every dimension of homeostasis. Although we now understand that at the level of cells there are signaling pathways that assure balance in ways that may not constantly require sensory and motor messages, and thus are able for variable lengths of time to remain balanced when left to their own tools and capacities. The nergous system, endocrine system (hormones) and the immune system as well as other body systems are mutually dependent. If one system is maladjusted, other systems may compensate temporarily. Cooperation, it may be said, is a hallmark of cells in a multicellular organism. This cooperation includes programmed death (apoptosis) of cells as they inevitably age and are replaced.

Immune functions are critical to homeostasis. Although, again, beyond the scope of our intention through this book, a few comments about immunity are in order. Immunity is about self and the fundamental function of immunity is to distinguish self and differentiate self from non-self. The most obvious function of making this distinction is to assure that the self is protected from other life, peimarily in the form of bacteria and certain other microbes capable of literally eating from our bodies. The great immunologist, Sir McFarland Burnett, said in his book on infectious disease, that all of ecology can be broken down into the simple consideration of eat or be eaten. We are, our bodies are, an ecosystem, which is inhabited by literally millions of microbes, very probably more bacteria—non self—than the trillions of cells that resulted from the multiplication of our mother’s egg and father’s sperm. These bacteria and their biosimilar microbes are present on our skin, in our mouth, nose, and gut, literally every internal and external surface exposed to microbes in our immediate environment, and present from birth until death. In death, of course, these microbes get the upper hand in ending all metabolic functions of our bodies. Howeveer, before death, keeping these microbes a bay and isolated from internal tissues and organs is the fight of our lives. This, the immune system with a vast complex array of specialized cells is generally able to do, maintaining a delicate balance. Infectious diseases are situations where one or more microbes gain otherwise forbidden access to internal tissues or creates an egregious imbalance on a body surface. This havoc is fortunately controllable now with antibiotic drugs, to which the microbes are not or not yet resistant.

The dynamic battle of balance in our bodies goes on with homeostasis. This is foundational to physiology. Too many stresses from our ecosystem, whetehr internal with bacteria or external with our multitude of relationships can raise havoc with the balancing act. We return to this theme going forward. To assume that all is well with everyone all the time is perhaps the greatest error that any educator can make. This is never a mere assumption. It is life.

Reproduction

The laws of physics (thermodynamics) and (physical) chemistry are not amendable through human or any other intervention. Politics be damned; these are laws that don’t change by voting. The result of natural laws is an inevitable end to the lives of individual organisms and replacement is, and always will be, required for life to continue. Reproduction replaces a self with another self with a quite accurate copy of DNA passed from generation to generation. We get a lot from our parents, but without their DNA we would get nothing more.

DNA and is organized in the nucleus of eukaryotic (nucleated) cells. (DNA is organized differently in prokaryotic cells) Eukaryotic DNA is alloted in a unique number of structures called chromosomes; so named because the acid properties of DNA attract certain dyes used to stain cells for observation with the microscope. Each chromosome is represented in the cell nucleus by an identical or homologous chromosome.

For each species there are unique numbers and sizes of the homologous or paired chromosomes. Humans for example have 23 pairs and the mouse has 20. Chickens, by contrast have over 300.

We hope our parents have taken good care of the DNA they will pass along. DNA not cared for can result in disaster, including death or disability. Fortunately and almost regardless of what parents may or may not do, their DNA is protected even when totally neglected or abused. The instructions for replacement is generally pretty damn good. At least good enough for basic survival of a replacement.

Replacement is at its most basic a cellular process where a single cell divides to form daughter cells. The parent cell does not exist but its offspring continue to live with characteristics of the parent. With multicellular organisms, this reproductive function is a constant feature of homeostasis. For instance, cells in the bone marrow divide and replace worn out blood cells including those cells carrying oxygen and the cells of immunity. Cells of the skin are lost from the surface in large volumes daily and replaced through cell division in the underlying layers of skin. This type of cell division is called mitosis and results in each daughter cell receiving exactly the same amount of genetic material as the parent cell.

Cellular replication and division enable multicellular organisms to reproduce. However, it is not possible for cells to simply fuse to make another organism. The fundamental, biological problem is that the genetic material would duplicate or double with each generation reaching an unmanageable volume withing a few generations. As a result multicellular life is maintained by a unique type of cellular division that first reduces the amount of genetic material before fusion of cells. This reduction division is called meiosis.

The process of meiosis assures that these homologous chromosomes are almost precisely separated in the formation of sperm and egg cells. With fertilization the pairs are restored.

From there a lot happens. Sequential cell dividions (mitosis) produces a mass of cells that follow instructions embedded in DNA to migrate and form layers that will develop into a new individual with characteristics that mostly resemble characteristics (traits) of the parents. The phrase “mostly resemble” is deliberate because it is imperfect reproduction that enables evolution.

Evolution

Paleontologist -Steven Jay Gould declared without equivocation that evolution is a fact. However, the acceptance of the fact of evolution is not at all universal. The notion that a supernatural being made all of the life forms on earth, is seemingly intractable. The intractable idea is that life does not change. It does change and it is change across genrations that is the essence of biological evolution.

Darwin’s two primary contributions to the concept of evolution include: first, establishing powerful evidence that evolution has enabled the formation of the enormous variety or types of life—The evolutionary origins of species, and second, an explanation of how evolution occurred through natural selection of inherited characteristics (traint). Time has strengthened the first and time has greatly modified the second. That is not to say that either component of Darwinian evolution is understood today in exactly the way Darwin wrote in 1859. One hundred sixty five years later, journals of biology are filled with both reinforcements, revisions and alternatives to Darwinian evolution. Yet the fact of evolution remains strong. Most biologists agree with Dobzhansky that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Nothing from serious research has supported doubt about the fact of evolution among biolgists. Yet Darwin’s original theory has been modified. For instance, biologist Lynn Margulis recognized that cooperation is essential for evolution, and has elaborated on its importance across virtually all levels of organization from the formation of internal structures of cells to the stability of planetary atmospheric environment. Her writing in the 1950s was said to be as important as the writing of Darwin.

Inheritance of desirable characteristics has long been recognized for its importance through generations. Homeostasis, reproduction and self-perpetuation are inevitably complex and challenge our understanding. Every challenge is met with adaptation or it is not. When it is not, the result is a state of non-existence; that is death. In biology everything is judged by the unambiguous criterion of survival.

What we now know is that what once was explained with mythological stories and magical imaginings is simply and unequivocally not true. Yet myth and magic persist, were one and the same and formed systems of belief about where we came from and, importantly, where we are going. Life after death was imagined by humans and used to reinforce systems of control for human behavior and hierarchy in human society. We no longer need these myths and magic. Now we are in danger of letting myth and magic overwhelm a new, better way of knowing. The new way of knowing is called science.

EvoDevo and Autopoiesis

Now as promised it is time to clarify the notion of autopoiesis. Autopoiesis is self development and links life from its earliest beginning on earth around 3.5 billion years ago. Biologists have been challenged and continue a quest to understand how life came to exist on earth. Geology provides evidence about earth’s age and change across time in the evolution of hte cosmos. Life is an assembly of all essential parts needed for a process that originated, developed and evolved into all of its current the current forms we find on earth. This masterful act was not masterminded but was autonomous.

Perpetuation is as basic to life as metabolism and organization. What is perpetuated is organization and metabolism makes the dynamic organization of life possible. Self-perpetuation and autopoiesis are almost synonymous when organization is a central consideration. Autopoiesis and metabolism are, then, inseparable from life itself. But we must ask and seek to answer the most basic of all philosophical questions; Where did we come from?

In the primordial soup of the early earth, molecules of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, assembled to form early versions of nucleotides, amino acids and short proteins or peptides. A likely predecessor to replicating molecuses like DNA was RNA, which we now know can act as its own catalyst. A key to the beginning of life on earth was formation of semi-permeable membranes, which isolated nucleotides and amino acids making them concentrated enough to take small molecules admitted by the semi-permeable membrane and make large molecules, which could not pass the membrane. These larger assemblies formed the catalytic proteins, energy capture molecules and self-replicating molecules.

The key to understanding autopoiesis is that this assemblage within a semi-permeable membrane was able to make more of the components—amino acids, simple sugars, fatty acids and nucleotides needed to maintain all of the more complex molecules of life—protein, polysaccarides, lipids, RNA and DNA. Acquisition of energy capture from sunlight as well as other known energy generation from inorganic materials is now well known to enable continuation of life.

While it is not possible to rule out that life on earth may have been transported from other parts of the cosmos by astroids or other natural space debris, that only kicks the can and asks; How did that life begin. Of course, it is impossible to know what actually happened 4 to3.5 billion years ago during the earliest existence of earth. Work in many laboratories build on work that began more than 70 years ago, to find and fine tune our knowledge of the earliest chemistry and metabolism. This work began to coalesce in the 1970s led by two Chilean biologists, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, who coined the term autopoiesis. To say that their work was seminal is a gross understatement. Varela in particular has wedded the concept of autopoiesis to cognition through pioneering experimental studies in the neuroscience of vision. Together with philosopher Evan Thompson and psychologist Eleanor Rosch, Varela built important bridges to phenomenology that has been extended by Thompson and others to connect with deeper understanding of human consciousness.

It is absolutely incredible to me that while biologists writ large almost universally agree about the fantastic self development of life at all levels. Yet for schoolists, a persistent assumption assumes a stance of stupidity—that is to say, notable oblivion to or acknowledgment of the development of evidence-based knowledge of our natural world as well as nascent (yet to fully develop) attitudes toward one another. That development is a process and it has remained fairly constant or consistent across 3.5 billion years and has survived on earth by adapting to change—Life “has evolved” and in the process of its evolution has reciprocally changed the earth in which it lives. This is the Gaia Hypothesis developed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. More on this later.

Incredibly too, many educators still honor the old shibboleth that the brain is an empty bucket that must be filled through education. Every neuroscientist knows that a brain is never empty, even from its first embryonic moments it is actively putting in place what it will become; its development that will occupy and last, for the most part, a lifetime. Yet, we organize a huge segment of our social existence to fill the empty bucket and tell people what they must “learn,” which is to say, we will dictate how they are to develop by filling the filling the empty bucket. This unfortunate notion comes down to most of humanity by way of a fundamental historical concept that this can be effectively processed by creating artificial categories and groups of people to dictate human development. These are teachers,professors, clergy in old clothes, and politicians, executive administrators, marketers in new clothes. Admission to the haberdashery to obtain the new clothes is expensive and demanding, a privilege afforded to onloy a few

It is hard to imagine anything more relevant to the ecology of education than to better understand our human place in the cosmos and find a path forward through the chaos and confusion of the present state of affairs for almost all of human existence on earth. We are all autopoeitic—self-developing and our education deserves and demands that we break the chains that bind us to only what we think we know. Truth be known, we don’t know Jill or Jack. It is time to be nimble for our future.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Evans …

Varella, Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. …

Margulis and Sagan …

Schrodinger …

Chapter XIII

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

Mehatma Gandhi

Stress, Trauma & Humiliation

Perhaps nothing is more appalling than the suicide rate among our young people. Speculation about causes is wide but inconclusive. It is hard to avoid concluding the trauma of stress and humiliation is not involved. Without a sense of belonging and a measure of esteem, young people may feel there is no other choice but to tragically step away from the stresses of life.

Trauma and Humiliation are linked because humiliation is a psychological trauma. For an early adolescent, rejection by a peer group, being shunned, shreds dignity at a time when acceptance, belonging and esteem are paramount psychologically. In assessing the impact of trauma throughout life, emotional factors are often more important than physical incidents. When adults are traumatized, children around them are traumatized as well. Being beaten physically in public leaves scars much deeper than skin, muscle and bone.

There are a few who argue that humiliation is a source of virtue. Possible I suppose, but that may be power of positive thinking run amuck. For instance it was W. H. Auden who said Art is a form of humiliation. Or, John Donne who said Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification. Everything is, one can suppose, in the eye of the beholder, and it is entirely conceivable that an incidence of humiliation can act as a powerful motivation to avoid any such a soul crushing event ever again.

This chapter will elaborate on the biological elements of stress. This will be examined as part of normal physiology and as a source of pathology. Emotional humiliation may contribute to stress in both physiological and pathological impacts of stress through neuroendocrine and body-wide changes in several related pathways. PTSD—aka Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—is a syndrome (pattern) of body reactions and has emerged as a significant social challenge, which is not just an outcome of participating in war. It turns out PTSD may emerge in many forms and across a spectrum from mild to severe. Regrettably, conditions in and around schools introduce trauma that is sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle but unrecognized or covered up, too often with tragic consequencnes. We will address trauma and humiliation as a source of stress and a response or an adaptation that may exceed normal conditions and be more apparent in some individuals than in others.

Stress

In physics and engineering, stress is resistance to a force. In biology stress was recognized as a non specific condition or response of the body to virtually any demand. This takes in almost anything and everything that may be encountered in life. Because this is so universal it has become a useful consideration for a wide range of human concerns ranging from psychology, animal husbandry, and agricluture. In medicine, signs and symptoms point toward specific diseases, yet common experiences seem to fit many diseases; the feelings of being sick signal bad news for all of us. In response we all try to at first ignore the feelings and hope we are wrong.

Stresses in life may be acute or chronic; of short or long duration. Common to both is changes in the release and distribution of the body chemicals we know as hormones. In acute stress these hormones are released, circulate for minutes to hours and then dissipate; absorbed and metabolized to some non active state which can be treated by cells as waste. The feelings accompanying their presence are short and feelings return to normal. In chronic stress, however, the body adjusts and resets homeostasis and the feelings become a new normal. Life goes on. But with a difference that may not be sensed or acknowledged.

Chronic disease can be a result. Medical science is just beginning to act on the earliest indicators of causes of chronic diseases. It has become abundantly apparnet that all of our human chronic diseases have beginnings that may preceed the signs or symptoms of the disease by years as in a decade or more. Smoking and lung diseases such as emphysema or cancer or heart diseases including atrial fibrilation or cardiac myopathy may be separated by years of decades. Yet contemporary research indicates that cellular changes may be evidenced by markers and can be detected through laboratory tests. These biomarkers are often near minuscule secretions that result when just a few cells of an organ have been damaged.

This may be thought of as stress occuring at a molecular level. Unfortunately the sources or causes of molecular stressors are ubiquitous. Nevertheless the hope is that with early detection a stressor can be removed.

All of this may tell us that we are ignorant of so much of what is going on in our bodies, that the ravages of stress may be well beyond what we are able to understand—yet!

It may then, perhaps, go without elaborating on details, that stress is a fairly normal part of everyone's life experience. In fact, stress is also likely important for our growth and development as well as our very survival. One very good example of this is demonstrated when mice are raised in an environment totally free of any bacteria—conditions we say are axenic. These mice never develop a normal immune system because critical cells are never challenged. The result is a mouse that is easily overwhelmed by a few bacteria that would otherwise cause no harm. Similar deficiencies have been demonstrated for other tissues including those of the brain. With a lot of development, timing is everything.

When the body is threatened, particularly by a sudden external event, a whole host of immediate changes are called forth preparing the body for running away or standing firm. This is colloquially known as fight of flight. When the emergency subsides, these body changes return to normal. Unfortunately, however, it is also well known that stresses can become chronic and lead to anxiety that is anything but normal.

Think about encountering a strange animal. For a small animal like a squirrel, you nnotice the animal freeze for a long moment, if you move the squirrel rapidly flees. If the strange animal is a large bear, you freeze, the bear freezes. If you move the bear moves after you but in your direction. You are in danger and you know it. Your body prepares itself for flight by pumping more blood, breathing deeply, supplying muscles with more sugar and you may even begin to perspire. However, if you remain still many of the same things may happen to your body, but the bear senses you are not a threat, gets bored and ambles away. Your body slowly returns to normal.

This response is mediated or controlled by components throughout the body. What the body does is a result or effect of secretions by cells of the nervous system—mostly neurons. One division of the nervous is sympathetic and prepares for action. Another division is parasympathetic and reverses these actions to enable normalcy to return.

Now imagine, as the pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris so riveting said: you are a young child and the bear returns to your home every night (Burke Harris). What should be joyous, a pleasure in a child’s life, a fun, loving father, becomes a source of fear and pain. You can’t just flee. You can’t predict what may happen to you or others in your home environment. There is real terror. The bear may yell profanities at you or your mother, physical beating may occur. You are stressed and when this happens every day or nearly every day, your body resets to a new normal. Life goes on but it is, by all accounts, pretty shitty. You need a break, but none is to be had.

Now imagine that you don’t regularly have a nice quiet supper and time to relax before going to bed. Noise from parents arguing, television blaring keep you from sleep. Yet a new day comes and you are forced to get yourself dressed and meet the yellow bus for school. If you miss the bus and don’t want to return home for fear of what either your mother or father may do to you. What are you to do? School is too far away to walk by yourself, perhaps in cold rain that day. Getting to school was your best hope of having something to eat. You are tempted to cry, but that bear has told you so many times that crying is sissy, and you can’t be a sissy.

All those body reactions of encountering a bear in the woods or being the squirrel, continue and your just constantly feel shitty. This is chronic stress.

Science began to recognize that chronic stress in childhood can have a long-term effect. In a 1992 publication, a California physician, Felitti and other researchers with support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) studied 17,000 adult people who has been enrolled with the Kaiser-Permanente Health System for decades. Their study asked each person if they had experienced stressful conditions before they were 16 years of age. research questionaire listed ten conditions including whether they had experienced physical, emotional or sexual abuse, death or separation of a parent or close friend or relative, frequent hunger, and so forth. When responses were tallied it was first found that over 69% had experienced one traumatic condition and over 10% had experienced four or more conditions. That seemed bad enough as a general proposition, but then there was more. When medical records for all of these childhood-abused adults, the research found that for those who had died, their life spans had been reduced by as much as 20 years from normal expectations. Moreover, this group of patients had heart disease, stroke, addiction cancer and other chronic health conditions far, far greater than expected. Stess in childhood clearly has adverse outcomes. The authors in their title used the phrase Adverse Childhood Experiences. This is now more widely known as ACEs and has been studied extensively by many other research groups.

A summary of this research was published by Keratekin and Almy recently. Much this research has focused on impairment of growth, learning and development in school-age children.

Physiological Response & Adaptation

Adaptation to stress was identified by the physiologist Hans Selye, who named the response the General Adaptation Syndrome. His studies initiated our understanding of the role of brain structures, particularly the Hypothalamus, as well as the Pituitary gland at the base of the brain and the Adrenal Gland's, which each reside atop the kidney. The adrenal glands have unique cells making and distinguishing a core called the medulla, which is surrounded by a cortex. The hormones of the cortex and medulla are different but in their own ways jparticipate in the body’s physiological response to stress. In the stress response, a part of the peripheral nervous system called the sympathetic division is activated. This division has nerve endings that secrete epinephrine, which is also known as adrenaline. The whole of the adrenal medulla, actually acts like sympathetic nerve endings that can pour massive amonts of adrenaline into the blood. The effect of this surge is elevated heart rate, increases in blood pressure, release of sugar from the liver, and slowing of digestion.

Reset of normal homeostasis gives rise to a condition of allostasis … balance remains but systems are reset to higher than normal values. Accordingly heart rate, blood pressure, secretions of certain hormones reach higher than values that are considered normal. These resets are the result of activity of a part of the peripheral nervous system called the sympathetic division. Resetting is caused by a stressor

The relationship between stressors and disturbing physiological processes was first established by Selye (1946) and explained with the General Adaptation Syndrome. The scientist theorized an association between stress and disease as a cause and effect phenomena, with stress causing diseases of adaptation (Selye, 1946).

Selye recognized three phases to the stress response; alarm, adaptation, exhaustion. He found from an exhaustive series of experiments that no matter what substance or organ extract was injected to challenge the lab animals, the result was enlargement or swelling of the adrenal glands. Of particular note was the enlargement of the outer part of the gland known as the cortex. This part of the gland was later shown to be the source of the hormone glucocorticosterone or simply cortisone; a glucocortico steroid. This hormone is now well known as cortisone and has many worthwhile medical uses including reduction of inflammation. However, elevated levels provides for adaptation to stress. Among these adaptations are increases in heart rate and blood pressure, insensible perspiration, increased tension of skeletal muscles and decreased activity of certain internal muscles such as those needed for digestion. The liver increases release of glucose and insulin production rises and then becomes more quickly depleted. One result is the beginning form of diabetes. Obesity may follow as body systems for regulating the stress become exhausted.

Response to stress including humiliation may include attendance problems, dropping out either by physically leaving or by simply giving up on further attempts to engage with school and any of the academic programs the school may provide. Engagement with para-school activities, that is those activities that to a greater or minor extent may not happen in the absence of the school building, the schedule and the presence of students may lead to pregnancy, suicide, drug abuse and even criminal behaviors—such as gang related or solitary criminality. Many of these para-school activities initially take the form of experimentation usually under some from of peer pressure. When a school situation makes a young person feel inadequate, they may find belonging and esteem by para-school engagements.

Stress is known as the flight or fight response. It is associated with threat to the integrity of the body including the subjective components of self at the level of belonging, esteem or satisfaction of goals that represent aspirations across either short or long time spans. It is a result of confrontation with a threat or the perception of threat that will derail a goal. Stressors include but are not limited to social-emotional, environmental, perceived threat as well as actual physical challenges. A broad range of conditions are likely to affect or mitigate an individual's level of perception of a threat. These are mostly linked to the attributes of the individual relative to the attributes of the threat. An isolated individual or small stature using profanity to address a person is not as likely to signal a threat as a mob of individuals using an identical profanity. Being attacked by someone with a knife or pistol is much harder to ignore than a person on the street yelling a profanity.

—

Chronic stress has adverse impacts on health.

Consideration for stress in students is important but it may also be recognized that stressors may exist in school settings that have a primary impact on staff including teachers, counselors and the leadership team at the building or district level. These school-based stressors may lead to secondary or derivative stress on students. Behavior of adults, particularly where there are unexpected or unaccounted actions or events may lead to psychological stress that becomes increasingly difficult to identify and recognize for the impacts on others. This may be particularly relevant, of course, for the younger children, but even post adolescent people may experience stressful uncertainty.

PTSD or Post-traumatic Stress Disorder has become prominent following the military ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. PTSD can be induced in non military encounters. Police can come to represent an actual or potential threat depending upon an individual's prior encounters with police and with hearing accounts of encounters with police by peers. Some neighborhoods may occasion multiple episodes of trauma that can be highly stressful.

Impacts of chronic stress on health are known to affect cognitive function and capacities to control emotional responses.

Assessing Stress …

Elevated cortisol levels can be assessed using modern chemical analysis in a decently equipped and certified laboratory. Cortosol levels can be accruately measured in sample of blood, sweat, tears, saliva and, amazingly, hair. Hair samples are able to reveal changes in cortisol levels across weeks or even months. As hair grows, its cells and their surroundings accumulate cortisol from body fluids and analysing a sample of hair by sectioning or partitioning it beginning at the root, the changes in cortisol levels across some time span can be fairly accurately graphed.

More accurate cortosol analysis can involve taking blood or saliva sample at intervals.

The analytic methods require some expert operation of sophicated instruments including mass spectrometry. Not every lab has or can afford and operate such equipment. However, well funded research projects are able to meet the analytic challenges and reveal useful data.

Although cortisol is the most common it is not the only indicator of stress levels. These various methods are, however, much more objective than the anecdotal recitation from a peerson’s memory.

Trauma

Abuse of children did not start recently, but there is now a significant movement to reveal the way that childhood trauma alters cognitive functions, and across an extended period, physical and emotional health.

Adverse Childhood Experiences—ACEs were placed in a new light in 1993 by Felitti and others with publication of their classical study of over 17,000 (narrowed to 13,000) adults enrolled in the California-based Kaiser Permanente health system. Their study showed that when adults were interviewed about their experiences of trauma as children up to the age of 16, over 60% reported at least one from a list of ten traumatic experiences, including Physical, Emotional or Sexual abuse, {hysical or Emotional neglect, Divorce, Violence against a mother, Substance abuse, Mental illness, Incarceration of a relative.

What was more striking from study was that 12% reported experiencing more than four instances of chronic abuse. This later group or cohort were then studied for their health as adults. As a group they suffered more alcohol and drug abuse, social withdrawl and depression, obesity, erratic employment, diabetes, heart and vascular disease including stroke, risky sexual behaviors leading to sexually transmitted infections and diseases, and suicide ideation or even actual attempted suicide.

Subsequent assessments of Adverse Childhood Experiences may follow any one or more of at least a dozen different listings of what constitutes trauma (Keratekin & Almy, 2019). However, in all cases emotional incidents may override the actual physical incident.

The former California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician who trained at Harvard's public health department, has mounted a campaign to ameliorate the impacts of trauma in her state. She experienced and expressed considerable frustration with the slow acceptance of trauma assessments by her fellow pediatricians. A consequence is that in many young people, their realities of trauma in their lives are being rather severely neglected by medical and public heath authorities and school personnel— teachers, counselors, psychologists, nurses and instructional supervisors—who are ostensibly positioned to, at least paartially, ameliorate both short term and longer impacts of trauma.

Any combinations of the ten key conditions of trauma identified by questionnaire or interview could enable worthwhile action on behalf of adults or young people adversely affected. Emotional impacts of fear are legend among psychologists and psychiatrists with solid research revealling engagement of brain regions including the amygdala, hypocampus and cortex. Emotions are complex and there has been no end to the stream of literature from neuroscientists which explore the emotions in great detail. Neuro chemical, neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, oxytosin and vassopressin mitigate our experiences of pleasure and pain.

It turns out, intriguingly, that many or all of these neurotransmiters are either actually or potentially connected with moral values and ethical choices. (Churchland; Nussbaum, ) Affection and attachment as revealed through the writing of Harlow, Schiere and others strongly suggests important implications for brain development including bu tnot limited to development of the executive functions which may foreshadow our understanding of how poor choices may become habitual

Assessing Trauma …

Over the years since 1993, following the work of Filetti, a robust number of questionnaire assessment tools have been developed and subjected to research regarding efficacy and accuracy. The range of items has been wide. However, as pointed out by Nadine Burke Harris, the use of these tools by physicians has been extremely uneven with many pediatricians ignoring the use of questionaires because they cut into precious time of a patient visit, and may uncover abuse by a patient’s parents that may require reporting to civil authorities. Nevertheless, an acceptable short questionaire has become acceptable and supported by validating research. This tool is known as ACE-10.

How might we be better off if society would avail itself with information provided by a tool like ACE-10 to identify individuals who need extra care because their life has been badly bruised by trauma … that would be “trauma informed” responsiveness … and, should generate action on the part of a community or neighborhood to provide care and support, but more importantly ways to intervene and/or prevent trauma in the lives of anyone.

There is well documented evidence regarding abuse (tramatic) of women by men … what can be done to eradicate the world of any semblance of an attitude that maltreatment of women is acceptable?

Humiliation

The range of negative emotions is huge and complex. My choice to emphasize humiliation may be rejected by some because it neglects other important emotions. However, I will argue that of all the descriptions and terminology assigned to negative emotions, humiliation, is nearly overriding. At tje same time, naming other negative emotions is often very useful.

For instance, sexual abuse is an important form of humiliation and expression takes a multitude of forms following what has happened across a spectrum ranging from body shaming to violent rape. As a source of psychological stress and trauma it may be hard to find anything worse than the humiliation of sexual abuse.

Humiliation itself has many forms that go well beyond overtly sexual abuse. These may surface early along with the development of cognition matched with feelings of what is happening to the newly realized self. By the time of school entry, being prepared for emotional trauma is rarely assured.

The Socratic Method is often heralded as a wonderful pedagogical strategy and in the right hands, undoubtedly is effective as an educational tool. But when used in a school situation, however, a case may be made with accusations that it may also be a means for humiliation of students, intentionally or innocently. This may particularly emerge whenever an adult constantly badgers or hectors pupils with what may seem to arguably be Socratic-like questions. The focus is regurgitation prescripted replies rather than analytical, critical thinking. Anxiety, tension, and frustration may follow.

I will also argue that humiliation is an egregiously misguided tool for motivation. But, does that justify the use of humiliation in a classroom? That may be particularly relevant, even poignant, if the role of the teacher is primarily classroom management; assuring that all is well and orderly. The order may reside atop an underlying fear of further continuing intimidation. Humiliation may well be widespread among students in a classroom, but whereever exceptions to acceptance exists, an individual may challenge a teacher’s authority and act out behavior demanding retaliation by a teacher or by classmates who resent the intrusion.

Not unrelated to humiliation, is bullying whether from adults or peers. The bully is characterized as seeking to harm, intimidate or coerce; suggesting levels of bullying. Regardless of level, humiliation is an outcome by anyone who is an object of the bully. Particularly where physical harm or violence is involved, the humiliation is also accompanied by fear—and the bully is avoided and the subject of bullying experiences restrictions on their freedom. Bullying in and around schools is a huge distraction and will likely leave a negative, long lasting emotional scar.

Humiliation and dignity human rights and human dignity are linked. Violation of human dignity has been coming to the attention of scholars and practitioners. Humiliating practices such as frequently occur in civilian conflicts between religious or ethnic groups block access to building(constructing) space in society for mutual respect and esteem. Humiliation may be built into cultural practices and becomes something of a vicious cycle with humiliation layered on more humiliation. Defeating the cycle of humiliation may well resemble the pealing of layers of an onion. Every layer removed may be drowned with tears. (possible citation EJ918297 )

The circumstance of the classroom, potentially for some individuals, becomes humiliating. Ethnic and racial minorities may be most vulnerable when a teacher may signal that showing disrespect is OK. Teachers can also demonstrate disrespectful behavior in words and deeds will also be tolerated. Classroom management would demand that an attitude of zero tolerance is to be the only acceptable normal. The stress of frequent, even daily, humiliation from racial or religious taunts may quickly turn a student to disliking the environment of the school's classroom. It may be difficult to measure these emotional causes of actual or virtual school dropout.

Dealing with student-to-student taunting behaviors is challenging and doing so in a positive, non punishing, way would normally be most desirable. However, this nicety may not always be possible in the flows of customary classroom management practices.

A group at Oxford in the UK has pursued studies on humiliation and human dignity. Their work points toward dialogue as holding promise for advancing dignity but at an international scale. A similar approach should be tried in classrooms. This could be centered around questioning how the behavior may make another feel. Taken to a level of role play with peers, a sense of empathy may be evoked across a swath wider than the immediate players. The goal would be to foster “equity in dignity,” signaling that all have a right to enjoy dignity in the same way. (EJ918297 )

Shunning is a form of bullying that is commonly practiced by young people entering their teen years. Maintaining peer affiliations can be highly emotional at this age. High levels of humiliation may cause extreme avoidance in school (avoiding places where a bully is expected) or of school (feigning sickness to stay at home). An outcome may be frequent crying, which can further exacerbate bullying.

Teacher use of sarcasm is often, perhaps too often, humiliating. Using nicknames for kids can be cute, light or humorous, but it can also be highly embarrassing if a moniker carries a negative connotation for the targeted student. A young boy being call “shorty” in front of peers may embed an unintended message.

Using insulting language when performance is below standards is unfortunately, not uncommon. Unfortunately sarcasm and mild humiliation is a tool that a teacher may use with some good effect. But it is tricky; what may work for one student, say to motivate better effort, may have an exactly opposite effect for another student. No teacher is omniscient and disastrous mistakes can occur. A student who experiences sarcasm from a teacher is, not unsurprisingly, less likely to seek out help with a class assignment or project. A teacher’s use of sarcasm may be a weapon to intimidate students and maintain control in a classroom. Singling out one kid in a classroom calling attention to an unusual physical characteristics, clothing choice or a behavioral faux pas can assure that students are kept in their place.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Felitti V. J., Anda R. F., Nordenberg D., Williamson D. F., Spitz A. M., Edwards V., et al.. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults - the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) study. Am. J. Prev. Med. 14, 245–258. doi: 10.1016/S0749-3797(98)00017-8, PMID: [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Ref lis t]

Karatekin, C., & *Almy, B. (2019).  ACES 101: A primer for clinicians.  Creative Nursing, 25 (2), 87-102. http://dx.doi.org/10.1891/1078-45 35.25.2.87

Megan Gunnar

PDF of the TWO ACEs ….

Lisa Feldman Barrett

ACE-10 is suitable for assessing intrafamilial adverse childhood experiences in adolescents.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10235773/

How might we be better off if society would avail itself with information provided by a tool like ACE-10 to identify individuals who need extra care because their life has been badly bruised by trauma … that would be “trauma informed” responsiveness … and, should generate action on the part of a community or neighborhood to provide care and support, but more importantly ways to intervene and/or prevent trauma in the lives of anyone.

There is well documented evidence regarding abuse (tramatic) of women by men … what can be done to eradicate the world of any semblance of an attitude that maltreatment of women is acceptable?

(EJ918297 )

(possible citation EJ918297 )

Chapter XIV

It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Aristotle

Limits of Neuroscience

Philosophy has long been a primary focus of knowing the matters of mind. Religions have contributed confusion. Motivation has been the realm of self-help; You are what you think about; Think and Grow Rich; and so on. Transcendentalists no less than Henry David Thoreau have promoted or preached a gospel of individualism; rise up and control your life.

This chapter will begin with an exploration of philosophical explanation, consider the mechanistic approach advocated by science, recognize the limits of tools and techniques of science, knowing and reflecting on our experiences with the world or worlds in which we live, look into our limited understanding of consciousness, and conclude with some thoughts on the limits of knowledge.

This chapter takes us into some deep water or weeds. Our vision is clearly limited and what follows can do no more than suggest the extent of our ignorance. But what follows will also recognize a few lights shining in darkness. Our challenge for education is knowing when to follow the real lights and when to ignore shiny objects.

No Room for Metaphysics – OR - The Room for Metaphysics

Explanation based on supernatural causes and forces are, simply put, no longer satisfying or satisfactory. We no longer accept mystical explanations based on non-physical or metaphysical speculations no matter how entrenched they may be in the minds of many; followers of myth. There are no “higher” powers to which any loyalty is either appropriate or unequivocally demanded. No one or no thing speaks for these mystical powers. There are no all knowing, omniscient, or all powerful, omnipotent, entities guiding or pulling the strings of the universe.

Accordingly however much we may be tempted or induced or intimidated, there is no room any longer for metaphysics. Rene’ Descartes oft repeated mantra Cogito ergo sum—I think, therefore I am—set up a disastrous dichotomy of mind or body that still baffles and bastardizes too many explanations. School subscriptions to this dichotomy stand as roadblocks to our path forward in education. Are there things we do not know? Yes! Or, cannot know? Maybe. Being absolute about knowing is standing on quickssand that can suck you down.

There is also much, too much, that we think we know and have words to describe, but do not know—absolutely. Additionally there are things we do not know that we do not know; the unknown unknowns. And there are a few things we are not allowed to know because of a perception that knowing is taboo. Some taboos seem even to climb the highest ivory towers of science. Yet, today freedom of inquiry has opened portals into darkness. We may not know if light is flooding in or flooding out, but we know light is there if and when we have need to see better and farther. Humanity is here and is now looking for reliable answers. We have no need to look for a supernatural power to explain anything. Period. Full stop! Let's get used to it.

That is not to say there are no unanswered questions. There are plenty of unanswered questions. Humanity, and only humanity, so far as we know, is able to contemplate the questions. We must do so with an open mind and in an open society. Closing doors to cathedrals of the past is long overdue by humanity writ large.

Mechanism v. Vitalism –

Laws of Physical Science have emereged across several centuries with some interesting links including the development of alchemy in China and its migration along trade routes to reach Europe perhaps 500 years ago. Two threads of alchemy are: finding the elixer of life in order to prolong life. and, transforming base metals like mercury and iron or copper into gold. From alchemy the roots of chemistry emerged to form a solid science based on empirical evidence and systematic challenge to emerging knowledge of matter.

The link between matter and energy only emerged fully in the Twentieth (20th) Century from the imagination and mathematical skills of Albert Einstein. What seemed straight forward for matter and energy became complex with the emergence of quantum physics that introduced uncertainty. Nevertheless, new knowledge of atoms and their reactivity yielded enormous power of prediction enabling the synthesis of molecules as never before believed possible except by a few others with great imaginations backed by solid, factual knowledge achieved and shared across decades of theory guiding the work at the lab bench. Plenty of imaginative theory was discarded along the way.

Chemistry and physics have grown and matured through an emerging collection of generally accepted practices and principles. The result is a confidence in certain principles, theories or laws. The distinction among principle, theory and law is fuzzy but may perhaps be tentatively assigned to levels of confidence. When scientists talk about the laws of physics, they are highly confident, which is not to say absolutely conficent, that these laws are highly stable and not likely to be overturned by new observations or experiments. This is also not to say that future work will not reveal new insights. Isaac Newton's Laws of Gravity have not been overturned by Albert Einstein's Theories of Relativity but Einstein certainly provided new and expanded insight. Gravity still retains important elements of mystery consistent with sound science and confidently predicted outcomes of applications including our space vehicles.

It is an axiom of science that observations must be quantified to enable a level of understanding that is logical and consistent with mathematical models. While data from observation (experiments) may be variable, statistical inferences based on central tendencies and measurement of error take what looks to be chaotic and make sense of it. Refinement of quantitative methods and application of computer algorithms has greatly expanded our useful explanations. At the same time these explanations have become increasingly esoteric—understood by too few. That is a serious problem for the public understanding and even potential participation in scientific enterprises and engineering practices. Yet without hands=on participation, too much of science will seem beyond understanding. The reality is that understanding complex explanation and mathemetical models is not mentally easy, or for the faint of heart.

Biological scientists have fully embraced principles, theories and laws of physical science. Biologists expect explanation that is fully consistent with known facts, principles and genneralizations of physics, chemistry and geology. That leaves essentially no room in biology for metaphysical explanation or vitalism. Vitalistic explanations embrace a notion of vital forces that is possessed by anything, any entity, that exhibits the properties of life—a living organism. Biologists are entirely confident that everything about life will be explained in a way that is fully consistent with any and every law of physics and chemistry. This also means that there is near universal agreement among biologists that nothing uncovered by biological research will overturn a law of physica or chemistry. Geology may be a different matter. It turns out that the composition of earth’s crust, atmosphere and water composition, have been enormously influcnce by the presence of life (Margulis & Sagon, 20xx).

That said, and all that has been said is fully consistent with my view of life, I am also willing to recognize that every living entity possesses a will to live. That will is built into the organization, metabolism and self-perpetuation in a fully mechanistic way. We humans, who seem to be in sole possession of consciousness, also seem to be sentient and have adopted or co-opted this universal will to live as a foundation for spirituality. Unfortunately a form of denial of further explanation or even questions about life that may lead to improved explanation. More on this as we move forward, particularly in Part Seven.

Tools & Techniques –

Our historical perspectives about knowing and explaining is illuminated with the stories stemming from development of the telescope and microscope. Until the invention of the telescope the celestial bodies including sun, moon and stars were mysterious. Authority depended on mystery and enforced ideas and stories based on unknown and unknowable sources, supernatural entities that explained where we come from and where we are going. These supernatural entities also were attributed the rules for living and surviving and reproducing. The telescope began to change explanation. By about 1600 Hans Lipperhey in Holland inventes a device for seeing things far away as if they were nearby. Later called a telescope, the instrument began to alter humanities view of the place of the earth in the universe. In the hands and mind of Galileo, the telescope enabled collection of evidence that dramatically changed humanity’s view of its place in the cosmos.

By 1700 Antony van Leeuwenhoek had captured attention with his observations of living, that is moving, animacules with his acclaimed simple, but powerful microscopes. Refinements in development of the microscope throughout the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century enabled important generalizations about the cellular basis for life. By 1830 Schleiden and Schwann declared that the cells discovered by Robert Hook were universally observed in every plant and animal studied with the microscope. Germs, microscopic cells, were becoming more and more suspect as a cause of diseases. In the late nineteenth century a multitude of observations and experiments had established the germ throry of disease and that the cells of the body were adversely impacted by germs as well as being the source of tumorous growths—cancer.

The 1905 Nobel Prize was awarded to Santiago Ramon y Cajal and Camilio Golgi for their work on cells of the nervous system—neurons—as the theoretical basis for function. Their work was a result of developments in preparation of tissues for microscopic observation through special staining techniques. The invention of the electron microscope and its wide deployment following WWII enabled detailed observation of the synapic gap between nerve cells as a near universal way that neurons communicate information in the brain and spinal cord as well as between neurons and other body cells, especially muscle cells.

Contemporary neuroscience continues to gain knowledge development momentum through development of new instruments for measuring electrical changes in neurons, imaging and manipulation of individual neuron signaling and recording of neuron action. Each tool and technique enlarges the questions that scientists are able to ask and expect to answer. What may have been well articulated as a limit not many decades ago, now are well studied. What is conceptually limited today may be opened to new understanding by development of unique tools and techniques.

Connectivity, databases, genomics as well as transcriptomics (in single cells), proteomics, metabolomics and epigenomics have emerged along with gene editing techniques (CRISPR and others) in the past couple of decades. The genome project had substantially reached a milestone in 2004. Work continues and costs have plummeted and resolution has expanded many fold. Enormous databases (LLMs)have developed and machine learning (AI) greatly expands and accelerates development.

Reflections on Experience –

Experience is a topic within a larger philosophical consideration of epistemology or the study of how we know or have knowledge of anything. An important consideration for philosophers and scientists alike has been drawn together through neuroscience. Psychology as we have emphasized earlier, cannot be wholly separated from the biology of our condition as an organism. In fact separation is so difficult that all attempts to separate self from other is fraught. An early body of thought or reflection attempted to justify seeing the body and brain as distinct. This view is no longer tenable given the contemporary state of neuroscience. However, limits remain regarding our experience as we live and experience a life.

An autobiographical self may be an autobiography but every attempt to write or speak about our experiences is incomplete and fragmented. We live continuously with experience as a sort of glue that connects and holds many elements of life together. Of course, there are interruptions, as when we sleep. In sleep we dream and form a different experience with mixed reality. Waking up once a day, our bodies and minds take in and process what surrounds us physically, intellective or cognitively, emotionally, and spiritually. All of this is a flowing stream of consciousness, compressed and cataloged by our attention, selective focusing, thoughts or reflections and, importantly, memory.

Philosophers have developed a position regarding experience using new approaches to the phenomena of experience in our lives. This branch of philosophy known as phenomenology, has taken new dimensions and directions in the past decade. In the past, personal accounts of experience were discounted or ignored. However, psychologiccal and philosophical approaches combined with neuroscience to reveal new methods and insights, opening phenomenology as an additional tool for studying experience and consciousness.

How are we able to make sense of the movie in the mind that constitutes our daily moment to moment perceptions of what we see, hear, touch, smell and taste and extends to our sense of ourselves and objects in space-time continuum from sometime following birth until death or sometime before death? Our perceptions, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, or social can represent various types, and perhaps, levels of reality. These are arguably not wholly objective or subjective but are mediated by and through brain activity. Because of our experience with dreams, it is not possible to ignore potential for delusion.

Delusion is a matter of fact for some people. Since we can't experience another's internal or personal mental state directly we rely on what is external in the form or observable actions including but not limited to speech. Delusional statements are often taken as a sign of mental illness or disability, an abnormality in the psychology of another person's experience. Not unlike our experience with green screen video especially in combination with animation techniques, we may raise questions as to What is real? And, What should be believed? We can suspend our disbelief and allow what is before us to take on a pseudo-reality. Fortunately we exercise some useful control of what we make of our suspended disbelief. The movie in the theater and the movie in the mind are kept nicely separated.

However, our minds may construct what we believe to be reality. The result is a reflection on reality that is filled with nonsense that can be seen, perhaps only by others, as conspiracy; a melding of quasi fact and connections to guide our reflections on experience are typically second hand or even third hand accounts of experience that are dauntingly difficult to verify.

Consciousness

Limits of understanding loom large about our own and another's consciousness.

Consciousness may be described as a state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings. For humans, it is an awareness of self in the context of an environment. Conscious experience is, then, an awareness of our existence. This awareness extends externally but also internally to the conditions perceived to be within our body and its mind. What we believe to be going on in our mind, we also attribute to the mind of other—another person. Feelings are connected through consciousness of body and mind . Consciousness may also be elevated in a fully awake state of being while it declines progressively through dream-filled sleep, deep sleep and comatose unconsciousness, senselessness or oblivion. Consciousness is, we almost universally believe, permanently lost in brain-death. Yet whatever of body, mind and consciousness may remain following death, is likely a permanent human mystery.

Neuroscientists are making progress in the direction of understanding consciousness. Multiple theories have been proposed and are trumpeted by one group or another. Qualia has endured for some years as a descriptor for the origins and nature of experiences. But a label does not explanation make. Another term – neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) perhaps takes labeling to a little better depth. It has become increasingly clear that not all parts of the brain are necessary for consciousness. For example the cerebellum and spinal cord seem not at all necessary since losses of either through accident, disease or surgery does not totally impair conscious experience. Even the cortex of the brain's cerebrum have an uneven contribution to consciousness; the forebrain being much less involved than the so-call posterior hot-zone where vision, sound and touch are recognized and processed.

As neuroscientist Cristoff Koch put it; What is it about the biophysics of a chunk of highly excitable brain matter that turns gray goo into the glorious surround sound and Technicolor that is the fabric of everyday experience?

Koch then added: The central puzzle of our existence is how the brain enables the feeling of life itself.

Robert Van Gulick, writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy15 emphasized that a comprehensive understanding of consciousness will likely require theories of many types, and that decades will likely be needed to sort out theories and make future progress.

Knowledge

It is regrettably the case that knowledge has too many synonyms and we often refer to knowledge when we mean something very different. Education and knowledge are too often equated where one implies the other.

There is also the problem of limits to knowledge. What is believed to be true is either not true or is not applicable.

A person acquires knowledge through experience or education. Pete Seeger quipped that education is what you get by reading the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

An ongoing challenge to understanding “how we know” is the dichotomy between reductionist and holistic approaches. Though seemingly distinct, each is part of the other. The whole is more than the sum of its parts recognizing that with assembly of parts there are emergent properties. At the same time the assembly means the use of parts that each have properties that contribute to the whole. Leaving out parts or not seeing the whole results in incomplete knowledge.

Since Plato, knowledge has been defined as justified true belief. Of course if the reasons for the belief are false, what claims to be knowledge is neither justified nor true. In other words, a false premise lead to false conclusions that preclude knowledge. What may be thought to be true turns out to be false and without value.

What constitutes value? Pragmatism emerges to provide some help. Accordingly, there are practical elements to gain sufficient understanding of a subject to sort out the facts, information and skills that may come to bear in some valuable way. Theory, concepts, principles, generalization, or categorization forms a useful context. That is, until idealism or dogma intrudes to creat a persistent cloud around value.

Acquisition of knowledge is usually attributed to experience through either direct engagement or with indirect or vicarious engagement. There are many routes to acquiring knowledge and these may involve many sources, including at least perceptions, reasoning, memory, testimony or observation, scientific (research) questions and tested hypotheses, education in any of its facets, and repetition and practice. In the life of each individual, these elements converge in the mind-body in unique patterns that are constructed as the individual’s reality. Teaching has a limited role that can be both mysterious and magical. Understanding that is not for the faint of heart. Nor should it be casually afforded to anyone if it is not afforded to everyone.

The mysteries of our embodied mind’s journey through life, constantly challenges neuroscience to explain consciousness, thinking and our acquisition of skills, knowledge and attitude. Progress is elusive.

The next chapter will look at emotional understanding and the practice of emotional intelligence, as a way to … (exercise control of emotion?).

Recommended Reading & Sources

Neuroscience is a dynamic and relatively new discipline built on studies of anatomy, physiology and pathology of the nervous system. While it is nearly impossible to precisely delineate neuroscience, a novice should first consult general textbooks for an overview. From there interest can take readers in a number of productive directions. This may involve seeking out reviews of neuroscience, which are quickly identified with a Google search. Terminology is an initial barrier, but patience will yield a vocabulary including the frequent uses of abbreviations.

Margulis, Lynn and Dorian Sagon. 2xxx. What is Life?

Varela, F., Evans, Eleanor Rosch. 20xx.

PLoS (Public Library of Science) neuroscience reviews.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (Articles by … )

Koch, Christof …

Damasio, Anthony. 2xxx. The Feeling of What Happens.

Van Gulick, Robert. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Chapter XV

What young people really need is diverse perspectives. People who care about them, who are trusting, loving adults, who are there for them, thinking with them about who they are.

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Affect & Control

The affective domain is about our feelings and emotions as Antonio Damasio, MD, PhD puts it in the title of his book The Feeling of What Happens. The sources of our feelings relate to perceptions but can both go beyond immediate perceptions and operate beneath our consciousness. Emotions can get out of control. Regulation of emotion is about management of an element of life that is about our feelings. Too often conversation about emotion and feeling gets sidetracked with reason and our near constant emphasis on the cognitive domain. In fact, we probably over intellectualize our emotions and tend to sidestep a fundamental part of human life. Without our feelings, life would likely not even exist.

As life goes on, problems or challenges are presented to individuals and groups. These challenges generate reactions that may take on physical form such as a change in facial expression, production of tears, flushing or redness of facial skin, and, not infrequently, some vocalizations ranging from a rapid inhilation to a raging response to a perceived threat. We know that these emotional responses are mediated by the automatic or autonomic nerves that link to our brain and spinal cord with all the rest of our body. Neuroscientists like Damasio, are engaged in research to enable more complete understanding of the whole of the affective domain. Much is known but much more remains to be known that will contribute to our understanding of emotion. Interestingly we may develop control of emotions without knowing much of anything about the source of emotion.

This chapter will provide insight into the classification of emotion, how emotions are connected to cognition, the matter of what Goleman has called Emotional Intelligence, the importance of social and emotional development, manifestations—the impacts of classroom outbursts and consequences of emotion in school groups.

Classifying Emotion

The matter of classifying emotion is a longstanding issue within psychology and psychiatry. Many attempts have been made to argue in support of one system of classification or another. Most classifications will call forth arguments about what emotions are basic or primary and which emotions may be classified as secondary, derivative or related to a primary emotion. The list of English words used to name emotions is long and complicated or bedeviled depending on how you or someone may be disposed toward either lumping and splitting.

Anger, sadness, anxiety, fear as well as happiness, joy, exuberance, enthusiasm, empathy, love and many, many more terms may come into expressing or describing an emotion. Anger is often linked with aggression, happiness is linked with joy. While anger and agression may be fairly easy to distinguish or differentiate; the border distinguishing happiness from joy may be permanently fuzzy. It may be important to concede early and often that when it comes to emotions, precision of language is itself a huge challenge. There is plenty of ambiguity built into the language of emotion. Some will argue that simplicity is desired, while others, also correctly, argue that simplicity leads to more ambigutty and lack of precision.

Neuroscientists have taken a slightly different approach from psychologists and psychiatrists. By looking at the parts of the brain related to a particular emotion, there has been some progress toward better, if still imperfect, understanding. A good example is feat. Fear is a response that is somewhat better recognized that many other emotions carrying other labels even though the emotion may be related. Fear and anger may be linked in some situations but it is possible to distinguish a fear response from an anger response even when the animal involved is a rodent such as a mouse or a rat. Consequently the neuroscientists can take questions into the laboratory where probative questions and definitive experiments may be used to falsify hypotheses. The work of a neuroscientist may require months or years to resolve and refine questions before confidence emerges as explanation of concepts and principles that includes empirical evidence. Because experiments comparable to those with mice and rats cannot be done ethically with humans, gaps between neuroscience and psychology may seem impossible to close.

Nevertheless progress continues. Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux has worked with fear using rodents. Over many years he as been able to provide strong evidence for the role of a brain region called the amygdala as a mediator of fear responses. Interestingly his rodent work was stimulated by experiments using monkey brains and based on observations of human pathology. A Swiss physician Heinrich Kluver found a peculiar conditions from his patients who recovered from injury to the temporal lobes of the brain often showed reduced fear from otherwise frightening situations. Working with American neurosurgeon Paul Bucy, the temporal lobes of rhesus monkey’s were removed. Within three weeks, the monkey’s showed a cluster of unusual conditions (now known as Kluver-Bucy Syndrome), including what seemed a lack of fear. It was this clue that sent LeDoux in search of the functions for the amygdala.

The amygdala, now much studied in many labs, is located in the temporal lobes. It receives and sends signals form multiple brain regions. This almond-shaped bit of gray matter, is well connected with other parts of the brain known collectively as the limbic system. Anatomically nearby within the limbic system is the hippocampus, which filters and processes signals to make memories, as well as the brain’s hypothalamus, so important in regulating a rich array of body functions. A fearful situation signals the hypothalamus and triggers the flight-or-fight response discussed in the chapter on stress, trauma and humiliation. Memory serves a highly important function for survival. Thus these signals and triggers engage body-wide responses and we feel those responses quickly and, at times, very powerfully.

Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett, working in psychology labs, 1 has been able to clarify the distinctions between pleasure and pain to the point that she defends an assertion that pleasure and pain may be the most basic of emotions providing a rationale for assigning valences to emotion. She has taken advantage of neuroimaging tools and techniques such as CT scans, fMRI and PET scans to study emotions in human subjects. At the physiological level, our emotions may boil down to a simple we have them or we don’t, and they are weak or strong. From there we think about our human emotions, and construct all manner of complications and explanations. The result may be beautiful poetry with enough knowledge gaps to keep us intrigued.

There is a lot of hills and valleys in the border between emotion and our capacity for thinking and reasoning to explain and understand our moods. The laboratory, but maybe not the hospital surgical suite, can be a place to start.

Connections With Cognition

The affective and cognitive domains have been regarded as entirely separate. Linking emotions and intelligence, the emotional with the rational, has been the source of argument dating back centuries. Philosophers have contributed and Spinoza is cited frequently by Damasio regarding the early recognition of connection between the rational and the emotional. Philosopher Evan Thompson and neuroscientist Francisco Varela venture where others still fear to tread.

The reptilian brain is regarded has primitive compared to the brains of birds and mammals, with the human brain occupying a pinacle. The comparative distinction has proven useful because it is clear that birds, mammals and humans have brains that include the reptilian primordia and that these brain regions are active in preserving essential life processes such as breathing, blood pressures and heart rate, skin responses, feeding and sleeping and even reproductive functions and a variety of body rhythms that operate within a day, between days and across longer time intervals up to annual rhythms.

Varela and Thompson begin by looking beyond reptiles and fairly recent evolution, by consideration that cognition may be embraced with everything—everything—that is alive. The bacterial cell in search of nutrition, alters the direction of its swiming in a broth to seek out the source of a sugar. How far, they may ask, is that from our own quest for water, food, shelter, safety and belonging? We humans have an amazing capacity to tell a grand story about how we are so much above the lowliest forms of life. Maybe that just makes us feel good or at least a little better. But then, again, is cognition so much more than a grand feeling of what happens?

Perhaps Spinoza was just a century of so ahead of our poetry.

QUITTING TIME 4:15pm, 11-30.

Emotional Intelligence –

Psychologist Daniel Goleman gained attention with publication of his book on Emotional Intelligence or EQ, in which he emphasized the importance of being aware of how emotion influences others as well as control the expression one's own emotion in handling interpersonal relationships. In Goleman’s view handling these relationships involve five elements: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social kills. This entails effective communication while empathizing with others individually and within a group. It also enables seeking resolution of conflicts as well as overcoming challenges, which may be causing dissension and conflict. In short relationships are managed for a positive, win-win, outcome.

None of the skills involved in emotional intelligence are automatic or built in to our being. In that sense they rise above the behavioral elements built into the reptilian brain and body. Our pet Boa constrictor, doesn’t observe any such niceties when a good meal is needed and available. Goleman hits a useful although obvious note. Humans have not completely escaped the legacy of a our snake-like ancestors, and for some this is more obvious that for others. Socialization takes on new meaning and importance.

Although there are important individual differences among humans, it is widely recognized that development of a full range of social and emotional skills is desired and is possible with guidance and deliberate practice. Motivation to develop these skills is often the result of realizing that emotional skills contribute to success across a broad range of relationships in family, community and commercial environments. Success with a “kiss my ass” attitude is fraught to say the least.

Possession of a robust vocabulary enables naming of the emotional states and becomes a way to neutralize or defuse emotion laden situations that have potential to explode in a violent direction. Simply saying something like, “You seem to angry,” or “Did I make you mad” can pause a situation from getting out of control. Such a vocabulary can develop through awareness, training, trials and feedback. This may be greatly aided by being curious about people, their motivations and causes of emotional shifts, particularly the quick shifts that seem to come unexpectedly. Looking for triggers for these shifts may be helpfully informative.

Letting go is difficult but an important attribute. Holding grudges only makes it more difficult to putting mistakes behind and moving on to more productive activity—avoiding being stuck for instance rather than being able to manage a challenging situation.

Sometimes, though, people in a group can be noticeably toxic; they have mannerisms that turn others against them and dampen enthusiasm and productivity. Neutralizing their toxicity can greatly benefit progress within a group to build constructive relationships, foster creativity and enable conversations to evolve gently. Dealing with toxicity places demands on one or more members of the group to recognize the toxicity and creatively diffuse it. Knowledge and recognition of emotional intelligence may prove essential.

Every aspect of emotional intelligence can be improved where there is motivation to improve by acquiring knowledge and practicing skill in the use of that knowledge. Where skill in dealing with emotional intelligence does not come naturally there may be more uneven progress in improving. Generally speaking, however, any incremental improvement in dealing with your own emotions and the emotions of others is much better than making no progress at all.

Social Emotional Development –

Maslow identified belonging as a basic human need. The need to belong is present at birth and follows a life of dependent existence in the womb. The birthing process is stessful for both mother and child. The flow of hormones at parturition is well documented and among these hormones are oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin has been particularly well studied for its role in bonding and attachment. (citation?) Differences between oxytoxin and vasopressin are known but there are overlaps, which we will largely ignore.

Attachment is the result of affection, fondness, or sympathy for someone. Attachment is a deep and enduring emotional bond that develops between an adult and a child. The power of attachment in life is exemplified by the importance of attachment theory in development.

Attachment theory recognizes that every person has a fundamental need for a “secure base” from which they can develop. While this is certainly applicable to child development reflecting on it also reveals to me that this is a lifelong condition. When you don't have a secure base from which to operate it is nearly impossible to imagine how any need for personal development may emerge in one's thinking let along how any conceivable progress toward a more robust self-esteem may be able to emerge. Indeed attachment theory has been extended to adults. If anyone ventures thoughts that attachment is unimportant for continuing adult education, they should reexamine their thinking for some fairly obvious gaps.

Psychologist Mary Ainsworth (citation?) recognized that there are many important forms of attachment including avoidant attachment, anxious attachment, and disorganized attachment; all of which are detractions from a secure attachment and, it seems, almost certainly limit the potential for individuals.

Development of Executive Functions may be influenced by attachment early in life. (citation?)

Object Relations Theory is a part of psychoanalysis that influenced (given name) Bowby to articulate the importance of attachment and loss (of attachment?) in a series of three books between 1969 and 1982. His work encountered resistance because it questioned wide-spread psychological dogma regarding early social development (which was???) The importance of social attachment theory has emerged as a central element of early development for a child.

Attachment carries important biological ramifications. One element is relation of temperament and attachment in relation to immune system functioning at later periods of life. The importance of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis and its development pathways or patterns in early life due to stress has been well documented for the lifelong health of individuals subjected to intense and chronic stress in early life. Genetic elements are induced epigenetically through attachment mediation as well as modification of gene expressions related to critical neruotransmitters dopamine and serotonin and their receptors. The forms of attachment (see Ainsworth above) are influenced differently by physiological phenotypes linked to genetic markers. The implications for medical prognoses and potential interventions cannot be ignored where potential immunological alterations can be documented. The mysteries surrounding the variable responses to the COVID-19 virus are conspicuous and may be the result of overlooked or underlooked evidence from early childhood attachment dynamics. (says who?)

Criminal behavior is another potential application of attachment theory.

The range of attachment considerations has been published. (SEE Cassidy J, & Shaver PR (eds.). 2008. Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research and Clinical Applications. New York and London: Guilford Press.)

Attachment theory has been criticized by Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan arguing that early life attachments are not likely to be permanent. In other words, attachment is dynamic and may well be subject to dramatic swings across even just a few years. There is no long-term secure attachment and none should be expected to be reliable. (citation?)

Temperament and the influence of attachment in any or all of its forms may be in conflict. It almost looks as though the whole field of early child development is conflicted over the issue of nature v. nurture with temperament representing nature and genetic determinism while attachment theory comes down on the side of great environmental impacts through a robust nurturing environment. It seems to me that the jury is still out. Little can be done about the genetic and epigenetic endowments of a child. Maybe temperament is not anywhere alterable. However, attachment can be controlled and until the jury comes in with a verdict, parents and all of society may be well advised to do what is possible to assure a child is cared for by maximally loving parents and guardians; and that peer relationships are healthy.

Why would anyone but a famous Harvard psychologist argue otherwise? Empiricism can't be ignored, so let's see the numbers if and where reliable numbers are to be found.

Mary Helen Imordino Yang, herself a Harvard grad now at University of Southern California, has begun to apply the findings of neuroscience to the matters of emotion in school-age children. Her work and that of others will continue to enlarge understanding of critically important facets of the social-emotional relationships in the early years. As has happened with our understanding of stress and trauma, new findings in the emotional or affective domain of life may be extended beyond the school environments to influence thinking about a lifelong existence with all of its emotional entanglements and uncertainties. Potential consequences for society writ large are huge.

Manifestations –

Schools are particularly troubled by the elements of emotion. While schools have been formulated and charged with responsibility to deliver to society a population that is able to read, write and make effective uses of numbers, the capacity to carry out this charge is hampered by almost all of the emotional baggage carried into the schools by almost everyone who enters. Success, of course, is greatly dependent on the capacity of individuals to control a broad range of emotions across school days that blend across weeks, minths and years. The march of time in, for and by schools us for the most part unrelieved and one result is stress that builds toward emotional outbursts. These outbursts often take others by surprise and may be highly disruptive. Yet it is almost instantly necessary to control the outbursts and do so effectively. This means reduction of the time taken away from others by the attention needed to deal with the outbursts.

The classroom may be or become a tinder box for emotional explosions. Management is a function of the teacher and her or his response may determine the impact on others. These outbursts can take on so many forms that a complete exposition would be way outside the scope of this chapter. Yet it must be recognized that management of the classroom is largely a matter of managing emotions as they flow across the school day. At some level it is really a miracle that teachers are able to sustain a classroom environment that endures the emotional ebb and flow of the individuals in the classroom.

The conditions of the classroom are themselves intrinsically able to maintain control. An outburst may be avoided by a child who has from some prior experience realized the consequences of an emotional display. The rules outlined and enforced by the teacher about talking, raising the hand, etc. may establish a condition that precludes a child from excessive and inappropriate vocalizations or other physical display based on an emotion.

Crying is not cool even among the very young in a classroom. The child’s peers may respond with empathy or shame among a range of other reactions. Since there is little likelihood that a classroom of children would rebel or create an insurrection over another childs punishment, the teacher is constrained only by state statute or school-based rules for meting out punishments for misbehavior. Although it must also be recognized that children leave the school in the afternoon and may go home to tell their parents their version of what happened to a classmate. Teachers that push the law or rules may find themselves in administrative hot water if the parents become concerned. Administrators are apt to be supportive of a teacher’s managing order in the classroom by suppressing emotional outbursts.

It seems very probable that the personal need to control emotions leads to a dislike for the conditions of a school. This may well be one of the reasons for the tacit dropout that occurs with far too many — perhaps up to a third of students before completion of third grade or nominally around the age of 7-9 years. The loss of interest and enthusiasm for continuing may be overwhelmed by societal pressures, the belonging engendered by friends or the mandates from within the family including parents and siblings. School is, after all, the thing, the only thing, for a child to do. Go to school or go away. And for the child withing the earliest decade of development there is effectively no “away” from school.

Society need to ask if there is another way to support these dropaway kids. Clearly they don't “drop out” as out is never an option. No one in the child's life can envision an option regarding school attendance. This may be the great reason that Every Child Deserves A Champion. Advocates for the unique needs of a child who is not able to adapt to the school environment for any number of salient reasons including but not limited to time of day and duration of the school day being too long or even maybe too short, personal state of energy, interest and enthusiasm for what is dictated by a teacher, principal or administrative dictator, home support including not only parents but also siblings if present, birth order, nutrition, friends, prior development, stage of development, and so on. Children are not able to speak for themselves any more than a forest animal or a tree can speak for itself. The true champion must be able to shed history and bias while finding the best, or at the very least, a suitable path forward to foster truly educational values for a child. Loss of esteem can be a lifelong and life-wide consequence of neglect for early neglect of social and emotional skill, knowledge and attitude.

Recommended Reading and Sources

Daniel Goleman. 2012. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Bantam.

Antonio Damasio 4X

Joseph LeDoux 2/x

Lisa Feldman Barrett. 2017. How Emotions are Made. Kindle.

Michael Tomasello. 2021. Becoming Human:

Mary Helen Immordino Yang . Developing Resilience …

Citations in the section on social emotional development …

Chapter XVI

Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that involves genetics.

Steven Pinker

Psychology & Evolution

Mysteries of the mind have been daunting for scholars across centuries. The search for understanding human nature has a long history and gave rise to speculations about the mind by philosophers and theologians. While theological explanations invoked the power of deity over human life with references to soul and spirit broadly or minutely, philosophers like the Harvard scholar William James, questioned both soul and spirit while seeking to understand the mind such as in terms of free will or determinism. Dichotomy stretching forward prospectively from Rene’ Descartes mind-body dualism heralded great divisions. Enigma and paradox of mind functions and body functions, as with habits or fixed patterns of behavior that could be altered by thought induced choice or “will” raised new questions and expanded speculations. Eventually the rise of science began to intrude on the various avenues of speculation about the human psyche. Psychology as a scholarly discipline emerged with the Twentieth Century. William James wrote the textbook emphasizing perception and remained its leading light for decades.

The work of Russsian physiologist Ivan Pavlov opened a new window on the mind and psyche. His experiments using a dog, paired a bell with presentation of food. After a few trials, the dog would salivate, anticipating food, when just the bell rang. The link between mind and body was demonstrated. This work continues to influence educational practice and the resulting behaviorism remains a foundation for theories of learning. Yet there remains no limit to the speculations brought forth by a crowd of individuals and groups (schools) who have proposed answers and advanced the scientific study of mind under the broad tent of psychology. Across a career spanning 45 years as head of a physiology laboratory in St. Petersburg, Ruissia, Pavlov brought experimental techniques to bear on studies of the nervous system and the functional responses of distinct personality types in responses to physiological shock and stress. (citation?)

For decades J.B. Watson and B.F. Skinner, also at Harvard, developed experimental tools for empirical studies of behavior to the near exclusion of searching for a role for the brain; concluding that brain functions were not accessible. Based on Pavlov’s studies, as well as those of Edward Thorndike at Columbia Teacher’s College, the concepts of conditioning emerged to dominate psychology and threaded an enormous pathway within education. John Dewey, also at Columbia, tackled the challenges of education at the level of democracy and society.

Early speculations by philosophers gave way to empirical studies and publications under the branches of behaviorism and cognitive as well as others. One of the others is, of course, educational psychology, which is currently morphing into education science, which increasingly relies on the specialized field of psychometrics as an extreme expression of empiricism. These empiricists are able to process enormous volumes of data using modern mammoth computers and highly sophisticated algorithms tied to the goals and aspirations of the practitioners developing artificial intelligence (AI).

By the mid 1970s psychological scientists began to merge with biology and labels such as psychobiology began to appear recognizing that psychology shared principles with biology. These fundamentals include gene-guided cellular function in development and the role of genes in evolution and development. Within the biological sciences interdisciplinary labels such as neuroendocrine provided bridges to link isolated research about control of hormones by actions of specific anatomical brain regions. For instance, one part of the brain's hypothalamus was found to influence the production of sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone as well as testosterone; while another part was found to produce and release vasopressin and oxytocin, important hormones regulating blood flow, breast milk production and psychological bonding. A fascinating link was psychoneuroimmunology, which was endorsed by the famous immunologist Robert Good, when he observed how hypnotic suggestion could induce an immune respons on the opposite arm for which the immune stimulus was induced.16 One result of these important interdisciplinary initiatives and outcomes was the emergence of Evolutionary Psychology.

With the above as historical background, this chapter will consider Evolutionary Psychology in its broad landscape within psychology and education. In addition to a risky but brief look at some pioneers of biological and evolutionary thinking in psychology, I will venture into some fascinating concepts that bring studies of perception into focal points of the mind and brain physiology. The importance of stress in shaping both evolutionary adaptations as well as personal resilience to stress has taken on a new level of importance for education. We;ll return to the topic of stress to add context, without being too repetitious, to what has already been said in Chapter XIII. Then we’ll return to a more recent development of what has become known as embodied psychology. As a result of reading this chapter you should gain a sense that while it is possible to analyze behavior to develop important concepts about the mind, much remains for research and future conceptual development. The following chapter will take us into matters of molecular biology and genetics, which serious scholarship is no longer able to ignore.

We'll begin with brief commentary on perception.

Perception, Expression & Mind

Dissection of an animal with a backbone reveals with clarity the connections between organs of perception, most obviously the eyes, and the brain. Teasing out the nerves of the ears, tongue, skin and muscle takes longer and a bit more skill, but these connections have been so thoroughly documented and repeated that passage of these signals are a common part of knowledge among anatomists, biologists and psychologists.

What happens in the brain is not so obvious, although an enormous range of information has accumulated in the literature. Processing of the visual signals is known to begin, for example, in the elaborate connections of cells within the retina. Signals from the retina then course or flow through several brain structures before reaching the brain’s occipital lobe and the brain’s outer layer of cells—the cerebral occipital cortex—also known as the visual cortex. Here the signals are processed and become associated with other active signals and stored memory to elicit an appropriate response. Laboratory studies involving comparative anatomy, physiology, and experimental pathology of vision correlates observations with behavior. For instance, snakes and frogs responses to movement begins in the retina and triggers the rapid reflex movements needed to capture prey; a flying insect for the frog and a vole or mouse or a frog for the snake. No thought or higher level actions of the mind seems necessary. A literal no brainer! Or, so it seems.

Yet even the tiny and seemingly incomplete anatomy of a frog or snake brain, includes structures also represented in bird brains, in mouse and monkey brains and inthe human brain. What ever brain processing happens when a frog detects a fly in its visual field, is very likely also happening in identical primitive brains parts in a human. However, it is also clear that human movements are not purely reflexive. If sufficiently irritated by the fly’s presence, humans will locate a rolled-up newspaper or a fly-swatter, stalk the fly, and attempt to kill it with a quick swing of paper or swatter. Not infrequently we discover that the fly’s reflexes are much better than ours. The fly survives to irritate us another time. So we invent sticky paper, or purchase someone else’s invention of sticky paper, to trap a few flies at a time. Or we spray insecticides with a different commercialized invention. Brain power! Or, so it seems.

The connections between our perceptions and the activation and function of our mind is an ongoing challenge for biology and psychology. That, in no small part, is due to our incomplete understanding of mind, which is, and has been for centuries, baffling to say the least. Mental activity involves multiple levels of complexity ranging from outsmarting an annoying fly to making sense of our place in the cosmos. Inherent in this complexity is our consciousness and how consciousness has evolved. And … may continue to evolve.

The linking of consciousness and perceptions seems obvious enough. Our lack of response to light, sound, taste or touch is a sign or signal that consciousness is not present. Clearly enough, something is going on, and that “something” is a matter of mind.

Sensorimotor systems for which the brain provides coordination … . Coordination thus is an essential component for a multicellular organism and this, particularly, for animals, although plants and fungi also exhibit movements through directed cell growth to assure access to nutrients and elimination of waste. Witness root growth-seeking water and nutrients; or, the orienting of a leaf toward sunlight and the opening and closing of leaf stomata for intake of carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and release of oxygen as a by-product or waste product of splitting water in photosynthesis. Protists (bacteria) grow or swim toward nutrients and away from excess metabolic waste.

Varela, Thompson and Rosch (1991) advanced our thinking about cognition and consciousness, and later Evan Thompson, synthesized (2010) and extended the late Francisco Varela’s research into the philosophical conundrums of phenomenology; a first-person account and maybe our only source of what happens in the brain. Phenomenology coordinated and correlated with neuroscience tools like electroencephalography and computerized tomography (CAT, fMRI, PET scanning) may be our window like that of a Peeping Tom. Yet daunting questions remain for others to contemplate and struggle with explanations, hypotheses and experiments to uncover empirical data to aid our understanding of our embodied minds.

Which (above) may bring to mind the question(s) regarding thinking and reasoning, which should be address before closing this section of the chapter. Cognition is often the sine qua non of and for education and attributes of consciousness are clearly in play for education. Teaching for thinking is a central focus once certain social and behavioral skills regarding language and number knowledge-based skills are considered to be sufficiently mastered. Vocabulary and grammatical use has reached some minimally sufficient level and number facts for arithmetic are demonstrated. Reading and listening is established at suitable levels of progress. Socialization enables productive participation in a small group. In other words, there is qualification for additional development of skills and knowledge along with formation of positive, productive attitudes regarding self and values related to further education.

Whatever the mind is or may be, it is never separate from the body. And, perception in all of its complexity is no more or less essential than expression.

Stress & Resilience

Stress is a part of life. Being able to cope with stress is a necessary element for development of skills and knowledge; and stress is strongly reflected in our attitudes. We live with a constant need to balance stress and put potential and actual stressful elements of daily living into a workable perspective. That is resilience and may well reflect positive attitudes.

Response to stress is physiological and mediated through a combination of hormonal output and a balancing act between two evolutionarily enduring components of the nervous system known as the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions. Combined these divisions are known as the Autonomic Nervous System or ANS. It is the sympathetic division that is activated when certain events intrude on tranquility, such as the encounter with a bear while strolling along a beautiful, peaceful wooded path. Seeing a bear, a perception, reflexively activates an embodied response which immediately speeds the heart beat, dialates the iris of the eyes, redirects blood to muscles, instantly tenses and freezes muscle action and sends messages via nerves to the adrenal gland to dump activating hormones—adrenalin—into the blood. The the liver releases sugar and the pancreas releases insulin so body cells are better able to mobilize energy from the sugar. The body is prepared to flee the scene by turning to run back down the path or to fight if the bear attacks.

Those trained in the way of the woods know that outrunning the bear is impossible. The best course of action is to sustain the freeze. Eventually the bear strolls away and the activated body systems begin to become “normal” because the other division, the parasympathetic, has been activated.

We may say that the stress of encountering a bear along the trail is an acute stimulus of the ANS. However, sometimes the circumstances or environment of life is a constant source of stress. This is chronic stress. The result is a constant elevated state of sympathetic activity stimulating body organs. Over 50 years ago Hans Selye, a medical research-physician, recognized that chronic stress requires adaptation that involves changes in many body organs including enlargement of the adrenal gland’s shell or cortex. He called this the General Adaption Syndrome, aka GAS. Dealing with chronic stress may well be an adaptation built into our physiological responses to stress. Such adaptation is a part of what we call resilience.

Differences regarding resilience take many forms and are abundantly observed with individuals and communities. However much these differences are manifest in individuals, they are multiplied in communities. We treat resilience as a trait of character. Some seem to have resilience and others lack it. Coping is another term related to resilience.

In chapter XIII stress was highlighted. Before moving on to genetics and molecular biology, we will dive a little deeper into the biology of stress to provide a foundation for consideration of resilience and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) which, as simply adverse experiences, are not necessarily confined to childhood. The GAS is not age-limited, although its expresion and individual responses are not easily separated or categorized for analysis.

Adverse experiences are those from which there seems no escape. The result is chronic or unrelieved stress on body systems. These stresses are mediated by coordination at the level of the brain and spinal cord including the ANS.

The functioning of these two divisions are quite different. The sympathetic—aka, Thoraco-Lumbar division—secrets a neurotransmiter very similar to adrenalin which generally speeds up many body functions while slowing down certain other body functions. The body systems or functions that speed up are those needed to respond to immediate threat.

The existence of these systems for dealing with stress are nearly impossible to either deny or ignore. Accordingly it is essential for any system for understanding them to consider where did they come from and why did they develop. The facile but correct answer is consideration for evolutionary origins. Human existence in our evolutionary past was undoubtedly short, traumatic and brutal. Life in the forest or plain made human life a target for predators. Humans themselves were a threat to other forms of life and those other forms developed the same fight or flight responses to the presence of not just humans, of course, but many other predators. Flight of the hunted prevented success of the hunter. Fighting could also prevent success of the hunter as well as providing success in the form of food. The early life of humans was not separated from the basics of all ecology—eat or be eaten.

Evolutionary psychology reinforces understanding of our contemporary responses to stress by recognizing our evolutionary history. There has been nothing mystical or magical that has removed these highly refined, however primitive, elements of the human brain-body partnership for survival. The parts and functions of the brain make sense only when their connections with the body are fully accounted through recognizing their evolutionary history.

Resilience

How is it possible to account for the differences exhibited by children and adults regarding their capacity and ability to cope with stress in their lives?

Studies by Maston and Garmezy17 at the University of Minnesota as well as others (citation) have revealed that resilience (aka, Grit) encompasses a range of complex characteristics that include psycho-social as well as biological elements; all of which are brought together under the big umbrella of neuroscience. It is very likely the case that the elements of resilience may be developed when the right mixture of support surrounds the individual—mind, body and social.

Comptence in dealing with adversity and stress has been shown to include social support.18 Enabling such support can be fostered by optimistic personality traits, skills in deflecting threats to cope with an immediate circumstance, and, most importantly a sense or feeling of mastery of self that enables control. Needless to say physical development is very important while cognitive development will enable a rapid, successful search for options and choices that can respond effectively to threat. In the absence of cognitive alternatives an individual can feel trapped, out of control and the depth of stress may rise.

Optimistic personalities considered broadly, are clearly a factor that would be attributed to the bailiwick of psychology. If as some studies suggest, optimistic individuals may be somewhat less susceptible to chronic stress in their lives, it may be worthwhile considering how this may have emerged within our historical heritage. What genetic factors could be involved and how would these factors be inherited across literally hundreds of generations? Contemporary studies with experimental animals, using gene editing techniques (see Chapter XVII) specific genes can be inactivated (knocked-out) and a loss of function may follow in offspring. What if this “knock-out happened spontaneously many generations past? Animals, less likely to react to a stressor may have passed the trait on to their offspring. There is no apparent reason that such situations in other animals could not have also applied to humans.

Given that our stress responses are very likely the result of our pre-historical heritage, what else can we infer about our psychological history? These inferences lead to an emerging discipline of importance to any consideration of Education's Ecology, our human evolution.

Evolutionary Psychology

In the broad landscape of biology, structures and functions are examined within an evolutionary perspective. Our most useful mental traits including perception, memory, and language are are seen as adaptations that have enabled the human species to survive and thrive as environments have changed across long expanses of time. The current state of these traits as well as our consciousness and capacity to process knowledge is increasingly recognized as a result of selections—natural, kin and sexual—that have highlighted mechanisms of competition as well as cooperation. Our historical legacy is now broadly recognized beyond biology and embraced, at least partially or tentatively, by much of psychology.

Explaining our behavior in light of established science of mind and evolution has been a more daunting consideration for most psychologists as well as those biologists engaged in some parts of animal behavior or ethology. While evolutionary psychology may seem obviousness to most biologists, there is a significant core within psychology that seem to remain oblivious to evolutionary thinking in their scholarship, practice and research. Darren Burke writing in Frontiers of Psychology asks: Why Isn't Everyone an Evolutionary Psychologist? and then cites a half dozen reasons for psychologists remaining refractory to evolutionary explanations based on evolutionary mechanisms. Consensus on or around an evolutionary psychology is incomplete. (citation?)

Incredibly, education is left out of a long list of contemporary applications of evolutionary psychology. Considerations for economics, environmental policy, health policy, the law, management, politics, literature as well as certain medical divisions like psychiatry, continue with alternate paradigms for how we got where we are today; alternatives that reluctantly include or firmly exclude the tenets of evolutionary psychology. Tracing certain historical roots is limited to a mere 4,000 years of written records, in spite of excellence evidence from paleontology that human (Homo sapiens) roots extend back in excess of 50,000 years. Our contemporary human traits, in part and in total, are no less influenced by evolution than are the traits of Siberian Tigers, Mediterranean Fruit Flies or Zea mays. There are, at least, potential evolutionary explanations for what we are today. For education, we may legitimately ask; So what? What difference does it make if we acknowledge our human evolutionary heritages? Admittedly for the classroom teacher, there is little to be gained by thinking of all the 20-30 little cherubs as creatures of evolution. S/he needs a management solution now!

Modularity of the brain seems an obvious observable fact at the gross and microscopic levels of anatomy. Functional modularity is not so obvious. The Gray Matter areas (brain nuclei) both large and small seem to stand out anatomically as modular structures and are connected withing the brain and externally with body organs—muscles, glands, sensory structures and so forth—with conspicuous white matter—active tracts now known with increasing detail using modern tools—to carry essential signals back and forth between Gray Matter areas, and, often involving several of these areas simultaneously. External body structures connecting with the brain are part of this network. This makes declarations of functional modules problematic for neuroscientists. Accordingly, the concept of discrete brain modules with specific functions is elusive. Accordingly as I use “modules and modularity” below the reader is advised to interpret the use gingerly.

Comparative anatomy reveals that the various parts of module-like elements of the brain have evolved across phyla, but more relevant to the human condition, of course, is the evolution within classifications such as amphibians, reptiles, birds (avians) and mammals. In addition selection at the level of the gene or molecular level of organization that enables development of critical adaptations involving anatomy, physiology and behavior with all of their interrelationships. As an example, the evolution of tool use was made possible by the evolution of an opposable thumb to grasp the tools as well as evolution of critical hand-eye-brain modules to coordinate the actions of behavior. This is highly complex but is casually passed off with a phrase like hand-eye coordination.

Evolutionary Psychology is often characterized through studying modules of the mind. As mentioned, anatomically this makes sense. The brain's architecture includes many obvious centers of gray matter that have been amply demonstrated to afford a multitude of functions ranging from internal regulation of temperature, hunger, circulation and hormonal flow as well as our internal clocks, to reception of external sensations, integration and responses that are very nearly automatic within the range of choices that we are able to make. Enormously basic to evolutionary psychology is the concept that these modules have each individually as well as collectively been changed and modified genetically to enable adaptation critical tpo survival. Our contemporary capacities to deal with our lives is a result of what these modules are able to do in guiding behavior.

Not least among the modules are those that track, test and provide critical feedback for our emotions in a fully social context. Modules enable development and modification of what may be called habits of mind. Yet habits may only seem locked in. Clearly variation is both apparent and important. Denying variation as a property of the human species makes no biological or evolutionary sense.

The current state of modules is a snapshot in time that has passed and time that will emerge. Nevertheless the current understanding of functioning modules and module coordination stands as a challenge to all of psychology, biology and humanism. Our human nature has yet to be fully understood by anyone, certainly not the least of which are educators who are increasingly charged by society with finding and “teaching” solutions to human foibles.

Every actual or putative brain module has multiple inputs and outputs. A module may include a tiny cluster of a few neurons, cells of the brain, each receiving inputs from synapses on their dendrites and cell bodies and generating outputs by way of axon terminals. Every synapse is modulated by electrical signals and neurotransmitter molecules. Accordingly all of the millions of inputs and outputs are continuously capable of modification and coordination, often extremely delicate and subtle, is never unnecessary. The multitude of connections creates potential for what has been called a combinatorial explosion, the full extent of which is virtually beyond comprehension. It pretty clearly takes an enormous amount of hubris to run around the world claiming to understand the working of the brain and mind. At least the brain is tangible. The mind, not so much. Yet education must inevitably deal with both.

Cognitive modules such as: language-acquisition modules, incest-avoidance mechanisms, cheater-detection tools, intelligence and sex specific mate selection preferences, foraging mechanisms, alliance-tracking mechanisms, agent-detection mechanisms are putative explanations that have been proposed and received some attention in the literature of evolutionary biologists and psychologists. Some of these such as language-acquisition, attach to famous scholars such as Noam Chomsky.

If modules are putatively pre-wired for spacific functions, actions of the module may be categorized as specific or general. For instance a language module may enable acquisition of any of hundreds of different languages. However acquisition of a particular language will depend upon languages spoken in a particular environment and at a particular time of life. A window for acquisition of language or of certain aspects of langugage such a phonemes remains open early and seems to at least partially close with age. Phonemes relate to accents in speaking and these may be much harder to shed with advancing age. Nevertheless, attaching a function to a particular brain region is often fraught when multiple regions are engaged to acquire a skill such as language. Our understanding of language acquisition certainly remains incomplete.

The contemporary study of evolutionary psychology is highly interdisciplinary and draws on studies of linguistics, natural language and artificial intelligence, behavioral ecology and ethology, molecular genetics and genomics as well as proteomics, metabolomics, and epigenomics. Related fields including archeology, anthropology, ethology, economic botany and zoology and animal husbandry as well as sociobiology are brought into scholarship on evolutionary psychology. It should be emphasized that sociobiology is widely regarded as tipping the scales of thinking about human nature in a direction that attempts to critically incorporate or integrate principles of evolutionary biology. One result is a broad and high stacking of hypotheses representing rich food for experimental science. It is entirely too early to predict the outcome of this research but it is foolish to not acknowledge our ignorance and withhold belligerent judgments, statements and actions. The questions from evolutionary psychology are much more exciting that the statements of the mostly ignorant public voices of media and, yes, educators. (citation .. see Art. Kaplan …)

Evolutionary psychology relies on psychological mechanisms that are corollary for instincts and drives that are basics to the science of animal behavior—ethology. Ethology embraces the whole range of animals from round worms to mammals. Enormous work has been done with the social arthropods including ants and bees. The result was the 1975 publication by E. O. Wilson of Sociobiology. The book contained a host of solid research results, but unfortunately its messages were sidelined by the premature imputation of certain principles to apply to human societies. (Citation Kaplan et al )

The field of cognitive psychology relies to a substantial extent on the metaphor of computing and the model of the mind is embedded with the principles of evolutionary psychology. It is even said by Cosmides and Tooby (cited by Pinker) that the brain is a computer. While there is a cogent case to support their view, there is also some very important differences between the brain as a cellular based computing device and the silicone microchips embedded in your laptop or even the supercomputers built by Cray or IBM.

Emerging quantum computers may alter this view. The artificial intelligence algorithms written by human programmers are or sometimes seem to be carrying out wonderful functions that bear some resemblance to the human brain. Applications such as ChatGPT and other generative AI that can write their own coded algorithms are stunning to say the least. However it is necessary to pause and reflect on the enormity of difference. It is the case that studies of brain functions in perception and behavior will inform goals and aspirations of the AI programmers even as what they do will also inform brain science. How can a brain do this or that? Then it is necessary to add the question; Why does a brain do that? It is also to be necessary and important to recognize that our main source of information about how and why the brain does something is the behavior of the body of which the brain is an inextricable part. Is it possible that the massive computers needed for AI will have to acquire a body?

There is a great deal of connection with developmental psychology and cognitive psychology. However, it is also clear that while the brain and its development is central to all of psychology, there remains a reluctance on the part of too many psychologists and sociologists to get on board with the notion that biology is foundational and that everything about human behavior sits astride the biological sciences. If a notion from psychology or sociology does not fit with an established principle of biology, the psychologist or sociologist will be obliged to make a case that there is something wrong or grossly incomplete with the biological principle with which they find objection or fault.

It is important to recognize that the brain and body evolved to meet the measure of environmental conditions that are greatly difference from those that exist today, even in societal situations that may seem quite primitive.

Embodied Psychology

Beyond evolutionary psychology pulling the study of mind away from the psyche and toward the biological sciences is another emerging consideration referred to as embodied psychology. It is now increasingly clear to psychologists and neuroscientists alike that not only does the brain connect to the body and vice versa, but brain function is intimately associated with what is going on tn the body.

None of this is to say or even suggest that biology, neuroscience, psychology or philosophers of mind are confidently close to understanding how the mind works. The study of brain modularity takes at least two paths. One recognizes a limited role for modules while attributing the significant human functions to a large central domain-general function that could embrace learning and support much of learning theory including, importantly, the enormous variation observed throughout much of thinking about how learning and so many other aspects of human behavior is highly variable.

Another path is called massive modularity. This path postulates that all of brain functions including this thing we call “learning” results from developmental processes that have been the result of human evolution across no less than several million years or at least since the earliest appearance of the genus Homo at the dawn of the Pleistocene. Body and mind have emerged and evolved together.

It may well be that humanity's greatest challenge is to use the mind-tools, our brain modules that evolved so long ago to come to grips with what our species Homo sapiens has done to our home, our ecosystems, our earth in the mere blink of the eye in geologic time—creating a new epoch—the anthropocene.

Now at the risk of making a chapter that is already too long, way too long, I must comment on “learning” in the context of psychology … and EvoDevo. Learning has become a “catch all” term of art that adds confusion to the messy environment for education. Habits, instinct, tropisms are exhibited by the whole spectrum of animals and even plants (tropisms) and have been treated as examples of “learning” in both ethology and psychology, along with instrumental and operant conditioning, and so forth. My objection of continuing to use learning in education is itself fraught. However, I see a path forward through the thickets of human evolution and development, EvoDevo. I’ll leave more on that for later chapters and the Epilogue.

Summary for Chapter XXVI

The mind is certainly integral to education. However, this chapter recognizes that the mind is integral with the body and may best be considered “embodied” in the sense that whatever attributes of consciousness are inherent in brain fruntion, they are entirely dependent upon input to the brain from constant body-wide, life-wide signaling. And, of equal importance is that whatever outputs the brain may generate, the expression of those outputs requires multiple functional attributes of the body. This likely includes the memory of thought, which may or may not involve representations in physical brain structures.

Thought and thinking

Recommended Reading & Sources

Downes, Stephen M., "Evolutionary Psychology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/evolutionary-psychology/>.

Leda Cosmides & John Tooby. 2005. (sourced from SEP.

Stephen Pinker. 1997. How the Brain Works?

Antonio Damasio. Xxxx. Deacartes Error.

Dennett, Daniel. Xxxx. Darwin's Dangerous Idea,

.19

E. O. Wilson of Sociobiology

Chapter XVII

Genetics is about how information is stored and transmitted between generations.

John Maynard Smith

The Omics Revolution

Genetics & Our Social Self

Ever sicne Darwin the study of life has never been the same. By itself a Darwin’s scholarship was Scientific Revolution. Charles Darwin’s evidence for evolution settled a thread of conversation that had been going on for many years among naturalists. Some historians of biology take the concepts of taxonomy and phylogeny back to Aristotle. The formal classification and naming of species is attributed to the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnae who introduced the system of binomial nomenclature for naming plants and animals. Linnae believed, consistent with Biblical teaching (aka, dogma), that all forms or species of plants and animals were created by a supernatural being in one week and have descended, unmodified from that single momentous act of God, to the present day. Challenging that is what got Charles Darwin in so much trouble among church leaders and their followers. This trouble continues today. However, the science of biology is undergoing another revolution—The Omics Revolution—perhaps with bigger impact than that of Darwin.

Together with Alfred Russell Wallace, Darwin also described a mechanism for evolution through natural selection, which simply means that for any organism (species) the population has variation and that nature, not God, selects those that are most fit or adapted for the place or places in which they normally live. Thus Darwin demonstrated that variation is normal and that the species we observe today are the descendents of life from the past. Darwin documented change. But he was unable to explain how traits or characteristics are passed from one generation to their progeny.

Darwin and a few others, particularly Lamarck, believed that organisms acquired characteristics during their lifetime and passed these traits or characteristics on to their offspring. It took scientists in the newly recognized field of biology to recognize that organisms do not inherit acquired characteristics; but there was plenty of confusion until an Austrian Monk Gregor Mendel opened a new way of thinking about inheritance. His work with garden peas showed that inheritance was particulate. After his work was discovered in a few years after 1900, these particles of inheritance were named genes. The study of genetics became a focus of biology. And, the fusion of genetics with the concepts of natural selection set biology on a firm intellectual foundation based on science.

In the four decades between 1910 and 1950 much was learned about genetics and the patterns of inheritance but the physical substance of the gene remained unknown. In this chapter we'll look at the remarkable discoveries in the firld of genetics that bring us to the status of contemporary biology. What follows will take us briefly into the realm of biochemistry and molecular biology. To be brief, leaving out many details will be necessary as we look at discovery of DNA and RNA, the role of protein, current concepts of the gene and how genes are expressed, the human genome project, model organisms, and how gene expression is modified in development.

The genomics or omics revolution began with the human genome project which was enabled by instrumentation tools and techniques, that made possible the reading of detailed sequence information in DNA. Unfortunately the genome project resulted in a concept of the supremacy of DNA. We now witness this with the frequent expressions like It is in our DNA. This implies that DNA is the supreme command and authority, ordering every detail for all of life. A Hierarchy. Yet it is abundantly clear that isolated DNA does nothing. For DNA to perform its most basic function, that of replication, it must be present in and supported by the entire biochemmical—metabolic—machinery or apparatus of a cell. It is a cell that is autopoietic and metabolic—self-replicating and the basic or fundamental form of life. It is this recongnition that makes The Omics Revolution so fundamentally important. Conceptually and practically this chapter will look into and describe The Omics Revolution.

The Omics Revolution embraces the genome, the transcriptome, the proteome, the metabolome among other Omics and the controlling functions embedded in the epigenome, which supports an interplay of these Omics with the environment. These Omics afford all of biology the capacity for looking at the developed and developing connections—the connectome—of the nervous system, and the molecular functionality and development of every body organ. It as well enables an emerging field called sociogenomics, which likely begins with relationships at the protein level. Embedded in all of this is the mechanisms of the cell in controlling the expression of coded information in DNA. And so we begin with an exploration of DNA.

Discovery Of DNA And RNA

DNA and RNA are called nucleic acids because their presence is most conspicuous in the nucleus of a eukaryotic cell. The discovery of DNA dates back to 1869, but it was not until 1944 that it was firmly linked to genes. Biochemists around the world studied nucleic acids and found that these extremely large molecules were made up of smaller molecules, subunits, or bases, called nucleotides. Two types of nucleotides were found; purines and pyrimidines and analyzed. The analysis revealed important chemical differences, importantly by their structure and size; purines being larger. The ratios of purine and pyrimidine bases were analyzed in DNA extracted from single species and different sepcies. These ratios of purines and pyrimidines bases of DNA were found to be curiously constant for a given species but variable between different species.

Using a host of information from such analysis, James Watson and Francis Crick, with important support from Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, were able tp propose a structure, the now famous double helix for DNA that proved to be elegant and explained much about how genes were able to make exact copies to pass along to a new generation of cells and organisms. RNA remained mysterious until Crick proposed that RNA was necessary for making protein. He also recognized that along a length of DNA a group of three nucleotides could serve as a code for the assembly of the twenty different units—the amino acids—the structural subunits present in all proteins. This meant that a code written with the nucleotides of DNA could be passed to RNA with RNA serving to specify or stipulate the exact sequence of amino acids in protein. This became known as the Central Dogma of a new discipline—molecular biology—a way of explaining the properties of life through precise knowledge of the structure of three principle molecules of life—DNA, RNA and Protein.

Role of Protein

A mentor once said to me about teaching biology; If you teach about biology and haven't talked about protein, you haven't said anything. The implication is that everything about life is a story of protein. Protein is the essential foundation for every aspect of metabolism. Metabolism is the sum total of all of the chemical reactions occurring in cells. Every cell performs literally thousands of different changes or reactions in the chemical molecules present in the cell. The key to understanding the importance of protein is to understand how these myriad reactions are even possible within the conditions present in the cell.

Most chemical reactions studied by chemists (or chemistry students) in the laboratory will proceed at a fixed rate. This rate will typically be very slow. To speed up the reaction in the laboratory the chemist can raise the temperature or add more of the chemicals involved. Chemists also discovered another trick. They could add a catalyst, typically finely ground or shaved metals like iron, nickel, copper, molybdenum or zinc.

Living cells don’t tolerate any of these conditions. High temperatures kill, high concentrations of chemicals are toxic and the metal catalysts are typically poisonous. The trick of the living cell is to make its own catalysts. What cells make to speed up chemical reactions at ordinary temperatures and low concentrations is protein. The catalysts of a living cell are protein and these proteins are called enzymes.

While the catalysts of metabolic reactions are enzymes and just about every enzyme is a protein, it is simply imposable to ignore what proteins do. The huge question, then, is how do they do their catalytic work. The key to understanding this is to understand the three dimensional structure of protein. Each reaction within a cell literally requires, with very, very few exceptions, a different protein to enable a reaction. Accordingly, every cell, no matter how simple or how complex, must produce thousands of different proteins, which act as organic catalysts—enzymes.

Please note: enzymes are named using the suffix -ase. For example, a fat or lipid enzyme is called a lipase. A sucrose digesting enzyme is a sucrase.

Furthermore the timing of appearance of each enzyme is important. It has become clear that proteins and enzymes are controlled by instructions provided by DNA.

Gene Expression

The Central Dogma of biology was articulated by Francis Crick. He recognized the link between protein and the gene required an intermediate. The Central Dogma was recognized as a flow of genetic information. DNA → RNA → Protein. The first step; DNA → RNA is called transcription. The second step RNA → Protein is called translation. The DNA is unique for each species and therefore must be faithfully preserved from generation to generation and also from cell to cell in multicellular organisms, which begin life as a single cell or zygote that forms with the union of an egg with a sperm. Hence DNA → DNA is called replication.

A word about Dogma is needed. Dogma is an unquestioned assertion. Crick’s initial use of Dogma reflected this connotation, recognizing that it is a universal attribute of life that is central to all of our thinking about life. Initially it seemed entirely defensible that information could only flow in one direction. However, this was not for long unquestioned. A few microbiologists asked: What about viruses that have only RNA and are able to replicate or reproduce when in living cells? Shortly research in California and Wisconsin, revealed that these RNA viruses have an enzyme that first copies the RNA code to DNA, which then makes viral RNA and that RNA makes the viral proteins. This enzyme is called, reverse transcriptase. This may underscore that no belief about life is unquestioned. Indeed, it is questioning is central to all of the biological sciences.

Transcription of DNA to RNA is huge because it reveals the function of our genes and can do so across time spans from milliseconds to years. What was once regarded as three types of RNA—messenger RNA or mRNA, transfer RNA or tRNA and ribosomal RNA or rRNA—has now expanded into several dozen forms of RNA that exert important controls for how and when DNA is expressed. Messenger RNA (mRNA) is a critical link needed for the cell to make protein; mRNA nucleotide sequennce → amino acid sequence in protein. So the transcriptome holds potential for telling us what protein is being made by a cell. Since there are potentially thousands of proteins in a cell, the proteome tells us what is being made at a particular time.

The problem of gene expression was recognized by Crick as a problem of code. The genetic code must provide the instructions or direction for translating the four-symbols of DNA and RNA—nucleotides—into the 20+ symbols—amino acids—of Protein.

Proteins are composed by attachments of about 20 differnet Amino Acid molecules. A single protein may be as small as a dozen or so Amino Acids or literally hundreds of Amino Acids. Each amino acid (AA) in the string of beads is different from others by the type of chemical groups it has attached to what the biochemists call the alpha carbon. Carbon is able to form four attachments or bonds. Three of these attach: 1.) an organic acid; 2.) an amine; and 3.) a hydrogen atom. Hence the name—Amino Acid. The fourth bond to the alpha carbon includes one of twenty different groups, also called functional groups, because they confer on the entire amino acid distinctive properties or functions. The details of the se properties are well known to biochemists. The properties include making the AA molecule acidic, alkaline, water attracting (hydorphilic), or water repelling (hydrophobic). One AA called cystiene, has a sulfur group that enables two cysteine units to bond together. The order of AAs making up a protein are extremely important. For example the substitution of just one AA for another AA is a disastrous mistake that causes sickle cell anemia; a disease that is inherited.

As early as 1959, Crick wrote in Scientific American, that the code for each protein's amino acid sequence must reside in DNA. DNA has four different molecular subunits called nucleotides. One nucleotide would, of course, only code for one amino acid. Two nucleotides in all possible combinations would only code for 16 amino acids, not enough to account for all twenty amino acids. Consequently Crick and others reasoned that the genetic code would require a combination of three nucleotides—a triplet. These sixty four possible triplets would account for all twenty common amino acids found in the proteins of every living creature on Earth. A few rare proteins call for some unusual amino acids, so the triplet code would also provide for placement of those in proteins when required.

Crick recognized that the triplet code of DNA must first be transcribed to RNA. RNA like DNA has four nucleotides but there is a slight but important difference. The nucleotides of DNA contain a sugar lacking an oxygen atom, hence deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and four different bases: adenine, guanine (both purines) and thymine, cytosine (both pyrimidines). This gives rise to critical and exact base pairing. Adenine (A) always pairs with Thymine (T) and Guanine (G) always pairs with Cytosine (C). A with T and G with C.

RNA is different from DNA in two ways. First, the sugar is ribose not deoxyribose, hence ribonucleic acid (RNA), and second, RNA lacks Thymine but instead has a nucleotide called Uracil (U). Base pairing still operated between DNA and RNA but Uracil pairs with Adenine or A with U. G still pairs with C.

The huge problem was to figure out which triplet coded for which amino acid. The breakthrough cam quickly. The first code deciphered was UUU in RNA that specified the amino acid phenylalanine, so the AAA code in DNA specified the amino acid phenylalanine. Labs all over the world went to work with a straight forward set of experiments substituting distinctive ordered nucleotides and examining the aminio acids added to short chains of protein. By 1966 a table of these DNA/RNA codes was published. Each triplet code-word is called a codon.

Human Genome Project

In the 1980s biologists began to realize that knowing the entire ordered sequence of nucleotide pairs, hence all of the codons, of human DNA would enable work to solve mysteries of evolution and development (EvoDevo) including the evolution of forms and functions including behavior, as well as variations (abnormalities) of development such as occur with birth defects and diseases.

This was, in the words of then vice-president Joe Biden picked up by an open microphone; a big f**king deal. Biden was referring to the passing of President Barack Obama’s health care plan. It is defensible to say that the Human Genome Project enables a realization of real cures for many devastating diseases, for which no cure could be envisioned. And a true triumph of molecular biology.

Variation is a normal part of every kind or species of organism. Recognizing the normality of variation was a highly significant contribution of Charles Darwin. As we look around us at other humans we have no trouble recognizing massive variation or differences. Unfortunately entirely too much attention is paid to the simplest observations, such as that of skin color. Many other differences are also obvious such as height, eye color, facial differences. More difficult to observe are functional or physiological attributes and mental traits. We humans are way too quick to accept simple explanations for highly complex traits or characteristics. The reality is that human variations are, at root, functional attributes of the base-pairs we inherit. The Human Genome Project enables detection of the source of variation and assessments or analyses of what the variation really means for human life. The Human Genome Project is about US. ‘Bur not everything about us, because so much more than the base-pairs and variations, remains to be solid, reliable, predictive knowledge. The Genome Project makes that knowledge possible—someday. And it will enable all of us to know, what traits are inherited and what traits may be influenced by our social and natural environments.

Education’s Ecology will change as a result.

Observable characteristics are called phenotype. The underlying gene combinations that determine the phenotype is called the genotype. The Human Genome Project set out to determine the details of genotype right down to every one of three billion parings of A&T, G&C. From its beginning in 1989, the project was expected to be completed in 15 years. By 2004 the basic draft was announced. The entire human genome, all of the DNA, all of the 3-billion base pairs had been deciphered or decoded. Interestingly only a small part of this codes for proteins. Accordingly best estimates put the number of genes—sequences of DNA that codes for protein— in the genome at about 20,000 to 25,000. Non coding DNA seems to make up the bulk of the genome. The full story of why non-coding DNA is present in cells is still unfolding. The search is for more and better information about control of expression of each of those thousands of protein coding genes.

Work has continued to substantiate findings with partial and full maps of DNA base-pair sequences now available for many individuals. This has been stimulated by reductions of errors in earlier drafts, and made possible through a combination of critical studies of diseases. Better methods of sequencing have emerged and an entire industry of biotechnology now includes thousands of firms in pursuit of miracle drugs and big profits. The industry has reduced the cost of sequencing to fractions of what it was twenty years ago.

It was, of course, well known before 1989, that the human species, without exception in “normal” individuals, included 23 pairs of chromosomes, and that essentially all of the DNA was stored in these chromosomes. Chromosomes are easily observed with a microscope after a bit of manipulation of cells as they are dividing. Arranged in pairs from the largest to the smallest, the picture of the chromosomes is called a karyotype. With special staining techniques, chromosomes revealed unique patterns of banding. As details of DNA sequence were found, the sequence could be associated with each of these bands. This became the basis for preparing a catalog of human genes. Work on the Human Genome Project continues with ever increasing details and constantly improving resolution of where each piece of human DNA is located on the 23 pair of chromosomes. These details are available to the public; understanding the details is also open to anyone.

What is emerging from the Human Genome Project is a recognition that every individual is unique and that every individual human is basically the same as every other human. The now famous company, 23 and Me, explores and explains this mix of similarity and difference. Every year advances our understanding of our human complexity. What is not understood very well yet is how these genes contribute to our distinctive phenotypes. James Watson once predicted that the work of enlarging our understanding may go on for 400 years. That is why biological scientists realized that to build this level of understanding, experimentation was needed and that for important ethical reasons, these critical experiments could not be carried out on humans. These scientists had long before begun to use model organisms, a legacy of comparative anatomy, embryology, physiology, pathology and ethology (animal behavior).

Model Organisms

To be useful ass a model organism, a species must be very well studied for its morphology and development, its physiology and biochemistry. Scientists are necessarily impatient and so they select organisms for experiments that have relatively short life cycles. For a short life cycle, the little Gram negative bacillus, Escherichia coli, (E. coli) is hard to beat. When supplied with a simple diet of minerals and a simple sugar for energy and incubated at just the right temperature, E. coli cells will replicate and produce a doubling about every 15 minutes. Over the course of an 8-10 hour laboratory day shift, a culture beginning with just 10-100 cells will produce a population numbering in the 10s – 100s of millions of cells. This is truly amazing and remarkable. Everything to enable the life of E. Coli amino acids for protein, nucleotides for DNA and RNA, sugars and lipids for membranes and cell walls, have to be manufactured using DNA instructions in just 15 minutes. And, a simple error in just one DNA codon (a mutation) can halt or alter the process, enabling a microbiologist and a biochemist to figure out what went wrong. Using E. Coli and other model organisms, mutations can be introduced at highly specific locations to study what happens.

Baker's and Brewer's Yeast, Saccharomyces cereviseae, is a little slower, but not much behind E. coli. The yeast replication cycle is more on the order of 1-1.5 hours. An overnight culture will provide a massive population of cells. A little round worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, (C. elegans) doesn't quite keep up with yeast but produces a decent number of offspring in a day or two. While E. coli and Saccharomyces are single cell organisms, they are noticeably different in that the yeast cell has a distinctive cell nucleus and chromosomes while the bacterium does not, and naked DNA floats freely in the cell. Cells with a distinct nucleus are called eukaryotes while cells lacking a distinct nucleus are called prokaryotes. Both prokaryotes and eukaryotes possess genes made of DNA. The little worm C. elegans is multicellular; in fact beautifully so. In one of its common forms, it contains exactly 906 cells with a nervous system, muscles, digestive tract and reproductive organs. Its usual diet is none other than E.coli.

More complex multicellular model organisms are Drosophilia melanogaster, a well-studied insect called a fruit fly. Fruit flies were selected by T. H. Morgan at Columbia University in the 1920 for study of Mendelian Inheritance. The fly-lab became famous and was replicated around the world. Other laboratories selected animals like fish, the frog, toad, and chicken. Hens eggs are incubated for study of development as are eggs of zebra fish, the African Clawed Toad and common grass frog. These species are not as easily breed in the laboratory, although efficient breeding techniques have been worked out to comply with needed environmental controls. All of these differ from the fruit fly in that they are animals with backbones, or vertebrates. Among vertebrates, the mouse has attained the status of a model organism. Supplying laboratories with mice that have been genetically manipulated is now a mega-business with several corporations involved, shipping mice all over the world for research.

The genomes of each of these model organisms has now been sequenced. Comparison of genome to genome across model organisms, clearly reveals that certain genes and gene families have been conserved. This makes good sense because all living organisms have to meet common needs for nutrition and behaviors enabling survival and reproduction.

Other vertebrates are also needed and include the rat and rhesus monkey or macaque. Our nearest primate relative the chimpanzee (bonobo) are also used from some experiments. With vertebrate animals and in particular any of the primates., research institutions (mainly universities) must adhere to strict standards for animal welfare and compliance with these standards is very costly. Accordingly a research biologist will dwell thoughtfully to understand whether her or his research questions can be answered with the simplest organisms.

Usually the answers obtained with simple organisms are only partially satisfying and often confusing. Satisfying answers emerge slowly. One consequence is that laboratories share questions and puzzle over how to solve the problems of unanswered questions. Laboratories specializing in one form of model organism or another will tackle the questions and publish their results in scientific journals for dissemination to others. One result is that studies and partial solutions from different labs will use their specialized knowledge with their unique model organism to slowly and carefully expand understanding in a specialized area of biological knowledge. The goal of raising the stakes to embrace human welfare will often involve biomedical and clinical research, taking accumulated results from studies with model organisms and seeking ethical attempts to apply a narrow segment of knowledge to benefit humans.

All of the work with model organisms adds to our fund of knowledge with potential application to our own species. Human inheritance can only be observed. Experiments with humans are allowed only under rigorous conventions of bioethics maintained by institutions, funding agencies and the editorial staff of scientific journals.

Educators are, by and large, ignorant of what biologists are doing with these model organisms. The research questions entertained by microbial, fruit fly or mouse geneticists seem very remote from the classroom. Occasionally, of course, results form laboratories involving primates will catch some attention of educational research involving early human development. Abnormal development often affects or influences classroom behavior and the cognitive or intellectual development of a child or two in a classroom requiring the intervention of specialists in psychology or sociology or medicine. These specialists may bring to the intervention greater knowledge of current development studies such as may be involving autism or other so-called learning disabilities. However, the gaps between the research labs and classrooms are huge. Too often the gaps afe filled with drugs with some hope of making behavior more manageable. Yet discoveries from the laboratories of molecular biologists, hold promise for deep understanding that will impact education.

Modifying Gene Expression

Manipulation of inheritance has a long history that likely dates back to the beginnings of agriculture and animal husbandry. Breeding plants and animals for a particular human purpose has given us special strains of plants and animals. Plants are useful when they consistently produce seeds and stalks for food while animals that provide human relief from labor of hunting and readily available food to minimize the need for hunting, are captured and bread to be maintained easily. Domestic animals must be docile. Selective breeding has produced a dozen varieties of common animals including cattle, horses, pigs and chickens, while similar selective breeding has produced wheat, corn, beans and other useful grasses.

Most selective breeding is somewhat hit and miss. Results of matings are somewhat erratic even though predictable variation does occur consistent with the laws of Mendelian genetics.

More recently methods for gene editing have emerged. The 2020 Nobel Prize was awarded for discovery of the CRISPR-CAS9 editing tool now widely used throughout the world form highly sophisticated commercial and university laboratories to DIY labs in basements and kitchens.

Development

Central to any consideration of development is cell differentiation as an ongoing, lifelong matter. A new individual life is a continuation of cellular life. Conception is not a beginning but a continuation. Accordingly it cannot be separated from the parents and their lives. In fact, it is now recognized that the parents lives may have genetic influencs of many sorts that meld development with the parent's parents environmental history. This means that development is never self-contained but is influenced by environmental factors that are, at least, highly complex and to date, only weakly understood.

That is not to say that biologists are totally ignorant of development. Much is known about the changes in form that occur following conception. What has seemed to be miraculous, is now increasingly understood in terms of cellular dynamics and differentiation. The cluster of cells formed by the first divisions of the zygote—the fertilized egg or ovum, yields cluster of undifferentiated cells or embryonic stem cells. Each of these cells containers the full compliment of genes from the parents—half from the mother and half from the father. All, of course, now fairly obvious and now not a miracle at all. Using the tools and knowledge of genetics and genetic manipulations with model organisms, biologists are rapidly uncovering the way cells become different though the various phases of development. Biologists are gaining new insights about the unique expressions of genes that enable formation of nerve cells, skin cells, liver cells and muscle cells among the literally hundreds to thousands of different cell types that make up the organs of our bodies. Some differences are easy to see and are obvious enough to be seen with an ordinary microscope. Other differences are more subtle, refined and hidden. Progress is accelerating with the emergence of tools like the confocal microscope and fluorescent labeling of cells and cell parts. Biologists studying development can literally follow the developmental fate of a single cell in a model organism. This includes the formation of brain cells and brain cell connections that differentiate the cells of parts of the brain that are important for behavior, chemical coordination and immunity. Amazingly what sometimes seems distinct and different turns out to be similar if not identical between different organ such as brain and spleen, or lung and testicle. Changes in disease also come into play and provide new insights into the dynamics of cellular behavior and differentiation. The study of cancer is not isolated any longer from the study of immunity and organ transplantation surgery.

EvoDevo

Evolution and development (EvoDevo) are inextricably linked as a foundation for all of biology. Accordingly, as we begin to think about biological foundations for enlightenment of education's ecology and the practice of education or pedagogy, it will very likely become impossible to proceed with any level of confidence without an understanding of this significant linkage.

Educational psychologists are already looking toward evolution to explain and understand many aspects of human behavior both normal and different or deviant development. They now increasingly seek explanations that carry at least roots of evolution. It is not possible to ignore evolution as at least a partial explanation. And, of course, because evolution happened in conditions that are vastly different from what has occurred as a result of agriculturral//and industrial social conditions as well as the enormous influence of cultural intrusions such as religious practices and traditions, our evolutionary explanations must be accepted and treated as incomplete.

However, development is a contemporary expression of our evolutionary past. Accordingly the human roots of what huimans do and are able to do carry developmental implications and developmental explanations become increasingly dominant as assertions about education enter into both discourse and questions. As these questions facilitate dialogue about the human conditions on Earth, there is an emergence of new explanatory powers. These powers are lights from biology.

Current Concepts of the Gene

Gregor Mendel talked about particles of inheritance. It was later that Wilhelm Johannsen coined the term gene, recognizing the origins of form and function as coming from Mendel's particles.

The concept of the gene is constantly evolving. The recent intrigue among biologists is the matter of epigenetics. It is now well established that expression of a gene is modified by environment and that this modification may be inherited. The mysteries of this epigenetic inheritance are emerging and as yet far from complete.

Measurement of gene expression modifiers is an emerging art in the laboratories. These measurements include direct DNA modifications like acetylation and methylation and indirect modifications of gene expression such ass occurs with modification of the histones—proteins that package DNA into the chromosomes.

Furthermore, there is now evidence that our human gene expression is not entirely a result of our own genetic makeup but also happens through the influences of the genes of organisms with which we live — the microbes of our gut and even possibly our skin. This is an emerging area of biological knowledge that may turn out to have huge implications for education through influences on development of our neuroendocrine and immune systems. Our “psyche” may not turn out to be entirely our own or only influenced by the most obvious elements in our environment including parents and teachers.

The impact of the growing knowledge of epigenetics on development is almost inevitably huge. Interested readers should consider what is being learned about autism (ASD). For instance. Unraveling the genetic complexities of these and other developmental conditions continues nationally and internationally. We’ll have more to say about developmental disabilities in later chapters.

The Omics Revolution is well underway in laboratories and institutions around the world. An educator is well advised to pay attention and keep informed, because this revolution in life science will be a game-changer for education and all of society. I believe that knowledge of molecular genetics will expand to include better understanding of our human development including our being as self in an ecology of other, which we should name and embrace as education’s ecology.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Books listed below include textbooks for undeergraduate and graduate students. A search of Amazon or Barnes & Nobel will reveal many additional titles that may fulfill the reader’s need for additional information on this important area of the biological sciences.

Campbell’s Biology—is a standard textbook for beginning college biology courses for majors.

Bruce Albert’s Molecular Biology of the Cell—an advanced textbook with up to date details representing a current state of knowledge.

Lehninger’s Biochemistry—highly comprehensive textbook of life science chemistry.

A popular book providing a wonderful overview of much covered in this chapter, and more, is:

Siddhartha Mukherjee. 2002. The Song of the Cell. Mukherjee is also author of an earlier best selling book, The Gene, which is highly recommended.

Chapter XVIII

In the person with autism, the brain may already be seeing the part and be less distracted by the whole, and in the person without autism the brain may have to set aside its picture of the whole to analyze the detail.

Simon Baron-Cohen

Harbingers

Disabilities are harbingers of what education can be. Learning is a process of development involving skills, knowledge and attitudes. A harbinger describes metaphorically a sign that foretells the coming of some person or event. It is in this sense, that education is life long (the whole of life span) and life wide (the whole of being). The narrative of events and ideas described in this chapter will enable and foreshadow a new view of the developmental framework and difficulties encountered in education and how education may be able to, one future day, see these difficulties in an new light, a framework, created by a merger of biology, medicine, and social-behavioral science to advance a new paradigm for education recognizing comprehensive human development as sine qua non. That is, we will assert, education is human development.

Disabled –

This often just means not being able to do a thing in the way that is usual and customary in society for an individual to do a thing. It is our intent to ask for a more closely attended look at the meaning of disabled and most notably the meaning of “being disabled.”

Fortunately there are plenty of examples of both disturbing societal responses to disabled people as well as admirable efforts to represent disabled people in a much larger and friendly societal context. Being disabled, if ever that is true, only represnets one part of being.

It is really hard to blame anyone who is labeled as disabled. Disabilities have causes even though a precise definition or description of a cause may be elusive for scholars or practitioners who know that precise descriptions of cause would be helpful. There may be a sentiment or stance that knowing a cause could provide a path toward prevention. Although it must be said that the whole notion of prevention may place the disabled at some risk in that looking to prevention is also looking beyond the immediate facts of a person with the disability. Choices about adopting preventive measures would likely be fraught by considerations for morality and bioethics.

American Disability Act (ADA) has done much that is commendable, even laudable, to improve the lives of people who have been dealing with physical conditions in which they are impaired or unable to do many things that others are able to do without thought or support. Out built environment has in way too many instances erected barriers to access. It is certainly the case that architectural decisions and provisions to enable the disabled never impose barriers for the able bodied who may also use a facility. A ramp around a stair does not impair the use of the stain. An elevator can be used by all. Talking traffic signals are useful for anyone. Some architectural costs may increase but these costs are amortized across the life of the facility, which may exceed the many decades used for calculating amortization.

The Spectrum -

The notion of spectrum has emerged across several conditions that have previously been afforded a label that seemed suitable. Such has been the conspicuous case with autism. This singular label has been nearly abandoned in favor of the Autism Spectrum. Until recently the term “disorder” was attached to form the Autism Spectrum Disorder and the acronym ASD. More recently ASD has become ASC to recognize that disability is anything but common and that autism includes a broad range of conditions many of which are not only not disabling but are highly sought assets. A similar situation, although not so likely to pertain to positive outcomes, is Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which is now carries a preferred label of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. All of this shifting of terminology reflects both a differentiated look at the range of conditions and the potential for a concomitant range of causes. ASD/ASC in particular has benefited from a well organized cluster of people including parents, educators and medical practitioners as well as a research community supported by both government grants and largess of philanthropic foundations.

Looking at the broad spectrum of learning disabilities it is well to recognize that while there are many, many categories, there are also important commonalities if not direct similarities. Isolated observation, research and applied practice regarding conditions such as dyslexia, dysphoria, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, auditory processing disorder, ADHD, attention focusing, delayed speech, et cetera, will reveal bridges that require building before they can be crossed productively to see relevant relationships through an embodied approach.

Autism or ASC has greatly benefited from active engagement of the biomedical research community's engagement with contemporary genetics and the emerging importance of the human genome project. The ASC research community has found multiple model organisms to support its inquiries in both the lab and clinic. Research has revealed connections and relationships that just a few years ago would have been considered ludicrous. For example, there is mixed or uncertain confidence that particular bacterial species making up the flora of the gut is able to influence development of certain brain regions implicated in the social or repetitive alterations characteristic of ASC. Mouse models are suggestive but far from conclusive.

There is remaining reluctance withing the ASC community to endorse the approach advocated by Lynn Waterhouse PhD that Autism should not be treated as a single condition but rather as a cluster of conditions, each with distinct causes and treatments.

Even the notion of treatment is called into question because of the implication of cure. It is clear that there are conditions that development precludes from ever becoming “normal” and that even the dramatic solutions from gene editing are seemingly outside the realm of realistic potential to fully correct the condition.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports the annual incidence of Autism and ASC. The US Departmentn of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2016) that individuals served under the IDEA formulation (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) supported students increased from 94,000 in 2000 to 417,000 in 2016. The dramatic rise in these numbers calls for explanation. Is the increased numbers due to different diagnostic criteria, or due to actual increases in individuals diagnosed?

Given the growth and prominence of autism it is not surprising that schooling for children on the spectrum is provided by the private sector as well as the public sector. Both sectors are able to avail themselves of up-to-date tools including assessments for mastery of basic skills to sharpen the focus on what Individual Educational Plans (IEP) are to be followed to assure that any given student is afforded the personalized attention that their educational advancement may require.

An IEP is a document that specifies annual learning goals and evaluation procedures. Skill domains may include: (1) cognitive skills, (2) social skills, (3) academic skills, (4) adaptive skills, and (5) motor skills. The IEP is ideally prepared by a multidisciplinary team that has close contact so to be able to add relevant considerations to the IEP. A key feaure of the IEP is periodic evaluations that may require specialized personnel as well as dedicated facilities. Needless to say, it is likely that only the more affluent districts will be able to provide for excellent execution of both construction and evaluation of the IEP.

Mergers -

Biology, medicine and education will all benefit from a greater liaison. Putting this in place will be jarring and daunting given the entrenched practices of biological research, the delivery of high quality medicine in highly corporate structures for management of medical practice, and the entrenched framework for schooling in education. There is, however, a body of literature in the business world that may provide conceptual frameworks for successful mergers at scale. M & A (Merger and Acquisition) is a term of art in the business world. It is disruptive and makes room for growth in directions that may be emergent in that the properties of a new firm may not have been wholly predictable from the properties of the prior entities. An outcome is frequently a form of innovation. Imagine for instance, that a hospital management firm takes over a all of part of a school district dealing with execution of IEPs. Would a model of patient care with hierarchy of practice involving physician, nurse, technician, assistants in a clinic be implemented in a school setting?

M & A has its downsides, usually on the short term. Displacements of human capital are jarring to those who are displaced and there may not be sufficient safety nets to prevent personal disasters for families or even whole communities or cities.

M & A is customarily considered the province of business but its application in the not-for-profit sector has also been attempted; although often under the auspices of a for-profit firm. This has been the case for the growth of hospital corporations. The potential dangers for the integrity of public education as it has been known, should not go unnoticed.

Potential for spin-off of new businesses should not be overlooked when assessing potential M & A withing and between education, medicine and social-welfare organizations. An excellent example has been articulated by Ted Kolderie for school districts, outsourcing or off-loading functions like transportation, building maintenance, purchasing, accounting as has happened with many municipalities. These functions are needed by are outside the domain or realm of education per se. Unfortunately Kolderie has not looked beyond the schools as they are presently controlled and constituted. His ideas combined with a new paradigm for education could amaze all of us.

Going farther, for example why not allow or assign the legal profession the responsibility to provide for civics education. Or, why not socially assign pediatricians to engage with the reproductive biology of potential parents to provide education about parenting before men and/or women decide to undertake the challenges of being parents. Schools, or better said an educational system, with a more flexible protocol for operation with the many advantages of digital technologies—AV/IT, AI/ML, LLM and so forth— could well be positioned to support innovative academic or pedagogical theories essential for the hands-on workers who maintain, furnish, install or remodel our building systems.

Responsibility -

It may well be time to re-examine responsibility for human development as it takes life long and life wide attributes, rather than our current focus on the “school years.” Globally to be sure, but with Western society in particular, the intensity of change is awesome. Change affects nearly every niche and habitat of our human existence. Our collective experience with the covid pandemic was eye-opening and eye-popping. It is clearly no longer necessary to do what has always been done to live, work and play. The expanding potential for human development likely defies plans and pigeon-holes.

The quest for definitive solutions may take many forms and find fulsome or fanciful solutions. Leaving responsibility for those solutions in the hands of authoritarian demagogues and dictators with entertaining clever phrases is a very dangerous path forward. Yet real responsibility is there for those who wish to take it for lofty or nefarious purposes. How does society decide what is right? I believe there is no single best answer.

For education it may be high time to re- think and imagine, What would society do if schools did not exist? This mental experiment could enable an enlightened path forward. In the absence of schools, society will be forced to look elsewhere. With a perspective of human development as life long and life wide, we may see teaching, testing, textbooks and technology in a new light. My sense is that a significant part of this illumination may arise from the biological sciences. Those advances are, along with advanced digital technologies, preceding a new societal responsibility. However, those responsibilities will themselves evolve and develop from local efforts that are shared, first regionally, thennationally and globally. The key will be readiness to sustain what works well and quickly discard whatever is not working. Pragmatism and an open society is essential. Responsibility will emerge.

The days of society handing responsibility for development of young people to systems of schooling are likely numbered. In the chapters ahead comprehensive human development will emerge with a new perspective that is currently outside the capacity of schools as they are presently constituted.

A responsible approach will be to ask, What is best for this person. The question should be asked regardless of the person's age or the condition of their body. We must constantly be reminded that the brain is not only a part of the body, it is an inseparable part. Psychologists will increase their checking-in with advances in biology. Mostly the checking in will result in with many empty baskets but now and then an egg will be found ready for further incubation. Where biology provides insights for psychology or psychiatry, yielding to sound and settled, stable principles of biological science should hold sway; tipping the balance toward suasion. The biological sciences will also benefit from psychology by regarding findings as early observations that are demanding biological explication.

Society seems to have little or no alternative way to solve social problems attached to young people without blaming and/or engaging schools. For example, a workforce relies on schools for child care. Responsibility for the future will occur when we take time to examine alternatives and are able to do so by recognizing that human development needs assistance but that the assistance is often best delivered by society as a whole and not segmented for attachment to a school's tightly structured and specialized environment.

Taking on responsibility may mean looking as broadly and deeply into the biological foundations for the particular condition. Where significant questions about the biological components are or remain open, these gaps (aka, ignorance) should be kept at the forefront of all conversations in order to assure that assumptions—too frequently bordering on belligerence—are kept in perspective if not entirely kept in check. The research community must remain open to concepts that may not easily or entirely fit within the bounds of contemporary principles. New insights may alter important research questions. It is these questions that should guide responsible research and action.

The Future

There are serious problems translating assessments and interventions from a school setting to a home, non-school or neighborhood setting because of the specializations needed to deal with serious problems. These difficulties may be overcome or ameliorated through extensive uses and refinements of telecommunications tools and techniques. This is where advances in telemedicine may prove to have high value as merger of medical, educational and social-service entities progress. Telemedicine is currently advancing along a number of fronts. These advancements should be studied by educators and social workers to discover new questions, potential probes and seriously studied for implementation of new improvements in social-educational practice. This advancement is unlikely to happen unless there is active engagement on the part of medical professionals drawn from the laddered rankings of physicians, nurses, medical technicians, and new categories including medical navigators. The logical place for these interactive relationships to be built would be at urban universities where there are contiguous colleges of medicine and education. Likely new interfaces could begin with the education-specialist faculties and facilities of the medical school.

We should hope that humanity will continue to treat the disabled among us as fully human with all of the rights, privileges and obligations that come with being a part of the human community. All are not equal, and that is more and more fully recognized, but what has yet to grow into full blossom is equality of opportunity—to engage fully and consistently within the conditions of one’s existence. No one should ever think of themselves or be thought of by others as less than. Our focus for the future must be on possibilities not disabilities. Every step we take to enable the possible is a step in removing the dis in dis/abled.

Harbinger titled this chapter because what has been said will lead the way toward a new future for education based upon a recognition that it will require moving fast and opening doors to understanding; a multitude of portals highlighting details of disability and taking action. At stake is nothing less than care and consideration for the worth and dignity of every individual in our society. Dignity is enabling what is possible. We may wish for much more, of course, and that is an idea of what the future must become. What seems impossible today becomes doable only when what is possible has been done.

Recommended Reading & Sources

ABLLS-R – Assessment of Basic Language and Learning Skills – Revised …

DIBELS – Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Learning Skills …

Lynn Waterhouse. … Autism …

UMN Book on Autism … 400+pp …

1. Part IV
2. Development is Everything

Part Four will argue that everything done in the name of education must be about human development writ large. Everything else is peripheral and a potential distraction.

Society designs education and human development designs society. If we fail to recognize human development we risk a grave mis measure of human potential and nothing we say or do in the name of education is tolerable on a planet that is at risk.

Unfortunately our planet suffers from human development, a history of biological and cultural evolution that has favored a few and neglected too many. That is both a liberal and a progressive idea. It is liberal because it recognizes freedom, and it is progressive because it eschews individualism recognizing that we don't live alone. As Homo sapiens we live with other members of our own species, and as a species we live dependent on most, but not all, other species. We humans are mutually dependent; that is to say we are symbiotic. Our need for cooperation exceeds any need for competition.

Each of us is an ecosystem at the same time we are a part of an ecosystem. Ecosystems are inherently social. Our bodies re not genetically all our own. We share a space in time (space-time) with many other species. Our lives in an external ecosystem are not ever only about us. We exist as guests of many other organisms. Perhaps the most important host for human life is the green plant. The green plant represents the base trophic level because it can transform energy from sunlight into all the organic molecules that are the essence of life; the foundations for organization, metabolism and perpetuation.

Perpetuation is the result of development and development is the essence of perpetuation, enabling autopoiesis and metabolism.

Part IV will look at the necessary merger of education and medicine through P4+P4, the decade of dependent development and the transformation to a thriving adulthood, This part will continue to amplify the need for a new paradigm for Education's Ecology.

Seven chapters of Part Four make the case for refocusing our thinking about education as a process of change rooted in biology and the biological principles of Evo/Devo or Evolution and Development.

Chapter XIX—Learning is OUT!—development is in! and this means education will focus on making use of skills, building personalized knowledge and the erection of positive attitudes.

Chapter XX—P4+P4—education and medical practice are both challenged to meet the needs of society writ large. Each has slipped in its mission toward individual and planetary health. A merger is long overdue. Here a foundation for the merger is described.

Chapter XXI—Passion—emotional engagement creates a foundation for doing, working with peers and finding joy in mutual accomplishment.

Chapter XXII—Prediction—capacity based on development of skills, knowledge and attitudes enables confidence and collaboration for more reliable future outcomes.

Chapter XXIII—Dependent Development—no development takes place in a bottle. Throughout life we depend on others and nowhere is that more important than in the first decade of development following conception.

Chapter XXIV—Emancipation—eduction is the practice of freedom and dependence must eventually give way to independence in a context of responsibility for self and other.

Chapter XIX

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Albert Einstein

Learning is OUT!

We have been conditioned to see learning as the reason for education. Learning is rarely criticized even when applied to socially unacceptable activity. This seemingly basic element of human life all across the globe is represented by so many words in so many languages it would be nearly impossible to compile and count them all. That said, I would not be at all surprised for readers to write and tell me that other languages have many alternative terms for what we in English call learning. In fact, even in English, we have a multitude alternative terms for learning. One Thesaurus lists these synonyms for learning: culture, information. literature, research, schooling, science, study, training, acquirements, attainments, erudition, letters, lore, scholarship, tuition, wisdom. Acquirements is certainly a curious item in the list. It is said to be gaining knowledge or mental attributes. Is it possible for knowledge to exist outside of some mental attribute? Contrast acquirement with a definition of learning as: the act or process of acquiring knowledge or skill. Or, as the modification of behavior through practice, training or experience. And then conjure a definition that implies that learning is something that happens with education or experience.

None of this leaves much in the say of satisfaction. It takes on something of a circular argument. Learning is education and education is learning. The synonyms at least don't link education and learning. At least that seems to imply that learning is independent of education.

In the chapter that follows we will explore some thoughts about why it is time to begin restricting our societal uses of learning as though it is a thing that everyone agrees is essentially the same. It emphatically is not that. When we look critically at our language of education, learning gets top billing.

We might say that this chapter is a critique of the all the languge we apply in education. That is pretty heavy, a task for a team of skilled and committed linguists. I would never be picked to participate with that team. So with all the confidence that goes with ignorance, I will forge ahead. This is emphatically not hubris on my part. In fact it is my search for understanding; ignorance demanding reflection. I leave the linguistics to those who are qualified. But unfortunately we can't leave education and our language of education to the exclusive province of experts. Education's Ecology is embedded in language. Inadequacies of words and how we use them are more important than mere flatulence.

Definitions are elusive and we can resort to characterizing, usually with a long winded discourse with emphasis on wind. Both defining and characterizing attempt to impart meaning. We ask a fundamental question; What do you (we) mean? When there is a broad consensus about meaning the question is not asked; or, if it is asked, it is either ignored or belittled, the result is belief in a meaning when there is no meaningful meaning. Our collective ignorance marches on. We should stop the marching and its seemingly needed drumbeats.

Connotation is another dimension beyond a definition or a characterization. Resorting to dictionary definitions because is what dictionaries do, a connotation is a tacit meaning with undertone, overtone, and conveys actual or potential significance all requiring interpretation by a listener or reader. Connotation is also association, essence, coloring, nuance and suggestion. It hints at a meaning. It may convey a secondary meaning in addition to its primary or explicit meaning. A connotation is something suggested but may not be explicly named or described. A connotation also carries a set or range of attributes to which the term may be applied. Learning certainly carries a multitude of connotations. It is loaded with connotations.

When there is a word with too many connotations, the language in which the word appears, requires annotation; a critical or explanatory note or collection of notes—added text. Annotation is nearly impossible for speech and, in fact is so clumsy that it is rare in written documents. A glossary may help annotate text in which words are highly technical or specialized as in the jargon typically associated with scientific communication or other scholarly work. Annotation may involve exegesis, explanation, explication, interpretation, or elaborate descriptions.

Trouble comes when all the connotations overwhelm. The connotative uses of the term can evoke mental mush that takes too much for granted and precludes action. What do we do or what should we do to learn?

Adverbs and adjectives don't help very much and lead us off in unproductive directions. An example would, perhaps, be Zoloff's “(social) learning” or “learning conversation” or “action learning”… we need to go off in search of meaning of the modifier. We have much to lose when our language assumes too much. We can be blinded by labels that are off the mark. Expectations are elevated to such lofty heights that clouds obscure our vision. It becomes too easy to think we know what we don't know. A need for a new vocabulary begins to emerge from the fog or blizzard of words. An action agenda for education emerges from creating better language.

Losing in language

What do we lose socially when we continue or persist in using a term that contains a poorly understood meaning? Here are a few thoughts that may be helpful in seeing what we lose from frequent uses of language that is without salient meaning. When a thing is red, yellow or green, when should we begin a debate about the shade, hue and saturation of those colors, and when can or should we be or b ecome accepting without debate? Is theere a difference that matters? OF course, meaning itself may lack meaning, particularly in an emerging circumstance where meaning is only attributed to what can be and is actually measured. As you read through the bulletted points below, don’t hesitate to ask the profound and the profane. If I could be clearer, I would gladly do so. My lack of clarity will, I hope reflect both wondering and wandering of my mind. Make some notes; send me your thoughts. Maybe we’ll both be bigger and better for the effort.

• We give away power to those who assume they and we share a meaning or definition. A discussion or conversation moves along with bobble heads nodding and conveying agreements where there is only empty assumptions allied with something akin to good feelings.
• Persuasion is enabled by precluding questions and a word or phrase is integrated into a mindset about a condition that may hold virtually nothing. Advertising slogans such as “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should” — “Only PAY for wht you need” — “Prevagen—healthy brain, better life” come to mind from the past and present. We should challenge ourselves to make cogent meaning from any of these slogans or others that come to stick like snot in the mind.
• Crappy questions flow from misleading or redirecting attention from elements, issues or concepts that must be held in our working memory to serve the execution of choices or retaining attention about matters of greater importance,
• Diffused attention splits or divides our focus across what is often irrelevancies for moving in a particularly personal direction and attaining a goal or defining an aspiration in more meaningful terms.
• Unrealistic expectations are intrusive and may block creative solutions to matters of immediate importance. Intrusion on productive or potentially productive thought and reflection leaps across barriers or sidesteps roadblocks that are real and need to be attended for progress.
• Inability to recognize ignorance; to see what we don’t know; clouded ignorance is still ignorance. Blowing away the cloud can open minds to new ways of seeing.
• Thinking we know when we don’t know. Emotions are murky at best. The affective and even the cognitive domains are obscure even as they intrude on our understandings about what education is or could be. Managers become too easily powered to take us forward with ideas, concepts, principles and stories that may be mostly nonsense or even completely irrelevant to the aspirations of individuals or small groups.
• Mean, median, mode as measure are mathematical measures of central tendency that take on the spotlight of knowing but may be mislabeling statistical inferences. Who, we should ask, Is actually average?
• The acceptance that behavior tells the whole story enables loss of not only understanding about important brain physiology, but insights regarding how and why brain function matters, can be modified and enable permanency of habits built on executive functions.
• Equating psycho-motor cognitive and affective domains as well as important relathioships of interaction important to guiding motivation and behavior in both productive and destructive pathways.
• Equity and equivalencies are put into the same balloon or casket. A dead zone is formed that is like the oceanic triangle or the universe’s black holes from which there is no effective escape. It becomes increasingly impossible to recognize when equal and not equal are relevant and when they are only a matter of perception and semantic wandering in a forest from which there seems no escape.
• Negation of active engagement for development. Empty phrases like active learning. Ignoring growth mindset while accepting a concept of fixed capacity for individual or small group actions that are able to yield a better basis for advancing methods and practices that are consistent with development.
• Perpetuatig ignorance and fostering the embedding of dogma. Saying things without meaning may mislead individuals and groups to accept assertions without question and continue reliance on hierarchical authority based on mythical and magical precepts that substitute, or even become a basis, for, reflection and thought. Knowing what we think we know, but in reality don’t know.
• An important consideration is that there is no real basis for knowing. Empirical evidence is not sought to establish the validity of assertions. Evidence is not easy. It is not easy to find and it is not easy to articulate. Accepting worn out words is a lost opportunity.

Mislabeling

A school kid simply can't sit still through a droning lesson that demands close attention to follow a highly linear and interdependent presentation of a concept that is needed for a future step toward knowledge, a skill or some unmeasurable or poorly measurable “understanding.” How does a teacher deal with such a kid?

Categorizing is a common human enterprise. We tend to put objects including the people we encounter and treat as objects, into buckets or bundles and give them a name. Problems created by naming are legendary. Yet labeled categories are often a useful aid to thinking. Unfortunately names that may have been rational too easily become emotional crutches that can be easily mistaken and misapplied.

The difficulty of applying and consistently using labels in education are built into the our systems of schooling. Age, for instance, is a category and advancement in education is ostensibly age-related. We expect certain things to happen according to age. School readiness is expected by age five. Reading with sufficient working vocabulary is expected by age eight. Graduation from public schooling is expected by or before age eighteen. All of these are assumptions and are systemic to schooling—itself a label of sorts that has multiple meanings.

Unfortunately age-grading in a school environment doesn’t turn out to apply universally. There are exceptions. But society does not like or accommodate exceptions easily. So those not meeting expectations are labeled as “slow” or “retarded.” The later term so derisive that use may become taboo. Appropriately so because when using a term like “retarded,” one result is loss of clarity or more ambiguity; a consequence of mislabeling.

Our language is laden with labels that are poorly fitted and used without discrimination, and much needed nuance. These nuanced matters take more time to describe and explain so we resort to a label and use it despite obvious limitations.

Disruption of classroom management by inappropriate or discordant student behaviors call forth help that often demands an extensive description. When a description is repeated often enough it becomes almost mandatory to use a label to conserve time and the energy of speaking and writing. Checking a series of boxes on a computer screen substitutes for description; nuance be damned.

Yet sooner or later someone will struggle to understand nuance particularly if other categorical elements are to be implemented. Take for instance, an almost universal ideal or quest for the desirable conditions of personalization or individualization of instruction, assignments, grading, counseling and so forth. When a child is labeled as deficient an Individualized Educational Plan, an IEP, is implemented. The label of disablity often requires the intervention of a specialist; a psychologist to reinforce or resist a teacher’s judgment. The psychologist’s task is to affirm or designate a label. One procedure after observation of the child or reading an observation report of others, is to consult the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. The DSM, in a current version, which is now version five, or DSM-V. This manual is itself not without controversy even among psychiatry and psychology practitioners. Yet it is generally considered authoritative.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) provides definitions, through the US Depart of Education, that are intended to guide the action of schools when students present with particular cognitive or behavioral problems. Yet diagnosis and prescription of “learning disabilities” may be due to mislabeling when students of low socioeconomic status acquire inappropriate labels. Second opinions are costly.

Within the content of IDEA and DSM-V, there is room for disagreements about the application of a multitude of categories. One result is frequent inconsistencies in “diagnosis” of a condition such as lack of attention on the part of some children. These children may acquire a label of Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD. When the child is also hyperactive, the label becomes Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. So now we witness ADHD, ADD, and ADD-without hyperactivity.

These labels are only a few among many related to a larger category of “students who do not learn” aka, Learning Disabled or with Learning Disability. DSM-V is a trove of possible conditions many of which call forth Special Education and a host of trained specialists. Not infrequently medical interventions in the form of drug prescriptions may be made. One must hope that the labels assigned to an individual are indeed correct or appropriate. The percentages of correct labeling are high. Yet mislabeling happens, and it may be argued that any percentage of mislabeling is too high. And that doesn’t scratch the surfaces of why mislabeling occurs among supposedly highly qualified practitioners. These social undertones deserve much greater attention. However, DSM-V will remain a controlling authority.

Unreal Expectations

When we use words frequently and easily make associations we create expectations among those who read or hear the words. Word use is context dependent. A word in the absence of context is unlikely to be meaningful. Wen we accept ambiguous terms that are intended to hold some precision, there is an inevitable discomfort that prevents fulfillment of expectations. Two people speaking to one another use or attempt to use, vocabulary that is common. We expect that the meaning of words are shared by the two minds engaged. That is related to the Theory of Mind, which basically is that one mind (theirs) is functioning in the same way as another mind (ours). When we are aware of differences, we tend to talk up or talk down to another possessor of a mind. It is almost impossible to get it right. Yet when we don't talk up or talk down, there is potential for expectations to be unfulfilled in either an immediate or in a long-term sense. In other words, a conversation begins to fill with unreal expectations.

This doesn't even begin to consider that one party to a conversation may do things that either intentionally aor unintentionally mislead the other party. Much has yet to emerge regarding interpretation of words and phrases, prosody and body languages. Depending on tone of voice or the positioning of the body, a word or phrase may take on or acquire very different meaning or message.

What We Don't Know

The difference between knowing and not knowing are too often surrounded by ignorance. It is too easy to think we know something that we don't know. Understanding is elusive and represents a murky form of knowing what understanding is when we see it … perhaps not unlike pornography. Understanding is likely impossible to see, hear, taste, smell or … know. It is possible that what we may convey about “understanding” is not anything that has a cognitive basis, but is, rather, an emotional sense about knowledge. It just seems like a very risky business to think we know what understanding actually represents. And, it seems very likely that we traipse down a primrose colored path whenever we use the term understanding.

Connection is also elusive. Educators want their students of make connections. Well good luck! A feeling of being connected may emerge magically. The light-bulb blinks a bit and then becomes steady, for a bit. With continuing exposure or experience, relationships may be taken for granted, assumed for ongoing work until along comes a messy exception. What seemed like a connection can be severed or teased into new growth or growth potential. When that happens, as it will, confusion precedes clarity, modification or abandonment. Science is built on shaky concepts of connection because the scientist is a skeptic and demands a lot of repetition before grudging acceptance. So Einstein understood enough of Newtonian mathematics to accept results while he kept questioning.

New Lexicon

Our considerations above may call forth needed new vocabulary for education. This is not to say that we should just collect all of the words and phrases used in education and substitute new terms.

As we rethink the paradigm for education, we will very likely invent new vocabulary. For instance, teachers are clearly associated with the practices or praxis of education. Calling them guides begins to get at the new paradigm. Nevertheless something different may emerge. Teachers are also More Knowledgeable Others—MKOs and may become known with a term for respected leaders such as the Sensei (pronounced sen-say). But neither term, MKO or Sensei (the Japanese honorific for teachers at all levels) will ever fully reflect the new order, paradigm and practice that will need to emerge for education to evolve in a dramatically changed and changing world of the future.

Learning is generally now thought a central element of education. However, when education is framed as life long and life wide, and knowledge is recognized as constructed, there may begin to emerge other labels for what happens to individuals or small groups as a result of experiences that are either spontaneous, serendipitous or have been carefully designed and constructed to elicit a change that is attributable to the experience. It will be much more difficult to glibly say that “learning” has happened and then attempt to measure with precision what has happened. We may see a day emerge when no one believes that what happens with education can be measured or is comparable from one individual to another.

Accordingly my decided preference is to constantly seek ways to use development or human development instead of learning. Of course, development also has its ambiguities since were too often lack measures of development any more that we have measures of learning. However, there is something that seems more solid to speak of developing knowledge of something rather than “learning” something. Learning was once defined with some tidiness as a “permanent change in behavior.” However the matter of permanence was as fraught as was learning itself. It has not been particularly easy to substitute “development” for “learning” and there are interesting situations where a suitable substitute for the verb learning seems impossible to find.

The fairly simple fact is that what humans do for or in development is not yet well defined. This fact is accompanied by another, that learning is not better and may well be worse because of its inherent ambiguities and the huge range of ways in which it is used with even bleeding edges between its use as a verb and as a noun or even as a modifier that itself needs modification to elicit some sense of meaning. Clearly, I believe that education will be well served as we search out and try new expressions about what is happening in the broad framework of human development, which precedes and follows the school years. Human development is life long and life wide.

Action

By using language and carefully considering the meaning of the words and phrases, questioning the writer's or speaker's meaning, we are taking action. Every act of communication is a two-way proposition. Parties in communication seek engagement although engagement may be fraught when one party is poorly engaged or disengaged. Indeed the content of communication may cause disengagement. Engagement is fostered or facilitated when there is open invitation or a tacit agreement between the parties that asking the speaker to expand on their meaning is a useful effort that may foster dialogue and a conversation that encourages or engages more robust concepts.

An action agenda for education begins to emerge from creating new and more appropriate—better language. Kicking “learning” our is going to be uncomfortable to say the least. But the effort will strengthen education's ecology by helping us—everyone—see obstacles and possibilities.

Action may begin at the edges of language and support the creation of new meanings to foster evolutionary change. It is more likely that it is not our language that must change for education to evolve but for our concepts and paradigms about education to themselves begin a labor-intensive evolution from now to then. This is about the fututres of education, which will be the subject of this book’s epiloguue, and we should hope a constantly advancing dialogue to foster human development.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works, and

Chomsky, Noam. … as well as philosophers auch as …

Michele Foucault …

There may be other suitable recommendations … including …

Reigeluth, Charles (& Lisa Lahey???) Time …

Make Just One Change …

mislabeling may also carry racial undertones20. DSM-5 has been taken to task21 … fourth edition's (DSM-IV; APA, 1994) task force chairperson, Allen Frances, MD. Dr. Frances argues that the use of DSM-5 will result in the mislabeling of everyday problems as a mental illness. School psychologists rely on a current versions DSM.

Chapter XX

The greatest wealth is health.

Virgil

P4+P4

Society itself is embedded in a constant state of development. It cannot be ignored that development of society takes place in a multitude of silos. Two of the most important silos concern human well being—education and health. P4+P4 is, for reasons I’ll elaborate later, a symbolic recognition that these silos need to be torn down and new structures built to make both health and education a more natural and functional element in society. Both should be firmly and positively removed from the economic dictates of capitalism, and, yes, socialized. Both should be highly personalized even as society is a beneficiary. As such there also needs to be a pealing away of rank commercialism from other essential institutions for human development. Insurance and banking come quickly to mind.

The matters and concerns of “health care” have migrated from medical practice to a scientific enterprise that has enormous commercial value and is euphemistically, and I must say egregiously, called health care. The medical sector, for almost its entire part, does not really care a wit for any body’s health. The practitioners are paid for procedures, and now, more than ever, their administrative controllers, have migrated a system to the depth and breadth of a capitalist society along with finance, insurance and banking, and real estate. Efficiency and productivity reign for medicine and increasingly for education. This often call forth outsourcing service delivery.

Even important parts of government are being “outsourced” and provide cash flows and profits for private commercial enterprise. If there is doubt, start with the modern military and the infamous military-industrial complex that carried a warning from General of the Army and President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Beyond the military, looking elsewhere seems urgent. The ecosystems of media and entertainment could rank high. This introspection is not for the faint of heart. The mentally lazy will label looking at this Marxist, socialist, or communist. Dismissal through name-calling.

Medicine is now fully and thoroughly commercial. Education, I fear is taking similar steps and, though still far behind, has seen through publishing, chartered schools and high stakes testing an intrusive trend toward commercial-industrial enterprises. Schooling systems turn to digital tutoring applications and uses (or abuses) of artificial intelligence, machine learning and large language models. Reform of schools, if we are not cautious, is headed down the same for-profit path. Choice for parents is promoted to adopt a competitive framework. It too will slide slowly outside of any social democratic control or restraint. After all regulation has become a profanity for a growing libertarian sector of society.

Medicine and Education are two huge sectors of society and its economy. Together they rival (or, by some measures, exceed) the annual federal investment in the military. To paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirksen, a trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon it adds up to real money.

In this chapter we'll look at these two important sectors with some intention to draw conclusions as to why society should consider and promote a merger. Both are in desperate need for a change in the paradigm within which they currently operate.

Medicine

This section will bullet a few points about medicine worth consideration in any discussion of merger. The following section will focus similarly for Education.

• Research is highly focused on stakeholder outcomes including but certainly not limited to patients. Research justifies pharmacertical approaches, medical device manufacture, economic efficiencies for clinics and hospitals and human resource allocations.
  • The foundations of medicine are fully biological. It was the development of a body of knowledge about cells that enabled both the recognition of the cellular theory of disease, including cancer, by Rudolf Virchow and the Germ Theory of disease by Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, and others. Our understanding of neuroscience rests firmly on cellular biology of the Neuron, a theory elaborated by Santiago Ramon y Cajal and Camilio Golgi through their elaborate microscopic examinations of brain and spinal cord tissues.
• Development is embedded in understanding the body and its systems. The role of cell differentiation in evolution and development (EvoDevo) enables medical advancements as with stem cells and gene editing.
• There is an important ecology of medicine in place that is also exclusionary of anyone lacking financial resources. Insurance and desired social goals are not enough. Entry to services is one aspect of finance, but entry to practice through years of medical schooling is also important. Entry to practice is highly dependent on prior intellectual accomplishment and that in turn is largely a function of finance and adaptation to the school environment—education's ecology.
• Medical delivery is lifelong but much more intense in the later years than in the early years. End of life medical costs are huge.
• Medical practice is highly personalized and group management of patients is almost unheard of. P4 as in Prediction, Prevention, Personalization and Possession (as in ownership) are already being pursued medically. The later “P” is placing initiatives and guiding in the hands, heart and minds of patients, not physicians.
• Expectations of practitioners for robust compensation is common and near universal; it is built into the whole meshwork of medical care, including but not limited to medical technologists, physical and occupational therapists, psychologists, and, of course, nurses. Need we even mention members of hospital corporation executives?
• New specializations are proliferating and establishing their own knowledge bases (and research methods and biases).
• Perfection is often a hallmark for success in medical colleges.

Education

• Education and medicine share some important links of impact in the school environment specifically and the education environment broadly.
• Education and neuroscience share common considerations of cognition, affect, and, perhaps, even the mysteries of spirituality. Attention, choice and executive functions, memory, circadian rhythms, and stress adaptations all play important roles in actual and potential human development.

• Autopoiesis and self-directed development link what happens with the body-mind to quality of life including cognition and affect related to freedom and pursuit of happiness and well-being.

• Life long and life wide considerations apply to education and potentially impact health perspectives and personal practices.

• Passion, peers, projects and play (another P4) are emerging in education along with questioning and dialogue to serve greater engagement and self-directed development.

• Education has never presented such huge economic barriers to entry as it was fully socialized and has adopted a minimal requirement for intellectual achievement on presumption that anyone can teach reading, writing and arithmetic if they themselves have already learned these skills.
• Perfection and personal mastery is far from a feature in Colleges of Education. Educators rarely encourage a team approach, shared visioning or mental modeling, and systems thinking is mostly absent in Colleges of Education.

Praxis in Education and Health

First a word about praxis. Praxis is recognized as a process by which a theory, lesson or skill is enacted realized, embodied, or practiced. The term has some connection with theology and embraces the faith for relition and may be attached to traditions of ceremony or worship such as the practice of the Christian Gospels with their dogma. Marxist philosophy advanced a school of humanism which acquired the designation of a Praxis School. Our customary reference is to practice of medicine and law; praxis is rarely used. Praxis has also been attached to education and pedagogy.

So, then, where are equal concerns or values that could make merger attractive? Education and Medicine it may be argued, include overlapping magisteria—domains of medicine and education that could be mutually supporting if certain barriers or borders could be reduced or abolished. One such condition involves disabilities. Often most evident in youth, but find as well expression in adults and aging. It is with disability and development that both medicine and education have common grounds or seeing potential shared values. Stress disorders are one such area of overlap. Developmental (learning) disorders are another.

Here I will mainly focus on pediatrics because it has the closest affinity to children who are about to begin schooling or are already enmeshed (matriculated is a nicer term) with school. Pediatrics is where parents and school officials turn when a child is not fitting comfortably into the dictates of classroom management because of unmanageable behavior. The inattentive or restless or disruptive child is examined medically for diagnosis and treatment. With due consideration for alternatives, the treatment of choice is not infrequently a sapcific psychoactive drug. That is, a drug that will either increase or decrease some general or specific brain-body function. Pediatric psychiatry is an important, if not particularly lucrative, specialty. Yet the medical model has limitations and leaves room for improvements. Nursing models that involve holistic personalization, environmental considerations, the benefits and liabilities of biomedical approaches, as well as family matters. A pediatric nurse practitioner may see potential benefits for engagement of social workers, family therapists or a psychiatric specialist as a responsible alternative to a quick drug prescription.

Career or knowledge laddering is already in place due to the evolution of the role of parents. Parenting may look to nursing, including pediatric and psychiatric nursing with pediatric nurse practitioners and physician assistants carving out their functional niche An emerging Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) required under auspices of educators, may well integrate the medical perspective. . A bridge role for a school nurse should not go unnoticed.

It should be a source of interest that the school nurse has a role in the interface between pediatrics and school practice if not a direct role with pedagogy. Screening for basic physical limitations would be an important beginning. The assumptions of normal perceptual, attentional, social or physical coordination functions among pre-school and in-school children is too often egregiously neglected and left to reporting by a teacher. The school nurse may be consulted when a child has an obvious medical condition. Yet proactive screening may be warranted well before the obvious disability emerges. When there is emotional disturbances, a school psychologist or social worker may be the consultant of choice.

Focus on Health

There is also a bit or language bending involving health care and medicine. Medical practice is almost fully oriented toward diagnosis and treatment of disease. A condition of disease is quite distinct from health; some would argue that health is the absence of disease. This argument given the contemporary practice of medicine should almost preclude health care as a synonym for medicine. Health is not a matter needing care in the sense that care is used for individuals suffering from trauma or disease. While it is conceded that a medical practitioner may perform or practice a procedure with the aim and potential benefit of restoring a condition of health as absence of disability from trauma or disease, the practice is medical—not health care.

Specialization has become a hallmark of medical practice. The individual mandate for practices has given sway to corporate management of medical practice groups including clinics and hospitals. The pharmaceutical and medical device sectors are fully dependent on the research and development structures and functional attributes of the major universities and their medical school research faculty. The practice of pediatrics has a focus on diseases of infants and toddlers through adolesciece. Pediatricians may well consult with other medican specialists such as surgeons, infectious disease internists, oncologists, or others.

New careers are emerging in fields referenced as Allied Health … much of this is the result of chronic illnesses such as cancer, kidney failure, and importantly mental health requiring patient choices as well as actions that only a patient can perform or that require critical patient cooperation and compliance. One such emerging speciality is the Health Navigator who provides no diagnosis or treatment, but is an unbiased guide for a patient/client through complex choices, some of which may be financial (insurance-related), lifestyle or relationship matters. Behavioral considerations may outweigh or override medical matters. Death and dying with dignity may be a more central element than a purely medical strategy.

Every level of practice or praxis in medicine is attended by individuals who have passed muster in programs designed to advance the roles to be assumed in the ecology of hospitals and clinics. Only a few are enfranchised or certified by law to provide services outside the auspices of a system of control and accountability.

The traditional roles of physicians, surgeons and nurses has underone an enormous development of specialization. Nurse's roles began to differentiate along with the specializations of physicians, particularly along the lines of hospital wards for patients with medical, surgical, obstetric and gynecology, cancer, pediatrics and psychiatry. Nurses with general training took on roles to provide support in specialized areas. For instance, in operating rooms, surgical nurses became familiar with the order of procedures and the instrumentation for particular forms of surgery. Their skills are prized by surgeons. Some nurses become more familiar with the anesthetic administration and patient monitoring throughout and following a surgical procedure. Post surgical intensive care and recovery also called for specialization.

But nurses also took on the transition from medical practice to health practice. They have collectively recognized that a nursing role is different from a physician role. While the physician concentrates on diagnosis and treatment of disease, nurses recognize that patients are first and foremost people who live in an environment and may be motivated very differently from the physician’s expectation. Accordingly a nursing emphasis has shifted from the hospital bedside to the place of people in a community who can be responsible for maintaining their own health. Physicians too are recognizing that chronic illnesses demand a new framing of diseases in which the origins of diseases or disabilities are founded often years before any signs or symptoms become evident or observable. … health maintenance through nutrition, exercise and positive social relationships often place much greater burdens on people to avoid or evade becoming a patient.

These specialties commanded more advanced training and morphed into roles as physician assistants and nurse practitioners. Accordingly medical praxis became increasingly specialized and fragmented. These shortcomings were recognized and addressed thorugh physician specialties such as family practitioner, primary care physician, and even hospitalists, who confined their practice to the care of patients in the hospital. Nurse practitioners (DPN) obtained doctorate degrees to prepare for careers a primary care providers.

The result was development of a distinct career or knowledge ladders that ranged, at least potentially, if not actually, from a home health care aide to a highly specialized physician. The path to medical school enrollment continues to be a huge gap in the rungs of the career ladder. Few are able to reach the medical school section of the ladder. But the ubiquity of access to databases of literature opens the knowledge ladder to anyone with requisite background knowledge. Nevertheless, especially within the ranks of nursing, potential exists. Some similar laddering has been occuring in dentistry as well where dental hygienists have acquired credentials as dental therapists and now provide patient care that includes procedures once confined to only dentists with specialization in periodontics; for instance doing procedures that amount to surgery of the gums.

Focus on Education

Here we will focus first on elementary education or the PK-4/6 arena. It bears saying again and again that these are critically important years that provide the foundation for future academic success. That is not necessarily to say that without success in those early years, future achievement is precluded. However it must be recognized that if academic fundamentals of reading, particularly, and number manipulations of arithmetic, writing and speaking grammatically , as well as important social skills including emotional control, are missed by age nine, rehabilitation is extraordinarily difficult and the individual may be so challenged that their discouragement is impossible to remedy. The result can be a lifetime of discontent and marginalization.

Preparation for Pre-school and Kindergarten does not happen in schools but nevertheless is critically important as and for education. Accordingly it is parenting adults and siblings or playmates in the environment of the child who take on near total responsibility for this preparation. Most adults, parents, relatives, neighbors, of course, do this extremely well. Unfortunately some not so well. It is clear that in these early years, a child that is neglected, does not form healthy adult attachments, or is subject to trauma repeatedly or even in a single emotionally jarring event, may be left behind and unable to acquire the academic skills needed for life-long successes socially, intellectually, and financially. These children have built in barriers that are typically not obvious to the adults attached to the schools. Even simple disabilities may be overlooked for critical periods of a child's early development. Screening for vision, hearing and other sensory modalities including proprioception and coordination, may be overlooked or ignored. Schools will only rarely be able to recognize disability and make adequate provision for remediation. The condition is too often simply accepted.

Secondary education has a fuzzy beginning because of the ambiguity of adolescence. This is accompanied by serious questioning about the nature and timing of emancipation of children from parents and the taking or responsibility for their life in society writ large. There are at least a few important transitions that happen to both individuals and their peer groups. Accprdomgly we should try to pay much closer attention to these transitions.

Institutions of Higher Education cannot be excluded from education although their increasing dominance by, as and for research has dramatically changed IHEs and drawn them inexorably toward a new model in which the old charges for teaching, research and service has been egregiously altered to serve the further expansion of inequality within society. Elite universities, about 50 or so, including for the most part Ivy League, Land Grant Institutions, now dominate and dictate the practices in all of higher education. Being another “Harvard” seems to be a nearly universal aspiration and goal. This visioning is an unaccounted base for thinking; perhaps too much thinking, in and about hiigher education. This thinking drives the inexorable quest for parents and their children to seek and find only the best reputations of colleges and universities. It is another competitive field or arena.

Schooling Praxis

Paulo Friere, the Brazilian philosopher and educator, frequently referred to praxis in his famous book Pedagogy of the Oppressed in which he recognized the role of civil authority for the condition of Brazilian peasants. His praxis was met with such a severe reaction, that he was forced to live for several years in Chile in order to avoid prison and punishment for his work in Brazil. It is noteworthy that Friere advocated critical pedagogy and recognized its relationship with the practice of freedom.

The central mandate for praxis in schools is classroom management. When management is attained, pedagogy or teaching is possible if it is carefully and critically planed. This planning is necessarily done for the ecology of the classroom. This ecology begins with the metaphorical opening and closing of the door to a space where a group is accommodated. The open door admits children and the closed door keeps them in the box to be schooled. The child develops a mindset about appropriate behavior while the door is closed. When the child walks through an open door to leave the classroom, a different mindset replaces the classroom mindset. An even more profound change of mindset occurs at the door to the school. Freedom!

The classroom ecology is recognized implicitly or tacetly by all children and adults as a place where freedom is limited.

Individual practitioners of education, the teachers, are deeply embedded in the management of classrooms under a series of authoritarian dictates that have emerged across a dozen decades to denigrate the role of teacher pratice and make them almost fully subordinate to a hierarchy of administrators who can't seem to be bothered by any thinking outside the classroom boxes. Support for innovation is rare; freedom to adapt, adjust, create, change or evolve is almost non-existent.

The Merger

Merging the ecologies of school/classroom and hospital/clinic may seem an impossible undertaking given the historical developments that have attended formation of the contemporary practices in thse two disciplines. This is a stumbling block that cannot be ignored or avoided easily. The likely key will be to look critically at the practice of pediatrics and particularly by those nurse practitioners who have already looked to pediatrics as their specialty. These Nurse Practitioners who often hold a doctorate (DPN or PhD) for qualification may be able to work, practicing independently in local communities or neighborhoods. Their practices may reasonably embrace others with revelant knowledge and experience. For instance, Doulas and Midwives may provide services where the missions of institutions such as hospitals and schools are secondary or even irrelevant to a primary objectives of caring for mothers and infants. Midwives have already built collaborative relationships with obstrics and gynecology practices. Further collaboration, perhaps involving Doulas, nurse practitioners and pediatricians could provide for enhanced care and support for infants and toddlers aged zero to three. Sources of adverse experiences—trauma—in those early years is devastating. Avoiding childhood trauma takes a village! This is not a matter where uniformly, unquestioningly, dogmatically trusting all parents is appropriate. Even one bad parent in 50 (one traumatized child in 25) can wreak havoc on a future classroom.

This seems to clearly open a place for a whole new and different initiative in which society emphasizes and even strongly advocates orientation of prospective parents prior to conception. Some schools and home economics programs attemped to do this but for the most part failed, as evidenced by too many (anything greater than 1 in 100,000) incompetent parents and an egregious, unrelated closure of home economics programs in school districts and university education. Couples who contemplate starting a family could be encouraged to visit these new village professionals in order to develop a strong sense of the challenges of parenthood. Community development agents could facilitate and serve to help couples recognize alternatives to the usual and customary institutions of commerce, entertainment and religious organizations that drive too much sex and accidental or unintended parenthood for their dogmatic and nefarious reasons. Too much irresponsible parenting is damaging schooling for too many kids and their teachers.

Each couple could be encouraged to see their role in the neighborhood or community through a lens shaped by the planetary imperatives of stewardship and sustainability. An important element would include emphasis on the importance of health. Healthy lifestyles revolving around the community of a neighborhood, pride in living conditions, provisions for local foods and collaborative transportation would foster these community values as well as environmental values. Community values and environmental values would increasingly be viewed as one and the same. Both medicine and education have much to gain when neighbors promote mutual healthful living.

Integral with any merger would be a shared vision of individual and community health though cooperation and communication. Leadership would be distributed and integrated with an ongoing dialogue in which development is constantly open to new questions to facilitate strategic action based on partial and ongoing answers to the standing question; What will we do together?

Accordingly, each individual participating in a community of geography would come to see a central role for personalization in a social context. The needs and aspirations of individuals would be formed around their roles in providing development of their own interests while supporting others doing the same. Society can help fulfill aspiration where aspiration contributes to community development.

This is, of course, a highly Utopian view. Reality does however respond to vision. Accordingly a social reality is susceptible to enthusiastic advocates who envision change as realistic, relevant and doable. This means that a merger would never be complete and perfect and would emerge spontaneously or serendipitously from evolutionary conversations that support new development. Yet the praxis of medical and educational fulfillment recognizing the touch points or overlap of interests may tackle the most neglected aspect of community development, namely the importance of building capacity of children who will be the adults of the future; an actuality that may well be as old as humanity.

There may also be some important and useful places to begin. Native or indigenous communities exist in both rural and urban settings. Immigrants quite naturally cluster in neighborhoods, and community developers could function as gentle guides and more knowledgeable others to build functional democracies based on cooperation and shared leadership rather than hierarchy and power structures. Elected leaders would be, ideally, those already disposed to thinking in terms of stewardship and service.

Individuals and small groups can be aspirational in a socially responsible way. Perhaps, only they can take actions and experiment where larger bodies of people may experience constraint with larger, longer commitments. Small groups are often working from common understandings and structures that enable spirits to move with collaboration, cooperation, communication and a collective consciousness built on empathy, altruism and enthusiasm. My optimism about mergers involving education and medicine is built on initiatives of many small groups.

In the two following chapters, we'll look more closely at the personalization efforts going forward in both medicine and education.

Recommended Reading & Sources

I am not aware of anyone writing along these broad considerations of merging education and medical care. Much has, of course, been written about education in medicine, nursing, health care institutions and these sourcees should be of some value. Likewise in education the interface with medical specialties such as, for instance, pediatrics, would likewise provide writing of some value. If any reader knows of writing that adds to the thinking I have expressed in this chapter, I will be most grateful for your correspondence.

Tobbell, Dominique. 2023. Dr. Nurse …

Senge, Peter. 199x. The Fifth Discipline.

Hood, LeRoy. … The Institute for Systems Biology.

P4 in education …

Friere, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Clinton, Hilary. 1996. It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us. [ In 2005, Senator Rick Santorum wrote a rebuttal to the book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good. ]

Compensation of this pediatric psychiatry specialty should be compared to pediatricians in general practice.

Chapter XXI

Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Passion

This chapter's title is taken from a larger consideration that a child's life and development can carry her or him across not only the first decade but through an entire lifetime of development. There is an old but important adage that it is the purpose of education to light a fire rather than to fill an empty bucket. That fire is passion.

Too much of contemporary American education is aimed ar bucket filling; craning more and more into a school day and testing whether the items poured into the brain-bucket are still there a day, week, month or years later. Because a psychometrician has no way to measure the heat of a student's fire for anything. Memory is measurable. Skills can be demonstrated. Plenty of drill and practice can solidify many memory-requiring lessons and skills. Passion it is not measured. And, of course, we experience a social compulsion aligned with the clever phrases from the world of business—you can't manage what you can't measure. In the business world employees without fire are fired. School kids and adults develop differently. Fire and passion come from a different place and does not happen uniformly.

Passion, Projects, Peers and Play are one part of P4+P4. It is the part that is most significant for education. And, it is not limited to the early years. It is also a foundation for graduate engineering education at no less than MIT. Mitchhel Resnick an MIT engineering professor told the story of developing creativity through emulating Lifelong Kindergarten at MIT. In fact, a certain thrill and joie de vivre is a foundation for accomplishment that goes beyond mere ambition. .22

This chapter is about the feeling of freedom and will consider four elements that can take education to a new level in and for human society: Passion, Projects, Peers and Play are a foundation for what all of what education and human development should become across a life span.

Passion

The passion of a person can be described with a multitude of words—agony, heat, rage, desire, irrational motive, sexual desire, eros, mania, concupiscence, love, excitation, zeal, eagerness, elan, avidity—but we know it when we see or experience it.

Passion is a form of emotionality; a visually observable reaction, a behavior or a body-wide physiological manifestation of emotion. But it is also a combination of deep engagement and focused exclusion that holds flaming emotion and steely reason in balance to assure productive action.

In this sense passion is not a white hot, irrational drive, mania or concupiscence; a sexual desire. It is a normal, if occasionally abnormal or supranormal, part of the human spirit and should be fostered, not suppressed. Control is likely counterproductive.

Passion is offen attached to religious fervor or zealotry. There seems to be something about passion that is frowned upon in most school settings. School structures and rules seem remote for anyone who becomes passionate about an object or subject.

Certainly the capacity of teen age adolescents for engagement with the opposite sex is socially dampened, often for good and substantial reasons. Teen agers are not usually schooled or taught or conditioned to accept their body's hormonal changes in a way that encourages measured and appropriate control. Although teens will seek out appropriate situations to express interest and desire with the opposites sex or, for that matter the same sex, but taking a different course of behaviors often with distinct gender differences.

Curiosity is singularly important and it should surprise no one that curiosity about sex becomes a near white hot passion. Rather than ask about the source of these passions, it may be more appropriate to ask about why they are so typically held in check and why that is better done by some than others.

Sex education may be an important step in a productive direction to help teenagers make sense of their emotions and passions. Turning the emotional energy of sexual desire toward other objects and subjects and recognizing the need for balance is a development that begins with the rise of adolescent body changes and the beginning of puberty. Yet, the school approach is customary inclusion in a health course for a few uncomfortable hours for clustered students and their teacher where both are forced into performance routines ranging from forced authoritarian dispatch on the part of a teacher to coy embarassments on the part of young people. One result is snickering in hallways after the bell finely rings signaling freedom.

If there is ever a cause to be celebrated it may be fostering personal passion. Passion is highly personal and fundamentally outside the purview of groups attending schools—sitting in a classroom and following a prescribed schedule of activity should be noone’s formula. Passion is something that is impossible to give to someone else. Certainly there are circumstances where someones passion becomes something similar in someone else, but it can’t be directly and predictably fostered. It “rubs off” so to speak. A role model may forge such a strong relationship that there is identity that flows between two people. That identity may enable a strong bond to form that is noticeably like love that is not eros but is agape; a deep, almost extreme, friendship. A relationship forms that enables a mutual commitment, beyond merely following.

The power of a celebrity represented by a poster on a bedroom wall, cannot be dismissed. A teenager who idolizes a celebrity; an entertainer, an athlete may feel a belonging and follow an example that may be helpful or harmful depending on many factors attended by publicity machine ethics. Parents are often called directly but usually tacitly to serve as guides to balance or proportion passions. They may be sometimes fortunate and sometime cursed with this role. Passions are not easily or safely put in a fragile bottle. No one should be surprised is a cork blows and a passion spills over. Passion is perhaps an inherent element of growing up and may be a part of the seeking of emancipation that catches hold of a young person's attention. The guides for young people may be well advised to let passions find their own containers or discover their own borders. Society’s dilemma is to enable passion and expect it to find both freedom and responsibility. For this a goal or purpose may need to emerge in the form of a project.

Projects

Turning a passion into action in the form of a project may be healthy and productive. A goal, objective, visioning comes from many sources and combines into a coherent direction.

What constitutes a project? A project acquires meaning because it is about the future. It may be directed or stipulated by another person or it may be self-directed. The role of another person is accepted or found acceptable when recources are required. Time is often a defining, critical resource, a defining endpoint, objective or goal. A timeline and begins to dictate what needs to be done if the goal is to be achieved. The project is defined as a goal when an ending point has a time certain for achievement.

Then comes the question: What needs to be done or what do we need to do? What action is needed now and later? On what is action dependent? What are the skills and knowledge needed to reach a goal?

A project cannot be completed in isolation. At some point there is a need or process for sharing and collaborating. A team effort along the lines of X-Teams with distributed leadership is of great value. Development of the value proposition that can scale the project by identifying critical steps and responsibilities for completion of the requisite steps. Accordingly, projects bring into focus the five disciplines championed by Peter Senge. Those disciplines are pursuit of personal mastery, building and modifying mental models. finding a common or shared vision, working in teams and employing systems thinking.

Every project proceeds through a series of feedback loops that requires a network of peers.

Principles of project management are developed by direct experience with projects, but most typically along side of a set of principles that are brought to the attention of a project team. Much of project management is a highly stereotypical set of principles and there are many different names and terms applied. In fact project management has beome such an important sub-specialty in commercial and industrial corporations that development of project management skills should likely be attended by everyone, young and not so young. There may be no substitute for experience and recognition that project management comes in many useful forms. Moving from and early concept to a final outcome may take many paths.

Innovation is frequently, if not typically, framed as a project. An idea is forwarded through a corporate hierarchy until it receives a hearing by someone in the C-Suite. After some deliberation, a corporate officer may become a champion and give the project a go-ahead. This follows a series of deep deliberations that establish expectations with timelines, budgets, and human resources. Of course, the process of project development and management is rarely linear and an agile approach may be needed to assure successful achievement of a vision or goal.

Community development or neighborhood improvement could be turned into a project with great opportunity. A small part of a community, a neighborhood, could develop important levels of engagement. The scope could be constantly checked, rechecked, reduced or expanded. In other words, agile. Even the size or extent of the neighborhood could be elastic. Geography has only minor relevance and people could come and go as their interests ebb and flow. Age or gender, ability or disability of participants is not automatically relevant. Skill level and safety is relevant but can be integrated and developed without any of the usual and customary barriers.

Communication can be wide-open for review, comment and modification as needed to enable inclusion. This may mean shifting a timeline for completion. Time is, or can be, a vairable resource, money and capability are not so easily variable, but these can be variable also. When money or talent is in short supply, the timeline may need to be extended. Not everyone can do, or be expected to do, everything. Division of labor still stands strong to get things done. But divisions need not exclude, and certainly should not exclude development of skills and knowledge—synergy and serendipity may flow in unexpected, unpredictable ways while a project moves forward. An open environment that fosters asking questions can lead to synergistic and serendipitous developments. A question or spontaneously expressed opinion may open communication portals previously seemed to be closed. New (innovative) solutions may emerge. Questions or random opinions may call forth explanation—all contributing to moving a project forward in the direction of a future, valued development.

Peers

Collaboration is a highly sought element in workforce development. In most STEM disciplines and their associated industries, teamwork is for engineers, lab groups, statisticians, and many professional associations.

Practicing effective communications, tracking shared goals, … clarifying roles and expectations, fostering mutual trust, physical and psychological safety, happens when respect, freedom and responsibility are fostered. Hierarchy is irrelevant and this includes age, gender, or power derived from authority of conferred through money.

When engagement and participation in a project is limited something may be amiss with the project and is likely defeating a project’s quality and value. Peers are the participants. Age, gender or ability are irrelevant. There is a certain essential circular logic operating here. Diversity, equity and inclusion are strengths to be fostered. The result is often discovery.

Feedback is important, perhaps even critically important. Recognnizing the role of feedback at a multitude of levels may be critically necessary to place actions in a context that is global and regional in addition to local. What does the action look like when viewed through an external lens, perhaps from an elevation of 40,000 feet. How would the actions best be explained to outsiders who knew little or nothing about why the project was conceived and initiated. Background may even need to be communicated to participants occasionally to remind them of what is going on and why it is going on.

Teamwork is in almost constant need of attention to assure that knowledge is shared, skills are being updated and attitudes reflect a positive, can-do orientation. Too often the process of updating leads to hierarchy. Those with more or better knowledge assume a glorified role and may even leave the team with dependence and expectation that another member will do it or, worse, that a member is not needed or valued. Schools would seem to be almost ideal places to foster teamwork. But unfortunately, schools are almost by definition, hierarchical due to administratively assigned responsibilities. Principals supervise teachers and the teachers are expected to provide the lead in skill development. Teachers are charged with classroom management above all else. Little wonder then that team-teaching has been tried, and seemed a good idea, but has had mixed results. Models for team development are ubiquitous and optimistic. Yet, too often what is missing in school settings is inclusion of everyone regardless of age, skill-set or knowledge. The result is differentiation and not inclusion.

Models may be useful in considering the role of peers. The acronym CARE (Communication, Accountability, Responsiveness, Empathy) comes from the world of marketing and sales but has been used to model team development in other realms including healthcare settings. Emphasis in health care is on communication, adaptation, relationships and education. In a hospital or clinic the inevitable emphasis is on an individual and a care plan is a forthcoming essential. That plan, if it is to be successful for a hospitalized individual with a disease or disability, is almost never a totally top-down dictate. Physicians possess an huge range of technical and often highly specialized knowledge but that knowledge mayt not include schedules, resources, attitudes along with other tacit elements relative to the individual patient's situation before arrival and after release. In this sennse, of course, the patient is an essential part of the team—a peer in an important sense. One thing present in healthcare, that is severely lacking in our current system of educating with schools, is personalization; a place where adaptation and empathy should reside along with communication and relationships.

Nowhere is this schooling limitation more obvious than with Projects intended for human development and involving peers. In a school setting, defining who is and who is not a peer may become complicated. The simple consideration is age. But there are obviously other matters that are far more important; capacity or capability come immediately to mind as important, paarticularly where time is constraining or sets a closure. Schools and corporations rarely leave open a time frame for a project. Performance is often measured as bringing the project to a conclusion on time, and on budget.

Peer review, and peer definition, is built into much of science; where it is the essential criticism of rationale, method, results and conclusion as well as allocation of resources and ascription of priorities are respected and supported. Status of reviewers for funding of science is rigidly enforced through a system of ranking experience, education and accomplishment. The review process also acknowledges the importance of anonymity to assure candor. The work of a scientists in the form of a proposal for publication of a study's results may also be kept anonymous to assure that reviewer bias is minimized, if not ideally eliminated. This luxury may be obviated when peers are involved in a project. There in the interest of relationship building and maintenance, candor may have to give some space for diplomacy. Obviously there is almost constant exercise of communication skills.

Progress with a project makes demands on people. Each person engaged with a project arrives from a different set of experiences and levels of personal mastery of knowledge and skills critical for the aspirational conditions or goals of the project. This is also about socialization that cuts deeply through sincere, honest give and take within a group.

This may be the most essential piece of education for participation of a more knowledgeable other or MKO. Guiding a group toward the ideals of an X-Team is an art to be practiced, not a skill to be executed slavishly.

Play

When students are asked about school and what they like, it is not an infrequent response for them to say “recess.” Recess may be a very unfortunate term because of its connotation that this is a time to “not learn” and that development of physical and social skills is not important or is only informal. The degree of organization devoted to recess is probably minimal in most school settings; at least it certainly seemed so in my school experience at the elementary level. In junior high and high school almost all physical activity during the school day was in a formal class called physical education or PhyEd. In other words, there was no release from designated, disciplined activity. The emphasis was on how to play certain games or engage in specific activity such as dance, gymnastics, track events. The activity was programmed and for the most part everyone was expected, if not absolutely required, to participate. An example was rope climing in a “boys” PhyEd class. The 2” manilla rope was hung from the gymnasium rafter and everyone took a turn attempting to climb as high as they could useiing the demonstrated technique. A few achieved a goal of reaching a specified height, most did not, and the next day rope climbing was abandoned in favor of some other activity. To my recollection there was no effort on the part of the PhyEd teacher to 1.) encourage skill building by anyone, or 2.) create a competition game of rope climbing. My reflective sense is that “rope climbing” was listed in the PhyEd curriculum guide and was duly checked off by the supervising teacher. Though the teacher was an outstanding coach with teams that valued winning, in the rope climbing exercise, joy was missing.

Letting go and having fun is important. Passions drive both individuals and groups when there is a shared commitment to something that might be called excellence, winning, or making a difference, Progress in the direction of a worthwhile ideal or goal is one definition of success. Standing on a platform with a trophy, metal or accolades from a cheering crowd is both an end and a beginning. The championship team is bonded, sometimes for life. But there is a new season with new challenges. What has been developed for this championship may be a beginning for further development . Sharing in the development of new levels of mastery makes another championship possible.

But play is not about championships it is about joy and pleasure of imagination triumphing over some reality … it is also important to recognize that play involves engagement, which may be physical as in athletic contests or competitions, or a combination of physical and cognitive and emotional as in the playing of music. Singing may be highly disciplined, as is some instrumental music, ot it may simply be for fun and discipline of tone, rhythm, etc. may take second place to simple enjoyment.

What is missing from the paradigm of passion, projects, peers and play? First of all there is a process of getting there. Also: Prediction or anticipation, prevention of mistaken direction or bypassing of ethical considerations or neglect of pathological conditions, Participation or engagement that goes beyond peer-to-peer projects and extends beyond an immediate surrounding to see how other communities my benefit, and finally seeing the whole as deeply personal; being a prt of something greater than self.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Search with keywords/ descriptors …

Ancona

Senge

Chapter XXII

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.

Niels Bohr

Prediction

How does anyone predict the trajectory of a life?

The challenge for all of education is to predict what will happen as the result of what is done in the name of educating. Not even the best schools are able to predict much of what will happen to their students once graduated. Certainly those at the top of the class are more likely than those at the bottom to achieve excellence and become important leaders in their fields.

But occasionally something happens that curtails outstanding achievements, and also occasionally a graduate from the bottom 10% makes an outstanding contribution or achievement. Important Generals have been Goats at West Point. While there may be occasional lamentation about those “failures” in the top 10%, there is little effort to focus important questions about the bottom 10% and why so few find a path to personal success. Those Top10% failures may be attributed to poor choices or just olf-fashioned bad luck. As for the Bottom10% there is just old-fashioned who cares?

This chapter will begin with the daunting challenge of making more accurate predictions and then go on to explore prevention, personalization and participation. Together these four elements are among the efforts of LeRoy Hood MD, PhD at the Seattle-based Institute for Systems Biology where he and his colleagues are visioning the path toward a more personalized approach to medical practice they and others now call precision medicine. Hood is an inventor and entrepreneur. He invented the instruments and methods for analysis and synthesis of genes and gene products to underwrite the human genome project, for which he was a prime mover. Genomics has, as described in chapters above, morphed into other Omics: Transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, epigenomics and others. It is Hood who argues persuasively that if you want to change the world and the way the world does things, you have to start a business. I approach business modeling for education with caution, but there may be value in careful consideration for private sector development of new educational tools. Hood also recognizes that progress will inevitably depend upon developing capacity for storage, retrieval and analysis of biological data. With support from Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Hood pioneered the combination of biological research with computational methods to advance discovery in the biomedical sciences. The long goal is to integrate big data and systems biology to focus on wellness of individuals.

It is our contention and we will argue that each of these four elements—prediction, prevention, personalization and participation—will combine with big data and artificial intelligence to prepare a framework for moving education in new directions that could well include greater liaison with medical research and practice. Almost certainly there will be enormous resistance to these new directions. Yet elements of automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and large language models are nascent or even already present in the servers for education’s research efforts. Although it should be noted that the educators involved are often not well equipped or capable of actually seeing a path forward. Accordingly, it may be the medical research scientists that need to be counted on to find paths forward for education. A nascent merger, will depend upon building much greater liaison between education research and medical research.

Many people in education are still baffled and intimidated by promises of digital systems that may automate teaching and testing, uses and potential abuses of decision making through AI, and by the enormity of huge data bases. These datasets may not be even close to containing the really important and relevant data needed to effectively guide students and the choices they, and they alone, must make. After all these data sets are the potential wellsprings for their futures and the futures of communities in which they will live, work and play.

Prediction –

It should almost go without saying that prediction is highly complex … and always about the future. Yet we should all want to know what will happen when a huge slice of life is devoted to attending school, taking and completing classes and graduating.

Medical practice has, for the most part, been essentially reactive to a patient who presents to a physician with complaint or symptoms. The physician’s examination and laboratory analysies observe and measure what is happening in body systems. A diagnostuc judgment follows. Many times the diagnosis enables a choice of treatment among several possibilities. An infection may be of bacterial origin and the physician may select from among a range of antibiotics, choose to administer the antibiotic by mouth, injection, or infusion and so forth. Based on experience and considerable study of the pathology and the properties of various antibiotics, the physician will be able to predict with fairly good accuracy what will happen to the patient.

The physician may however, lack critical information about the patient, the agent causing the symptoms and signs as well as incomplete knowledge of a drug and its potential interactions with undetected physiology of the patient, or with other drugs the patient may also be using or abusing. All of this suggests that more information may improve prediction.

Medical scientists are seeking an expansion of information about patients through the development and open sharing of huge omic data sets in order to collaborate broadly to improve prediction.

Educators will, or should, look to the medical example. While there are undoubtedly many aspects of educational practices that will require vastly different data and approaches to how data may guide predictions, re-inventing what already exists and is being actively improved, is hardly justified. Following a solid, established example is a proven way to develop new capacities.

Prevention –

With education, the notion of prevention should be approach with caution. Guiding students is fraught in too many ways to be recounted, criticized and rectified here. For just one instance, students are too often (mis)guided into activities considered to be non-educational including but not limited to entertainment and athletics. One result may be seen as neglect of scholarship. Passion for sports, music, drama or even journalism, business or faith-based palaver could be construed as “distraction.” It often turns out that these “distractions” become a basis for development of scholarship in the form of intense study or even random sifting to and from what may seem to others as vapid interests. Deep engagement may be life changing and life-long. A step to prevent a particular direction may be misguided, particularly where a guide assumes authority and sets a path or direction for an individual’s future development. A simple key is to lay out alternatives and emphasize self-directed choices.

Nevertheless, educators also know that a life trajectory can become egregiously out of touch with contemporary social standards (norms) and lead to a multitude of behaviors that are harmful, or in a very real sense pathological. These shifts could be considered akin to a disease. Incautious analogy can easily invoke a diagnosis of psychosis or mental disease. Deviation or distorted associations can be grossly misleading and take an individual's path away from schooling as education. The schooling paradigm may well be, for some individuals, a profound source of disease. In this sense, education is leading away from the usual and customary paths toward an unguided life trajectory. The dangers of self-direction cannot be ignored, because social pathology may follow mis-directed independence. Using prevention can lead to abuse. This is well illustrated by the misguided efforts with religion, gender identity and sexuality where parents attempt, with the best of intentions, to force-feed “corrective” measures—reprogramming which is highly controversial and rarely, if ever, appropriate. It is not at all clear that a parent’s decision is going to be best. Yet it is a near universal social axiom that parents are always right. How, we should ask, can a complex decision involve a prediction of a good outcome?

Medicine uses biomarkers to provide early detection of indicators of disease. These biomarkers often appear in body fluids like blood, saliva or urine before an individual patient is aware of symptoms. Educational pathology likely has early markers some with likely biological manifestations. Stress, trauma and adverse experiences may impact a child’s trajectory of development. Education should make early detection of dissatisfaction or disaffection or distraction a priority. What are the relevant indicators and how can technology assist or lead in discovery of early indicators of dissatisfaction, distraction or disaffection? It should be possible to identify these disablers and begin to test for early indicators.

Education Ecology recognizes that for each individual there are multiple systems and networks that must be factored into any definitive action or actions taken or recommended. Systems of systems and networks of networks interacting make the tasks of the educator daunting to say the least.

Prevention of disabling behaviors may require an entirely new mindset or attitude such as the “growth mindset” of Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck. This could lead educators down other paths, focusing on attitudes and preventing the formation of socially incompatible, legally unacceptable, poorly conforming or unproductive tendencies. As with medicine, early detection could yield much better guides. An ounce of prevention could well exceed a pound of cure. Our social costs of incarceration and remediation are huge but very real.

Personalization –

We are all different and our differences should be celebrated. Amalgamation and conformity for education’s sake is, it seems to me, completely inimical to everything that education should be about. Education demands personalization. We have no difficulty easily and quickly recognizing our differences regarding height, muscularity, weight, facial shapes and features, hair or eye colors, et cetera. Certain features that distinguish individuals are well known to be fully or partially inherited. We tend to look like our parents. Yet when considerations are given to physiology there is a decided tendency toward amalgamation to create averages and label these as typical. This has been no less the case with intelligence and a so-called mental aptitude of individuals.

Howard Gardner, a psychologist at Harvard, rattled this cage a few decades ago with studies providing strong evidence that intelligence is not a general characteristic—measured as IQ— but is an amalgam of multiple intelligences. These intelligences included: linguistic, mathematical, musical, kinesthetic, spacial, naturalistic, inter-personal, intra-personal, and possibly existential. The labels are not without controversy but pretty clearly point to recognition of individual differences—not uniformity or singularity. Personalization means that educators need to frame their efforts around diversity and respect for the dignity of differences. Expectation that everyone is or should become the same is nonsense. And frankly, that may apply to much of the esoteric mumbo-jumbo of psychometrics. Just exactly who is average? And, what does it actually mean for anyone to be one standard deviation above or below average?

This may well come down to a matter of choice and the entire spectrum regarding an individual’s development of many brain and body functions including cognition and emotions. One that exhibits this diversity is the so-called executive functions. The executive functions attributed by neuroscience and assigned often tentatively to specific brain regions include attention, working memory, decision-making, time management, organization, planning, self monitoring and others. When combinations of these functions are deficient an individual may exhibit socially inappropriate actions, difficulty paying attention, procrastination with tasks, or emotional instability.

What may constitute personalization for one individual may be quite different from the personalization for another individual. It is in deed or in fact these differences and choices that make personalization even possible. In the absence of honoring the dignity of differences, personalization may not be possible. This leaves us with a daunting challenge of doing the impossible. Doing the impossible requires finding what is possible and doing that. Consequently anything and everything we actually do is a step to independence, freedom and personalization. While an ideal is to deal holistically with individuals, personalization may come down to recognizing one or just a few features of disabling tendencies and focusing remedial attention on those that are most important. There are likely many possible places to begin.

Personal efficacy is a fitting holistic overview that may emerge through emphasis on self-direction. A key to personalization in this sense is fostering confidence and enabling steps toward belonging, esteem and self-actualization. Abraham Maslow recognized that interdependence is somewhat more likely than a linear progression from fulfilling belonging or esteem needs prior to attempting development of actualization. And, it must be said that the matter of actualization is still poorly defined, as is subjectification. Accordingly, these are highly personal matters for both contemplation and achievement. The cliche’ of health, wealth and happiness is hardly any more helpful that equality, liberty, or life. These Ideals are not tangible objectives or goals. Self-directed development consists in reaching a level in which achievement seems possible. Self-actualization being even recognizable is beyond the scope of many. Every individual of any age deserves access to resources to meet a hierarchy of needs. Our social systems, emphatically including education, can be designed accordingly; recognizing personalization as a foundation. Individuals will define their own fulfillment as it unfolds across a life.

Participation

Know yourself. This is a big task and an even bigger ask. The range of potential capacity regarding self-knowledge is almost beyond any comprehension and the concomitant challenges are truly daunting. Nevertheless, participation should not be regarded as impossible because it already happens at levels that are unquestionably possessed by those who are autodidacts; they teach and develop skills and knowledge by themselves and they do it well. Participation would attempt to bring everyone as close as possible to self-directed development. This may first mean a dense and thorough analysis of what development is indeed needed or desired. Personal aspirations should obviate requirements and aspirational views would be a foundation for a highly personalized venture, which could only happen through participation. Deep personal participation is passion.

Engagement is often the key element making a difference in life and meeting needs. A sense of belonging is engagement and can carry motivation to a new level. Being recognized for a worthwhile contribution or idea not only lends a sense of dignity but may also become a source of pride and feeling of esteem in being a participant in decisions that are actually and authentically important. Sometimes a simple “what do you think?” can convey or communicate that there is value and respect attached to engagement and participation.

Knowledge of the markers of maturation can be accessed easily by anyone seeking to participate in decisions and choices that need to be made. This may entail using communication tools that are responsive to the level of comprehension that actually pertains to the individual or individuals (student and parents) involved in the development of greater engagement and participatory decision-making. While a very experienced practioner may accurately interpret comprehension level and the effectiveness of a communication, the practitioner with less experience may mistake signals of comprehension. Comprehension may not fully embrace other elements of participation such as other executive functions including attention, lack of distraction and the full access ot relevant memory of concepts, principles and ideas that bear on making an appropriate choice or weigh-in making a highly participatory interpretative decision. Interpretation of markers, signs and symptoms may involve ciritical thinking and questioning. Access to specialists, either person-to-person or by way of a digital interface, may be important examples or guides.

Individuals are, of course, very unlikely to possess sufficient memory of highly technical and dense data that are relevant to a participatory choice. This may well mean that database access tools are needed that are relatively easy and straight forward for a lay person to use. These user interfaces may also need to signal areas where knowledge may be lacking and would hinder accuracy in interpretation. This likely means that the technical database must also interface with user characteristics encoded in a separate database. This is clearly a place to bring artificial intelligence to bear on participation. AI in this way can amplify rather than overtake participation.

It seems a reasonable contention that everyone, regardless of other markers of achievement, has some form or forms of disability, a shortcoming that creates a physical, cognitive or emotional barrier to progressive realization of a goal or a form of actualization. This may be particularly evident when looking at the spectrum of conditions such as autism where there is very well documented recognition about the enormous range of differences with regard to any given marker. For instance, socialization, a marker for autism, may range from almost complete lack of capacity for interaction to a reasonably breezy willingness to step forward with introduction and engagement through curiosity, inquiry and questioning; a condition that seems to signal healthy socialization skills to a casual observer or even a well-trainned specialist.

It may well be that some individuals will be incapable of any participation and their circumstance will be left to the decisions of caregivers who will be required, of necessity, to go far beyond the role of guiding. These caregivers will be required by professional standards and ethics to make decisions that are in the best interests of an individual who cannot speak, question or act on their own behalf. These are more likely to be situations that fall outside, far outside, the capacity of anyone in the educational arena and instead fall clearly in the center of medical practice, nevertheless the medical practitioner will benefit form partnership with educational specialists who at least will be able to convery the limitations of educational interventions. Together there may emerge alternative observations that may be in the best interests of a patient's developmental future.

In conclusion, it may well be recognized that while prediction, prevention, personalization and participation may have roots in systems thinking in the medical community, there are powerful potential applications of these P4 elements for education. The educational markers to be discovered seem most likely very different from those of molecular biology. Nevertheless, educational science research efforts could do well to discover and validate what can develop from greater interpersonal knowledge of relationships enabling individuals to become self-directed discoverers of skills, knowledge and attitudes that will enrich their lives and those of others.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Hood, Leroy … P4 Medicine … But who is seeking prediction, or precision in education.

Dweck, Carol.

Maslow, Abraham.

Gray, Peter.

Gardner, Howard. (if multiple intelligences are added … to personalization … )

Chapter XXIII

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

George Bernard Shaw

Dependent Development

This chapter will look at human development from both an educational and a biological perspective. It will argue that across a life span from conception until death each individual passes through developmental stages that are unique but not bordered. That is to say, development is a continuous process with one stage blending into a subsequent stage. Of these stages, those of the first decade are the most important. It is emphasized that this first decade includes the nine months or 40 weeks of life in utero. The environment of the womb is no less important, and perhaps even more important than what unfolds at birth. During the first decade of development, human life is highly dependent. Accordingly it is called the Decade of Dependent Development and is identified by D3. Our primary focus for this chapter will be on D3. The following two chapters will deal with the adolescent transformation and emancipation respectively. The adult, through its own stages of existence, is emancipated de facto or de jure.

Dependent development (D3)continues through about age nine. It is well recognized that the newborn child goes through a series of developmental stages and that the first three years are critically important because certain development can be lost if not stimulated. What is unfortunately not recognized or is too little acknowledged is that those months in the womb are also extremely important and dependence cannot be more obvious. We will look at stages of development in the first decade of life: In Utero, Birth & Infancy, Toddler, Talker, Zero to Three, Pre-School, Kindergarten, Primary School Years.

Conception

Every conception is immaculate because it is a fundamental mystery and beyond explanation—fortunately and unfortunately. Unfortunately only one conception is steeped in myth. Fortunately we can now step beyond the myth. I don't believe in the supernatural version of immaculate conception, but I do believe, that is my knowledge is fully justified, that the biological act of intercourse is functional to initiate another life. This is ancient and universal. Modern reproductive biology and medicine have combined to make intercourse unnecessary for conception. In vitro fertilization (IVF) is now quite common. Accordingly, I'll leave the supernatural and spirituality as well as religion for a later chapter in PartVII. Here I hope to persuade that education is development, that which begins with conception and that the role of parenting precedes the unprotected intercourse that produces a child. Birth control still really, really matters. It is all about, or should be all about, choice. The freedom of choice is what should be cherished, dare I say held sacred, above all. Without freedom to choose, there can be no education—only various forms of indoctrination. So it may well be that the Decade of Dependent Development is a time of life where education and indoctrination merge in a way that is both necessary and regrettable. That is to say a paradox.

Unfortunately Homo sapiens remains a long way from exercising reproductive choice. The biological process of procreation has also become something of a sporting event between people that gets tied into a whole host of psychology that results from so many complex functions and systems that anyone claiming to understand it really needs to pause and reflect on the enormity of what they don't know. Ignorance is ever present and is winning. We'll deal with the consequences of that in the next Part V—Our Planetary Imperative.

What prospective parents do prior to conception is now well known to be important. We now understand that the genetic instructions transmitted by the egg and sperm cells are influenced by life choices and circumstances. These choices may date back one, two or even more generations. In other words the life circumstance of parents and grandparents are manifest genetically with what biologists call epigenetics. (see Chaapter XVII ) Some parts of the epigenetic background may be well beyond control. Nevertheless prospective parents can attend to what they can control through good nutrition, reduction of stress and avoiding essentially all recreational drugs in the months prior to conception. Doing so they let the wisdom of the body work its magic. Then it is time to celebrate the joy and awe of conception. Any other scenario for conception, most certainly rape or incest, but I would also include lack of due diligence by a couple, is to be damned.

Society, writ large, must find a path for procreation that rises above chance and necessity. That is not only a planetary imperative, but is a human imperative. There is clearly no place else to look for relief but to humanity all by itself in our little part of the universe. Since we can’t count on religion, we better hope that our metaphorical better angels will be guided by sound and solid human, humanitarian ethics.

Life In Utero

At about the 8th day following conception, the fertilized egg has undergone divisions to create a ball of cells that are able to join with cells lining the uterus and implant or begin a highly dependent association that will last for years. Birth is only a marker along the way, important of course, and necessary for development to proceed beyond the uterus.

What happens in the uterus following implantation is the formation of distinctive layers of cells and migration of cells from the three respective layers to establish the head to tail and right and left orientation that will enable human form to emerge. These layers are populated by stem cells, cells with the potential for formation of the hundreds of distinctive cells and tissues that sustain life. An inner larer of cells (endoderm) begins formation of the lining of a digestive tube. An outer layer of eclls (epiderm) forms the skin and the neural tube—the beginning of the brain and spinal cord as well as the connecting peripheral nerves that will eventually enable coordination of the new life. The middle layer of cells (mesoderm) connects the inner and outer layers through formation of many tissues including blood vessels, muscle, bone. All of this happens through massive networks and systems of communication initiated by active genes programmed to turn on and turn off in a precisely regulated space-time—orchestrated but without a conductor, . A missing signal or an early or late signal can terminate development or initiate a developmental defect. The sources and causes of these maladaptive signals is part of the continuing mystery of developmental anomalies that science is trying to better understand. It is clear that missed or inappropriate signaling may be life-long and life-wide. Aging and cancer are a result.

In the embryo, over a period of just a few weeks these tissues develop into distinctive organs through what biologists call the period of embryonic development and what has been intensively studied in the specialized field of embryology, a part of developmental biology. For most organisms of intense interest to biologists, including now the human organism, the details of embryonic development are well known and described in nearly exquisite detail. One organism, a round worm barely the size of the period for this sentence, has 959 cells. Biologist are able to describe precisely how and when each of these cells is formed. Such detail is not possible for the billions of cells that comprise the human body.

Embryologists cannot, of course, experiment with human development. However, multiple principles of evolution have enabled much experimentation with a range of organisms—model organisms—that provide important insight as to normal development. With these model organisms, it has been possible to unravel mysteries about cell division, migration, cell differentiation and the acquisition of anatomy, physiology and defects or the pathobiology of development. That the developmental processes are programmed by genes is now well established, although many, many details of how genes are expressed and guide development remain for research by developmental biologists to explain. Experimental studies are also revealing what can go wrong and what may cause things to go wrong.

What is amazing is how far biological scientists have been able to go, recognizing what is known and what remains to be known. The complete draft of the first human genome (see Chapter XVII) in 2003, opened a window on human development that has been greatly aided by the skills to transfer human genes into mice. These so-called transgenic mice have enabled study of genes in development and throughout the life span. Molecular tools for genetic manipulation have made possible the selective turning on (Knock-In) and off (Knock-Out) of genes and to study what governs expression of selected genes and even clusters of genes. Through transgenic animals, it has been possible to create enormous databases containing knowledge of many, if not most, of the approximately 21,000 protein coding genes. In addition to these critically important genes, biologists have been opening new windows into other parts of the genome that control expression of these protein coding genes.

By the end of the first three months (first trimester), all organs are at least partially formed. This marks the end of embryonic development and the developing individual is properly called a fetus. In fetal development, each organ and organ system continues to mature but at highly variable rates. The heart and blood vessels, kidney, intestinal tract, bones and muscle are recognizable in a form similar to that of a infant or even adult. For instance, all of the 206 bones of the adult are recognizable and the approximately 639 skeletal muscles are, for the most part, in place. The brain and spinal cord with peripheral nerve connections from sense organs and to muscles and glands takes shape early and continues to mature even beyond birth. Other organs such as teeth, await additional development following birth. And of course, the ovaries and testes await full development until puberty. Early development of the heart is necessary to fully distribute oxygen and nutrients to all of the fetal cells and carry away the waste metabolites for disposal. Coordination becomes evident in utero when movement is detected.

The result is a growing recognition of the dependence of genetic control on how successful and unsuccessful (pathologic or lethal) development occurs in utero. We know that during life in the uterus, the embryo can be influenced, even fatally, by insults of deprivation or over exposure to certain chemical substances. Vitamins, amino acids, certain fatty acids are critically important and will be mobilized from the mother’s body if her diet is deficient. Even an early embryo, with support from the extra-embryonic membranes of the placenta, has some capacity to neutralize and/or reject certain unneeded or unwanted chemicals. Alcohol, nicotine, opioids, and hormones from many sources including food and the body of the mother, are of concern, as well as a vast range of other substances such as pesticides, herbicides, plasticizers, or other chemical residues can interfere with normal development. Anything interfering with the embryo’s metabolism, cell divisions, cell differentiation or even timely programmed cell death, which are essential for normal development, can be fatal to all or part of an embryo or fetus. The result can be an obvious or a subtle defect at birth.

These months in utero have been for anyone reading this, highly successful. That success may seem miraculous. However, we also realize that the miracle of development is a result of literally millions of years and generations of adaptive evolution. Our ancestors successfully handled so much that could have gone wrong. Others didn’t fair so well. Abortion is a natural solution when life in utero is too disorganized to survive. When a maternal parent is not well prepared physically, mentally or emotionally to support life after birth, she needs societal support to end a pregnancy, ideally well before a conceptus is ready for birth.The detectable rhythm of contracting muscle—a primordial heart—is not the beginning of life but a necessary function among many functions of a being yet to be.

Birth & Infancy

Birth is a dramatic time for mother and child. The time for parturition— their physical separation—is filled with flowing hormones and tissue changes that are both wonderful and traumatic. It is an ancient ritual that has played well across tens of thousands of human generations and has evolved to assure success. However, no process is perfect and success is celebrated even with the helping hands of caring family, midwives, nurses and physicians. When something goes wrong, physicians are not always capable of setting things alright. Mother and child are mutually engaged in forming a relationship that is biological with guiding hormones and neural circuits that have been fine-tuned by our evolution for a new attachment following detachment from life in utero.

During the immediate post-natal time period, attachment to the mother (ideally) or another caregiver (a human surrogate) is crucial for well-being of both parent and child. Neglect of the infant at this turning-point of life as was long-ago shown by the work of Harry Harlow, with a colony of Rhesus monkeys at the University of Wisconsin to have devastating and lasting impacts if they remain separated. Does work with monkeys apply to humans? You should bet that it does! Deprived monkey infants are poorly adjusted as they grow toward adults. These lessons are neglected with great peril.

Resilience may correct for some abnormalities of development … but what we know about the differences in resilience is only in its own intellectual infancy. Scholarship has barely scratched the surface. Clearly there are individual differences but little is certain about differing descriptions about resilience and the potential repercussions if resilience fails to develop. Understanding the development of resiliency may provide clues as to how it may be promoted throughout development if missing, even in the earliest environment of the newborn. Mistakes we currently have almost no way to understand could well be life-long.

This is a time for the potential intrusion of trauma—only alittle of which is overtly physical. However physical abuse of a child does happen; witness the life-time tragedy of shaken baby syndrome. More subtle, but of considerable importance, could be the physical and metabolic consequences of poor or substandard nutrition on cognitive and/or emotional development. Poverty in infancy can mean many different things, but when a child is deprived of both mothers milk or a suitable substitute, the raw material for development such as essential amino acids, critical fatty acids, or vitamins and tiny amounts of certain minerals, may alter organ maturation in such a way that permanent physical disabilities may be manifest. Where we deal with truly mysterious impacts is with regard to brain developmental deficits from nutritional omissions or gross nutritional imbalances of extended duration. Anyone doubting this should look carefully at the medical literature and listen attentively to those who make it their life’s work to understand the research. That does not mean agreement is mandatory, but disagreement without facts qualifies as stupidity.

This is also a time of important emotional or affective development that hinges upon attachments, which we’ll lump for convenience as maternal attachments. Attending to the obvious needs of warmth, food, and hygiene as well as comfort and safety is paramount. The matter of infant bonding with paternal parents is open to some worthwhile questioning and is unsettled compared with the now enormous evidence supporting the importance of maternal attachment bonding. The men in a mother’s life clearly represent an important support system and should not be undervalued. The traditional family structure may well be best. However, when the traditional structure is or is not present, with or without flaws, the matters of attachment demand attention beyond the family. At this early dependent stage, the child’s attachment is paramount. Neglect is never acceptable.

Much has been made and much remains controversial regarding breast feeding during this important stage. The biological foundations are clear enough. There is no effective substitute for the balance of nutrients and the maternal antibodies and other factors of innate immunity acquired by the infant from maternal milk. With the evolutionary success of mammals as witness, there would be little persuasive argument to dismiss breast feeding. There are, however, some good and substantial reasons why breast feeding may not be universal. Failure of milk production by a mother is a substantial and primary reason. A maternal death may obviate a search for a suitable substitute. Some women find breast feeding to be very painful. None of these should be dismissed as would be objections based on other factors such as employment or even certain social commitments. If women are part of a workforce, they must be afforded private comfort for breast feeding. Clearly fathers cannot be a direct substitute without artificial formula. With only artificial formulas being used, the first six weeks of infant life may be tricky, tenuous or even open to partisan debate. We only surmise that development is “normal.”

Visual, auditory, tactile and very likely taste develop in infancy. Along with this comes awareness of musculo-skeletal development as well as hand-eye connection if not yet coordination. The sound of the mother's voice and recognition of her facial features occurs early in infancy. Certain essential reflexes are present. Early reflexes begin to moderate in favor of other needs or alternatives. Conditioning modifies both cause and effect to attune reflexes with environmental cues or raise awarness of others to infant needs. Deficiency of heat, hunger and hygiene trigger reflexes that demand satisfaction. What happens to an infant’s body and brain when these deficiencies and demands remain unmet?

The interaction of mother and infant with people with expert knowledge of development is often important, and should be universally available. In addition to pediatricians and nurse practitioner specialists, midwives and doulas can contribute much to understanding this crucial time of development, perhaps heading off the disaster of missed clues.

Infant vocalization is early and often; crying is important. It is a demand regarding needs and testing to have needs met. Being dry, warm and fed comes first and conditioning may begin with responses of caregivers. These responses are more than fulfilling attachment and belonging. Conditioning may represent an early response to the environment and even some modest attempt at experiment and manipulation. Differentiating what works and what does not work to satisfy needs for warmth and food may well be the beginning of trial and error to develop knowledge of patterns—what works and what does not work. These developments of stimulus and response are natural. Brain structure changes to solidify the patterns as reality for the infant. One could certainly wonder, who is training who? Yes, adults may have an edge but mutual and natural adjustments should be expected to emerge.

Growth means new challenges and the importance of support from many sources continues to emerge. Siblings may be curious and want to contribute to helping with a new brother or sister. Playing with a new companion is meaningful and positive. However, competition with siblings may happen. Parents may face new choices and act as mediators when competition with siblings arises. Sibling rivalry may be more important in later stages. However, it is in the early years that siblings may be present or yet to become present. Birth order is a difference that makes a difference in the analysies of some students of life; mostly psychologists, sociologists and associations of caregivers including clergy. Questions are many, answers are few.

Religious practices such as saying a prayer before meals is introduced in the environment of many homes of families. Certain behaviors are carved into the pattern of living together. Rules take shape. For instance; Keep away from hot objects and sharp objects. Some rooms are off limits. Climbing and falling build their own rules. In some homes, these rules and admonitions may be couched in religious terms like “God is watching.” or “Jesus would never do that.” Who, then, is a kid to argue with? Certainly not big people and least of all God Almighty!

Zero to Three –

There is at least one organization takes as its name this title and makes the case for attending to these early years. My own preference would be to Minus 9 to 49 months. At forty months after birth a child, still an infant insome respects, still needs plenty of help and is not ready for meeting the world on the world's terms.

It is well established through contemporary neuroscience, that brain development proceeds in a dramatic way through the first three years. Synaptic connections reach a peak in 18-24 months and begin to be accompanied by what is known as “pruning” a none too subtle reference to the elimination of neuron branching and connecting. Why this happens is not well understood and explanations are speculative at best although progress continues to emerge from research laboratories. Understanding theory and proposed principles will precede solid fact-filled knowledge. This science is still in its own infancy.

Bonding with parents, siblings and peers intensifies along with some independence and explaration. Curiosity mounts and trouble can easily occur from trying new tastes, making unique noises, mouthing and tastind, attempting physical acts for which the body is not yet ready with coordination and strength. Attempted imitation is often strong enough to make minor or tragic, injurious mayhem. Some of the imitation begins to emerge with crawling, walking and talking.

Through Zero to Three physical challenges and progress toward physical competencies include rolling over, crawling and the attainment of bipedal walking and running. The life of a toddler begins to open new worlds for exploration.

Language acquisition emerges and is likely the result of imatation. Linguists sustain debate over the extent to which the capacity for language is embedded in brain and body structures. I find this fascinating enough, but hardly feel capable of rendering any resolution. My sense, at this time, is that certain morphology for language in the form of brain nuclei, cranial nerve connections and laryngeal anatomy including muscular attachments with the hyoid bone are “wired” durning embryonic and fetal development but must be stimulated to mature following birth. It seems clear that within the peeriod of zero to three, exposure to language is essential and dependent upon parents, family and neighborhood communications. Among the elements of communication, I find little reason to doubt that tonal, rhythmical sounds are every bit as importnt as words. The tone of voice and patterns of speaking are central features of language acqauisition. Beyond that there is much to question and discover.

The reader has already tolerated my rant about the inadequacy of schools, schooling and the schoolists who support schoolism. Nevertheless I will resort to some outmoded language habits to carry forward a few points about the remaining dependent years of development. These are the years usually occupied by the institutionalization of education. That said I will continue to reference development in terms that relate to many customary attributes of schools, namely age-related grades. I do this out of a frustration with language that always seem inadequate. Perhaps as I write I will create an alternative descriptive terminology that both I and the reader will find both functional and enlightening. We shall see.

Pre-School –

The four-year-old has sufficient control of bladder and bowel to begin a new phase. Bladder and bowel control is presumably needed to begin association with peers in a sufficiently structured setting to prepare the child for greater responsibility for her or his behavior in the more formal settings to follow. For this we need to look at what is to follow and why preparation, structured preparation, is even necessary.

What are the goals of pre-school education? Who has been setting these goals and measuring the outcomes? Readiness for reading, writing and arithmetic as well as socialization with interpersonal communications; following some rules and many more rules that will follow for reading, writing and arithmetic. The goals of pre-school experience seems to be preparation for school per se.

Empirical evidences regarding the efficacy of pre-school experience for later success in kindergarten and the primary grades has been elevated to a logical and emotional mandate. School districts are increasingly taking on responsibility for pre-school structures and functions. Parents are also relieved of another year of child care expense. It can’t be denied that what happens to a child from age 4 to 5, carry considerable influence on success in a school environment. Is pre-school really necessary for development and why?

Kindergarten –

In many states, parents have a choice about kindergarten, but enrollment is strongly encouraged. Kindergarten is, to some, an extension of preschool.

By age five, a child is presumed to begin the regimentation(s) necessary for sitting in a structured classroom and paying attention to an adult figure who presents lessons that are intended to aid development of specific, differentiated skills. Skill packages of alphabet recognition, number recognition, handling and properly manipulating writing instruments like crayons and pincils and paper. Cutting and pasting begin to emphasize motor skills, or at least select those kids who possess those skills.

Playing with other children according to certain rules begins to structure play into formalities that will ease classroom management for adults in years to follow.

This entails a gradual transition from informality to formality. From a day without honoring time to a day with blocks and intervals. Choices become increasingly limited and creative choice is becoming almost unknown. Even drawing on paper is structured into the making of alphabets and numbers with a few iconic people, pets and nature objects introduced into the mix as “art” class. “Now we will do this, and now we will not do that.” Permision to do anything becomes paramount. Rules are respected.

Primary Years –

These years, nominally 6-9, do not have to be labeled “school years” or Primary School Years. These years are primary because they are laying the foundations for emergent and emancipated life. That is, emergent, in the sense of recognition of self-hood and a social role in relation to other people, places and things. Life of an individual emerges beginning at around age three and continues to emerge across a lifetime. Yet by age 8-10 characteristics of life patterns take shape. Emancipation begins when the child “sees” self as a relationship with other. Friendships are formed and fostered. Freedom looms in larger and larger ventures and challenges that are physical but also cognitive, affective and spiritual. Questioning takes place along side of unquestioned acceptance.

Young people live in a defined place in space-time with physical things and surroundings that have characteristics which are recognized and recognizable. This includes people beginning with parents and siblings as well as a cluster of acquaintances in a neighborhood, a school, a church, synagogue, mosque or temple and through media including but not limited to radio, television and the Internet/telephone. Non-school organizations such as scouting, sports teams, take on importance and contribute greatly to imitation and the formation of personality as well as passions and play with peers. Within this mix are to be included the people, places and objects/things of advertising and the lures of the commercial worlds.

These primary years are, inside or outside of school, a time for beginning mastery of fundamentals – reading, number skills, writing, speaking, finding and evaluating information. Music, athletics, books, magazines, newspapers and a sense of sources of skill, knowledge and attitude all begin to take on varying levels or degres of importance.

Expectations for growth and development emerge initially as physical attributes with simple differences in height initiating recognition of individuality. The ages 6-9 and Grades 1 though 4 enable or force social and emotional development.

The freedom and joy of kindergarten is replaced by structures that exclude playful unstructured interactions with peers. Emotional outbursts are discouraged mostly as a means to better manage a classroom environment, maintaining the flow of lesson plans and execution of specific activities and lessons.

Expectations are uniformity and conformity based on standards for progress across age or grade. Children moving rapidly ahead are considered exceptional and children lagging behind are singled out as special. Little room in days, weeks, months or years is available to enable passions to guide activity and projects remain subordinate to progress through a public schooling curriculum.

The private sector of education exemplified with Maria Montessori’s methods or the philosophical underpinnings of Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf Education are considered exceptional in relation to public schools. Nevertheless they are still schooled in many if not most of their operating routines following a public-school-like calendar. Residential private schools may enable certain deviations to emerge. Residential schooling in the public sector is nearly unheard.

Parochial schools often adhere to highly rigid routines as well as a highly indoctrinating mix of spiritual dogma and secular constructions for the three ‘Rs’ of curriculum. Home schooling, more prominent among evangelical portestant Christian families, represents around half of home-based education and takes on flavors of parochial schooling mixed with greater flexibility.

Sudbury Valley School may represent an extreme regarding unstructured assembly of young people for education. The Sudbury experience is often recognized with the label of ‘unschooling’ and may well chaaracterize much secular home schooling. These approaches to the primary years may raise questions: What is the real need for rigidity? Is high-stakes testing either necessary or efficacious?

By the end of the primary school years there has been sufficient acquisition of physical and intellectual skills to venture forth with new acquisitions that can lead to the important changes of adolescence and puberty. We'll take that up in the next chapter.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Peter Gray.

Sudbury Valley School.

Montessori

Waldorf/Steiner

Chapter XXIV

Adolescence is the conjugator of childhood and adulthood.

Louise J. Kaplan

Adolescent Transformation

Adolescence is a time of turmoil. Transformation to being adult is offered but withheld in mysterious rituals. Guides are important because the path has multiple stumbling blocks and many wonderful stepping stones. The rites of passage from dependent child to a responsible, emancipated adult is laden with much more than ceremony. The years from nine to some other age are murky. Adolescence is a time of choice.

This chapter will look at adolescent development from both an educational and a biological perspective. I will argue that the school environment is unnatural and leads young people toward dependence rather than emancipation. Some will of course regard that as balderdash. Some of what I write will be justifiably characterized as something more colorful. However, society imposes a host of almost axiomatic influences that shape what adolescence is, not what it could be if each individual was able to choose freely among alternatives and that peer pressures were somehow minimized.

Adolescence is entered, endured and then exited. Stereotypes are schooled with tensions exacerbated by embodied change and social constraints as well as multiple windows opening on opportunity. New levels of hormones initiate and accompany physical body growth and change that is physical, but also cognitive, emotional and spiritual. Choices begin to dominate but are messy, exciting and filled with possibilities not always easy or obvious. Higher order needs take on conflicting demands that alter routine and habits that served through the decade of dependent development. Emergence is at hand but held with a shaky grasp. Ambiguity accompanies the role of more knowledgeable others.

What follows will highlight physiology of adolescence, psychological impacts and social psychology, pathological induction, risk factors, while finding a path forward. We will build on concepts introduced in Chapter XII. Autopoiesis and the metabolic as well as the self-perpetuating functions of homeostasis and reproduction; acquiring the capacity for sexual activity and the physiological dynamics of adjusting both mentally and socially .

I may at times be pointing out what seems obvious and well established about this important time of life, but I will also emphasize the myriad nooks and crevasses that hide our ignorance. Animal studies have limits and even the study of primates leaves huge gaps in our human understanding of the changes of adolescence. It has not gone without attention that the flows of change in adolescence are only thinly altered by schooling. Schoolists must be aware of these flows, but too often are oblivious, forcing change or conformance and compliance across an uncontrollable timeline of physiology. The rigor and rigidity of schooling likely imposes on the adolescent’s transformation unknown unknowns that authoritarian structure does not serve well—if at all.

Women and men are very different through adolescence. Witness Our Bodies, Ourselves and its impact on the feminist movement and its subsequent momentum across society. The biology of women in all of its dimensions is pertinent here. Feminism has challenged not only masculinity. It has created a new pool of promises that are dramatic and too long overdue in almost all parts of the world. It has ben agonizing to contemplate the revision of feminine freedom in the hands of the Afgahan Taliban and in the votes of Texas Republican legislators who are, like Taliban, too willing to repress choices about reproductive freedom. In both Afhganistan and Texas it is nearly impossible to ignore the influences of religious bigotry, belligerence and blasphemy. No God has willed repression of women.

Gender questioning is in some sense universal before or during adolescence. Most of us resolve the questions and find our biological sex just fine or just the way it is. But why should we be so surprised or even appalled that some adolescents don’t easily fit the mode as we expect from whether we’ve inherited two X Chromosomes or just one X and a Y Chromosome? Choices about gender are nothing new. We now have means of medical intervention that too often fosters sociopolitical debate rather than individual decision. These are issues that this chapter can’t settle, nor should it try. Although the limits of schooling’s ecology may emerge from a tangled web.

Physiology of Adolescence

Before it is possible to get to the important and almost overriding elements of adolescent psychology it is necessary in the author's view, to take a strong look at the biology of adolescence. Why? Our biology has been both a legacy of our evolution and challenge for our understanding of what happens and why it happens. The literature of anthropology (physical, biological anthropology) may be important to help our understanding of why Western Culture has been warped to generate the present practices of supervising so closely the natural progression toward sexual maturity and the potential responsibilities that go with being an adult; mating, reproducing, raising children and achieving some sense of self-actualization.

Understanding complex physiological changes in the body during adolescence provides insight into behavior that may relate to current and future impact of trauma on broad spectrum of health issues.

Trauma in adolescence is, of course, both physical trauma and psychological. Anyone who sustains concepts that psychology is separate from biology is out of tune and out of touch with contemporary science, in particular, contemporary neuroscience. Attachments are as important in the teen years as they are in infancy, although the teenager has options for compensation that are unavailable to the infant. This is, in part, why it is possible for teen violence and trauma to be most frequently seen primarily from a psychological prospective. The concomitant physiology is obscured because on the one hand the manifestations of hormonal changes and neuronal activities are not easily observed or even reported on by the teenager; and, on the other hand, it is becoming increasingly possible for the teen to talk about her or his feelings, which are seen as psychological, and to address these feelings as thoughts, which are not fully seen as the result of deep-seated needs that are more than physical.

One problem for teenagers, individually and collectively, is that they have not been fully informed about the expected differences in the timing of physical change and maturation. One result of poor or incomplete information about physiology can become a sense of isolation resulting from not understanding the differences in timing of physical growth spurts in height, hormonal influences on appearance including skin eruptions, or of facial and public hair, or breast and testicular enlargement. The changes resulting from internal signaling and massive changes in hormonal flows.

These differences are noticeable and subject to teasing comments that may be taken as abusive or simply shrugged off depending upon the circumstance in which they are delivered and by whom. Cliques may form to fortify defense from such abuses and a shelter of sorts from physical or verbal attacks. There is safety in numbers. Commiseration seeks company. To recognize gender differences in clique formations is only to forestall analysis of alternative mechanisms that likely exist in both sexes. For example, until recently it has been a mostly male thing to engage in team sports, a clique of sorts but rarely seen as such.

Maturation of the sexual organs and the onset of sexual behaviors is hardly a small matter. Delay of puberty is not uncommon in the animal world but for humans the delay is somewhat extraordinarily prolonged and often accompanied by variation from textbook or common expectation. Reasons for that delay and variation cry out for explanations. Why does delay have evolutionary, that is to say survival, values? This mystery and its explanation will unfold from continuing research into psychological correlates of neuroendocrine physiology.

Neurophysiology

Neuroscience has emerged to embrace anatomy, physiology, immunology and pathology using philosophical, psychological, anthropological, economic, sociological as well as community and political insights to better understand mind and body. An embodied view pervades theory and practice. Explanation is increasingly holistic, complex and dynamical. Keeping it simple is left to the age following Thoreau. K.I.S.S. is stupid!

Executive function is an umbrella term involving brain functions needed for deciding. Working memory, attention, planning, organization, social inhibition, self-regulation, and cognitive flexibility are under this executive function (EF) umbrella. Inherent within the umbrella is choice and choosing. These are aggregate functions and boil down to fulfillment of executive function through action(s); that is to say simply—behavior. Yet, saying it simply does not make it simple.

Maturation of the Executive Functions may be sine qua non for adolescent transformation. How does executive functioning develop and change across the early decades of life, particularly the second decade? It is now imperative to dig deeply into neurophysiology to gain essential insights regarding the adolescent years. As we dig we must realize and recognize that the more we dig the more there is to dig. Answers to critical questions are elusive.

The Adolescent Transformation involves making good choices, but about what? Good for what or good for who? How does the art of making good choices develop in a teenager? What or who are the influencer's? What are the conflicts with which the teenager must grapple and decide, making a choice among alternatives? Guides, curricula, or courses are unlikely to fit the myriad combinations teens face. But what if there are few or no alternatives evident to the teenager because of a particular environment (ecology) with which the teen is associated? Why is it so hard to imagine these as sources of conflict, tension and trauma? The school day ends for the teachers and principal but not for the teenager! Many may say “thanks” for evenings, weekends and summer break.

Choices may involve: responding to authority of parents, teachers, clergy, police; as well as the non authoritarian powers of peers. When conflict arises, as it most certainly will, across time new importance will follow with development of behaviors; skills, knowledge, and attitudes forming habits and preferences for relationships & friends, reading, playing, activities, entertainment, and, of course moral & ethical issues.

Given the “known elements” of executive functioning, it is unlikely that these functions will mature an a uniform rate. For each individual there may be waxing and waning of memory, attention, planning, or flexible thinking and questioning. Relatively but temporary, seemingly rigid, but functionally flexible deficits that make executive functioning incomplete or seemingly, sometimes, non-existent characterize the adolescent years.

Too often we work under an assumption that our executive functions are permanently fixed. There is, however, emerging evidence that executive functions are not fixed and can be modified through training. One of the modifiable executive functions is the adaptive shifting of attention. Another is inhibition. It may well be that adolescent behavior that is inconsistent with learning of complex material may be poorly shaped by the environment of schools. For instance, consider the situation of a lecture presentation of new, unfamiliar information. Ability to quickly shift away from and even inhibit distractions, may be particularly important for utilizing working memory. It has been estimated that, on average, individuals are able to hold about 4 information chunks in mind—their working memory. Some individuals are, depending on circumstances, limited to 2 chunks and others may be gifted with ability to hold as many as 8 chunks. The lecturer controls the chunks but not the neurophysiological capacities of those who “attend.” Should we “blame” the student or the environment? Perhaps the answer is “yes.” If working memory is fixed, what, if anything, can a student do to improve or compensate this physiological function of mind? Maybe they just need an ingredient “originally found in jellyfish.” Or, maybe the lecturer, should limit the chunks of information or make the information easier to make as notes. Who knows?

Social psychology

Adolescence is almost synonymous with teen and teenager, suggesting a defined time of six years. This keeps a border between dependence and independence in a great deal of limbo. Even the ages between nine and thirteen are fuzzy in the minds of nearly everyone. But who is counting may make all the difference. Parents, teachers, school administrators and school policy-makers are as confused as the young people in this age-based gap. This gap carries an important consideration for human growth and development with its stages, biological milestones, psychology and theory. Moral, cognitive, cultural and evolutionary considerations abound. Adolescence is a slice of life that cannot be separated or ignored. It is a milestone too simply marked by puberty.

It is challenging to draw clear boundaries anong biological, cognitive, psychological and social development. Just the listing of these labels initiates a troubling but too necessary compartmentalization of adolescence. For instance; is development of a self-concept biological, mental, or social? Where does the energy and impact of emotion fit? Simple recognition of a role for pain and pleasure can get far out of focus.

Parents and community are important and powerful impacts on transformation during adolescence. Belonging is important. Esteem may begin to emerge from social interchange and integration with religious, civic or athletic activities. School and academic achievement is not trivial. A certain rigidity of pace imposed by the school environment may overwhelm a teenager before physical, cognitive, affective or spiritual development reaches a functional level sufficient for success. For some teens, the school environment provides personal continuity and security unavailable from other societal sources.

Schools provide structured relationships for teens with adults. However, the teen has no choice in the relationship beyond subservience or subordination. Success is often achieved through compliance and conformity. Adults monitor and enforce both opportunities and prohibitions for sexual maturation. One result is teenage rebelion that may take both healthy and unhealthy forms. Habits of restraint may become lifelong and obligatory. Yet the presence of creative and emancipating expression by adults may encourage emulation, which may also become a life long influence. Unfortunately the school environment works well for some teens and for others doesn’t work for much at all. And, dropping out of school carries a life long social stigma that is harder to overcome beyond the teen years.

Induced Pathology

Conformity is a force in adolescence, but when, if ever, is it appropriate to label conformity as pathological? There may certainly be considerable survival value in conformity. The Stockholm Syndrome is one extreme but conspicuous manifestation. Like so much of pathology, the dangerous changes from conformity, like those from smoking, may be years away from recognition. Accordingly more introspection and balancing on the part of individuals is needed, but too much ignorance pervades initial conditions. Getting along and socializing demands making adjustment to fit in with the groups to which belonging is sought. An initial investment of time, thought and emotion may make walking away difficult or impossible. Groups take on a personality of their own, but are rarely independent of the pressures and potentials of their environment. Recognition or standing in a fuzzy social context frequently looms large enough to act like glue.

Bullying is a social pathology and takes many forms ranging from physical to psychological abuse. It rarely occurs in a vacuum. The bully seeks recognition and standing with a peer group. The bully as well as the bullied are produced by conditions in schools and the surrounding community that exacerbate unhealthy relationships. Being different is dangerous and conformity is an antidote to psychological or even physical trauma. Trauma in the form of individual and community adverse experiences can be as intense in the teen years as in the years of dependent development. Resilience may be, however different it may seem, as challenging to the teen as to the toddler.

Peers are powerful influences and forced conformity may take on socially damaging reactions particularly when a peer relationship is or has been framed through an antisocial window on the world. Drug use comes immediately to mind although other negative peer behaviors involving disrespect for norms and even laws highlight a host of differences that may separate teens from social realities and potentially induce sociopathic behaviors.

Lashing out against actual and perceived abuse can take on disastrous forms, particularly when guns become too easily available and serve motives that arise in anger, isolated or distanced from alternative solutions. Peer groups with counteracting beliefs and norms of behavior may be unavailable in a critical instant. Tragedy happens too fast. A teen’s immunity from grossly abnormal behaviors may be so severely taxed that tragic pathology is virtually unpreventable.

A school may regulate gun or weapon access with locked doors or magnetometers, but the ubiquity of guns doesn’t prevent violence outside of the school. The mental state that propels violent solutions to immediate or perceived problems is not a school issue to be relegated to some wished for school solution. Mental health issues unique to adolescent young people may be unreachable through adolescent psychology and psychiatric medicine although society demands assurances of response somewhere by someone.

Sources of pathological behavior may include adult expectations. Too frequently parents or community members including police, clergy, coaches or business leaders, create expectations that young people “be like me” that are so broad as to be frustratingly impossible to match. And, of course, the models put forth may be completely misaligned with the aspirations of youth.

Channeling or guiding young people—into athletics, music, hunting, fishing, religious practices, excessive concerns for safety and moral righteousness, conformity to cultural influences including choices about books, movies, entertainment and certain social activities and the belief systems that may come into play for adolescents—is fraught. Complexity attends even trying to come to a functional understanding of myraid expectations. Nevertheless when success happens it should not be dismissed or ignored. Society may need to look at those that are missed more deeply to sort through potential causes of social pathology.

Perhaps adults should get out of the way or at least stand aside. It may actually be useful to separate adult expectations from the complex mix of considerations in adolescence? Perhaps by the early teen years a new paradigm or framework should emerge where young people are honored for their entry steps; their choices about moving into adulthood.

Risk Factors

Choice is often uncertain and involves risk. Both choice and risk are highly personal and cannot be carried by another. The result of making choices and taking risks is all about the future. Accordingly it is an authorship of self. Uncertainty, taking risk, making choices is borne easily by some and avoided by others. The causes and sources of these differences are legion in life and literature, but cannot be easily rectified. Attempting to rectify uncertainty is often fraught with more uncertainty. Risk is a future condition or consideration that involves uncertainty and consequences. These central features, although intangible and poorly measurable, are elements of adolescent emergence and emancipation.

Risk taking is characteristic of the adolescent transformation and includes behaviors detrimental to health including but not limited to alcohol, recreational drug and tobacco trials. All of these “trials” importantly occur under the influence of so-called “peer pressures.” How these peer pressures actually influence an individual’s choices has yet to be satisfactorily explained.

Peer group memberships and attitudes ebb and flow, are subject to change, but with difficulty. Emotional trauma may accompany the change. Remaining in a group or being left out of one can be traumatic. Knowing the mindset of other individuals is never certain and the mindset seemingly expressed by the actions or inactions of a peer group is daunting.

Peer group influences on adolescent youth are many and complex including gangs, athletic teams and group activity that may be associated with music, drama, or simply “hanging out.” Church, Mosque, Synagogue or Temple groups as well as club or club-like associations form a base for peer group formation. It should be clear that participation or membership in these groups may not be entirely a matter of choice. Pressures to join may come from parents and peers as well as the founders or leadership of a group. Some organizations such as Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, DeMolay, and others may provide a combination of structure, discipline and goal setting or rank achievement to channel or focus behaviors along positive lines including goals of leadership development for potentially all participants. Athletics provide discipline surrounding body fitness, mental acuity as well as adherence to rules of competition. Teams provide a sense of belonging. Achievements within and between teams contribute to building of esteem as well as destruction of esteem.

Building of esteem is important but should be balanced against risk of loss of esteem by those who don’t succeed. Little has been studied regarding those aspirants for team membership that do not “make it.” They don’t just drift off. Their lives continue. But in the main, the coaches, leaders, principals, peers also continue oblivious to those excluded or left behind. Inclusion and exclusion are risky business and potential sources of social pathology.

Finding a Path Forward

The practice of freedom means recognizing that middle teenagers (~age15) are nascent adults and must be afforded free choice and responsibility. It is tempting to add; to the greatest extent possible, however there is a certain inevitability about the transition to adulthood that cannot be subject to another's judgments or imposition of their values.

Responsibility and free choice are never absolutes. Each has a gradient and reaches fulfillment gradually across time and at a rate and time that is uniquely individual. It is, perhaps, from this perspective that it is necessary to look at the possibilities and potentials for emancipation. It is simply impossible to generalize about an age-related marker, because there are a multitude of markers, which make up the bases for when emancipation happens.

Emancipation may be forced or may magically happen at any age from before nine years until after 35 years. A long delayed emancipation is not likely much better than is emancipation forced too early in life. Nevertheless, as dependence wanes, a path toward emancipation could be, and in some societies is, recognized and some celebration or marker imposed. During the years of dependence an expectation of emancipation can and should be highlighted. Emancipation initiates the practice of freedom and responsibility.

Practicing freedom and responsibility will require all who are subjects to be prepared through D3 and into mid-teen years to know and feel emancipation as part of their personal subjectification; their own authorship of self. Authorship is most importantly a personal capacity to articulate meaning about physicality, cognition and affect as well as a personal reflection on their spiritual state. The post D3 years proceed with relationships that should serve as guides; never as authoritarian dictators, Authorship of self means personal creativity that greatly reduces or eliminates and removes all forms of mimicry and slavish adherence to outside rules that are not adopted through a process of reflection, meditation and action, without any hint or ringing of the brass-bells of authority.

The years from 9 to 14-15 are for a combination of joy and refelction; a time to come to grips with their own place in humanity and accepting obligations for a personal future. Orientation to the future can flow from reflection on how much they have yet to learn about self and other. This is a time to look ahead, not to a finished self, but as recognition of lifelong quests that will require continuous development of body, mind and spirit.

Maturity is not a particularly tidy goal. It has been poignantly said; When you are mature you are manure. Life and death are never fully known or knowable. Throughout life we are ignorant people thinking about self and other. Full potential is meaningless for personal development as is preparation for life. The subject of self is never fully defined any more than is the other fully defined; we delude ourself with a concept of completeness. Development is life long and life wide. Self and other are phenomenal in that there is a constant state of becoming that defies permanent description or even narrative characterization, but constitutes the whole of physical, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual domains or dimensions.

For the most part, emancipation is emergent. It is a state of mind much more than an age or physical attribute. Our next chapter will expand on the meaning of emancipation.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Several textbooks and accounts of neuroscience and neurobiology ccould be encouraged, if not recommended here. Easily the most important, authoritative and comprehensive is:

Eric Kandel et al. Principles of Neural Science. 6th Ed. Kandel is a Nobel laureate and for years has assembled this collection of contributions from his peers. That is why you will see this recommendation repeated in several chapters of this book.

Robeert Kegan. The Evolving Self.

Jean Piaget. The Child’s Conception of the World , Biology and Knowledge and Science and Education …

Lev Vygotsky. Mind in Society; The Development of Highteer Psychological Processes.

William James. The contribution of William James to understanding adolescent development can be discovered in almost any introductory book on psychology as well as Internet search sources.

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. The Evolving Self and Flow: the Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life.

Chapter XXV

Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.

Rabindranath Tagore

Emancipation

The Practice of Freedom is sine qua non for education. Emancipation is a necessary step for freedom; and freedom is part of emancipation. Yet freedom is never absolute. Every free person is a a wholely or partially engaged person. That is to say, everyone carries a condition of sociality and expresses a social stance across their life. The expression is highly personal and therefore individualized. The expression changes throughout a lifetime and reflects perceptions and actualities of emancipation and freedom. In our contemporary society, emancipation and adulthood are linked however imperfectly.

Becoming adult is an act of existence and a state of being that is, it may be said, never fully accomplished because we are always growing. Humans, unlike trees, but like all animals, eventually reeach a “full size” that is normal for the species. While a tree can never be “free” of its soil, an animal’s freedom is bonded or bound to its habitat and niche in an ecosystem through its evolution and development. Human freedom is bonded to responsibility like the roots of a tree are to soil.

Growth too is dependent on nature and nurture. There is an enormous range for humans, but a height of between five to six feet is considered normal. Reaching full height occurs between the ages of 13 and 25 years. Fully grown human height ranges from around 20 inches to over 90 inches. It is not too hard to recognize that emancipation has little or nothing to do with either one’s age or one’s height.

By contrast with physical growth, there is intellectual or cognitive growth, emotional growth and in some more obscure sense, spiritual, moral or ethical growth, which may all roll into something I refer to as attitude, for lack of a better term. It is in these later senses that we can agree with Hemingway when he said of his occupation We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. There may be something to be said suggesting that Hemingway was speaking for everyone, everywhere about everything about life, love, work and play. That is to say, there are no limits or end to personal development—only the ending of death.

For education, the importance of a lifelong growth mindset may be most important. Three elements need our attention; growth, mindset and lifelong. Growth is change and adaptation to any or all of the new circumstances that may be faced across some part, or various parts, of a short to long time-span. Whatever the human mind is, it is not set and not unlimited. Life is finite and we each only have one for a limited duration. Humanity—the collective human species—has only very reluctantly recognized the limits of growth. That, may or may not be as it should be.

This chapter is about turning points across a lifespan. It is these turning points in life that enable moments to fit jigsaw puzzle-like into an autobiography of self. In this chapter the unfolding of an adult is a development through which passage is attended but sometimes unnoticed and sometimes unfulfilled. As with every gradient there are no well defined borders. Society and its institutions seem to insist on borders and break points which must be crossed with symbols suggesting something universal. High school graduation is one such symbol. It is age-based and biased by society as a break-point signaling being adult. But clearly that break between past and future is artificial except for the tangible reality of a commencement ceremony. Wearing a cap and gown, being handed a diploma, may or may not begin a new realm of life.

What follows will address and question legal issues and status, age, responsibility, sufficiency, and transition, freedom, independence, illusions. The matter of emancipation is never as clear and tidy as we may want it to be.

Legal Considerations

Emancipation is almost universally automatic at age 18, although in some jurisdictions emancipation may be earlier or later. When disability is involved a court may extend dependency indefinitely. A state’s legal definitions of an age of emancipation, defines the rights and responsibilities of parents or a guardian, sometimes carrying prison penalties for failures to comply.

Emancipation of a young person shifts both rights and responsibilities. It happens that young people may, for substantial or for frivilous reasons, seek a legal emancipation from an authority controlling their freedom. Success of a young person in gaining emancipation also entails the acquisition of responsibility.

Occasionally parents may seek relief from responsibility for care of a teenage person. There are two dimensions of this aspect of legal emancipation in that while a child may seek separation from parental authority, parents seeking relief from responsibility for care of a teenage child through legal emancipation proceedings are bound until they are unbound. Although the legal landscape has mountains, cliffs and deep valleys to negotiate, there are, for the most part, legal considerations for both parents and their teenage children.

Most of the legal matters apply to teenage dependents, as there are another set of considerations for adoption, which most typically apply to younger children. In these cases a parent for some substantial reason decides to give up custody. Another adult or couple may then assume full legal responsibility through adoption proceedings. The child’s rights remain, for the most part, unchanged. In general, the expectation of all concerned, is that the child’s situation is improved across a broad swath of considerations.

Teen pregnancy has elements of legal consideration. Parents of a pregnant young woman may want to disown their own child and the child's child. How big an element this may be is an open question about which there is sociological and legal research that may provide definitive statistics even if leaving moral and legal obligations murky. Such emancipated parents may no longer be required to provide housing, food, or health care including any enabling rights of the teenager to receive money from parents for any reason. Parents are able to completely avoid financial responsibility for the child or the child's offspring. Of course, along with such emancipation, the emotional considerations of love and empathy are also deleted, wiped out, removed.

Legally emancipation is a process that generats a fact of being set free from legal, social or political restrictions—that is liberation.

Basically emancipation is coming of age early, abruptly and perhaps unnaturally. Legal emancipation allows the child to make binding decisions on their own behalf and assuring that parents no longer can be held legally or financially responsible for anything that a child does or may intend to do. Contracts made by the child are legally binding and not subject to parental review or approval. Following a legal declaration of emancipation, the young person is considered an adult with corresponding rights and responsibilities. They can live wherever they please, work and keep their earnings. They can buy, sell or give away any property they have legally acquired. Curfew laws do not, for the most part, apply to emancipated teenagers. Medical procedures, including abortion—fraught as that is—are a now limited province of the teenager depending on their state of residence.

Folliwing emancipation there are remaining obligations and restrictions based solely on age, such as drinking, conformity with labor laws including child labor laws, continuing to attend school may be required, depending on state law, although the emancipated teenager may have their own choice about the school attended; for example they may choose to attend a private or parochial school instead of a public school, or vice versa. Sex may still be restricted to marriage and having a legal spouse, although, of course, enforcement is very uneven or absent entirely.

Age

Birthday celebrations are, for the most part in Western societies, embedded in our being from birth. Birthdays are generally adopted as celebrations to mark a milestone in development. Unfortunately these markings are taken way too seriously. It is as though every annual milestone has meaning and is taken as a new marker of maturity and responsibility. Being able to walk by age one, talk by age two and assume using the toilet appropriately before age three are basic markers for parents and pediatricians. Failure to meet these markers is cause for concerns that may entail corrective measures or actions. Most of the time, that is for most children, these milestones are met almost automatically when parents behave normally for parents. They take the development in stride, doing what is expected to encourage walking, talking and toileting.

Age expectations are important and walking, talking and toileting are not trivial but they are superficial indicators of the enormous developmental changes occurring in the brain. The critical neural connections needed for these physical activities are shaped thorugh both connections and disconnections. The brain is highly plastic or changeable or moldable and timing is crucial. This seems particularly true for talking or language development.

Beyond the age of three there are additional milestones that society attaches to age and make highly formal by establishing the expectations in the curriculum of schools and detailed for accomplishments by age and grade.

Once a child is toilet trained, in others words is fully capable of recognizing her or his own body signals to use the toilet and carry out appropriate hygiene, the child is deemed sufficiently mature to attend school; or as we typically say pre-school, and leading to kindergarten. After the age of three the focus of parents and other caregivers is oriented to supporting the child for readiness to enter the system of schooling. This preparation entails other age-related readiness such as sitting still and listening to a story being read by an adult, recognizing and naming colors and shapes when presented, recitation of the alphabet and recognizing the letters, relating letters to sounds (the phonemes) and even small groupings of letters—reading readiness. Putting on and removing clothing with minimal help from an adult. Playing with other children. Eating what is offered at table and without adult prodding or support. Ready or not, at age five a child is headed for school. Anything missing? Schools are expected to handle it.

Maturity has a certain progression that can be generalized but generalization should be done with caution because there is massive ignorance that should (must?) be acknowledged. The difference here between should and must bridges the gap between an individual and society. Society may try to impose “must” but the individual may or may not be capable, ready or willing to adopt society's must . The result is tension that cries out for resolution.

Abuse

In the absence of resolution the individual is set apart, not quite fully fitting in with the normal flow of schooling, and in an important sense, abused or mismanaged psychologically by classroom managers; and, perhaps even more importantly, by their peers. It is in this sense that a child in a school/classroom not fully ready for the flow of activities, lessons, or “learning benchmarks” is deprived of agency—an agent of personal efficaciousness.

Object if you will to my use of “abuse” in this context. When linked with “trauma,” and the really egregious abuses of children, this may be regarded as too minor for attention. However, wen looking for explanations of children dropping or dropping away from the impositions of schooling, my sense is that ignoring this abuse by schools of age-related expectations, is well worthy of better understanding. I would challenge anyone to successfully argue that this is NOT an adverse experience for a child. Furthermore, it is not anything that can be easily compensated.

Responsibility

Responsibility following emancipation is also a legal matter. The emancipated teenager must provide for their own financial support, paying bills when due. While insurance for health, vehicles or dental work is not a requirement, it would be considered both responsible and prudent. Making sure all income is from a legal source precludes prostitution and drug dealing as well as other illegal schemes or activities to obtain money.

Relevant considerations about responsibility have been covered above as legal matters. However, there is a larger matter of responsibility that may supersede the legal matters and age. There is an herent responsibility attached to living in a social milieu that may go well beyond what is defined legally. Responsibility is probably more an attitude defining and actually living a life, than a being a legal matter. Taking the future into consideration, an emancipated individual may begin to look beyond immediate needs and satisfactions to anticipate personal needs for housing, food, health care, social connections, and personal growth through skill development and expansion of knowledge. These are responsibilities for life itself.

Responsibility may change with life circumstance. Mating and marriage are prominent examples. Acquisition of a job or other source of remuneration typically adds a range of new responsibility to an emancipated person's life. Military service or community service will impose both restrictions and responsibilities that, at least for military service, may be very strictly enforced by higher ranking authority and responsibility includes following a chain of command. With community service, fitting in and following precedent may determine the extent to which one is able to belong and achieve a status of some esteem within a civic organization or governmental sponsored initiative.

Engagements may carry a tacit acceptance of certain responsibilities such as simply showing up when expected and donating skills and knowledge productively. Somewhat conversely, an engagement within an organization may enable shared responsibility with team members or co-workers. Sharing may effectively avoid full personal responsibility.

Sufficiency

Judgments of sufficiency for emancipation may include the officers of a judicial system that follows laws put in place by legislative authority. Those who represent the legal system as lawyers and judges may consider whether there is sufficient foundations for emancipation and make judgments based on age and other signs of maturigy such as capacity for making good choices, following authority, adherence to social norms and other criteria. Social workers and law enforcement officials may be empowered in certain jurisdictions including municipalities and school districts. Faith-based clergy are not infrequently judges of sufficiency. Credentials for making judgments are often built into municipal or state legal statutory language or an ecclesiastically privileged hierarchy.

In our contemporary society, the judgments about sufficiency are, for the most part, made by parents. This can involve a broad range of considerations that are linked to generational, community and religious criteria. There is little legal grounding of these so-called parental rights, although it is certainly broadly accepted that parental rights hover above the law.

Restrictions on parental exercise of authority mainly concern elements of abuse. But even abuse is typically considered physical, corporeal matters of punishment that is deemed excessive. Although it is well known that abuse may be psychological, the abuse from a child observing parental behavior is also documented and recognized as potentially if not overtly and actually as traumatic. The matter of chronic parental abuse and trauma was considered in a prior Chapter. This leaves parental judgments regarding sufficiency of a teenager to shoulder the responsibility of emancipation to some very grave questions.

A significant deference to the sufficiency of the teenager's own choices about emancipation are rarely explicit. Currently in most families, parents adopt laissez faire attitudes and even go about their lives with the teenage children in the background. The prevailing parental stance is to let maturity take its own course without interference, or with only minimal guidance. A stigma is often attached to helicopter parents.

Who are the appropriate judges of sufficiency? From what or from whom do these judges acquire the credentials to judge sufficiency for emancipation and fully fledged freedom?

Transition

The transistion to adult freedom and responsibility is not uniform and, for the most part, teenagers manage it successfully. Schools play a useful role but are not ever complete and successful influences or guides.

Consistent with a prevailing laissez faire attitude on the part of way too many parents, the acquisition of maturity and making good choices is an unguided transition to emancipation and adulthood. One result is a tension that may be internal but takes on external manifestations for too many young people. These manifestations may fall outside of prevailing laws and other accepted community practices, adding up to unacceptable outcomes. Anitsocial behaviors range from simple insensitivity to malicious violence. Mental health problems of anxiety and depression may be severe enough to result in suicide. Suicide is not uncommon among teenagers. Causes are obscure but these tensions of transition should not be dismissed.

Running toward and running away seems, for some teenagers, in a constant state of tension were resources for relief are either not available or not obvous enough. Perhaps this should be recognized as an inevitable tension of transition. When does the urge to run away overwhelm what others consider a safe condition? What is a feeling of being safe and how is it potentiallydelivered socially to help teens avoid tragedy—an ultimate sacrifice of self?

Freedom

Emancipation would be hard or impossible to characterize in the absence of consideration for freedom. Yet we kick around freedom as though it is some absolute, indispensible quality of human life endowed by some supernatural force or intelligence. Being free and experiencing freedom is an aspiration; not an absolute.

Freedom is not just another word for nothing … such as with Janis Joplin's nothing left to lose. Clever lyrics are not statements of truth, but could become triggers for reflection. Is there, for example, ever fulfillment of freedom before death as Sartre expressed as Being and Nothingness? Our being exists but can nothingness prevail to fully liberate us from obligation (and maybe even responsibility in some sense) to something we call “other” as a subject or object. Our social existence carries with it a broad range of obligations that we come to know in many diverse ways. School, of course, contributes but is never wholly responsible for the obligations that may exist or emerge in anyone's life. Is absence of obligation freedom?

So then,What is the meaning of freedom? How do we know when we are free? Liberation and liberty are often synonyms for freedom. Is freedom a rational condition or an affective condition; a feeling of something beyond ever really knowing?

What is there that society should do to assure that every individual begins to grasp the potential of being liberated from the constraints imposed by parents, schools and churches? Is that ever even possible?

The D3 could, and perhaps should, be the beginning of a quest for freedom, however, it cannot be an abrupt, all or nothing, transition. Ideally the transition begins—that is fostered—well before age nine. Secure environments may be essential; that is warm, sheltered, nuturant. The right environment may foster freedom. Yet even a highly supportive environment may fall short for an individual who does not recognize and demand freedom because only environments created by anarchists give freedom without grit. We may well expect too much from grit. It alone is not enough even though at some level of consideration, grit is probably essential. That is if we could know a lot more about what grit actually means. Grit may be prerequisite for freedom and liberation. But if so, How?

Subjectification, is part of education but not directly fostered. It emerges when a young person begins to see their person-hood as unique and experiencing a place in an environment. This environment, as a school, fosters development of certain attitudes along with skillsand knowledge along with socialization. All of which enables finding a place of belonging and esteem in a group within society. Schools are not the only environment in which a young person is living. Subjectification happens but does not necessarily follow any curriculum intended to qualify work or social skill.

So then, how does (or might) education take an individual (or a group) across a space into a state of freedom. Can it truly happen and what is the feeling of being free? Economics is an unwieldly contributor to feelings of freedom and is not easily dismissed. A state of mind emerges with money and choices are built on the perceptions and attributes of wealth in our environment(s). Yet captains of captialism with their $billions, are not free. They are as any of us, mentally bound to beliefs that could be found as satisfaction in a fantasy beyond their reality. In some sense even Bill Gates & Jeff Bezos bought their fantasy of freedom at a cost of $billions. Perhaps discovery of freedom and buying freedom are not equal after all.

Independence

Is it even possible to fully lose our dependence and bypass the need for belonging and esteem that may eventually enable self-actualization, self-esteem, self-efficacy, or any other attribute, however fuzzy, of what may be part of this thing we call independence?

Lack of independence was a matter of some powerful reality in the feudal age and was partially eroded by the magna carta, protestant revolution, enlightenment and a few nasty wars as well as cheap transportation fostered by fossil fuels. But what part? All parts? Are all parts of independence even possible to identify? Good luck answering those questions.

Who should shoulder the responsibility for fostering, promoting, the concepts of independence? Can society actually function when there is a culture of independence that fosters gross and absolute individualism or flagrant independence?

Independence is anything but immediate and absolute. Independence occurs from development of cogency, capability, influence. Power can be harsh or benign and may limit or foster independence. Our founding documents extol liberty and justice for all. Success in a democracy is measured without a well-marked ruler.

llusion

Given due consideration that emancipation is never absolute, there is always reason for individuals, their peers and society to recognize an illusion of emancipation. We are never fully free, and our responsibility constrains whatever freedom we have or want. Nevertheless an individual may advance toward freedom and emancipation physically, mentally and spiritually, living with self and partially understanding self and other.

How does an individual come to realize and somewhat satisfy the illusions of emancipation. Perceptions are nuanced and interpretated in a panoplyh of constantly changing conditions. Some of these conditions may be controlled to remain and retain a constancy that is sufficiently reliable to serve feelings of stability and a sense of reality.

Illusion, then perhaps means that emancipation is actually ephemeral, fading in and fading out before it fades in again. Emancipation is a state of mind and therefore beyond the tangible. We get there when we believe we are there. This is not likely a state brought about through education at school but is an accommodation achieved through education’s ecology.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Sartre

Biesta

Foucault

Potential Exclusions::

Removed from chapter's introduction:

That is not to say that all change is necessarily good or desired. In fact, some change can be very negative as when morality or ethical behavior turns against norms and becomes in conflict with expectations of a social group. Expression of emotions may not be seen as “normal” and an individual expressing emotion in an inappropriate way may experience social rejections that may be both hurtful and lasting. Spiritual change is too often left to theology, but it is important to acknowledge that what we may call spiritual is also a mental state that can, in some circumstances be seen as so far beyond normal as to be considered a form of mental illness[ Bruce Lindgren, 1/12/2024 8:03:40 AM. There may be so much more to menntal illness that it should be developed in greater detail; including the position of Thamas Saez, who argues that mental illnesses and disease is a misnomer beccause it simply and emphatically does not exist.].

Intellectual growth is also lifelong in the sense that with each new experience we actually or potentially develop responses that may be positive or negative, and these become a way for us to meet and greet new experiences. They become a framework for which we judge the importance of our new experiences. When certain experiences become a sturdy framework, one that has been with us and found to be effective, it continues to be used without reflection or thought and accordingly is often recognized as a habit. Certain habits contribute to new accomplishments and other habits may actually block accomplishment. Our autobiography is largely a recitation of the balance of good, worthwhile or desirable habits and those habits that that are bad, worthless and/or undesirable. This balance is our mindset. But a mindset is not fixed.

Changing habits is not for the faint of heart or the feeble minded person. Those of recognized feeble mind are not afforded the freedoms for which others are rewarded. When an individual collects a cluster of bad habits, society may take actions contrary to an individual's freedom, such as when a person with a collection of criminal habits is incarcerated or, perhaps, even executed by a law enforcement officer who betrays her or his oath to serve and protect and takes upon themselves being a societal rogue[ Bruce Lindgren, 1/12/2024 8:11:16 AM. The notion of “societal rogue: should be expanded or emphasized with italics … add jury to judge and executioner.]; rolling together the roles of judge and executioner. The problems of the “bad cop” are never far from civic attention in the wake of too many incidents involving officer killing that has racial overtones or undertones.

All of the above being said …

We'll explore liberation or freedom in an other section below. [ Bruce Lindgren, 1/12/2024 8:19:41 AM. What are the “other sections” discussion of liberation or freedom … refer to recent writing in Tjhe Stack about libertarianism …][[ What are the “other sections” discussion of liberation or freedom … refer to recent writing in Tjhe Stack about libertarianism … ]]

Development of Cogency. Capability. Influence. . Power. Success.[ Bruce Lindgren, 1/12/2024 8:33:58 AM. Much to be elaborated here. Along with SO WHAT! Is this, perhaps, to be considered “development” of responsibility and added to the following section RESPONSIBILITY.]

Removed from the heading Responsibility

Who are the liberators? Who imposes a condition resembling incarceration? Prisons of the mind come to mind. Perhaps emancipation is a process of escape from a mental prison.

1. Part Five
2. Our Planetary Imperative

The following five chapters will dwell more inclusively on global problems and a planetary imperative for education and will make the case that the most essential focus of and for education must be the condition of Earth. We will attempt to convince you that nothing in education is more important than the Anthropocene because if it continues, the conditions for human life on this planet will be so severely perturbed and degraded that extinction of the human species will become a very real possibility. Attempting to colonize another planet is insane because we humans will bring with us to another planet the same traits that have led to the destruction of life conditions on Earth. It cannot be ignored that if human engineering could reproduce an ecosystem on another planet; human arrogance and stupidity would inevitably destroy that ecosystem also.

All of our engineering talent fortified by science, technology and amplified by artful applications of logic and mathematics should persuade us of a new direction for education on Earth, right now. To make our point, chapters will document losses of biodiversity and the impact of overpopulation of humans as well as our role as stewards in building an economy that is sustainable. That economy is both necessary for, and worthy of, human choice.

The chapters of Part Five will dwell more inclusively and extensively on these global problems and the Planetary Imperative for education.

Chapter XXVI—Population Explosion—recognizes the huge growth in sheer numbers of the human species across just a few hundred years.

Chapter XXVII—Biodiversity—is really about not growth but loss of both numbers and the variety of types of species that we share on earth with us.

Chapter XXVIII—The Anthropocene—bluntly tackles the impact of both numbers of humans and the technologies that have emerged to enable the numbers.

Chapter XXIX—Stewardship—remarks pointedly on the obligations of everey human alive today to take responsibility for the anthropocene and enable a sound future for all of life on earth. [[ does the chapter address equity? ]]

Chapter XXX—Sustainability—begs the questions about survival and what that may be like for humans and our planetary companions upon which we are dependent.

Chapter XXVI

The power of population is indefinitely greaater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

Thomas Malthus

Population Explosion

In 1968 Professor Paul Ehrlich of Standord University wrote a book about the pending disaster of ovrpopulation. Titled The Population Bomb, he recognized a fundamental fact that humans are subject to the same biological, chemical and physical laws as any other species. Humans don't get a pass from metaphysics or some supernatural power. The habitat of every species has limits from the carrying capacity of its surroundings. When a population exceeds its carrying capacity it will decline by either death or migration. Mass migration of the human species from Earth is nonsense. The incorrigible optimists, believe an elite group from earth will extablish a new population. The pessimists are reasonably sure a new planet of humans will become overpopulated, polluted and require further migrations.

The global population in 1960 was under 3.3 billion. This year, or soon, it will reash 8 billion. Plotted year-by-year the numbers are showing an exponential increase. The graph line that has shown only modest increases for literally centuries is inflected and approaching a vertical. It is steep. That is a population explosion!

A graph of global population since the middle ages shows a very slow growth of human population until the advent of the industrial revolution in the late 18th Century when the curve of growth began to bend upward. Since the mid 20th Century the growth curve has become more and more vertical. The reasons for this are still being sorted out but so much is known about both the cause and consequences that it cannot any longer be ignored. Yet too much of this global population is going about its political and spiritual business as though the human population explosion isn't happening and doesn't matter a twit. Economic growth is sine qua non, essential and absolutely necessary.

It is clearly time to think again about the population explosion and education has to lead that thinking. Regrettably education is actually doing little or nothing to promote thinking about human population growth. What thinking there is will be found buried in a chapter or two of environmental science textbooks. These texts are laden with many important matters regarding the state of the environment. The result is only some passing attention to human demography. Unfortunately this book perpetuates the error. We'll make some noise and move on. To my great regret, it is a stretch to call that education.

In this chapter we will look at the Green Revolution, Agriculture Impacts, Technology Magnifier, Growing Inequality, Limits of Growth.

What Happened?

The world has become overpopulated by humans for many reasons. China attempted active measures to stem population growth, but within a few decades mostly abandoned their policy due to resistance, economic expansion and the need for workers to fuel more growth. In impoverished regions and countries, large family size remained an economic necessity. The impact of disease as a deterent to population growth was thwarted by greater spread of medical technologies including but not limited to some amazing anti-microbial drugs and vaccinations. While food shortages may have limited population growth, the application of increasingly abundant nitrogen fertilizers combined with genetic manipulation of many food plants such as wheat and sorgum, enabled enough food for family growth.

Energy is also a potential limitation. Electricity generation and distribution enables economic expansion, jobs and improvements of family welfare. Nuclear power generation was promising cheap electricity. Nuclear weapons proliferated in the US and USSR to create a massive potential for global annihilation. That didn't happen but many of those weapons still exist along with plenty of fear about a nuclear disaster if not from thermonuclear weaplons then from the power plants. A few disasters like Chernoble, Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daiichi kept the lid on nuclear development and stimulated as well as exacerbated the on-going development of power plants based on buring of fossil fuels, mainly coal. The energy needs of a growing population are being met along with atmospheric pollution.

Certainly some nuclear energy generation proliferated mainly in countries led by totalitarian regimes. Political and economic hubris exploded. Electricity was projected to become so inexpensive to produce that it could be endlessly distributed at extremely low cost; so low that some captains of industry argued that it would not be cost effective to measure or meter it. With abundant and essentially free energy the world could accommodate every need. Population was seen as just another challenge to be solved with technology. With nuclear energy supplying electricity for artificial lighting massive urban farms were predicted and steps toward this dreamy ideal are being taken.

Too many contries including some with very unstable leadership and irresponsible regimes have directed attention away from the real, ongoing explosion of population. The United States has devoted $- trillions in resources to fight terrorism with wasteful military manpower and technologies. The seemingly laudable goal was democratization. It has become clear that democracy cannot be imposed on people from outside interventions. Corruption is often rampant and ignores virtually all of the implications of excess population growth.

Then came Chernoble, Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daiichi . Melt down of nuclear reactors has stoped development of nuclear power in its tracks. A screeching halt? No, the mindset of humanity to demand all that cheap energy continued and industry turned to fossil fuels particularly coal. Coal-fire electrical generating plants began to increase in number but never were able to fully meet growing demand.

Green Revolution

The Green Revolution emerged following World War II in the 1950s and matured into the 1970s from two important and linked factors. The Noble Prize winning plant geneticist, Norman Borlaug, developed strains of wheat that responded robustly to increases in soil nitrogen. Production of nitrogen fertilizers proliferated. The result was vast increases in the productivity of agricultural practices. Unfortunately an accompanying result was vast over production and use of these nitrogen fertilizers and the pollution of streams and aquafers from runoff and infiltration through soil. While food production remains high, the cost in water pollution remains to be fully accounted. Nevertheless more food has supported the growth of human populations across many if not most countries around the Earth. Borlaug's genetics and the chemical fertilizer industry provided a mix of technology to greatly enhance production of wheat. This work was replicated with sorgum, rice and other grain crops.

Foundations, including Ford and Rochefeller, provided financial support that enabled dissemination of technology and the needed expertise to foster changes in global agriculture. These foundations leveraged many factors to assure that the technologies combined with financial incentives to foster adaptation of methods and materials essential to expand the global food supply. This work was considered to be highly humanitarian and recognized as generally beneficial to humankind.

Norman Borlaug is recognized as the “Father of the Green Revolution” and is widely believed to have saved literally billions of lives globally.

Agriculture Impacts

The Green Revolution also fostered other agricultural advancements including the uses of pesticides to control insects and more efficient mechanization for planting and harvesting.

Mechanism of agriculture has accelerated in the past couple of decades. The impacts of this has been a mixed collection of positive and ingative elements. For instance, there have been economies of scale through larger machinery. This has certainly decreased the amount of labor needed to plant and harvest each acre of produce, particularly with grain crops such as corn, soybeans and wheat. Machinery has also become automated to reduce the amount of guess work needed to effectively apply fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides as well as management of irrigation. Modern tractors and combines are often now equipped with GIS and GPS positioning and sensing devices to enable much more precise application of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. This reduces cost of production but pehaps more importantly, it reduces the excessive application of the agrochemicals. Much of irrigation has been automated also.

Reliance on irrigation in some parts of the world and with certain crops is essential. Sources of water are very important and often, if not typically, are severe limitations on cropping feasibility. Natural rainfall is rarely perfectly predictable. Accordingly a farm operation may require irrigation availability even when it is not needed in months where there is adequate rainfall. In many parts of the US, particularly in the Western US, rainfall is customarily inadequate, so farmers are dependent upon water from sources such as rivers and reservoirs. These sources depend not on rainfall, but on snowfall, particularly in the Rocky Mountains. Climate change has severely affected snowfall and the streams and reservoirs are depleted and there is anticipation that even with favorable conditions, that are not predicted, it will require a decade or more to reestablish adequate water supplies for agriculture and other human needs. Rationing of water is a common policy and practical reality for people living, working and recreating in the West. The economics of farming are probably the most important and the most dramatic effects of low water levels. However, farmers are often forced to compete with urban water demands.

Massive fertilization and ground water pollution is a reality for farming in most parts of the country. The demand economically and socially for increased crop yields and the maintenance of cost considerations is a difficult balance. Crop yields are improved with the uses of fertilizers, particularly nitrogen fertilizers, on farms. The tragic result of increased fertilizer use is the contamination of fresh water and even, now, with marine ecosystems. In the Midwestern states such a Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Missouri fertilization runoff to the Missouri, Ohio and the Mississippi rivers has contributed to the development of a so-called dead-zone in the Gulf of Mexico. It is also recognized that water that has dissolved fertilizers carries nitrate through the soil into the aquifers. The huge Ogallala aquifer that supplies irrigation and dirinking water has become contaminated with nitrates to the point that there is active concern for the safety for human and animal drinking of the water. Without quality drinking water, quality of life decreases.

Meeting the protein needs of people has taken a turn toward a greater emphasis on factory farming practices. Cattle, hogs and chickens, in particular, are now raised in conditions that have almost no resemblance to the natural conditions in which these animals would normally breed and develop.

Animal husbandry and domestication has advanced on pace with other aspects of farming. Much of the grain produced from farm fields is now diverted from human consumption to supply animals with t he nutrients they may require. Rapid growth is a premier consideration for animal farmers. This has led to highly scientific practices based on knowledge of not only nutrients but also genetics and hormones to accelerate growth. Antibiotics, of course reduce disease, but also to enable better uses of available nutrients, which in turn speeds growth. Breeding practices have also been improved. For instance, artifical insemination and In vitro fertilization enables more efficient as well has highly selective breeding. Sex, as it was once practiced by farm animals, is becoming obsolete. The cattle farmer no longer needs to maintain a bull on her or his farm since a specialized veterinary service can roll its van up to a barn or milking parlor and inseminate any of the appropriate and available cows. Fortunately roosters still seem to be in demand, but the day of the rooster crowing at dawn may be numbered too.

Agriculture is both vast and important. It fosters science and is enhanced by scientific discovery. Quantitative analyses combined with computer applications enable not only the farmer but the entire farm supply industry to become more commercially effective and efficient. For instance packaging and shipping has enabled global trade of farm commodities greatly aided and abetted by capital markets using powerful commercial banking practices. Cereal crops are constantly being enginered biologically to improve both nutrient values and harvest efficiencies. Testing and evaluation of hypothesized improvements such as GIS and GPS technologies, artificial intelligence as well as animal and plant genomics constantly expands science as a foundation for agriculture to serve an expanding human population.

Technology Magnifier

US has 5% of global population but uses 30% of global energy and materials … There is an important relationship between a population and its use of technology. Technology requires materials and energy and the debt supporting new applications of technology demands compound interest. Technology breeds more technology. The rate of acceleration is accelerating.

The Singularity is Near according to inventor and capitalist Ray Kurzweil … Kurzweil is one among a growing number of entrepreneurs who fuel their business growth with venture funding from the entrepreneur community. For venture capitalists growth of capital through investment is sine qua non. Nothing is more important than returns on investment (ROI). These returns are proportional to risk, but investors must find a use for idle money creating ROI—high risk means high ROI. Marjorie Kelly has called this The Divine Right of Capital. Like the myth of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, there is momentum from capital that accelerated, and magnifies applications of technology. Anyone with doubt about this assertion should look critically at the global growth of technology transfer in the funding and operation of our major research universities.

Growing Inequality

The increase in population is exacerbated by the growing difference between the haves and have nots … this is a economic matter but it is also a moral matter. The progenitor of modern economics and economic theory, Adam Smith, began his career writing A Theory of Moral Sentiments. That was followed by his book The Wealth of Nations.

The gap between rich and poor is getting larger, while vast monetary wealth is more concentrated. While there is some effort to spread the wealth around through charitable foundations created by the titans of technology, commerce and industry, the impact tends to be greatest in the most impoverished regions of the planet. For instance the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has invested billions to cure tropical diseases including malaria and to provide functionally efficient toilets where open lagoons and pits are common. The impacts of efforts such as this to close the gap remains small but is, nevertheless, measurable. While the gaps remain conspicuously large, it will likely require a vast shifting of how humanity thinks about and acts on alternative economic models to reverse the rowth of inequality and accelerate the shrinkage of gaps.

Limits of Growth

By and large, there seems to be a mindset that there are no limits to growth of the human population. The evidence from logic, mathematics and practical reasoning belies the assumptions. The necessity of growth seems locked into the way we think—our mindset. Assumptions are too often hidden or obscured by a mindset; tascetly denied, rarely stated.

The simple approach to recognizing limits of growth is to consider the exponential effect of doubling. Taking a single penny and doubling it ieach day for a month. This will produce an unmanageable pile of pennies. (actually 1,073,741,824; worth $10,737,418.24.) That is around 7 million pounds or 3500 ton. It would take over 32 dump trucks to haul those pennies around.

Without limits the human population will double about every 37 years, but that number will decrease. In other words the rate of increase of the human population is accelerating.

Physical scientists Donella and Dennis Meadows, together they provided an analysis of the impact of geometrical expansion and it s consequences on systems. They were members of the Club of Rome which was founded in part to recognize that consumption and population growth will imperil life supporting systems of the earth. Consumption of fossil fuel accelerates with increasing technologies multiplied by increasing people.

Population growth may reach an upper limit due to resource limitations. For example, if some known quantity of bacterial cells, say 100 cells per milliliter, are put into a broth with a known amount of necessary nutrients, and the culture tube is incubated at an optimal temperature for about 24 hours, the initial population of 100 cells will typically take an hour or so to acclimate to the new source of food, but will then begin growing and doubling about every 20-30 minutes. Over perhaps 18-20 hours the culture will continue to double reaching a population of one to ten million cells per milliliter (106–107 cells/ml). At this level of population, the mass of bacteria will exhaust essential nutrients and growth will cease. Experiments of this type have been replicated tens of thousands of times by biologists working in laboratories and confirmed through field studies of both animal and plant populations. We don’t experiment with humans but there is no biological reason to believe that humans are exhempt from the same constraints governing population expansion.

A similar story is that of the Water Lily in a pond where a single plant grows exponentially for 29 days and covers half of the pond. On the thirtieth day the entire pond is choked with Lily Pads. Students in a biology class often do a similar experiment with Duck Weed in a little Petri dish.

An excellent and charming example of the limits of exponential growth is presented in Wikipedia with the legendary Rice on a Chessboard story:

According to an old legend, vizier Sissa Ben Dahir presented an Indian King Sharim with a beautiful handmade chessboard. The king asked what he would like in return for his gift and the courtier surprised the king by asking for one grain of rice on the first square, two grains on the second, four grains on the third, etc. The king readily agreed and asked for the rice to be brought. All went well at first, but the requirement for 2n−1 grains on the nth square demanded over a million grains on the 21st square, more than a million million (a.k.a. trillion) on the 41st and there simply was not enough rice in the whole world for the final squares.

We humans live in a common space and are supported by air, water and soil. We all take from these resources but too often do not replentish what we take. That is The Tragedy of the Commons. The energy of sunlight may be unlimited but the material of earth is limited and will determine our future limits. It is imperative for our life on this planet that we make limits crystal clear.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Ehrlich, Paul Population Bomb

Kelly, Marjorie. 2022. The Divine Right of Capital; Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy.

Kelly, Marjorie. 2023. Wealth Supremacy; How the Extractive Economy Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Rrises.

Meadows, Donella. 1972. The Limits of Growth.

Hardin, Garrett. 1966. The Tragedy of the Commons.

Davis Professor of sociology and demographics … find or eliminate.

Chapter XXVII

If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.

David Suzuki

Biodiversity

There are notable reasons why ecologists recognize diversity within an ecosystem as highly desireable. It is well recognized that following a major disturbance such as fire, flood, earthquakes, volcano or tsunami an environment will repopulate, but rarely precisely replicating what it once was. Plants, animals and microbes remaining or migrating from surrounding areas find food, water, shelter and with their well established capacities, reproduce and repopulate the damaged area. Early immigration is successively replaced by new spacies and the biological community becomes diverse. Certain species dominate, plants in particular, characterize the commnity. These may be primary producers, converting sunlight to nutrients supplying themselves but other species as well. This leads to numbers and types of species and, typically acroos years, to a rich array of plants, animals and microbes and a well documented progressin known as biological succession. A mature community is characterized by its diversity and stability .

The community functions as well coordinated systems; networks that enable survival by providing food, shelter and enabling reproduction. Ecology today, and for the past 100 years, is studied scientifically. The principles of Systems Science demand diversity, for systems are only stable when there are many alternatives or options to enable a function upon which the continuation of life depends. Redundancy is important to systems function; if one part breaks down, another part can take its place quickly. In a world flooded with diverse life forms a complex layering of energy and materials levels assures that materials are cycled and energy flows. Energy is, of course, the key to maintaining the complex organization of ecosystems but cycles for water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur contribute to complexity. The amazing thing is that it all works. Ecosystems seem like a miracle.

What we don't understand, of course, is why nothing is essential while anything may be essential. It is well known that removal of one species causes perturbations or instabilities in the system that are temporary. The role of what is removed is eventually filled in another way, sometimes seemingly identical and sometimes quite different. Flows and cycles remain but their form is altered however slightly or hard to notice.

The late Harvard professor, E. O. Wilson, was one of the foremost advocates for taking care of earth's biodiversity and has more than a few outspoken reasons and vast ideas for what should be done. He was not attempting an engineering solutions but simply advocated setting aside the space for diversity with confidence that if humans are willing and able to stay out of the space, the organisms that are present will do just fine as they have for over millions of years. Wilson and many other biologists, chemists and geologists have long recognized that generating and restoring our atmosphere and oceans makes possible survival of life on earth into an unknown and unknowable future.

Biodiversity is, essentially, sustainable. Every time diversity is reduced we are, or may be—and we don't know which or whether—less sustainable.

If it ain't broken; don't fix it. Safer yet, we may say: If it ain't broken; don't tinker with it. Whenever a unique form of life is endangered or lost to extinction, we are tinkering in a state of ignorance.

In this chapter we will examine the role of biodiversity, declining biodiversity, causes of decline, prevention and restoration efforts, protection, and threats from invasive species.

What is Biodiversity?

Bacteria would likely be listed last in any catalogue of living organisms, but in fact these tiny, microscopic rod-shaped, round and cork-screw shaped creatures are the most abundant forms of life on earth. Although associated with disease, bacteria are essential for decomposition of all the organic matter produced by animals and plants. Yet bacteria hardly ever work alone but are aided by fungi (molds) and a variety of insects to begin breaking muscle, bone, leaves and bark to smaller and smaller particle of matter to enable the enzymes of bacteria and fungi to chemically separate protein, carbohydrate and fats into caarbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitorgen, phosphorus and sulfur. In an amazing array of combinations these elements are reassembled by other microbes to build a web of food for life to continue generation after generation. None of this could happen without bacteria and decomposition and synthesis through diversity among living organisms.

Seeing bacteria takes a nimble manipulation of samples with stains and use of moderately powerful microscope. Little wonder then, that when we observe and think about biodiversity it is the large visible animals and plants that spring to mind first. Looking at a forest or even an urban landscape we rather easily recognize and even name a variety of trees, shrubs and grass. Birds are easy to observe by sight and sound. Insects may irritate and require a swat or a chemical repellent. A variety of plants, animals and even some larger fungi like the mushrooms are obvious enoughh to help us understand that nature is characterized by diverseness.

Ecology is the study of relationships among the variety of life. Careful observation have made clear the interdependence of the life forms in any particular habitat or community. Forests, grasslands, ponds and oceanic tide pools, to name a few, include unique arrays of life forms each dependent on others for their existence. That is what we mean by biodiversity.

Role of Biodiversity

At the foundation or heart of every ecosystem is energy. Sources of energy are known by biologists to be diverse making life possible where the sun does not shine or penetrate deeply enough, but sunlight is, for life, the sine qua non along with water. Where both exist, life is both possible and even likely, if, and only if, other critical elements are also present. Those two factors are what astronomers look for in assessing the likelihood that life exists elsewhere in our universe.

On earth, it is said and worth repeating, life exists as a guest of green plants. Green plant are green because they are able to make, manufacture, synthesize chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is green because it absorbs red and blue wavelengths of light strongly; green waves not so much and almost not at all so we humans see green. The red and blue light is absorbed or captured to supply energy necessary to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen is released to the atmosphere while the hydrogen is captured by unique molecules related to DNA and RNA. This happens in cellular particles called chloroplasts. The chloroplast is a packet or package filled with an elaborately organized array of molecules needed to use the energy of hydrogen to capture carbon from carbon (C) dioxide (O/O2) or CO2 and make watered (H2O) carbon (C) or hydrocarbon (carbohydrate) molecules (CH2O). These hydrocarbons are processed or metabolized through a complex series of reactions to make large hydrocarbon molecules which store energy in the form of sugar. All of the sugars, and there are may forms are named by using the suffix –ose, as in sucrose, glucose and cellulose.

Green plants develop roots and shoots with leaves. Roots tap into soil for water and mineral nutrients. Above ground, Shoots, and particularly their leaves support cells with chloroplasts to construct the foundations for life in the form of not only sugars but also proteins and a variety of fats or lipids. Plants in this sense, then, seem to be self-sustaining. But that is an illusion.

A plant is dependent upon the soil or substrate in which it lives. Soil is itself highly complex containing microbes or microorganisms; bacteria, fungi, algae, worms and, yes, viruses. In short, soil is, itself, an ecosystem with its own diversity of forms and functions. This complex of life depends for its own diversity on the presence or relative absence of water. Water itself may be maintained in soil through complex chemistry that is not yet fully understood and is too often under appreciated even by some soils scientists. In other words, even for something a common as dirt, there is still much about diversity that we are yet to fully understand—if fully understanding this complexity is even possible for the human mind. But let's not give up on humans, yet.

Above and below the soil, green plants are food for animals (and fungi) as consumers. We call the consumer animals herbivores and they are all fairly local, some living directly on the plant as insects with specialties for eating roots, shoots, leaves and fruits while a plant lives or after a plant dies. In death the plant becomes colonized by a variety of specialist organisms to take apart the plant's complexity and make protein, amino acids, lipids (fats) and sugars as well as all the parts of DNA and RNA available in various forms and combinations of CHONPS to bacteria, fungi, and worms.

Animals as consumers display an amazing array of diversity and have evolved to eat plants (herbivores) and other animals (carnivores). The result is another web or network of complexity based on what is eaten and what gets eaten. The famous immunologist McFarland Burnett focused great attention on microbes that cause infectious disease and the defensive adaptations of animals including humans. He introduced his book on infection and immunity by saying “all of ecology comes down to the simple fact of eat or be eaten.”

As we look at diversity among all living forms it becomes evident, if not always obvious, that every plant, animal or microbe lives in a distinctive part of the environment and take on a unique role. Where a species lives is called a habitat, a home of sorts, and what it does, its role, job or occupation, is called a niche. A great part of ecology is to study habitat and niche as that is also a study of relationships.

Certainly there is competition and ecology of nature can appear, in Tennyson’s phrase, red in tooth and claw making much of life short and brutal, a battle for survival.

Too often we think that diversity is a cause of competition, which it certainly may become whenever there is simultaneous occupation of a niche (wat an organism does) within a habitat (where an organism lives). Something has to give and competition ensues until one species dominates. Characterizing diversity in only worthy or unworthy human perspectives and terms is probably a mistake stemming from a mistaken attribution of human characteristics—anthropomorphism. Yet the complexity of interaction has another side to competition and that is cooperation.

Charles Darwin explained how evolution happens with a focus on competition and success in competition as a gold standard for success in life. The importance of competition is impossible to completely dismiss, but it is now clear that competition is only one side of the story. The other side is cooperation. The late Dr. Lynn Margulis devoted her career to documenting the importance of cooperative relationships among plants animals and, particularly, microbes. Other biologists have recognized many important cooperative relationships, such as pollination and co-evolution of flowering plants and insects.

Biogeochemistry can seem complicated but its underlying principles are fairly obvious. A natural environment is constantly changing physically, chemically, geologically and biologically. In nature several crucial elements—carbon, water, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur—to name a few, are constantly cycling on a global scale. Biogeochemists study these cycles to understand how organisms are integral agents in sustaining the important segments of cycles. All of these cycling elements are essential for life in all of its forms. This is because each element has a place and purpose in everything of which any living organism is composed. Put another way carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur (abbreviated, using chemistry’s shorthand, CHONPS) are indispensable to the DNA, RNA, Protein, Carbohydrates and Lipids (fats) that are organized, metabolized and perpetuated autopoietically (Chapter XII) by every living organism. If these elements did not recirculate, that is they accumulated or were saved, sequestered or hoarded, life would stop, or it would have to change and adapt to new conditions. Knowledge of biogeochemistry is knowledge of metabolism on a global scale. Hoarding of these critical elements is prevented through decomposition. Accordingly the microbes are studied intensively for their diverse roles in decomposition. Importantly but not exclusively, it is microbes that assure the chemical reactions needed for recycling, storing and releasing these essential elements; CHONPS.

Declining Biodiversity

Biogeochemical cycles drive the entire array of systems of our planet. Diversity of organisms is essential to assure that hoarding of any one element is minimized and is temporary. Alterations happen locally and may threaten one or more organisms that play a critical role. Amazingly nature responds with migrations to restore balance. But this assumes that replacements are available to migrate and replace a declining or extinct species.

Extinction is happening as it always has but our concern for biodiversity is that extinctions are now happening at an accelerating rate. When there are literally millions of species, it can be tempting to simply say “so what.” Unfortunately for the planet an extinct species is a real loss of currency. That means, whoever says so what is vulnerable too.

Causes of Decline

In a word, decline is caused by one species—humans. Humans are remarkable and without much doubt entirely unique among all other planetary species. Early on our evolutionary ancestors discovered fire and agriculture. Migration of the hunter-gatherer tribes became less necessary in some parts of the planet. Fire could change forest to Savannah opening space for new growth including plants that would yield valued seeds and stalks for nutrition and shelter. Those valued plants were cultivated to the exclusion of others into what emerged as simplified or mono-culture routines. Where forests and natural savannas held a variety or diversity of species, plant and animal as well as decomposer species, a much simplified landscape emerged under the care of human tribes. Agricultural practices began to rely on annual plantings in order to harvest easily the valued plant products, mostly seeds for consumptions and for another years planting and harvesting. The result was simplified systems that were vulnerable and demanded costly maintenance. Deforestation was one result and encroachment of desert was another.

It is probably not an exaggeration to trace the causes of biodiversity loss to the beginning of the agriculture age around 10,000 years ago. Agriculture is largely built on monoculture of domestic or domesticated plants and domestication of animals. This essentially commercial exploitation of land and habitat enabled the building of larger tribes of people. The key to success was often simplification. Eliminating competing species of plants made room for a desired species such as wheat, sorghum, corn, beans and others obviated the need to find and gather seeds, leaves and roots from diverse natural sources. Hearding of animals eliminated the uncertainties of the hunt, provided meat, eggs and milk and enabled harnessing the strength of animals for replacement of human labor.

Of course, the small start of agriculture in what we now call the middle east spread and led to trade and war all of which accelerated across many centuries. Competitive advantage came from industrialization of crafts and escalation of manufacturing of domenstic and military tools. Accelerated tool and power making with the industrial revolution further demanded spaces for cities. These urban spaces were rarely compatible with most wild animals and plants. Building of cities with wood and stone structures traded through commerce required removal of forest trees and mining of lands. Spaces for diversity of animal and plant life was continually reduced. With invention of more efficient machines, acceleration of habitat removal and losses of species diversity also accelerated.

The causes of declining biodiversity are many and there is no simple scheme to identiry all of the possibilities. Yet the decline is well documented and projections for the future are bleak to say the least. Accordingly it is incumbent on policy makers to identiry the major causes and begin a process of cutting back on the impacts. Our contemporary dependence on global transportation for distribution of goods and services along with thte enormous accumulation of waste from fossil fuel powered vehicles and vessels has created its own host of threats. To this we must add the complexity of human lifestyles and the gross imbalance of economic conditions even as human population continues to explode globally.

Protection, Prevention & Restoration Efforts

Turning half of the earth's land mass into a wildlife preserve was proposed a decade go by E. O. Wilson in his book Half-Earth. Preservation almost inevitably means returning huge parts of earth’s land and water to a wild condition. This was recognized by Heney David Thoreau in the early 19th Century. The concept was beautifully memorialized by Eliot Porter, In Wildness is Preservation of the Earth, a book of photographs that amplified the messages of Thoreau.

Efforts have been made to set aside land and water as national parks and forests as well as certain other wilderness areas, is certainly laudable and should be encouraged. But the contemporary political arrogance and public policy notions that we humans can manage wild lands is a myth borne of not high-mindedness but purely high-handed hubris. Not to belabor a point but this is a raging stream of bull shit from lobbyists of commerce and industry to gain extraction access to mineral and oil reserves. What seemed feasible a century and a half ago, is, today, beyond responsible. Pressure of human population growth and commercial-industrial enterprises to meet actual and perceived needs to encroach on set-aside lands is a significant barrier to protect wildness nd prevent losses of biodiversity.

Certainly credit should also be afforded efforts to restore much that has been lost. The global need for fresh water will continue to make demands on existing sources such as great lakes and rivers around the world. These demands will make restoration efforts extremely challenging. Democracy respects a diversity of views, but it is anything but certain that enough respect for wildness can overcome mass destruction of critical habitat.

Invasive Species

International commerce together with trade, transportation and travel has made possible the movement of animal, plant and microbial species across barriers that would have naturally prevented invasion of new and foreign habitats.

Mere presence is not enough, an invasive organism must of course procure food and shelter as well enabling reproduction. That is, finding a suitable niche is crucial. This happens frequently and the result is invasion unless a native species gains a tasty meal from the invader. In the absence of natural predators, as too often happens, an invader can multiply rapidly. When the invader's food is a prized agricultural crop, research efforts are made to find some control measure. This often has been importation of a predator from the home habitat of the invader. Mostly these efforts are fraught and actually exacerbate or multiply a problem rather than solve it. Beatles imported from Aisa to control aphids are now a bigger problem than were the aphids.

Pesticides often seem a simple, cost effective solution, are developed by the chemical industry but are rarely specific for one species and not only wipe out many other species. A particular chemical in the bodies of a species that serves as food for another species higher in the food chain amplifies and concentrates the pesticisde in body tissues including fat. DDT is, of course, the canonical example with its near catastrophic impact on reproduction of the Golden Eagle.

Gaia

A much under appreciated facet of natural ecosystems is that linkages expand connections throughout the biosphere, literally a thin layer of life that surrounds the earth's crust. In the late 1900's atmospheric scientist James Lovelock and others including the late evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis conceived that our planet is itself much like a living organism, which they called Gaia. The Gaia Hypothesis recognizes that elements of the earth's atmosphere, perhaps most notably the presence of oxygen and its very constant levels is the result of the oxygen-producing green plants, particularly oceanic algae, but also terrestrial grasses and trees. These plants also, at least potentially, mitigate rising levels of carbon dioxide. Atmospheric nitrogen level is supported by a host of microbes occupying unique niches for decomposition. The Gaia hypothesis predicts that disturbances of plant and microbial life in the biosphere interrupts these natural cycles needed to maintain life supporting levels of oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen. These cycles, we now know, are particularly implicated in maintaining the temperature of the earth and the acid-base balance (pH) of the ocean.

Gaia also postulates that earth’s biosphere is autopoietic (Chapter XII) in that it is self-regulating and self-perpetuating through exquisite cycles supporting the myriad metabolic complexities of cells and the magnificant diversity of the organisms that together make all forms of life on earth possible. Tinkering with these networks of networks and system of systems is risky and could be disasterous for any one or a few species lost through extinction. Humans are an integral part of this diversity and delicate balancing act sustaining life on earth. We humans are very likely—no more and no less—vulnerable to extinction. Changes we have caused could well bite our arrogant asses.

The next chapter will highlight and address our collective human impacts on earth.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Wilson, E.O. Half-Earth.

Elizabeth Kolbert. The Sixth Extinction.

Meadows, Donella. 12 Leverage Points, and Thinking in Systems: A Primer.

Perkins, M. and the Chicago Zoo. Animal Kingdom (PBS series)

Bertalanffy, Ludwig von.

Margulis & Sagan. What is Life?

Chapter XXVIII

For decades, experts have warned us that human numbers, technology, hyper-consumption and global economy are altering the chemical, geological and biological properties of the biosphere.

David Suzuki

The Anthropocene

The danger to planet Earth is the human species Homo sapiens. Without us, life on Earth would go on just as it did for at least 3 billion years before our progenitors arrived as descendants of another clade of primates. We don't know for certain yet about our exact evolutionary origins, but we do know where we are going if we don't clean up our only home —planet Earth.

That is not a joke and it is not hyperbole. The facts about our species pollution of the planet, and now the space around and beyond our atmosphere, are so obvious and well documented that anyone with even a slightly open mind cannot miss them. Unfortunately there are fortunes and futures involved in the bulk of humanity retaining a mindless form of ignorance. What we humans have done and are continuing to do to pollute our breathable air, precious water, and productive soil cannot be undone. That is not to say that anything of the past is OK. It is only to wave a flag saying STOP!

Without some completely different and much more effective form of education, humanity will not stop its reckless and mindless march toward extinction. Education should have never accepted the burden of making anything better. This is even more than a mere societal problem. It is much deeper than surface dirt. It may be built into our genetic instruction book and translated into sacred texts. We are a different species; OK, accept that and move on accordingly. Different in that we think and think and think so much that we just can't seem to get it. We don't think about the reality of planet Earth.

In this chapter we will consider the origins of anthropocene, vulnerability, new consciousness, escape.

Origins Of Anthropocene

The concept of a geologic epoch dominated by one species is not new to geology. The Jurassic was dominated by the dinosaurs but was not named after that animal. Although the age of the dinosaur ended relatively abruptly in just a few thousand years, short on a geologic time scale, most epochs begin and end slowly.

Geologists are still arguing about the origins of the anthropocene, but not so much anymore about its existence. The dominance of humans all over the planet is impossible to ignore. It is about as well known as anything we know. Count 'em up. Nearly 8 billion human individuals roam the planet in just about every nook and cranny that is not filled with water or covered with ice, or simply too high above the tree-line; every extreme of burning heat and freezing cold; every desert and seashore, where fresh water is either rare or abundant, and packed into neighborhoods filled with shanty's and with skyscraper's. Humans are, well, ubiquitous; we are everywhere.

And almost everywhere we are, we leave a mess of trash or burned over land. Too often we just burn our trash and send particles and gases into the atmosphere where we hope they are gone. But, of course, hope doesn't get rid of anything any more than hope provides everything.

The anthropocene is only a new descriptive term applied to a condition that has been coming about for a long time. Four hundred years seems along time for human generations of just 20-25 years and lifespans that rarely reach 100 years. So the anthropocene onset may be as recent as the onset of the industrial revolution, the enlightenment or middle ages.

Marking time for the origins of religion, particularly Christianity or Islam is fairly common in Western societies and only a couple of thousand years is added for the Eastern religions. So perhaps the anthropocene can be dated to begin around 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. Pushing the date or origin back another 5-6,000 years, 10,000 altogether, it makes some snese to mark the the anthropocene from the earliest developments of agriculture. 400 years; 10,000 years; less than a blink in geologic time. The argument for agriculture, and maybe fire, seems pretty convincing.

Both agriculture and fire provided free time to do more than simply survive. Time for art and language to emerge leaving evidence on the walls of caves. At some point there was an emergence of contemplation or reflection; a time for planning and acting with future considerations in mind. There is much we don't know about our particular kind of consciousness, but there are indicators that consciousness in some of its forms is not necessarily unique to the human animals on earth. Even tool-making has emerged in populations of other animals. This suggests that intentionality occurs in other species who direct behavior to some particular object or modifying a state of affairs. However, beyond that fact it is not possible to attribute to other spacies beliefs, desires, hopes and certainly not thoughts as we humans are able to know them. Philosophy and its richness has seemingly eluded other living organisms. Philosophers hold history close and their questions enable important reflections on problems of origins, knowing and morality. Contemporary science seems to provide at least interesting answers even as it stimulates new questions. Much of morality seems to remain above the reach of science, although neuroscientists and philosophers have collaborated to provide thoughts about the origins of moral sentiments. Yet when it comes to morality, human communities from small tribes to great nations still tend to turn to the world religions for guidance.

Religious leaders, many deeply steeped in philosophy and their special brand of theology can play important roles enabling justification for human behaviors as well as political, social and economic direction for individual and collective behavior. One result is that religions are as ubiquitous around the globe as are humans. Religious traditions and practices have arisen from an effort to answer questions about our origins, sources of knowledge and morality. That the answers are in conflict is well-known and should not be surprising. Our human approach to the different beliefs too often leads to isolation and violent conflicts.

Religiouus Evangelism is, perhaps a form of vandalism; changing and sometimes even damaging minds adapted for another way of life. It is not necessary to look far for evidence of the cultural damage spreading through regions that have survived and evven thrived for centuries. The European invasions and conquests of the American and African continents were highly disruptive to say the least. The missionaries and their resource and commerce seeking escorts turned old cultures upside down and roasted them on the fire of faith. The mantra in the mind of the conquer insisted that we are better and you better believe it or we'll kill you. If we don't enslave you physically we will do so with mental pathology. If that wasn't enough we'll just innocently share our germs with you. Either way you and your culture dies. To which we should say; Good God! Or something a little less gracious. The vulgar profanity was not simply words or complex deeds but likely both. It is now abundantly clear that the successes of the human species was a global malignancy that metastasized. That cancer is the Anthropocene.

Are We Vulnerable?

Human existence has left many species extinct and others in peril of extinction. It would be short-sighted indeed for humans to actually believe that extinction of humanity is not possible. Yet is is clear that most members of our species do not believe that our future is no less in peril that the species we are killing. There is a certain ring of suicide about our collective behavior. We are in this sense slaves to our own consciousness.

Slavery is hard to imagine without recognizing the stratification between those who are blessed with accoutrements of wealth typically inherited and those who are left without much of material value. Ownership is an economic form that provides a few with choice and many without choice. Worse than lack or loss of choice is the narrowing of choice about even basic survival values. The concepts of owing and being owned are ephemeral if they even ever exist. The result is a life leaving little sense of owning, belonging and agency. Is that our slavery?

Perhaps our choice is taking ownership of our planet. If the choice is not collective, then who is the slave owner and who is the slave?

Even the slave holder becomes locked into a mode of thought and a slavish consciousness from which it is seemingly impossible to see alternatives or recover. It is then necessary, even essential, to accept the conditions passed down across generations and begin to think that it has always been a state of mind or mental model that some humans are entitled—elite and above others. Life for both the slave and slave holder may hold very different meaning. Thus it becomes nearly impossible to change without fatal or near fatal consequences. Change demands death of something that once was. One result is indifference to death. Another is reverence and respect for lives of the past. While we can honor our ancestral legacy it need not be a destination for our futures. A path forward means leaving the path behnad. Perhaps an important memory but a limited guide. If we take along too much baggage, next steps can be painfully blocked.

Crafts and commerce emerged from small tribes and led to trade. Living spaces emerged in the form of property rights. Defense of territory is a fact of nature because it supports the most basic of biological needs; shelter, food, water, and safety. The tribe is a foundation for belonging, of relationships of kith and kin. These relationships are built on empathy and have provided for the emergence of altruism that sustains a tribe when threats are eminent and opportunity may be forclosed. Strength is a huge asset and can be amplified with large and sharp tools. Weakness in the face of threat leads to slavery or death. The central loss is loss of choice.

Facing such losses of choice and narrowing of choice opportunity dims to the point of near invisibility. In extremes, there is acceptance of merciless conditions and even a faith that all will be well if we believe all is well; that our present conditions have some ephemeral or nonsensical, metaphysical, supernatural origin. We become hell-bent on following the leader whether leading from physically treacherous power, elected by some mythical will of the people, or ostensibly ordained by a powerful and all knowing deity.

Continued denial of human impact on the integrity of earth is an almost inescapable path toward vulnerability. The reality of human impacts on the ecosystems of earth is now undeniable. Ocean pollution from plastics in the form of microbeads of polyethelene, styrofoam particles and literally tons of floating plastic objects are now seen in essentially every part of the ocean. Even massive bodies of water such as the great lakes of North America are being infliltrated with microbeads. Our soils are depleted of nutrients and the addition of artificial fertilizers is creating imbalances of critical minerals that will eventually require more and more manipulation by farmers and other agriculturists to remedy. Growing food in almost completely artificial environments such as is done with hydorponics, aquaculture and aquaponics is unlikely in the extreme to provide sufficient food for a vastly overpopulated planet. The excessive warming of earth is beyond doubt now and has been caused in very large part by the continuing expansion of carbon in the form of mono- and dioxides as well as methane. These greenhouse gasses trap heat, warm terrestrial and marine habitats while causing direct losses of ecosystem-critical species.

As we continue postponing the inevitable the damage keeps accumulating. Earth has now reached a point where scientists seriously question whether protection and restoration of many or even most ecosystem is even possible. Deforestation is theoretically reversible but the scale is huge and the time is long. There are things about forest ecosystems that we don't know and to assume that all of these things are replaceable is nothing if not an egregious example of unalloyed hubris. Prevention means that humanity writ large must stop doing much of what it currently is doing. There are two important consequences that must be faced. First is that sustaining the currrent levels of human populations is not possible without continuing planetary deterioration; that is losses of ecosystems upon which humans and other species depend. Second is that our style of taking resources and not restoring them will eventually kill us.

Are we vulnerable? Yes, and you can bet on it! Without dramatic changes, the loss of human consciousness from earth is inevitable.

New Consciousness

Humanity may be unique among our evolutionary animal relatives and that is certainly a source of pride and hubris. However, since we are still in the dark about what consciousness is, our prospects of a new consciousness are probably slim or non existant. We have little-to-no concept of what a new consciousness would look like or what it may entail. But even if consciousness was fully understood in the present, what could be projected into the future? Would a new consciousness make humans less brutal, less greedy less avaricious; or more empathetic, more altruistic, more charitable?

Empathy and altruism emerged in our evolutionary past. We know that because it currently exists. It is not, admittedly, universal. Science remains baffled by seeming incongruities between competition and cooperation. Yet altruism is a reality of human existence. It involves sacrifice for the benefit or good of another human. Taking risk of one's own life to advance or save the life of another has expanded into affording risk for a community or a nation. Patriotism is built on the realities of altruism, and altruism is an embedded part of human existence. Unfortunately there are those among us who are all too willing to take advantage of our altruistic predilections to afford themselves greater benefits that would otherwise be warranted. Leadership has limits and this is certainly one important limit.

Consciousness is not fully attributed to what our brain does. Brain evolution has built-in structures and functions including extensive body connections that likely enable rapid adaptation. A new consciousness could potentially emerge rapidly. Thinking solely in terms of deep genetic modification may apply for the human brain much differently than for other organs and functions. It is not at all certain that human consciousness and cognition will be too slow to provide a new consciousness. That likely leaves just culture and memes to move the needle of consciousness but perhaps we remain too ignorant about communication and language to do much that may be effective. Without questioning our capacity, we may never know.

Yet, a completely revamped consciousness would seem essential to move beyond the anthropocene and protect what we have left and begin the massive restoration that is needed —and the collaboration making restoration possible. Desire or wanting will never suffice. Moving beyond dogma—questioning everything—is essential for humanities future.

Escape

There a few oligarchs among us who see the future in terms of escaping earth and establishing a human enclave on distant planets. The sources of this fantasy is itself fascinating. It was and is all wonderful sources of science fiction even preceding contemporary space exploration programs. Exploration is enough, we don’t need fantastical scenarios to justifyspending a few $billion here and there—the moon and Mars are close and relatively cheap.

Colonization of another planet is, well, just another egregious form of human insanity. In other words, the mere concept of leaving Earth for another planet is such lamentable fiction that it is without merit as a proximate human activity, whether or not important ethical questions are addressed. Who is left behind? Who should or would get to go? Why them and not us? In some important moral ways an escape plan from the mess we have made on Earth is maybe the most deplorable human act that could ever be contemplated. What are we going to do on another planet with the same human consciousness that created the mess we have made of planet Earth?

Unfortunately, the lure of space travel and the conspicuous rationale of colonizing another planet is senseless. Can science and technology get us there? Probably yes. That is only a technical question. What we should really be concerned about is the ethical question; Should we go there? My answer, for what it may be worth and why it may be worthless, is NO!

It may be very hard to avoid the conclusion that the very notion of escape to another planet is only possible because of the enormous accumulation of wealth. At its early stages, sace exploration depended upon nation-states, notabley the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics, that were sufficiently wealthy in material resources and accumulated human knowledge in the physical sciences and engineering to even conceive of space travel. In spite of denials to the contrary, this effort was fueled by the cold war and the insane accumulations of nuclear weapons that had to be delivered quickly to gain any military advantage—thus development of rocketry on the heels of the German efforts in World War Two. Going to the moon and returning to earth was indeed an exciting venture. And, there have been a few notable commercial products like satellite communications, velcro, silicone sealants, and some knowwledge of physiology that has medical application. Yet the effort has also greatly polluted near-earth space with notable masses of space-junk.

Space has notably expanded the human tendency to leave our junk wherever it is convenient. Our atmosphere, water and soil were not enough, it is now firmly evident that in space like earth, there is no away.

It is clearly time for humanity writ large to address this new, emerging geological epoch and design a new consciousness that will protect and restore the vital ecosystems of earth.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Climate

The Treeline

Pollution

UN SDGs Springer Books …

WAPO opinion pieces 16 November regarding the importance of world trade to ameliorate global warming.

Isakson, Walter. 2023. Elon Musk.

Isaac Asimov.

Tyson, Neil de Grasse.

Wilson, E.O.

Chapter XXIX

Stewardship of our air and water is a responsibility that should be free of the bias of politics.

Luther Strange

Stewardship

An Education Ecology that emphasizes stewardship will enable a green education approach to emerge as an alternative to schools with all of the societal burden that they both bear and exacerbate. It is, perhaps, in this sense that environmental stewards will be or become the guides enabling a new paradigm for education to emerge. In this sense that a nearly ubiquitous array of stewards will build a planetary imperative that is perpetuated and sustainable.

Stewardship is an old biblical term meaning to take care of something as in Genesis 2:15 … God took man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Many other references are scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible. For example; So if you have not been faithful with the unrighteous money, who will trust you with what is genuine? – Luke 16:11 or Precious treasure and oil are in the dwelling of a wise person, but a foolish man consumes them. – Proverbs 21:20. Churches frequently use these quotes to plead with or even admonish the congregants or parishioners about the importance of stewardship, particularly just before passing the collection plate.

Stewaardship is not likely something anyone can be simply talked into doing or toward becoming a steward. But it is also not a thing that you either have or you don't have. Being a Steward is built on a host of elements in personality that tugs at strings of ethics, empathy, obligation, service and commitment. It is an expression of altruism.

Stewards perform stewardship. That is, a steward is one who cares. This boils down to stewards doing, indeed living, a planetary imperative. That is a big gig for anyone but the big gig can be the result of many small gigs with a common cause. The cause is the imperative. The imperative is stewardship and sustainability. We'll focus on sustainability in the next chapter.

What does it really mean to be a steward of anything? In this chapter we'll explore some thoughts I have had about being a steward of Earth and why the attitudes, passions and knowledge of Earth Stewardship must become a ubiquitous part of human life if human life on Eaarth is to become sustainable. Ethics is a good place to begin.

Ethics

The planetary imperative is fundamentally about making ubiquitous, doing what is right. Being right is about making good choices for the future of the planet. Choice is central to economics whether the choices are made in a macroeconomic or a microeconomic sense. To a considerable extent, the macroeconomic choices are the sum of microeconomic choices at the level of individuals, family and neighborhood. In a very real sense, all economics is an aggregate of local choices. What emerges is an increasingly vivid expression of political choice and willingness to adopt and accept social norms however maleable they may be across space and time. Ubiquity begins at the base involving pragmatic decisions about what is right for a community.

An expectation for macroeconomics is for following ethical local examples magnifying what is right, just, fair. When change happens locally it can be abrupt. In our contemporary social milieu there is, on multiple fronts, attempts to suggest that generational change bears some normalcy. To the extent that the rapid development of technologies is now characteristic across our social economy, there is good reason to support such expressions as the Baby-boom Generation, Millennial Generation, or Generations X, Y, Z and so on. Students of sociology can differentiate characteristics of these generational labels, and journalists can use the labels for shorthand which is sufficiently ambiguous to communicate acceptably for editorial and market purposes. Labels are a convenient tool to avoid long and complicated paragraphs and complex, higher level thinking. And, too some extent the lables substitute for a deep dive into ethics and discourse on what is right.

To whatever extent ethics is relative, we are now increasingly prepared to argue about the broad range of human behaviors that lead to planetary distresses. There is in this sense an ethics emerging that recognized that the mass actions or massive, collective behaviors of the human species has wreaked and continues its wreaking on the collective ecology of earth. Not only is our take-makke-waste economic paradigm causing unanswerable accumulations of non renewable resources from the earth's crust, we are producing from human industry manufactured materials that defy recycling and these products—read plastics—are accumulating to a dangerous degree in soil, oceans and the atmosphere. Individuals, families and neighborhoods could take action to avoid these non recycleable materials. Changing the practices of a county, state or nation is daunting to say the least.

Act locally, interact regionally and think globally. The local action can begin with a very basic question, Is it right?

Ethics is about asking “Is it right?” Stewardship may begin by enabling local posing of ethical questions. Each istance is timely to the point of being a beginning of ubiquity. Every choice should answer the question, Is it right? affirmatively. Whenever this affirmation fails, the result is an unethical assault however tiny it may seem, on the ecology of earth. An action is executed by an individual that is an increment of destruction of an ecosystem.

Unfortunately, individuals are not independent and the choices offered by society in the form of economics is driven by or on behalf of what are often good intentions in someone's world view. To some extent it is nearly impossible to divorce ourselves from the choices of someone else. Commercial choices are made to maximize profits and minimize losses. ,Mass marketing of merchandise means handling and transporting products efficiently. Packaging plays a big role. The invention of plastics along with technology to extrude and mold plastics in a seemingly infinite way, contributes to efficiency and reduction of losses. Packaging is an end-stage of product manufacturing.

In the United States it is almost impossible to purchase a simple toothbrush or pocket comb that is not so firmly wrapped in a plastic container that it is impossible to open easily by a potential thief. The tight wrapping prevents theft and makes the completion of the sale almost brainless in a human sense at the check-oit counter of a Target or Walmart megastore. No human mind is needed to recognize the product and its price in order to collect the payment. If you want a comb or toothbrush, you have almost no choice. The question “Is it righ?” is now removed from the pint of sale and nearly impossible to even ask anymore. Some may say that ethics is entirely beside the point. Stewards will, however, continue to ask, Is it right?

Attitudes

An attitude can literally mean the physical position of a person's body related to a state of mind or a contemplated action. This positioning can become or also reflect a settled feeling or mode of thinking about another person, a group of people or an object, particular symbolic objects or icons. Attitudes have a behavioral manifestation that could also reflect a moral value.

Attitudes have valence reflecting value; that is, every attitude may qualify to be designated positive or negative. A positive or negative quality may also be quantified—quantized—by assigning a positive or negative numerical value—a valence .

It would be daunting to separate an attitude from personality. Optimists and pessimists fall on one side or the other, with swings back and forth. Their valence changes, sometimes with a very tender breeze. But occasionally the valence of an attitude becomes so polarized positive or negative that it takes a tornado or hurricane or typhoon to make change possible. In other words an attitude can become so polarized that it may not change for even a nuclear detonation.

Attitudes may be good when they are attractive and bad when they are averse. So attractiveness and averseness reflect positive and negative valences respectively and can be applied to a situation or event as well as symbols or objects. As such an attitude may well reflect an underlying emotion ranging from joy to sadness.

Attitudes also have consequences, which may also have a value. Our politics and even businesses can model choices and even how choices may be made, or influenced.

Values placed on outcomes and our values may rise and fall based on particular needs, goals and related motivation or drives that shape preferences about future outcomes. An outcome that is rewarded may reflect values related to attitudes.

Stewardship requires something resembling a positive attitude, but as we'll see in what follows, strong polarization is not always needed or even always desired. The attitude of a steward is polarized and positive but it may share passion with other parts of life. The key is sharing—teamwork, cooperation, leadership can take many directions. Building passion into projects; making projects playful and fun, relying on peers and being fair, sensitive empathetic about people often means a well developed theory of mind—recognizing the validity of how others may think and seeking to understand without being judgmental in order to build a relationship of sharing and caring.

From the perspective of stewardship, attitude may reflect a philosophy, perspective, a mindset, a point of view and frame of mind, or sensibility. An Earth Steward will hold values that coincide strongly with environmental values.

Passions

Passion is an element of motivation. Motivation is the reason or part of a cluster of reasons why an individual choses to act in some particular way. A global underlying reason may be hard to define and that certainly applies to passion. What passion is and what passion does to the human mind is daunting to contemplate, articulate and nearly impossible to define. Daniel Pink wrote on the matter of motivation in his book Drive. Being an Earth Steward is a drive to do something considered to be worthwhile. Worthiness can always be debated but in the end is an individual judgment. How such a judgment leads to passion is a mystery wrapped in an perplexity. At some level an individual cuts through the conundrum and proceeds. What they do may be characterized as being done with passion—an unyielding commitment to see something resembling completeness.

There is a necessary single-minded focus about being passionate. Yet the fully single minded individual’s behavior (mindset) is often interpreted by an outside observer as unrealistic or irrelevant. Even kooky and out of touch.

Meaningful passion seems to demand a sensitivity or even a moral sentiment that recognizes the environment as part of reality that must adjust or temper the expression of passion—a point of view that is or may be received by others as out of place, unacceptable, rejected. Some elements of stewardship may find a social situation in which prevailing attitudes are so diametrically opposed that making a passionate expression of what should be done is or can be literally dangerous to personal physical safety. This cals forth tempering passion at least temporarily until attitudes are altered, points of view accepted, a following grows as others join the cause.

With pasion as a motivator, time may seem to be irrelevant. Remarkably, basics of food and shelter and safety are seemingly automatic and require little or, ideally, no thought. This is likely precluded by the very essence of Earth Stewardship, which means deeply understannding and recognizing that everything is connected and proceeding must be consistent across a treacherous landscape and dark paths. Unquestioned passions are dangerous; that is they are so dogmatic that they are automatic and actions go without question; not unlike religious zealotry. A reflexive way of thinking that is not really thoughtful but is so driven by passion that its real driver is pure affect—emotion.

This brings communication into play because communication is essential for collaboration, cooperation and the creative energies that can meet challenges. And, of course, there are seemingly infinite arrays of challenge facing the Earth Steward. Communication through personal example may be essential or else sincerity of messaging may be called into question. The power of personal practices are hard to ignore. They are the acts of an agent. As long as those acts are consistent or nearly, marginally, consistent with values within a community, the acts may be noticed and even occasionally copied. Mimicry is a sincere form of flattery and can make incremental differences within a community. Passion may be important even though it is subdued.

Knowledge

Environmental values are rarely so obvious that there is no disention or controversy surrounding their assertion. Opinions differ but facts are facts. One such fact is that our Earth is home to humans. We don't live anywhere else; at least not yet if we ever will or should. Other facts stem or arise from knowledge of Earth sciences such as astronomy and geology, mineralogy, geography of space and time. All of these have implication for biology and ecology. They are foundations for physics and chemistry as well as the laws of energy (thermodynamics) and conservation of matter. Biology and ecology are never exempt from these laws of physical sciences. Stewardship may of necessity begin with knowledge of these laws.

It is entirely likely that acquisition of knowledge necessary and sufficient to be a steward of Earth is never fully possible. Accordingly it is not an absolute volume or quantity of knowledge that is important; it is the striving for knowledge and understanding that may be critical. And, it may be a steward’s lifelong quest to assure facts aliign with words and actions.

Knowledge that is important for Earth Stewardship may often or should begin with fundamentals of physics, chemistry, biology and geology. However, it is wholly unrealistic to anticipate that every Steward of Earth will be an expert physicist, chemist, biologist or geologist. Mastery of Earth Science is important for some but emphatically not for all Stewards. Furthermore, there remains a vast ignorance that motivates scientists globally. For instance, a simple widely held understanding that water has three phases; solid, liquid and vapor may demand modification as new data support a 4th Phase; an exclusion zone when studied at the level of water’s interactions with matter at the molecular level. Knowledge is important and it is also growing constantly. Staying attuned to the bleeding edge of science is daunting.

Unfortunately this creates the hierarchy of which we must all—and always—be wary. That is because hierarchy breeds and forms the seeds of authoritarianism. These fundamental sciences are and must be anti-authoritarian. Because they are scientific, they are always falsifiable; they must constantly stand in the the face of new factual evidence. Opinion, even passion, may drive some of the choices scientists make but opinion, or passionate expression, does not hold sway for the validity of any scientific law or so-called settled science. The whole enterprise of autocratic authoritarianism prevents enlightenment and forecloses signaling of important paths of knowledge that must be followed.

Many of these paths fall outside of the basic sciences; economics, politics, social psychology and, yes, education. Being persuasive and able to explain natural phenomenon is essential; as essential as physics, chemistry, biology or geology. But, and this is a big but (big butt is not a fat-ass), the persuasion and explanation must never, ever lack these basics or be above these basics. The reason is that these fundamental sciences provide the facts upon which all solutions of a planetary imperative must be built. The laws of science will never dictate any particular action but no particular action will be effective if these laws are ignored in favor or some untethered theory, or heaven forbid, some fat, half-ass conspiracy about the cause of one effect or some other effect. Conspiracy theories are devoid of facts or play a few facts into half-truths. Stewards must stand on established fact and constantly search for the truth behand every assertion regardless of source. This often means a skeptical stance.

Understanding

A sum of understanding about our world may be who we are—a self alive with a future. Yet nothing about our existence is ever fully understood. We are in our world a mystery. Yet we are also the sum of what we understand about ourselves and our world. Belief and faith are often, perhaps too often, blindly substituted for understanding. Atheism and agnosticism are irrelevant. Skepticism, freethinking and trusting in humanity may be all we really have.

What does it really mean to understand something?

Like faith and belief, understanding is a driver of action, of doing. However, understanding does not automatically translate into action or doing. In fact understanding is something resembling a state of contentment. You feel an understanding. You feel OK, comfortable, satisfied with yourself and whatever it is that is the object of a quest for understanding. Of course, understanding is often fragile. One moment feel you understand and in a next moment your understanding begins to fade. What makes it fade?

Curiosity often fuels questions that can make a contented feeling of understanding fade. The source of a question can be important. Extrinsic sources may elicit defense or justification of an assertion. The questions that are extrinsic are probably not as important as intrinsic questions. Intrinsic questions can turn the faithful into a skeptic. The believer into a sectarian. The path-bound thinker into a free thinker. Satisfied feelings fade away and may be replaced by curiosity opening new paths toward understanding. A result is or can be research.

Being a Steward of Earth is a narrow path through a dark wilderness of unknowns and misunderstandings—or missed understandings—with many branches illuminated by questions. These branches must be regarded as opportunity that can be followed with passion and and a positive attitude.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Meadows, Donnela.

Pink, Daniel. Drive.

Chapter XXX

The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them.

Paul Hawken

Sustainability

This chapter will look at human development and education in the context of what may be the most important perspective possible—survival. Unlike every other species, Homo sapiens has adapted and adopted an unsustainable tool—technology. Wonderful as technology has been across the 50-100 millennia of our existence as a species, the continued development of technologies (note the plural) has become insatiable. The driver is an economy that is almost purely social and broadly beneficial, but that has failed the planet by not building innovative and improved conditions for uses of energy and materials.

Our forms of use are abuse.

That is, our collective uses of energy and materials are unsustainable.

These uses are fundamentally premised on the paradigm of growth based on dominating natural systems that can never be dominated. A growth mindset or mental model is, purely and simply, hubris. Growth and improvement are not the same and are not necessarily linked. Balance in natural ecosystems is homeostatic. Improvements can be entirely consisstent with maintaining balanced conditions. When growth dominates an ecosystem becomes out of balance.

Tn what follows we will look at contributions to the important topic of sustainability and prepare for a long look at technology in the context of what we mean about sustainability. That drills down to what sustainability means. Before it is possible to be sustainable, we must know and understand what this all important word means. We'll look at these topics: Bruntland Commission, The Natural Step, Circular Economy (Remaking the Way We Make Things), Equality, Democracy, Globalization, Localization, and the efforts at the United Nations to enable pursuit of Sustainable Development Goals.

Brundtland Commission

By 1970 it was becoming apparent at the level of the United Nations that the direction and intensity of development around the globe was not sustainable and was so grossly uneven that massive inequity was inevitable. Accordingly commissions were established to formulate policy to guide potential new development. One particularly well recognized commission was The Brundtland Commission.

Initially the World Commission on Environment and Development, this subsidiary of the United Nations was intended to gather consensus from countries on sustainable development. Founded in 1983, former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland became its chairperson because of her expertise in science and public health. The so-called Brundtland Report was released in 1987 with the title Our Common Future.

The Commission's report provided a definition of sustainability that met with some controversy, although it was widely accepted and cited whenever questions were raised about the meaning of sustainability. Reconciliation of economic development and environmental protection represented the core challenge addressed by the definition provided: "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Thirty seven years on, the planet is at greater risk due to over population, malnutrition and food insecurity, losses of biodiversity, increasing energy consumption from fossil fuels as sources of severely increasing atmospheric pollution causing climate instability due to warming of terrestrial and marine environments, proliferation of human settlements in urban areas that accompany industrial expansion.

International equity concerns stemmed from recognizing the fundamental needs of people in underdeveloped countries, and the environment's capacity to meet future needs evenly. It was argued that the environment and human actions are never separate. "...the 'environment' is where we live; and 'development' is what we all do in attempting to improve our lot within that abode. The two are inseparable." This statement drew on the ecological concepts of habitat and niche, clearly and emphatically recognizing the important link with science—and education’s ecology.

Interestingly, the Brundtland Commission took issue with an earlier statement; The Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment that tended to see human culture and advancement as separate from environmental concerns.

The Natural Step

In Sweden, a physician, Carl-Henrik Robert, MD, PhD, specializing in childhood cancers (pediatric oncology) became concerned with the unexplained cause or causes of the multitude of cancers he and his medical colleagues were seeing. Beginning, with academic colleagues, Robert looked to environmental factors that may be at play. This led to recognition of the many ways humans are polluting our planet's air, water and soil with human-made chemicals. With an aim to find alternatives and remeddies, he wrote a draft of principles and sent it around first to colleagues in medical research initiating a peer review. Other drafts followed and reached scientists in diverse fields including geology, physics and chemistry, social, political and economic science. Altogether Robert's drafts numbered almost 100 until his selected cohort of scientists agreed on the four components or conditions of what became The Natural Step.

This was a monumental piece of work and what Robert wrote was widely disseminated globally. The paragraphs that follow will highlight its features. These features constitute a framework for organizational planning and action. The framework includes the metaphor of a funnel through which economic, social and environmental resources must flow, establishing four system conditions and a methodology for implementation.

According to The Natural Step, in a sustainable society, natural systems are not subjected to: 1.) concentration of substances extracted from the earth's crust; 2.) concentration of substances produced by society; 3.) degradation of the natural system’s physical attributes. And 4.), in a sustainable society there is no systematic inequities depriving people of capacity in meeting their basic human needs. These four system conditions constitute a Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development. Each element of the FSSD, requires a deep dialogue in which understanding and action emerge from probative questioning of specific local, regional and global implications and potential implementations. Methodology involves five levels of analysis enabling progressive actions within what may seem or be seen as daunting complexity.

The Natural Step International is an organization that works to foster sustainability locally, regionally and globally. Among its successes has been the formation of EcoMunicipalities—governmental commitments implementing the system conditions of The Natural Step. These municipal actions first concentrate on “low hanging fruit” and then expand to more challenging facets of execution through engagement.

Circular Economy

Economies are all about choices, efficiency, fulfilling needs and many other features. The economy is typically thought of or about as a uniquely human activity involving exchange of goods and services through a medium or some form of money. Trade has been a dominating element in expansion of the human existence on Earth. Competition and cooperation have waxed and waned between regions and nations for millennia and across monumental barriers erected by continental geology, oceans, language and cultures. What has evolved and is now widely accepted as “normal” for the economy is emphatically not sustainable. The concept of a circular economy is a sustainable alternative.

Recognizing the four conditions of a sustainable economy outlined in the previous section on The Natural Step, it is apparent to anyone thinking about it that there is no sustainable future in doing what we have always been doing. This is pursuing a linear economy where materials extracted from the earth's crust are manufactured into products, the products are used by consumers and then discarded at the end of useful life; in other words we Make, Use and Waste. The alternative is to complete the circle by taking all waste and finding pathways that turn the waste into raw material; material is recycled continuously and not allowed to accumulate in the earth's crust. This is essentially following what all of nature has been doing for the 3.5 billion years of life's existence on earth. Human societies, to survive, must develop a new mindset and mimic nature in what has been called Biomimicry by the journalist Janine Benyus.

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things was written by the architect Wm. McDunnough and the biochemist Michael Braungart. The book emphasizes that design of industrial manufacturing processes must come to include end-of-life considerations for every material component of a product or service. This entails anticipation of how the material will be removed and channeled into a path for reuse. Their ideas have found partial implementation in the automobile industry as well in the manufacturing, uses and reclamation of floor coverings such as carpet where tiles enable the replacement of only those areas with excessive wear.

Industrial Ecology sees a global need to maximize efficient uses of energy flows from high quality energy to the eventual dissipation of heat, and to conserve materials by seeing any waste from one industry as a raw material for another industry. Industrial ecologists have championed the idea or ideal of an eco-industrial park where landlords and tenants seek to maximize relationships toward efficiency and economic benefits.

My own logo, the Encircled Fractal Triangle. Embraces seven principles surrounding ethics, equity, economics, ecology, energy, evolution, and education. The last three are pervasive across all of the others. At the center is ethics because it demands consideration of doing what is right, while operationally equity, economics and ecology only ask how to maximize an ideal condition of justice, profit or livability.

Equality

Recources are not equally distributed. Fresh water, forests, arable land are regional. Money is accumulated, literally hoarded, by a relatively few individuals and our economic systems create barriers to more equal distribution. A relatively few family lineages, well shy of 10%, account for the monetary wealth of the planet by controlling mineral, agricultural, fossil and nuclear energy, banking, and now medical device resources.

Economically and politically these vast inequalities are unsustainable. The last twenty years of US involvement in the middle east, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria as well as support for Israeli and Palastinian independence have created geopolitical instabilities leading to terrorism and a resurgence of totalitarian states dependent in no small part upon a faith-based hegemony.

Capitalism cannot be ignored when equality and equity are being discussed. The magnificent contributions of capitalism as an economic system for expansion of well-being across virtually all sectors of the planet has been nothing short of amazing. However it has also been anything but an unalloyed benefit. The champions of capitalism have been those people best positioned for manufacturing, trade and marketing of goods and services. Consumers are caught as supplicants to capitalists. Until there is a much better balance of trade, the gap between those who have and those who don't have is only going to continue to grow larger. Governments at nearly all levels have engaged in arguments about who should close the gap and why they should do so.

Other systems including socialism and communism have achieved some partial parity with capitalism but have, at least in their purest forms, largely failed. Hybrid economic models are in play in many countries but have never achieved universal acceptance of application. An unfortunate result is conflict and competition rather than cooperation.

Economic development aimed, as the Brundtland Commission sought, to level the playing field internationally, has perhaps and mostly charitably, sensitized a few governments and civic organization to see the global economy through a slightly different lens. Yet we remain, globally and locally, a far distance from equality.

Democracy

Governance may take many forms and as the middle ages gave way to the renaissance and enlightenment the powers of monarchy, theocracy, oligarchy and anarchy began to move from tribalism to more and more personal freedom. The Magna Carta limited t he power of kings in the European Monarchies that remained from feudal aristocracy. By the 1700s the conditions imposed by British colonization and dispute between the English and French governments over North American hegemony began to give way to an experiment with democratic government. First with American revolution and then the French revolt against rule the ancien regime—combining monarchy and theology.

The divine right of kings has, it seems, never realy disappeared but has taken many alternative forms expressed in dictatorships, fascist rule and oligarchy; not to neglect a pervasive acceptance of authority generally. An underlying set of conditions or mental states makes this possible. People by and large seem to have little understanding or confidence in the conditions for self-rule that democracy demands. Too many people seem much more inclined to dwell on democratic shortcomings rather than possibility and potential. Perhaps there is too littly opportunity to foster conditions necessary for democratic governance. Building these conditions may require a deep dive into philosopy and neuroscience to understand our human condition or conditioning.

One emergent reality is a theory of mind—an expectation that the mind of another person works in about the same way that my own mind works. This develops in most people and confers a mental state that relats others to themselves. However as we discover differences, be they large or small in thinking and acting, we take action to bring the thinking of another into greater alignment with our own thoughts. Where differences persist, conflict arises and must be resolved. Ancient survival mechanisms including freeze, flight or fight rise and take command of our behavior. Seeing the other as enemy is usually much easier than any alternative involving communication, cooperation and creativity in forming positive collaborative relationships to achieve a common good—a community that is less tense, save and even progressive—recognizing everyone’s worth and dignity.

Getting tangled up with an unbridled notion of freedom can lead to thinking that foments conflict. Freedom is too often used without modification or nuance. Freedom is too often regarded as absolute and in either or terms; you either have freedom or you don't. The result is erosion of a basis or substrate for any flexible and more productive thinking. It should be recognized that any freedom that is articulated requires a concomitant recognition that every freedom is accompanied by a responsibility. In the absence of a definition or delineation of responsibility there can be no stable, lasting and unchallenged freedom. In the United States, because of the Bill of Rights, there are Constitutional protections for freedom that are troubled and perhaps untenable because there are essentially no worthwhile definitions of correlated responsibilities. The US Constitution grew at a time when men, and only men, drafted a document that ignored potential change by setting difficult to seemingly impossible conditions for amendment and not anticipating the formation of dualism and political parties. Yet, change ensued across a continent, technologies emerged that were completely unanticipated. Founders and their documents attained supernatural, immutable power over embodied behavior, mental models and governance. In the absence of changing the US Constitution through an included and inclusive amendment process, there remains too much potential for belligerent rhetoric and massive polarization that leads to increasing stagnation or violence bordering on or even embracing insurrection. Compromise and middle ground positions are fading alternatives. To which we should all say “Good Luck!” while working to reclaim a grand experiment in sustainable democratic governance. Monarchy, dictatorship, theocracy are incompatible with a just, equitable, diverse society that is culturally sustainable.

Globalization

While we treat globalization is a modern condition facilitated by telecommunication and jet planes, the human quest to explore is as ancient as anything about humanity. The populating of south pacific islands and Austrilia as well as North and South American occurred over millennia. The oceans dividing us across more than 25,000 years enabled emerging differences that were and remain physical, cultural and spiritual. Telecommunications and jet travel have hardly dissolved our legacy of deep differences.

Legacy has many forms and these differences have been inculcated in a multitude of world religions seemingly chiseled in stone. Each religion carries forward a set of beliefs of ancient origin that remain as divisive unquestioned assertions that are defended, often violently, outside of lasting agreements on governance. United States and United Nations have emerged with promise of solutions to deep human differences. Supernatural powers invoked as agents of change remain at once eternal and ephemeral. Faith and reason retain tension. Globalization has been a commercial success while our legacy continues to fuel disasters.

Legacy rules too much expectation about what is and what could be and humanity has been unable to grasp the nearly blasphemous concepts that our humanity is all we have. Finding solutions across conflicting systems of belief, governance, commerce and development of human dignity is elusive, perhaps too elusive, in the faces of quests for personal power by a few egregiously misguided humans. There are no supernatural solutions in heaven or earth.

The umbrella term, globalization, has many parts. Economic globalization is bundled with political globalization and cultural globalization may sometimes seem to stand alone or apart from other globalizations. That is to say discussion of one part should not automatically exclude the other parts. Yet politically exclusion and exclusivity are great and grave drivers across the global stage. Any discussion of globalization must include a broad recognition of the influences of capitalism, neoliberalism as well as a strong link to libertarian ideology. Too often the major global actors are not sincere globalists but are actually isolationists bent on consolidation of personal power. Never excluded from this messiness is the linkages with religious power and manipulation of zealotry in the charitable name of faith or not so charitable, nonsense. What is missing is any quest (questioning) for truth , evidence and justice.

Trade across many centuries between Asia, Europe and Africa brought exchanges of ideas,economic values and materials. Exploration of oceans beginning in the fifteenth century led to discovery but importantly consolidation of power giving rise to commerce and conflict. Warfare expanded land ownership and market domination. Slavery emerged as an economic engine first in Africa and Europe and then in North and South America. Colonization was also a concomitant economic engine. The notion of globalization has itself evolved to mean anything outside the borders of flat-earth existence to a recognition of new unknowns beyond a horizon.

Earth is sustainable with or without human global presence. Homo sapiens does amazing things. Before navigation with ships, simple boats provided local transport through bodies of local lakes and rivers. The venture extended out in small increments across time until ship building provided new potential. Astronomy and exploration merged slowly but inexorably to reveal the orb that is our planet. Cartography found new ways to graphically depict the connections of East and West; North and South with poles and equatorial markers. By the fifteenth century, exploration has marked the continents and oceans of earth. Now just a few centuries later, we have a new global challenge for protection and restoration of our global home that is not sustainable as it currently operates. A partial and promising solution may be to think globally, but act locally. Put another way, our survival may require thinking globally while interacting regionally and developing local capacities that are sustainable. Local sustainability may well be scalable globally through telecommunication stimulating many diverse creative solutions.

Localization

Subsistence—hunting, gathering and small-scale stewardship of a local environment to aid the lives of edible plants and animals, that is rudimentary agriculture involving horticulture and animal husbandry—has been critically important in the evolution oof human beings on Earth. As humans dispersed around the globe subsistence occurred literally thousands of times and in dozens to hundreds of locations, each with a local twist or adaptation. It was a fundamental tool or technology for survival. As such it could never be far from the origin of education. Parents assured that their offspring developed skills for survival. Replication may have merit.

Localvore—eating locally produced food—has entered in our contemporary vocabulary as a canard to stimulate new thinking about future efforts to assure better measures of sustainability. Two initiatives are worth mentioning as they can serve as models for other innovation and variation on themes that can strengthen local economies, namely neighborhoods, whether they are urban or rural. These models are Permaculture and Transition Towns. Both can find implementation in urban areas as urban agriculture.

One twist on urban agriculture is to enable the growth of plants on vertical surfaces rather than on horizontal surfaces as has been routine for 10,000 years. Vertical agriculture has many virtues but one is the much more efficient collection and reuse of fertilizers and other plant nutrients. The most important of the conditions for plant growth is, of course, lighting. While sunlight is the most economical and widely available at essentially no cost, some urban agriculture will reuire consideration of artificial lighting. Efficiencies of electrical generation and storage will be demanded in virtually all forms of urban agriculture.

Water is also an essential component of agriculture. In some circumstances is has been possible to foster urban agriculture through application of hydroponics. Aquaculeture has enabled growth of captive fish and other seafood species in water tanks that can be installed in many underused urban spaces including abandoned warehouses and manufacturing facilities. Aquaponics combines hydroponic plants with fish cultures; the fish waste supplying the required nitrogen to fertilize plant growth. Energy considerations are substantial and must be engineered for efficiency. Yet reuse of water is imperative on a massively overpopulated planet.

UN SDGs

The United Nations in collaboration with members has developed 17 Sustainable Development Goals—the UN SDGs—worthy goals for sustainability. There is now a massive international effort to implement these goals.

These UN SDGs have been receiving considerable attention in the halls of higher education worldwide. The publisher Springer, has committed to free or low cost dissemination of not only the goals but the efforts to implement these goals on a global scale. Education is seen as a critically important pathway toward achieving these goals.

Microscoft has focused its attention on six of the seventeen goals. Other examples of corporate involvement will follow and leverage the economic power required to move this agenda forward. The urgency is powered by global warming and its impacts. Climate is the gorilla in the room and casts a shadow over virtually all the SDGs.

Recommended Reading & Sources

The Natural Step Website http://www.thenaturalstep.org/

Robert, Karl-Henrik. The Natural Step Story: Seeding a Quiet Revolution. Gabriola Island, BC. New Society Publishers.

Latte, Torbjorn and Sarah James. 2004. The Natural Step for Communities.

Natrass, B. 2002. The Natural Step for Business.

Silberstein, Jand and Chris ____ . Sustainable Communities.

UN SDGs now represent an important body of literature readily accessible with search engines and open source AI.

McDunnough & Branugart. Cradle To Cradle: Remaking the way we make things.

Benyus, Janine. Biomimicry.

1. Part VI
2. Technology and AI

The following seven chapters will make the case that technology has much to offer society and thus education. However, these chapters will raise yellow flags of caution while recognizing that red flags are worthless and bright green flags are probably ignoring danger signals as we let the train increase speed.

Early adopters are enthusiasts who are most likely looking for efficiencies in how things are currently being done; although it must be said that some early adopters a just looking for another form of fun and games to play. Our marches through education beyond the technology of slate tablets didn't end with smart whiteboards and is now taking us forward (or backward) to realize the potential for individualizing or personalizing instruction even as we continue to almost completely ignore the ambiguity of learning as something that happens only in schools. Deciding what is really important may take ttime and resources away from what has grown up inside of educational rhetoric for decades.

Perhaps every child deserves a champion in the form of an Artificial Friend(AF). Teachers could then be fully replaced ty the tools of technology and there would be no need for textbooks or testing for that matter because the AF would be able to vouch for competence and mastery, where ever mastery was really required.

This part will conclude with consideration for evolution and how evolution itself is evolving and the pace is accelerating.

Part Six devotes seven chapters focusing attention on technology and the emerging peril and potential of artificial intelligence across growing forces of capitalism as well as an unchecked autocracies or oligarchies that are anything but democratic.

Chapter XXXI—Slate Tablets—tells us that technology is not really alll that new for education and has been evolving across centuries.

Chapter XXXII—Deciding—takes a new look and builds a productive perspective on how education can relate to technologies that will continue to emerge and influence human existence on earth.

Chapter XXXIII—STEM is Steamie—recognizes that our current infatuation with STEM in education is a product of a commercial-industrial economy that drives growth wherever profit is possible.

Chapter XXXIV—The Drivers—expands on our capitalist, free market economy to recognize that we have choices about the forces and motivations that both serve and enable technologies in education.

Chapter XXXV—Big Data—asks about the limits of data and its uses inside and outside of education. Natural Language combined with emerging sophistication of neural systems can and will be harnessed for education.

Chapter XXXVI—Evolution Evolving—our consciousness is both influenced and influencing the direction and intensity of change that will inevitably carry education in new directions.

Chapter XXXVII—Designing Systems—provides a new venues for thought about education taking new pathways with and beyond the broad reach of technology that may resemble but never equal our embodied minds.

Chapter XXXI

I am a blank slate—therefore I can create anything I want.

Toby Maguire

Slate Tablets

Full title was intended to be early adopter and slate tablets. Leading off a part of the book devoted to technology with a title Slate Tablets may seem to be the obvious tease that it is. What does a slate tablet have to do with an iPad? Maybe not much. Maybe everything. Technologies can engage students in may ways. Perhaps smartphones and slate tablets are tools to foster engagement.

The second letter of STEM stands for technology. Education Ecology contends that technology is not enough. So what? And Why not?

We are doing a lot to abuse and misplace technologies when we feel compelled to use and justify the use of elaborate electronic devices in the pre-school and primary grades. One very misguided entrepreneur took a simple fact of language development; namely, that children who are exposed to a greater number of words become more successful students, and created an electronic device to entertain two and three year olds. Confined to their crib, the little ones could hear an endless array of words and phrases in a parent-like voice. Is that crazy or what? Should the kid be cooed and cuddled by a surrogate parent in the form of a robotic Parent Assist Device aka PAD?

Some technologies actually don't seem much like technology and it is certainly arguable whether slate tablets and smartphones should be included in the same sentence as technology. While the digital electronics and incredible design and engineering that go into a smartphone bears little or no resemblance to a raw black stone tablet and a piece of chalk, we are likely on some thin semantic ice. However, looking at an array of devices that have found their way into classrooms, it may well be that technology is not the device with its hardwareand software, but the enthusiasm with which a teacher may capture a tool to fulfill her commitment to engagement of students.

The result is situating the array of classroom devices and tools along a gradient or spectrum of innovation that is teacher controlled choice rather than externally imposed or commercially promoted persuasion as “must use” tools. Individual small slate tablets eventually found their way to large wall mounted blackboards to focus a whole group's attention. Paper tablets emerged to call forth pencils and fountain pens to engage students in obediently copying text written on the big blackboard mounted in the front of the room. One should pause and wonder about the first teacher arguing with her principal that a second wall with another blackboard could serve more instructional efficiency. I have to wonder if that teacher had to argue with a whole school board. I'll bet she persuaded with not only words but personal charm.

Technology has always been a venture, if not exactly an adventure. Ad venture is above and beyond the ordinary. Most technologies are fairly ordinary steps above what is already an accepted way of doing things. The automobile was called a horse-less carriage until some creative type slipped a new label, automobile, into our vocabularies. There was plenty of amusement in the 1950s when a newly wealthy member of the Osage band in Oklahoma hooked a team of Percherons to a Cadillac convertible and drove the team through an oil field of drilling towers and dereks. Which way should technology take us in education? It is unlikely anyone will venture being called a Neanderthal and advocate returning to slate tablets.

Educators were probably slow to adopt slate tablets. It may well have been that only the rich kids could bring one to school, likely a private school that already had a big slate board on one wall at the front of a classroom. Doing maths on a slate tablet was more convenient than in a notebook. Mistakes could just be wiped clean with a wet cloth. Soon enough the whole class or children brought their own tablets.

In this chapter we will consider: printing, early adopters, electronic tools, projectors, green boards, television, terminals, telephones, personal computers. This will help anticipate the obvious question; What is the next slate tablet—the next bright shinning object for education to chase?

Printing

There is broad agreement among historians that movable type and rapid production of printed texts beginning with the Christian Bible enabled the enlightenment. It should not be ignored that printing technologies have had an enormous impact on education. It is arguably the technology of printing and publishing that drives myriad features and flaws of education today.

Certain early editions of the Bible were illustrated but replication of plates rendered by artists was costly and time intensive. Nevertheless, important innovations in medical textbooks introduced the drawings of Vesalius and revolutionized the teaching of anatomy. Yet even into the mid 20th Century, Gray’s Anatomy, the major text, only included limited color illustrations. Beyond medical texts new printing technologies introduced following WWII enabled wide and exquisite color illustrations at relatively low cost.

Moveable type, textbooks and 4-color printing changed education dramatically.

Models

Printed acetate transparencies were added to textbooks. Initially used in geology texts with overlay maps, these transparencies were used in biology texts to supplement frog dissections and depict the dissected human body becaming a “must have” for high school and even some college biology textbooks. 3D models of just about any plant, animal or human organ (brain, heart, kidney) can be purchased. Students can take a model apart and make a puzzle of getting everything back together in some record time. Using better and more durable materials yielded increasingly detailed and realistic depictions.

Photography

Artistic rendering of gross and microscopic anatomy was labor intensive and the skell set needed was prodigious to say the least. Rendering structure in three dimensions with photography remains a challenge, although solutions, often prohibitively expensive, are emerging.

The ViewMaster 3D photography innovation was enormously popular among children. The technology was also used for publishing a stereoscopic atlas of human dissection, valued because cadaver dissection was generally unavailable in most colleges. It was great for individual study of the human body, but a disaster in a classroom. In spite of a very expensive projector and a special screen the technology was almost too clumsy for instruction.

Kodak & Polaroid provided a revolution of color technologies and coupled with miniaturization of camera equipment made microphotography and photomicrography widely available by the year 2000. Digital photography has all but wiped out Kodak and Polaroid.

Photocopiers, Inkjet and Laser printers make custom printing almost universally accessible. Although, a paperless society is still far from reality. Electronic books are, of course, gaining greater acceptance inside and outside of education. Text-to-speech software is making the reading of ink on paper less and less necessary.

Early Adopters

Looking for a better way usually begins at the end of a frustrating day. A teacher, a principal looks back and wants to shorten time or take away a mundane but necessary task by making better efficiencies. They know that things are different in the “ouside” world of the school and begin to think that it could be applied to improve efficiency or, rarely, maybe even effectiveness. Teachers in particular crave efficiency because there is just too much to do every hour of every day. Making lessons and grading exams has to trump just about everything else. Except all of the “everything else” that manages to get piled on the shoulders of teachers. Sometimes principals lend a hand or a shoulder, too.

Whether a new shiny object shows up before a school day or a school year, there is bound to be chit chat about it. What can it do? Is it necessary? What's wrong with the way it was always done? Expectations begin to grow and take shape through first casual and later formal discussion or conversation. Pros and cons are debated, but more likely just assumed by an advocate for a new tool.

Early adopters are usually at the front with assumptions. They feel a need to justify doing something different and know that there are likely to be colleagues who will cite exceptions either because they genuinely believe that questions need to be addresses, or because they are fearful of having to chaange a routine.

Efficiency is welcome and persuasive. A better result, not so much.

Green Boards & White Boards

Yellow chalk for the green board improvdd contrast and visibility of handwriten text for instruction. Very interdisciplinary, of course. English teachers could more effectively outline sentences while chemistry teachers could fill a green board with equations and demonstrate for students the methods to balance a reaction and calculate the yield of products from starting elements.

A large poster of the periodic table came to characterize the chemistry classroom. Every instructor needed a three-foot rubber tipped dowel to point out the elements being described. Posters found their way into the classrooms of biology, geology and physics along with rubber-tipped dowel rods; always with an eye-hook for hanging beside the green or black board.

Colored chalk led another wave of innovative instruction although one otherwise high-minded administrator yielded to the custodial staff who didn't like the extra effort required to clean boards and dust from colored chalk.

White boards and erasable markers found a market and replacement of green boards and blackboards took on urgency in schools. But universal adoption was blacked by a few teachers who found the vapors of markers highly irritating to the point that they could not function in classrooms with white boards in about the same way they could not tolerate anyone wearing a particular perfume or deodorant. Even the teacher unions found causes for involvement to assure that adoption of white board technologies were consistent with due process. A teacher hauled up on charges of non conformity better be able to turn on the charm or consult the grievance representative (aka Union Business Agent) to avoid loss of livelihood.

Electronic Tools

Electric lighting may have been the first great technology tool for schools. In northern latitudes the school day could be extended. Dependence on window lights may have been superior to early incandescent lighting, but fluorescent bulbs changed the way classrooms could be lighted. Rural electrification and the gas powered bus paved the way for new and larger schools that were able to extend public schooling beyond the eighth grade and children could attend school for another four years.

The array of electronics that enhance a classroom and the role of the teacher are accompanied by a list of what once seemed essential and are now obsolete. Spirit masters and mimeograph machines come to mind along with electronic typewriters and photocopiers.

In a quite different sense, heating and air conditioning are technologies now assumed and expected along with thermostatic regulation. But there was a day when someone, perhaps a teacher, had to get to the school early, split wood and build a fire in the potbelly furnace. There was a day when air conditioning meant opening the windows.

Projectors

Projectors may have been the beginning or opening for commercial intrusion into the classroom. Following WWII film experiences became sufficiently portable and flexible to support classroom instruction. Theater projectors were downsized, first to 16mm and later to 8mm and Super 8mm. Use and abuse of film for teaching followed. A 50 minute film could fill a whole class period and film could be rented or purchased. School libraries could accumulate a collection of the films frequenltly used by faculty. Some turned on the projector and left the classroom to go to the lounge for a cigarette and coffee. Sometimes with administrative pressure, they would sit in the classroom and watch the goddamn file for the 50th time in a decade of teaching. Of course, discussion before and after the showing could facilitate student’s engagement, and an experience with merit—for at lease some students.

Film strips and collections of 35mm slides could be purchased or would be provided gratis by publishers as inducements for adoption of textbooks. The textbook package may have also included teaching guides and testing banks as well as worksheets and other teacher support materials. Naturally school systems and their audio-visual departments would supply teachers with the projectors and copy machines to utilize these materials.

One notable relic was an Opaque projector enabling a teacher to place the textbook on a platen and project the text to be read to students with emphasis, explanation and discussion. This was actually considered an innovation in instruction.

Telegraph & Telephones

Messaging at a distance evolved with the invention of the telegraph and the formulation and adoption of the Morse Code, an early version of simple digital signaling, although not necessarily the binary system we think of today as zero—0, and one—1. The Morse system of stringing together dots and dashes was great for short messages and as the wiring extended across distances between urban centers, mostly following the right-of-way provided to railroads, the potential for communication greatly expanded. A message could literally be sent across the continent in a matter of only minutes. Message charges could be projibitive and very labor intensive at both ends of the transmission. Learning Morse Code in schools was limited but became a step and hurdle for the Boy Scouts of America. Ham Radio with simple equipment and antennae enabled hobbyists to communicate cheaply and, with a bit more expense, globally.

Wiring for electricity made the telegraph and then the telephone a potential link for communication across vast spaces. Long distance access and charges were limiting. FAX machines utilized telephone numbers and existing phone lines. A teacher might use FAX to send a lesson to a student taken ill and living in an affluent home. Generally the FAX machine rose and fell without notable impacts on education.

Television

In the 1950s television began to find its way into classrooms. A school may at first have just one television on a rolling cart. Sporting events like the Major League Baseball World Series found outlets in classrooms. Boys might huddle around the television, while girls found another activity of interest.

Broadcast television was relatively useless unless there was a breaking news event such as a space launch or a Presidential speech. Video recordings bagan to change that and even enabled a teacher to prepare a personal lesson and reuse it several times a day or from one school year to another. Repetition became at least less necessary if not completely unnecessary. Video recordings were generally less expensive to purchase and were somewhat more flexible and durable than film.

Broadcast continued and airwaves were reserved for educational television. Scheduling was problematic. Many programs that were broadcast outside of the typical school day and were aimed at adult education. Most programs used essentially the same classroom format—sometimes with a sample array of a “student audience” to lend authenticity or credibility to the program.

Cablecasting of programs enlarged potential for mass distribution of educational content. Since cable installations required access to municipal rights-of-way, cable companies paid the municipality for access. These revenues supported Public Access Television with very mixed results and public reception. Schools and colleges were typically afforded access and used the access with mixed results.

Streaming of video became realistic with improvement i broadband access to the Internet. YouTube is not only ubiquitous but ubiquitously engorged with advertising pushed to viewers. Nevertheless streaming has greatly enlarged access and instruction can be greatly enhanced through careful selection, editing and convenient accessing of content. Access with smartphones, tablets and laptops has been a game changer.

Terminals

Main frame computing emerged in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. The network of wires, including the ubiquitous telephone lines, provided access to the so-called dumb terminals. Time-sharing enabled access to main frame computing capacity. Initially the technology of inputs and outputs was clumsy to use and costly to sustain. Data transmission rates improved, costs dropped and the digital technology was adopted for research and administration. Universities and colleges were early adopters, and school districts afforded administrative record keeping to handle routine tasks and requirements. As costs dropped and improvements in wiring emerged, potential for using terminals for instruction became more attractive. Faculty, notably in math, engineering and science included early adopters who saw ways to reduce the labor of teaching and improvement in effectiveness. Main frame computing gave way to mini computers and eventually the micro computer. The barriers of cathode ray displays and even key borad input faded.

Personal Computers

Visit any college campus today and you will realize the ubiquity of personal computing. Apple with highly proprietary, expensive hardware is a dominating player on campuses. But where once Apple and pre-Windows computers didn’t talk nicely to one another, a revolution across platforms and the rise of Internet technologies forced and enabled cooperative and collaborative ventures.

Portability and power.

Connecting peripherals began with keyboards and cathode ray tube monitors. Storage was limited to what could be stored on an floppy disc drive and most of the early personal computers had some internal functionality built into the motherboard and processor, but additional storage was required for the operating system and program documents. As programs for productivity—word processors, spreadsheets, databases, and later presentation and graphics—emerged demands for greater storage stimulated innovations. The first hard drives were very expensive; hundreds of dollars for just 5-10 megabites. Today a fraction of that cost will provide a terabyte or more of storage that is amazingly free of demand for electrical current and not subject to the damages when moving parts are banged accidently.

Wireless Connections

Wireless communication began with the invention of the radio by Marconi. Until around the year 2000, wires dominated computing networks. Being plugged in to a bank of Ethernet wiring and routers to access remote servers and other personal computers was daunting to say the least. Wiring demanded a system of numbered access routes known as the Internet Protocol or IP addressing. If numbers were not purchased and carefully assigned, access was blocked. Costs included the technical expertise to wade through the wires and connecting links.

The great breakthroughs to wireless included innovation in the protocol for connecting via Dynamic Host Configuran—DHCP. Static addresses were only necessary for certain functions that were actually quite rare. Wireless connections became a reality, costs dropped and hardware built-in the dongles needed.

Of course, the sources of content increased demand and the lure of advertising revenues made wireless computing ubiquitous.

Storage and Story

Storage of digitized information today is so cheap it is almost never a factor limiting access. But that was also true of the storage of the human mind in retaining and passing along stories from generation to generation and across literally hundreds of generations. Of course, the technology of writing and the invention of writing media from papyrus to papers, eventually superseded the storyteller in favor of the scribe. Scrolls contained the written record of stories and the myths of origins began to unfold also in the form of story.

Writing down the stories of civilization was not without cost and that was borne by humans who were privileged by memberships in an elite core even though deprived of many accoutrements of the hierarchy between scribe and priest. Accuracy was rewarded and error was not tolerated. Movement up the hierarchy was rare. Hours were long but limited by available daylight and later the technology of the wicks and tallow of candles.

Today our storage is still evolving, albeit rapidly as spinning disc drives are becoming obsolete in favor of solid-state storage devices. Capacity is rapidly increasing with quality while cost declines. Power requirements for storage are declining although the energy demands of massive server banks, storage devices, and parallel computing that enables storage in the “cloud” are yet to be reckoned on a global scale. Solid-state storage is also enabling mobility of even massive repositories of data. Replication is so easily possible that losses of date are becoming nearly unknown.

With portability even the capacity of hacking and cracking to enable theft of data is in decline; the cloud notwithstanding. It probably remains true that a dedicated hacker will find a way to steal even the most highly dispersed and sequestered cache of data.

Internet

Gathering together all the world's knowledge began before the Internet. As early as the Great Library of Alexandria, visions of aggregating all knowledge emerged and has has a following into the 18th Century and a proliferation of encyclopedias.

Today, all of the world's knowledge is ostensibly at your fingertips if you have sufficient access and bandwidth. Knowing how to use this fabulous tool, particularly with search engines, databases and Wiki articles is fabulous. It is sufficient to replace textbooks and make significant inroads into changing the conceptual foundations for testing and credentialing examinations.

The Internet has enabled massive distributed collaboration that has now taken on many forms beyond the initial wiki technology. Wikipedia, with its open philosophy has become something of a de facto form and example of what digital pioneer Mitch Kapor called massively distributed collaboration. The authors of Wikipedia articles have no public and facile identity. By that I mean that the aauthorship of any given article carries no byline and is openly and freely editable. Anyone can be an author and editor. The enterprise is fully governed by clustered sets and layers of ever-evolving rules, portals and protocols. Now more than two decades old, Wikipedia has weathered early skepticism and has emerged as something of a gold standard with the grand intent of accumulating all of the world's knowledge. Through its literally millions of articles in dozens of languages, Wikipedia seems to be fulfilling the promise of its founders Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.

Wikipedia emerged in a movement to make the entire Internet Open Source. Although the technological concept of a free encyclopedia is credited to Rick Gates, the intellectual founder of the open source concept is Richard Stallman. It was Stallman who coined the descriptor: “free as in freedom and free as with free beer.” Stallman recognized the potential for doing away with central editing. Other prominent encyclopedias such as MS Encarta, Britanica and Nupeida still employ gatekeepers with the ostensible role of assuring integrity. The idea of a wiki was the work of Ward Cunningham. Wikipedia is now an inspiration for many online reference projects. Some retain gatekeepers and many are also open source adherents to the philosophy of Richard Stallman.

Recent figures attest to the massive status of Wikipedia. The English version now supports over 6 million articles and has about 120 milliion unique visitors using the service. Wikipedia remains free of advertising and is supported through a foundation built from diverse contributors.

Mobile Phones

It is tempting to look at the miracle of the iPhone and its many mimics as the universal path for new approaches to education. We can also see the smart phones as an intrusion into some things we hold high for education. Phones in the classroom are a mixed blessing for educators. Examinations may top the list but disallowing an iPhone in a testing room for fear of cheating is considered necessary for “test security” that could cut both ways' using the phone to get information to answer a question, or using the phone to steal test questions to pass along to others as they prepare for testing. Nevertheless, students now have highly portable access to almost everything on the Internet.

Conclusion …

Of course, all of the above leaves a open-ended question; What's Next? It is not technology that should concern those who champion education … important as technology occasionally is and the promises for advancing education through applications of technology there are much, much more important considerations for education. What would we do if all the lights went out? Education should be the light. What is really important is to build a fire to fuel development of the mind. We likely need to pay more attention to mind tools that are independent of technology.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Novel based on Personal Assistant …

Chapter XXXII

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Deciding

All of education probably comes down to deciding what is really important. That means education is all about choice. In the dependent decade, the choices are made by someone else. After the first decade of life, the power of choice shifts, at first gradually, to the entity in the universe we call self. Where large gaps exist, choices have been deficient at a global level. Uncovering the source of deficient choice is way beyond the scope of this chapter, but looking to Education’s Ecology may reveal responses to important questions. So a first step in deciding is to ask questions. We'll never get to relevant questions without looking at deficiencies.

Along the way toward emancipation, the power shifting to self gets muffled by the din of society through the immediate and unique neighborhood in which a life is unfolding. The muffling begins early and dependence obliterates the meaning of most signals. A little one's doing what s/he is told to do has a whole set of advantages. These advantages assure the basic necessities for life including affection and belonging. When there is mostly pleasure and just minimal necessary pain, development proceeds in the direction of building a sense of worth and dignity. Where this a dominance of pain, development proceeds in a direction of reluctance and avoidance.

In this chapter we'll look at how technology decisions through several societal lenses including the state of technology, the value(s) of technology, applying benefits, cost benefit, realizing benefits.

State Of Technology

Technologies rarey if ever spring full blown into an environment. Accordingly it is necessary to look at the level of technological development and forecast the potential for applications of the technology. The forecasting process itelf will feedback on the processes of development. Where the forecast is bloated with wild-eyed, hand-waving speculations, the backing and adoptions process may be troubled, cumbersome and slow. More cautious forecasting backed by logic and statistical evaluations, particularly of market potentials, will direct recources to flow toward more development of the technology. It is these considerations of multiple interacting processes that will help place our understanding of the current and potential future state or states of technology.

Free-market capitalism and the ventures of entrepreneurial risk-takers looms large in assessments of the state of technology and speculations about how the technology may be applied in some loosly defined future. Capital requirements for technology development, including marketing, are never trivial. The entrepreneur in possession of unique intellectual property in the form of patent and copyright is well-positioned to seek robust capital for development.

Schools are mostly a lagging indicator because the tendency is for technologies to be developed and adapted by other sectors of society — military, business, entertainment — before schools see a flashing light, a bright shinny object, that can be of some interest and potential value. Unfortunately schools and schoolists have a nearly fatal tendency to expect instant, universal gratification. Early adopters push the envelope or expand the bubble with excited speculations. These early adopters also require resources, most often time, which provides an element of freedom to explore potential applications. The time-structure of schools often represents a barrier. Dovetailing or moving a new technology into the routines of classroom management and the tried and true methods of teaching, as well as administrative strictures are often a heavy lift. Their enthusiasm will call on available talent. First appeal is to internal capacity and later, recruitment of outside talent may be both needed and possible. In the absence of resources, the state of technology applications in a sector such as schools may lay dormant or even wither. Capacity for development of an application of technology is never unimportant in assessing the state of technology. In education capacity is often much more a mental model of potential than a state of personal mastery. Mindset lays the ground work for mastery of an application and its potential adoption.

Value(s) Of Technology

The value of technology is relative to the state of Education's Ecology. The seeds of technology will do nothing if there is not fertile cognitive and affective soil for growth. In the ecology of education, teachers are central to the potential values for technology. Without teacher's adoption of technology there is little or no value to be recognized. Administrative efforts to sidestep teachers runs into insurmountable obstacles born of traditional practices, time constraints, and formidable walls of resistance related to finance. A paradox rises in that value depends on how a thing is valued. If benefits of technology are not obvious, finance will lag. Lagging finance will limit the trial of an application.

While much is said about innovation, there is, in most educational systems, much more said than done. Why this is so is both a mystery and an inevitability. Value of technology can't be realized unless it is applied; used to obtain feedback for adjustments, modifications, and yet further innovation. The conditions are troubled by expectations. Schools expect and are expected by their stakeholders, to advance an amorphous thing that almost everyone comfortably and unthinkingly calls learning. Value then becomes a function of the measurements applied in the name of learning. Unfortunately learning lacks both measurable form and function unless, of course, the forms and functions defining learning is successful participation in testing exercises.

Value is potential and actual. Accordingly value is both actuality and prediction. The value of a technology for education is is rarely clear and instantaneous but is a muddy process of deployment, development and growth just to see what happens. Success is almost never guaranteed; failure must be accepted and regarded as an essential element for development—not engineering but recognizing the value of failure. The actuality of technologies are lagging behind the early demonstrations of potential or proof of concept. An early indicator may not be scalable beyond a short and small trial. Yet, what if in a test there was a benefit for a student that was not or could not be recorded.

Each of the technologies identified in the previous chapter became widely recognized for value across time and a diversity of sectors and drivers. Motivation for uses of the technology emerged through a mixed array of satisfactions and expanded development. For example, the emergence of television in society followed the growth of telegraph, telephone and radio. The earliest attractions of television were broadcast by relatively weak signals and available to a severely limited audience. Transmission technology led to greater adoption as the cost of receivers declined. Programming expanded when revenues grew through advertising. Value was added incrementally across several decades through invention and innovation until cable and flat screen expanded and reduced cost. Global supply of material parts and products drove a profit motive across oceans, across continents and, perhaps most importantly, across decades.

Identifying the values of technology for education should be expected to follow a similar lineage of development. Assigning value should be an on going process. Furthermore the assignment of value in some part of today;s educational ecosystem may not apply to another part or may not fit a particular part of tomorrow's trend-sensitive ecosystem.

ASDFAASDF

Applying Benefits

Education is complex and diverse. That is, education comprises many sectors. A technology that fits comfortably in one or even a few sectors, may be completely out of place in another cluster of sectors. It is less than obvious that benefits either can or should be uniform across all sectors of society or all sectors of education. Television, for instance, held some early promise as a medium for education but it has been bastardized in so many way by its entertainment and commercial value through advertising, that the potential benefits have not emerged for other potential applications including education, health, or personal finance.

The trouble for finance, education and health is that there is a limited or narrowed revenue stream to support potential benefits. Realization of benefits may require massive collaboration and innovation. Pharamcertical companies represent only a slice of the health-care universe yet have manipulated the rules for advertising and applied the benefits of television because these firms are positioned to reap profits that can be amplified through development of new products. Such does not pertain to education although textbook publishers and distributors have been able to pour money into some developments of educational technology. They are currently looking toward artificial intelligence to render their base of publishing applicable in new ways.

Cost Benefit

Technology development requires risk, which is manly manifest in allocation of money to support people with unique talents in engineering and writing of computer code. Venture capital accrues rapidly through gaining early access to invention and innovation—in short, intellectual propeerty or IP—and the protections of patent and copyright.

The benefits of capitalism itself are not unalloyed. Capitalism may have its faults but invention and innovation is not among the faults but represents enormous benefit; first to users and then to the investors. Benefits are measured as returns on investment or ROI. The benefits of technology requires capital investment. Accumulation of capital is the sine qua non of capitalism. In the absence of excess capital accumulation there can be no investment, hence no benefit from technology. Where a customer base is not established, promising technologies may be abandoned by both educators and investors. The pharmaceutical industry is almost notorious for almost literally miles of shelves that hold patented medicines and biotechnology processes that have never shown profit potential. Government regulation gets a lot of blame but at some important level represents the will of people at large and the firms holding patented products and services who are able to exploit vulnerabilities of an aspiring democratic governance. The firms have done quite well, thank you. The people not so much.

Realizing Benefits

The above suggests that our capitalistic system is somehow to blame for limitations on how technologies may benefit masses of humanity. Some of that blame is probably justified. However, that should not mean throwing out the baby with the bath water. No economic system has ever exceeded capitalism for its contributions to human welfare. That is not to say, and I emphatically don't intend to say, that all of technology benefits human welfare. In fact there are plenty of good arguments that technology takes humanity, at least huge majority segments of humanity away from well being and drives a monstrous wedge into society separating, perhaps irreparably, those who have realized the benefits of technology and those who will never realize those benefits. We seem, as humanity writ large, to have no clue about how to level the realization of technology benefits.

STEM is beginning to dominate education. More than 25% of STEM is technology or technology-development driven. While a lot of interesting computer code is written for the sheer joy of doing something new, something never done before, much of coding is a grinding process of delivering promise of what can be profitable. Not all programmers are champions of wonderful, hugely profitable world changing enterprises. Programmers are well paid workers in a potentially profitable venture.

Workforce development is all the rage and STEM is currently receiving the lion's share of investments in workforce opportunities. The US Department of Labor, administers a huge funding source to sustain a system of regional workforce investment boards with authority to compete for grants and to re-allocate this grant money to promising local projects. Projects are often centered in local colleges and universities with community colleges and technical institutes playing a big role. Workforce development funding flows mostly to workers or potential workers rather than directly to firms directly. Along with these WIBs (Workforce Investment Boards) other Federal departments, including education, energy, health and human services, homeland security and others as well as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health provide substantial funding for research and development that includes workforce development at levels ranging from Associate Degrees to post-doctoral fellowships for newly graduated PhDs. The research sector alone requires it own highly specialized elements of worker skills. Training of PhD candidates is a beginning step leading to post-doctorial positions that enhance the research skills of the research sector's workforce.

Industry demands certification. They want hires to be fully competent to step into open offices, computerized workrooms, and modern laboratories to move their ideas, innovations and agendas forward. While the certification of skills may take the form of being able to do this or that and is relatively easy to observe directly, a worker or potential employee displays an adequate level of skill—or fails to do so. Knowledge is more difficult to assess. Tools for assessment mostly are constructed tests. These tests may be scored manually or, now, mostly electronically. The score becomes part of a database and the database for an individual or work group (a team) may extend and persist across a period years. Progress in the knowledge domain may be tracked, and along with a system for skill tracking may provide foundations for employee advancement. In addition to knowledge and, so-called- hard skills, employers may also benefit from the soft skills of employees—attitude. These soft skills mostly fall into the category of social emotional matters. How well does an employee fit into the work group to which s/he is assigned. Are they productive contributors, able to work effectively with co-workers and customers in pursuit of objectives and goals of a team, department, division or corporation. The challenge in almost all organizations is to decide the best practices for realizing these benefits. Technology will play a role in that realization if and when leaders are inclined to apply the technologies available. The pressures to do so are looming larger.

The next chapter will take us into a more indepth look at STEM with an expanded view that may better fit thte future for education and Education's Ecology.

Recommended Reading & Sources

DOL website …

Chapter XXXIII

All of the traditional STEM fields … are stoked when you dream big in an agency such as NASA.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

STEM is STEAMie

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, aka STEM, is all over the face and features of education in the US. Government and industry are all agog about the looming shortage of highly skilled people to fill positions in corporate firms to advance discovery and development of the products and services that fuel economic growth and assure some kind of competitive advantage with foreign powers such as China, Russia, India and a few others, some friendly some not so friendly. The US has seen disruption overtake what seemed to be solid industry giants and STEM is expected to make the US an architect of disruption rather than a victim.

While STEM is commanding much attention from government funding sources such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health as well as Departments of Labor, Defense, Energy, Agriculture and Homeland Security, there are voices advocating for equivalent funding for the Arts, hence the acronym STEaM or STEAM. At the same time a few groups inside and outside of the science mainstream are calling for greater engagement of the public through STEaMie, saying cleverly that the funding effort should Include Everyone. Maybe so. The arts do represent an alternative that supports a different form of creativity.

At least it is worth our while to attend the push for, and resistance to, the massive amounts of targeted funding for the STEM disciplines in education. In the remainder of this chapter we'll explore both the potential and controversy surrounding STEM as well as the broad public implications and benefits across all of education.

What is STEM?

The naming of STEM disciplines is only a start in answering inquiry about what STEM is. Bringing in a scope larger than education is important because it is those other elements of the economy that are driving attention and investments in STEM.

The mathematical foundations for science and engineering are all well known to anyone who has attended college and been confronted with passing a required basic science course. Psychology has a key component of statistics, which some students, including a few psychology majors, find daunting. Anyone contemplating a major in physics, chemistry, biology or geology as well as psychology is required to complete math through at least the beginning calculus. Physics, Chemistry and Biology majors are expected to complete one or more years of calculus courses. Accordingly mathematics becomes a screening tool for the other disciplines. This means handling the hard stuff of concepts, equations and calculations to find a correct solution to problems posed in instructions and examinations. Cut the mustard in math or cut out!

Mastery of summative examinations in science demands knowledge of facts—concepts, principles, theory—about science. Facts are easy and efficient to test and score using multiple choice and machine scoring. The philosophy behind science may be the subject of lectures but is not so easy to measure. Yet the empirical and experimental foundations for science principles are much more germane to what scientists do and how they do it than a head bulging with facts. Of course, recall of facts is occasionally important and retrieval of facts from memory is much more efficient than constantly referring back to textbooks or other sources of facts. But those who proactice science regularly do become possessors of relevant facts and use what they know until it becomes either second nature to think with the facts in mind; or, science moves forward making a collection of facts at least modestly irrelevant.

STEM may also be thought of as a massive public relations effort to advance the national interests in security and economic development. The STEM label has taken on a certain cache' across many sectors of public life including but not limited to industry. Our economy requires a massive force of workers who are able to address problems and challenges in an environment that is constantly changing and growing through new applications. All of the so-called STEM disciplines are umbrellas for highly specialized fields of study and work.

Engineering has become highly diverse and specialized. Many universities offer undergraduate majors in mechanical, chemical, electrical, civil, industrial engineering, and it is not uncommon for students to find themselves studying and working across these fields in pursuit of mechanoelectrical concepts, or bringing mechanical and civil engineering to design and architecture challenges. Materials science has grown from chemical engineering and solves problems once assigned to teams of mechanical engineers.

Technology as well is an amalgam of many fields. Much focus of contemporary technologies include digital applications. The development of the digital computer and its applications in business, finance, marketing and management has made enormous demands on the workforce to improve efficiencies across all parts of commerce and industry from human relations to patents and technology transfer. Corporate attorneys are often called upon to understand complex science and computing algorithms behind new business developments that may involve complex mergers and acquisitions. The field of computer science, like engineering, is highly diverse.

Science itself now embraces study that ranges across and interconnects across multiple disciplines. Advancements in science are now often characterized as multidisciplinary. While science research laboratories are also increasingly specialized and seem to be very narrow in the scope of their pursuits, the application of their research output is often if not inevitably requiring the formation of teams with a broad range of expertise that crosses many disciplines of science.

Medical research is almost exclusively dependent upon multidisciplinary approaches. The medical researcher often possesses a medical degree involving broad study across a dozen or more specialties in medicine. Along the way toward the MD degree, a prospective research (worker) will recognize the need for not only deepeer knowledge in a specialized field, but also see that research methods are also highly specialized. The result may be the additional acquisition of the PhD, which is recognized as a research degree. It is not uncommon for Medical School faculty to hold both MD and PhD degrees and to support programs where students are enrolled in programs where they pursue simultaneously MD, PhD credentials.

Who cares?

The massive funding for STEM leaves a great inequity within educational institutions. It is not hard to understand the frustration and resentment from the faculty people in the non-STEM fields, some of whom have been or are being cut to support greater STEM programming. When programs in the humanities are cut the people begin the care a lot. Hence some blowback for STEM and the efforts to expand STEM into the arts and humanities. Indeed a good case can be made for better funding for the performing arts, history, political science, economics as well as speech and theater because of the use by scientists and engineers of these skills in arguments for not only funding through allocations and grants but the development of discovery for businesses that take the great ideas forward in tangible applications that benefit corporations and the public at large. Growth of the economy is a positive outcome of STEM that is ostensibly a benefit to everyone. That alone could be an argument for everyone to care about STEM.

This is a nice argument but not backed by a slew of solid evidence. But if arguments were based on scientific facts and unassailable logic what would become of the art of public relations, advertising and most parts of the political processes that govern our lives through functional funding of what we may believe we want? There is, then, a social dimension to STEM that should not be ignored. Economics is certainly one element and its ramifications into almost every nook and crany of society is important. This would be true if the only social consideration was the leveling of inequality across the ethnic and racial dimensions inherent in our social structures. On the face of it there is a lurking potential for economic gains from growth of STEM applications to ameliorate a broad range of social problems from food and nutrition deficiency, to transportation logistics and to the reduction of the costs of adequate housing at affordable prices. Much of these benefits would seem to depend upon the creation of jobs. This in turn is broadly thought to require workers deeply skilled in one or more STEM disciplines. Acquiring these skills is now regarded as a central mission of our schools. Accordingly, schoolists should care about STEM. And, by and large, they do care, if for no other reason than that society, through governments, is willing to provide lavish funding for new STEM educational programs. Crass? Maybe!

Regarding these implications it may well be time to pause in the quest for STEM expansions to question what all of the advances are doing to support the quality of life here and abroad. The implications for captains of industry and the managers of investment funds are not hard to list. New discovery, patents and transfer of technology provide a flow of funding to accelerate more discovery and even risky attempts of find future applications that will generate profits, revenue flows and wealth accumulations within the cycles of economics. Economic growth is the sine qua non for the decision makers and studious shakers of industry. Limits of growth, be damned!

This leads inevitably to consideration for a much smaller segment of society, that may take a very dim view of growth in any form. Population growth is considered unsustainable. Thomas Pickety makes a powerful case that the demographics of growth cannot be separated from economic growth. Accordingly those concerned with the foture conditions of life on Earth may care that programs of government and industry that accelerate growth of STEM also fuel population growth that has unsustainable implications.

Implications

Better understanding of the STEM disciplines by the general public may will turn out to carry important implications for society into the future. STEM disciplines are now extending so broadly and deeply into every facet of human existence that only the softest elements of society are untouched. Most of these soft elements revolve around language and its inevitable ambiguities. We are collectively in need of clarity in communication. Important matters of meaning and evidence and value of knowledge has notable implications.

It is well known that society is beset with massive problems of inequality, climate change, and weak resistance to false assertions by too many politicians, not to mention the willingness of journalists to exploit political statements regardless of their validity as totally appropriate fodder for broadcasting and printing for profit. Advertisers love a large audience and a journalist who is able to attract a large audience is well compensated. The result is a vicious cycle escalating noise that may include distortions of science.

Accordingly society should expect that improvements in STEM will trickle down in the form of more equity, amelioration or mitigation of climate disasters and an improvement in calling out lies propagated from the minds and lips of politicians. In the absence of a free press unencumbered by the drive for advertising revenues and profits, such laudable outcomes are unlikely. This may well imply that STEM in the absence of some fairly pure, factual communications and responsible communicators is going to be swayed in the direction of acceding to demands of commerce and industry rather than driving benefits to society writ large.

There are then, ponderous implications for education and these implications are mixed. On the one hand are all the benefits of capacity for personal and societal economic growth and development. On the other hand are drivers of greater inequality and exacerbation of poverty across all levels of society. The resulting potential for massive imbalance should not be ignored. The implications for the planetary imperative discussed in Part V are huge. Climate change and biodiversity will demand stewardship across a broad swath; we have argued that it should become ubiquitous as a concept for action. Certainly an implication is that development of STEM can provide the technical tools for reductions of losses of biodiversity and slowing of increases of greenhouse gases. Already there is some sense that governemnts, including the US government, is beginning to turn the STEM disciplines in the direction of sensitivity for sustainability. We must ask whether education in its current form of schooling, which by and large weeds out rather than gathers in, is capable of providing for broad benefits of STEM. It should be apparent that in the absence of STEaMie, equitable distribution of benefits could be fraught.

Benefits

Engagement of everyone in the expanded STEM disciplines including art and humanities can, potentially, have massive benefits for society. Not the least of these is better understanding by the public of what science is and what science is not. Science has limits and public understanding of these limits can have tremendous benefit for thinking about non science subjects like religion and spirituality as well as those parts of human knowledge, skill and performance that are not at all “scientific” even when they may call upon the outcomes of science, technology and engineering to solve everyday problems of good roads and bridges, better communication over wire and airwaves, or more interesting food availability and variability. Yet, it never ceases to amaze me that art and communication is ready, willing and able to take the tools and applications of STEM disciplines and use them for witless or nefarious short term benefits. Quite frankly, XBox or animations for entertainment and games come to mind. XR—Extended Reality—could, and may someday, actually and broadly benefit science education.

Widespread understanding of science and the full range of scientific methods could yield huge benefits. It is well apparent that too many public officials at even the highest levels of government and some corporations are ignorant of basic understanding about what constitutes knowledge broadly let alone what constitutes scientific knowledge. This will lay bare the limits of science. Unfortunately there is a large segment of the electorate who hold undiluted faith that science can solve every problem and bring global equity to some fairly immediate reality. However, juxtaposed against this niche of ignorance is another niche that is unwilling to trust much of anything that science may have to say about health, medical practices, environmental values, or even the untenable claims of certain aspects of faith and religion. They are ignorant about science and unwilling to even acknowledge their ignorance let alone question their beliefs.

If STEM education could hold some promise for penetrating these two parts of human ignorance and disbelief in a scientific method, there may be enormous benefits globally. Unfortunately education exists in a world where doubt is infrequent and skepticism is renounced when it comes to any of the world's religious traditions and practices. Science and religion are in conflict in so many ways that reconciliation seems impossible. It is not at all sufficient to simply claim that science and religion are simply different magisteria, as Stephen Jay Gould so famously pronounced, and Nicholas Spencer has described.

The philosophy of science is probably at the heart of matters involving science and religion. Religious belief are matters for metaphysical consideration where wisdom is based on speculation. The speculative wisdom has fuzzy sources and is not falsifiable. Philosophy also involves epistemology; a discourse on knowledge, how it is obtained and verified. In other words epistemology seeks the truth of assertions. Science has emerged to answer for assertions through repeated observation and experiments that seek to disprove or falsify assertions about the physical world or nature. Scientific knowledge is, therefore, always tentative. Truth is only our best guess or conjecture about reality. The logical potential for another experiment or observation that may falsify an assertion can never be ruled out.

The benefit of STEM education afforded to everyone and communicated broadly through artful performances that are built on the truth of assertions, will serve to benefit humanity writ large.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Pikety, Thomas.

Spencer, Nicholas. 2023. Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science & Religion.

Chapter XXXIV

We are all living together on a single planet, which is threatened by our own actions. And if you don’t have some kind of global cooperation, nationalism is just not on the right level to tackle the problems, whether it’s climate change or … technological disruption.

Yuval Noah Harari

The Drivers

It would be easy to point to commerce and industry as incorrigible drivers of technology in education. After all education is a potential consumer with a lot of money and, especially when young children are involved, an emotional soft spot to be exploited for profit. This is where I should ask the reader to pardon my cynicism.

Clyde Christenson and Cirt Johnson have made a case for disruption or more accurately for disruptive technologies. That is to say there are inevitable disruptive effects of technologies and, they say, education is ripe for disruption. After all education has been going about its business using the same old shop-worn paradigm of teachers managing classrooms by reciting and seeking recitation from students. Little or nothing has changed across a few centuries. Even Socrates likely did some lecturing when his little cluster of students (today “learners”) failed to respond to his carefully structured questioning. He likely felt a need to fill in for their ignorance about something that even he could not understand. One result was a need to drive information into the minds of those with deficient information. Filling the brain bucket as it were then and as it for the most part is now.

Is technology an answer? Probably not. At least I doubt it.

There are at least two drivers of technology in education; commerce and novelty. Novelty includes innovation and invention. Inventions, those with patent protection, are important drivers of commercialization. Novelty may reveal potential uses or applications that fulfill a social or personal need. The quest for novelty for the sake of novelty may be a driver, but business mostly comes first.

What about a better way? One would certainly think educators would be constantly looking for a better way of delivering instruction. Instruction takes time and effort. This effort is not only on the part of the instructor, but also on the part of those being instructed and by those who ostensibly support both the instructor and the instructed—education’s leaders—decision-makerss. Deciding if a technology actually makes a difference is a fair question. Who should answer the question? Is the use of technology in education a question of efficiency or efficacy?

Making a place for technology is a result of looking at a current situation and searching for ways and means for making a difference to improve. Innovation has a multitude of drivers many of which are either not rational or are hard to articulate with language that can make sense. But because technologies are often costly there are reasonable demands for justification.

STEM has now firmly established their places in education. STEaM sits on a back bench. Literacy is every bit as important as mathematics, yet beyond reading and some writing, there is little formality of “drill & practice.” Literacy is perhaps more important because of the need to extend explanation beyond those who are comfortable in a world of abstract formulas with equalities and inequalities. Measuring time and space related to causes and effects all need to be expanded and explained. Mathematics can be a poweful explanation and used to persuade for those who remember, care for and follow the formulas. Artful use of words enable those who don’t, can’t or no longer care about measurements and numbers.

It is hard to think of using technology and stagnation in the same sentence or paragraph. Our tendency is to link technologies with progress; an antithesis of conservation. But then, of course, our uses of terms like conservative, liberal, progressive and reactionary are laden with ambiguities that are pretty damn hard to escape. Yet we continue to labor with language that calls forth a need for speculation on the part of an audience, and every member of the audience likely has a bit different interpretation of meaning.

This means looking for and finding key words and phrases that evoke a cognitive acceptance of argument or evoke an emotional response with an audience. The key audience for educational technology is the individual or group empowered to make a decision. Representatives of a technology firm who are seeking to enter a market or expand a market share, want to speak to the decision-makers. Getting to the decision-makers is sometimes a challenge. The challenge can be made easier when there is a broad consensus about a proposed infusion of technology.

In this chapter we'll look under the hood with some hope to learn why technology has become so compelling in our contemporary approaches to education and where technology is simply, not enough. Technology has limits and our experiences with COVID has started to draw some important understanding of limits. What follows will include extrinsic drivers, frustrations with status quo, commercial interests, societal optimism, intrinsic drivers, more frustrations, more frustrations, competence, innovation.

Extrinsic Drivers

Extrinsic drivers are social forces and may be important or ignored depending on a host of factors and likely the most important is freedom that comes from some measure of financial independence. In the absence of financial independence extrinsic factors may be commanding high attention on the scale of motivators. In fact, these external factors may be so compelling that there is no room for reflection or making a choice. Choice is precluded by sheer necessity. Money for food and sheltered safety rank about as high as estrinsic factors can become.

There is a tendency to see innovation as some outside force that drives progress, in one sector of the economy or another. More often innovation rises when there is frustrations with status quo in an organization or community. Accordingly it may reasonably be argued that there are no real extrinsic drivers of innovation.

Frustrations With Status Quo

What is status quo for education? That depends upon who is asked and how well their child is progressing/developing in school. School systems set standards of expectation and categorical decisions can emerge when pressure is applied to define or modify status quo.

At the extremes, we will find frustrations emerging for both the faster and slower individuals on the scale of accomplishment and development. The pace is almost inevitably too fast or too slow for some members of a classroom group. Compensations include accelerated lessons or even classes and classroom to accommodate the so-called “gifted” with a resource rich environment to foster self-directed activities and creative pursuits. Not all are gifted.

Accordingly and alternatively, those with a “developmental disability” or with “neuro differences” are also provided with special attention even extending to provision for dedicated aides or paraprofessionals who literally attend to individuals throughout a school day from arrival to departure on the yellow bus or special transportation.

Frustrated parents of all or many school children may even look to extension of the school day and advocate for the need to provide special transportation such as that provided for school athletes who practice a few hours after the scheduled classes end. If special buses can be justified for jocks with well developed bodies, why not for kids who lack development of mind, body or both.

Coaches of athletic teams know tht nutrition should be optimized for development. When nutrition at home is sub-standard, the coach will advocate for more and better meals at school. Individual differences may be accommodated for those who need bulk (interior linemen on a football team) or those who need agility and speed. Why is optimized nutrition not available for everyone’s child?

Sources of frustration abound as external drivers for what schools do with and without technology. When a technology addresses a problem or frustration, adoption may follow.

Commercial Interests

Textbook publishers have a strong interest in education and may be either drivers or roadblocks. They certainly act to conserve both content and method for classroom instruction. Publishers may have been among the founding forces for instructional design — skpecifying or stipulating the delivery of content and the methods for acceptable delivery. After all the textbook is about as comon for education as is the neat rows of desks and the black, green or white board. It is not surprising that an early Learning Management System (LMS) was called Blackboard.

Apple and Microsoft along with Adobe, Google and other computing technology companies were early advocates for technology in education. Their software and even certain hardware, along with that of their early partners in development, were given away free to schools and even more explicitly to teachers who were early adopters willing to articulate innovative instructional uses of word processors,(Word, WordStar), spreadsheets (Supercalc, Lotus 1,2,3 and Excel) and presentation tools (hypercard, PowerPoint). Even programming was recognized as a necessary skill for future generations of workers supporting education in and through corporate environments.

Today education is a big sector for venture capital investments and drivers of innovation. Not much remains free, although Open Source and Open Access delivers value to education.

Societal Optimism

As technology became more and more ubiquitous in business and engineering firms and even not-for-profit establishments, it is not surprising that parents and school officiels or board members began to weigh in with questions and observations about potential for use in education. Because early on, the manufacturers and vendors of digital technology encouraged much speculation about value for education. Parents saw the future needs of their children to master the tools of technology as did parents of prior generations for reading, writing and arithmetic.

One hundred years ago, small rural communities, often with some form of support from a religious entity such as a church or synagogue or mosque(admittedly very rare in early America) to hire a teacher. These early rural teachers may have been recent high school graduates from a city school system, or a bright rural kid of 14, 15, 16 who was subsidized to attend a private local collegiate school. These private school often had a religious affiliation. Accordingly the graduate was welcomed back into a rural community where in the case of many females, an eligible bachelor might propose marriage. In the case of males, teaching in a rural school would become a stepping stone to further education and hence to community or church leadership.

Importing technology to make schooling more effective, efficient or simply more attractive to youth, fostered enthusiasm. Community leaders recognized how digital technologies were changing their worlds and saw the need to prepare youth for the workplace of a new future. Unfortunately too many rural schools still struggle to catch up and meet societal optimism and the expectations for access to digital technologies.

Intrinsic Drivers

It is more likely that important motivation is a result of intrinsic drivers. Drives and motivation are almost synonyms … at least they are in the book by Daniel Pink, which is entitled simply; Drive.

This may be a good time to look toward ERIC with keywords intrinsic motivation …

In an ideal world, teachers would be constantly looking for new instructional methods to assure uniform progress toward an ideal of student achievement. School leaders struggle to create a culture of innovation. This ideal may be a characteristic of some school settings and circumstances but certainly not all. This would likely entail a constant state of sharing in what is working or a best practice. These implementations may evolve as they replace shop-worn tools that need either replacement or sharpening. Replacement often means new development of knowledge and skill on the part of a teacher or teaching assistants. Sharpening skills may offer simultaneously with use, but offten demands time off line. In either case the instructional staff may well be best served by release time from teaching to pursue something new. In an extreme case, provision for sabbatical leave can be very helpful. At least a sabbatical leave may free the teacher from routines that are embedded in both schedule and thinking. A break of a few months or a full school year, may obviate or ameliorate burn-out. Access to the technology outside of the normal school day can be helpful. It is fortunate that school districts are now able to provide personal computers, mostly in the form of laptops and tablets, to teachers. The portability of laptops and tablets, as well as the nicely inexpensive Chromebook, enable access on evenings and weekends that would not have been available in the era of clunky desktop towers, monitors and keyborads.

The Internet can be thought of as either extrinsic or intrinsic. It is certainly as extrinsic as anything imaginable when the World Wide Web literally can connect teachers across continents and over oceans. But in another sense the Intenet and WWW are intrinsic in that it is a personal matter what is searched and how the results of a search are seen as applicable to the needs of the teacher and the immediate lesson for tomorrows or next weeks lesson plan. More recently, open, generative artificial intelligence has enabled teacher planning in a way that is highly personal.The Internet also drives communication among disciplines. Sharing of lesson plans is anything but a central planning effort even granted that the sharing and recognizing of best practice in another teacher's classroom may have a centralizing and leveling impact of choices in a way that no centrally planned curriculum could ever have without an authoritarian top-down mandate for teachers. It is probably unnecessary to say that top-down planning robs the teacher of agency and a self-directed or intrinsic sense of control.

More Frustrations

Frustration may seem painful but exploration may well reveal that frustration and pain come from very different part of the nervous system. So when we consider frustration from extrinsic sources and intrinsic sources there may be important differences to consider.

What, then, are the internal or intrinsic sources of frustration. One would have to consider intrinsic aspiration and modestly formal or articulated goals for a future condition. What is the idea or ideal being sought? Articulating a goal is not easy and can be, in itself, a source of frustration particularly where external, top-down authority dictates books, curriculum, schedule as well as a host of other management matters.

It is also worth some consideration that there is also drivers of anti-technology. The recent frustrations with the applications of digital technologies accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic represents a case in point. Parents are not at all uniformly enthusiastic about their children being at home full time and planted in front of a rectangular screen with headphones for hours at a stretch. For the youngest, this means constant parental surveillance and supervision. The parent may have to stand in for the teacher when the child is frustrated with either the technology or with the lesson that a teacher is struggling to deliver in an interesting way through the technology. One technology, video conferencing and particularly Zoom, has become somewhat iconic for this era of sudden and unanticipated use of technology for instruction and substitution for the face-to-face classroom environments with which everyone, or almost everyone, was both familiar and comfortable. If nothing else the classroom management routines were a huge, if not universal, source of frustration with remote technologies like Zoom.

Competence

Competence and incompetence are typically paired as opposites and the language is often too easy to toss off and move on. However that is both useless and dangerous. Neither term is an absolute and each represents a gradient across a fuzzy scale or landscape. It may be safely said that no one is totally competent or incompetent when it comes to technology, particularly digital technology. Competence grows with use, and some level of incompetence precedes use. Of course, that is generally true with acquisition of any skill.

Early stages and early adopters may be frustrated but develop the “muscle memory” needed to exercise confident, competent use of technologies used in education.

Innovation

Education is criticized both inside and outside for what seems to be a profound lack of innovation. Should anyone be surprised? Given the range of demands on classroom teachers to manage a diverse array of participants, we should not be surprised. Just consider for a minute gender differences. When schools were gender segregated the management was less complicated by an order of magnitude. Similarly for racial and ethnic differences with and without the complications of language familiarity and skill.

Innovation often conflicts with a real need for uniformity and conformity. Classroom management is not for the faint of heart. And, of course, there is the matter of foolish treading into unknown territory that may actually be the lot of the beginning teacher in spite of what a college of education may or may not do to ease the transition with lab schools, practice teaching and the like. The beginning teacher may observe the pro, mentor, for a few days and then be tossed into the ocean-jungle to sink or swim. To eat or be eaten. Hardly a great driver for innovation.

But is is possible to imagine alternate scenarios. For instance:

What if every beginning teacher or teacher wannabee was assigned to one child, just like a parent or guardian—a quasi-omniscient godparent of sorts, the MKO—to do the absolute best for the child that can be done under the circumstance? There is no reason that should be delayed until age twenty-two and a college diploma. It could as well begin at age fourteen with mentored development of a host of backgrounding skills and knowledge and a positive attitude as well as decent compensation while working and living in a neighborhood ecosystem.

Perhaps from that base of one child, skills, knowledge and attitudes for advancing the child’s own skills, knowledge and attitudes could emerge as a new paradigm for dealing with education. Realities would emerge and rarely support the relationship remaining one-on-one, but it is also unlikely that another classroom would spontaneously form. Home-based education could become cooperative and engage families in a community of developers, solving local challenges and reaching beyond the basics to embrace a global perspective built around Our Planetary Imperative.

If two or more beginning teachers were afforded freedom to meet and design many new and beneficial rules for child and adult would emerge and could be shared through digital tools and networks, with opportunities to test and try. New systems could rise from experience and enable a rich host of best practices.

What seems most needed is space to try some things that are different. Making an existing school conform to that space for innovation may only be an exercise in more frustration.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Christensen and Johnson Disruption in Education …

EdBiz

AV/IT

Open Sources & Open Access

Yuval Noah Harari. 20xx. Homo sapiens. Sapiens.

Kahn Academy and Kahnmingo AI software tutoring.

FRAGMENTED: Perveyors of technology … are committed to making a sale … to expanding a market or making a market … market size and share; market share is a HUGE driver .. make no mistake education is a huge market with plenty of niches …

empowerment for innovation …

The first challenge would be to assure the child's comfort and a measure of pleasure. Rule One would be: First Inflict No Pain. Pain and gain are not linked except in a clever rhyming alliteration; no pain no gain. Pushing the body enough to induce or generate endorphins may be perceived as pain or just simply necessary; no different from locating a street corner vendor of pleasure producing or pain reducing drugs. The first challenge is to alleviate, not induce, pain. Oxytocin and vasopressin are superior to oxycontin and heroin. That is a physiological fact. Is it possible to overdose and become addicted to extrinsic oxytocin? Probably. Maybe about a penchant for ribeye or walleye.

Chapter XXXV

Computing should be taught as a rigorous—but fun—discipline covering topics like programming, database structures, and algorithms. That doesn’t have to be boring.

Geoff Mulgan

Big Data

The promise and peril of big data embraces ubiquitous access to information. The result will support a vast global campus of knowledge. This campus was called the Omega State by Jesuit scientist and visionary Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Chardin did not anticipate the vast ubiquity of digital data. His vision was limited to the knowledge contained in human minds and written in books made with ink on bound bundles of paper. His imagined noosphere—a layer of knowledge—formed a layer of data and information that surrounded the globe as another layer along with life (the biosphere) and life-giving gases (the atmosphere). Our contempoorary proliferation of computing and storage options has opened a new dimension that is spreading over our planet and even threatening our very concept of space-time in ways that Einnstein could, himself, never imagined. Handling all of theis big data is indeed a new form of rocket science.

Knowledge available is one thing, understanding it is quite another. Understanding requires preparation of the mind along multiple paths. Out tendency is to expect education to provide those paths in some orderly. universal way to all. We know from much bitter experience with schooling that the ideal of everyone prepared to some desired level just doesn't happen easily, inexpensively or very well. With education as with everrything else it is impossible to have anything fast, cheap and high quality. Pick two because you can;'t have all three. The result for education is very uneven. It is too early on to know if big data will have an impact to change that. If there is change, What part or parts will change?

The beauty of mass data is its flexibility. In the past flexicility was mainly a consequence of memory. This means that following a well worn path is not necessary. It becomes possible to pick and choose a path different from what has gone before. I am reminded of the Robert Frost poem where two paths diverged in the the woods. I took the path less traveled and that made all the difference. It is, however, necessary to first get on some path into the woods.

Access is still daunting. The old addage of first being able to find the on-off switch still holds; but now that on-off switch exists with a new level of complication and complexity … and cost. The owners of data see data as an asset, a property, that they will rent. If you want to live in their data warehourse condominium, you will pay. As long as there is value you will pay and pay. Constructing your own data bank is a very costly proposition. The big data bankers are currently willing to keep the cost low enough to drive business growth and keep profits small but scalable. We should all begin to worry about the inflection point. That will happen when the data property owners will inevitably turn on the rockets launching a steep upward trajectory for profit.

The content of this chapter willl entail artificial intelligence, cloud computing, SAAS, Graphic Communication, Data Vending, The Medical Model.

Artificial Intelligence

The big elephant in the room is AI. Man and Machine; or, Man v. Machine. We had beeter develop an attitude of cooperation because there is little room for a fight and no place to flee. Your personal Big Sister is here, assisted by your Big Brother, and is watching your every move or keystroke. Ready to pounce on any error. Decisions are being second-guessed but there is little consequence for sheer stupidity or, it seems, fabrication apart from reality.

AI has been made possible on massive scale by a combination of inexpensive storage and parallel processing. A single computer is not a limiting factor because a simple desktop or laptop can access the computational power of literally a thousand nodes of unused computing power and through s systems of servers, combine millions of computations per second to produce a result on your personal monitor screen or screens.

Blumberg News has been a huge player in this arena for years and has been joined in a multitude of ways by Hewlett Packard, Dell, and many others. Microsoft has a role but it is not clear to me at this point what that role actually is. Google, Facebook, Microsoft are, or seem to be, a bit on the periphery since they are not makers of hardware like HP and Dell, but they are more than capable of purchasing the needed hardware and then doing the needed programming for AI.

Apple, with it commanding market in iPhone products, has nnever been particularly open with its code and sources while building a monster in the AI room. They may be a little unique and should be watched for an emerging roles in AI, Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Large Language Models, Natural Language Processing, et cetera. Apple’s beginnings with educational applications may now seem very distant, but it should be hard for anyone to ignore that well in excess of the world human population now possesses a smartphone. And never mind that these are not all iPhones, they are still pretty damn smart. Capacity to link is building out globally. Apart from the perils of despotic, authoritarian control, massive capacity for linking is a game changer for education.

Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook are the first be mentioned as champions in the AI arena, but for every one of these five, there are a host of start-ups with imagination and aspirations to be acquired. AI is here, permanent, and we may as well embrace its potential while we create a brand-new safe playground for imagination and innovation.

Sal Kahn, progenitor of the now famous Kahn Academy of video tutorials, months ago sang a spirited song about dangers of AI as a cheating-assistance machine for school kids. That has now turned around and Kahn is now a champion for AI embraced for tutoring, Kahn-style. Imagine every neighborhood supported with Sal Kan’s commitment, generosity, sharing, sensitivity, persistence with the world treated as a cousin is treated and encouraged with a “can do it” attitude. With neighborhoods as breeding grounds for other Kahn-like people, we could treat the all the world as cousins.

Cloud Computing

Storage is a massive problem in computing that has been solved through massive storage. The players are Microsoft, Amazon, Google and now Facebook. Each of these firms have mounted massive numbers of servers in facilities that are clean and cool. The result is anyone with a few bucks a month can store their data in the Cloud with almost no fear of corruption, being cracked or restricted access. The amount of redundancy is amazing. And, these Cloud Serivice firms will enable applications that create a very intimate relationship with your personal computing divide whether desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. As long as there is a high speed Internet available through wi-fi or phone link, your data is always available.

Of course, safety isn’t perfect, there are vulnerabilities to be considered. Hackers and crackers, can create ransom-ware that could cost you a bundle of cash, bitcoin or someting else of value. There is no reason to believe that schools are not vulnerable. A search of Google or some other databases for ransom-ware and schools will likely reveal that such vulnerability has already been used by more than a few crooks.

SaaS

Software As A Service has been growing along with access to mass storage and high speed transmission. The big players like Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, Lexus-Nexus, can be costly enough to be affordable to only major corporate players; although Microsoft has made some limited release available to the public at large with some concession to reasonable cost. SaaS means that the operating code is stored in the Cloud and is never fully downloaded to a working terminal. The instructions for any particular operation are available as-needed and just-in-time. In this sense the personal computer, tablet or smartphone is acting like a dumb terminal or, perhaps bettered described or labeled as a electro-mechanical slave to the mass operating and storage data in the Cloud. Your laptop becomes a tool for access. MS 365 is a really good and fairly easy to follow example. I don't know that there are any open-source systems that are at all comparable. Accordingly, a lot of the future may be pay-to-play.

Users of SaaS are beholden to constant update of licenses, typically on a per-device or desk basis. This can be a gotcha, especially when your personal data is also “in the Cloud” and your access to it depends upon payment of an annual license fees. You are essentially paying rent, and don't actually own anything. The legal nuances involved are part of the very fine print of end user legal agreements (EULAs) that almost no one except attorneys of large corporations ever read. Most users thoughtlessly click the I Agree button, and get on with installations and whatever else they have to do.

Google Cloud and Google Services are something of an unusual and perhaps instructive example of SaaS and an exception that needs to be fully expored to develop a narrative story for everyone who cares about the future of education; especially since Google has become such a dominant player in education. Google Education may even be said to be a dominant element in education's ecology. The big rap on Google involves the selling of its data … to an extent that is incumbent on educators of all stripes (school or not school) to examine the depth of ethics at Google as well as the ethics of the critics of Google. Are Google critics being ethical? Or, are they merely seeking a piece of the action? This is a broad criticism that needs to be fully fleshed out for all of education's ecology.

Google’s presence in education's ecology is such a many-headed monster that it could be the subject of another book.

Graphic Communication

There was a day when all we had was words and hand-waving to communicate. When words were committed to ink-on-paper the hand-waving was re-oriented but hardly eliminated, at least by the readers of the writing—oratorical flourishes are now aided by tools like a tele-prompter. Journalists and politicians take lessons and practice to hide their reading. Face-to-face communications added facial expressions to augment and sometimes add meaning, however ambiguous or even misleading the contortions of the facial muscles may be. Telling a lie with bright sparkling eyes and a big toothy smile could be an art form—a kind of personal theatrical enterprise with a strange but profitable way of extracting money from a vulnerable source. Used car salespeople of the past, come to mind. Being an actor meant acting out a part for an audience of one.

Paper has now become virtual and appears to be three-dimensional in the hands of skilled graphic designers. Today studios produce animated characters that are incredibly lifelike. Pixar is the iconic enterprise, but plenty of other players in the space of animated messages and entertainment exist. Tools for animation are inexpensive enough for anyone who takes the time needed to develop skills in their use can become adept enough to join the ranks of a whole new cadre of communicators. It is now possible to utilize skills in graphic communication to tell a persuasive story. This can range from using simple stick figures to graphs with two or three dimensions. Combined with voice and music, these productions are able to depict ideas, concepts, principles based on data in fully animated stories. Cost is constantly coming down and talent is concomitantly rising to meet a growing demand. The big elephant in the room is the quality of data behind these representations. The slick smile is still available to put emotion in motion for persuasion. How, we should be asking, can education provide just the right amount of critical questioninng and nudge insight in a safe and truthful direction?

AI seems now to be able to reconstruct and mimic anything or anyone. A robotic teaching assistant could become impossible to distinguish from a live person. Will robots someday form a union and demand equal pay?

Data Vending

The owners of big data sets will almost inevitably attempt to monetize the data. Unfortunately it is not always possible to assure anonymity before this monetization takes place. The danger is tha whatever may have been thought to be private is no longer private. At some level, the targeting of advertising can and does preclude anonymity. Your preferences are in the cloud and are attached to your devices with a very sticky glue. The glue is your device identity and your IP Address which is mediated through a maze of links. The big data firms know you very well.

Accumulation of big date on individuals can and likely will mean trouble unless steps are taken to protect the data by assuring that all data sets are properly anonymized—identifying particulars or details removed—before release. There has been significant, if not at all perfect, progress with medical records. As education advances beyond the simplicity of schooling and begins to embrace lifelong human development potentials, the individual records of everyone will be assembled into big data stores. It will then become fodder for the machines of commerce and industry. Wherever there is a buyer, there is a lurking sellet.

This, almost certainly, means that education has a challenge in the shape of a very nasty problem. This problem has to be framed as a paradox. Either school-based educators will not have access to individual data or they will be at the mercy of a whole new subset of participants in the educational enterprise. Thus education will be at the mercy of psychometricians—psychologists with graduate training in advanced statistical methods needed to interpret test data and other performance measurements. These well-meaning folks are mucking around in a swamp armed with increasingly sophisticated arrays of measurement numbers. Already large school systems and state education agencies across America scramble to build their own corp of psychometric specialists or outsource specifications to private firms who now do this public work for them. In either case this represents an expense that education through public schooling has never had to deal with in prior decades. Meanwhile the data will be vulnerable to exploitation and vending.

The Medical Model

The path to personalized medicine travels through a huge forest of big data. Medical research and accumulation of data has taken an upward trajectory over the past two decades. It is very unlikely that records from your visits to a medical clinic have been totally excluded. The rules about access to your personal data in this vast forest have been laid down in legislation called HIPPA (Health Information Patient Privacy Act). This is comforting. It prevents Insurance firms from targetting you for higher rates or no insurance at all. You have some meager protection from the death deciders among us.

However, personalized medicine has laudable goals of universal prevention, prediction, personalization and participation. It is very unlikely that any of these broad goals will ever be reached without big data and the implementation of artificial intelligence to read, understand and deliver the promise of improved health or reduced incidence of poor health. Prevention is a first step by recognizing what factors put health at risk and implementing steps at individual and population levels to guide behavior in non-risky directions. We already have plenty of data about the impacts of smoking to prevent a huge chunk of lung cancer. Big data will point to preventative practices for many more of the major killers. Big data will also enable medical practitioners to read an individual's data to find the unseen traps and barriers to stable health and longevity that predict problems ahead. Individuals can then take personal control of lifestyle elements to extend their years of well being. As tools for access to medical big date become more ubiquitous and easily accessed, we will see greater participation by individuals. Artificial intelligence will feed just the right data and persuasive messages to your favorite screen. Your access to personalized medicine will demand your participation. Education’s challenge may be enabling self-directed efficacy for personal health across a lifetime.

The path to this impact of big data for medicine is being established in biological laboratories as we write, think, and speak. The operative suffix is OMICS. Omics dominate medical research. Genomics is most visible as the result of the Human Genomics Project and its offspring technologies of quickly and cheaply reading our personal DNA, but transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and epigenomics are coming into focus as new instrumentation is developed to enable molecular biologists to see scientifically emerging new relationships. The science enables reliable or confident understanding of patterns and relationships. (SEE Chapter XVII for more details ). This is still and will likely remain for some time a top-down model because of the high administrative costs. It is not at all clear how these administrative costs are going to be absorbed by public ownership. At the present time the emphasis is almost wholly on privatization of data. The current array of medical records companies hold a great part of their data in proprietary banks accessible only to those who hold an appropriate license or have labored through a maze of challenges seeking permission for access. But important change will co-evolve with social pressure and profit motives.

The implications for the medical model for education are daunting. Not the least of concern is that not only is the potential range of data for education able to dwarf data for medicine, but that our knowledge of where to start is mostly mired in a host of questionable past practices. Education has nothing equivalent to anatomy, physiology, pathology and biochemistry on which to build a foundation for deep understanding. Puffy references to massive test scores and “learning” just don’t cut the missing mustard.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Shoshanna Zuboff. 2xxx. Surveillance Society.

Kissinger et al. Artificial Intelligence …

Singh, J. 2023. (future of medical care) …

Hood, Leroy. (find a review or reference the ISB in Seattle.)

Chapter XXXVI

It is no light matter to put in jeopardy a single life which is the very singularity of each life which underpins the idea of a just society.

Tom Stoppard

Evolution Evolving

Ray Kurzweil, polymath and computer scientist, has formulated an interesting concept about technology advancement. He calls attention to the Law of Accelerating Returns, which effectively says that technological advance advances itself. The more technological innovation that occurs in a specific field of engineering leads to not only more innovation but an acceleration of innovation. In other words, the rate of innovation increases exponentially. The exponent is increasing. Instead of innovation occuring at X2 it occurs at X2.1, X2.2, X2.3 and so on. This all suggests, of course, that the rate of change across society in all of its facets is accelerating. Acceleration is supported by each new technology.

Kurzweil introduced the notion of a spiritual machine and recognized the concept of evolutionary systems. These systems include but are not limited to technological systems. Like the evolution in natural systems, technological systems are also vulnerable to competition and find survival deeply challenged as new technologies emerge. Some new technologies do not survive. Witness the promising 8-Track video tapes or the laser discs not to mention vinyl records and even CDs and DVDs. Good luck even finding a 8-Track or Laser Disc player that you could connect to any other array of devices including your desktop, laptop or tablet computer. Even the connection technology has evolved with new low-voltage cables, which are themselves being replaced by wireless connections.

Technologies in many forms can provide a foundation for new innovation. However, there is also organizational readiness for innovation, expansion and taking new approaches to scale. Education has certainly adopted a range of digital technologies, but the foundations for using the technologies are hide bound to a paradigm or way of doing the activity of education in highly stereotyped ways that may trap new technologies in a bottle with a tight cork.

In this chapter we will look at the Law of Accelerating Returns in the following areas: teaching, testing, textbooks and technology itself.

Teaching

The act of teaching is euphemistically considered an art-form. Efforts are underway at major elite universities to move education into the realm of science with an increasing emphasis on empirical observations, research questions, and experimental attempts to falsify hypotheses. The US Department of Education supports an Institute for Education Science. It is noteworthy that a significant accomplishment of the IES has been the development of a database to support searching for education literature using keywords or descriptors as well as author, title, journal and the articles index number. The database called ERIC supports free access. Although the search engine makes it easy to find free articles, many if not most articles are proprietary, requiring institutional subscriptions. This is limiting, of course, to teachers in most K-12 schools and districts. Proprietary databases are a huge barrier to dissemination of information that a teacher may find relevant to a classroom application or challenge. Nevertheless, the ERIC data is a worthwhile advance.

Ostensibly a teacher would, within a scientific rubric, be able to apply with precision a tool or technique that would advance the development of a student. Some of this may actually be true were it not for the constant attention that the teacher musp pay to classroom management. The matter of classroom management is certainly not neglected in ERIC search results. The descriptor “classroom management” yielded over 16,000 results, clearly a concern of interest to authors. Descriptor “teacher training” by some contrast yielded around 70,000 results or hits. Refining the last search to include only articles where the full-text is available from ERIC, mostly as a PDF file, the hits drop to 29,000. However, ERIC is a tool of importance enabling teachers to locate studies related to their areas of interest. As teaching gains ground applying more of the unfolding science related to learning and development, this database will gain an accelerating use by educators.

Teachers may, and many do, seek better ways to convey lessons to pack the brain with concepts, principles, stories and ideas along with the facts and vocabulary to enable a student or group of students to demonstrate some form or forms of proficiency. Those forms of proficiency primarily include tests for which time must be set aside for test administration. So far technologies have been mainly used for test administration to groups that assemble at a specific time in a designated space where the computers are available. There are, of course, many forms of evaluation of student progress than the familiar multiple choice test items. Grading or evaluation of essays already takes in spelling and grammar. Software can look for plagerism also. The level of vocabulary used in writing can also be ranked on a scale indicating the extent to which the student is using appropriate words and phrases in an appropriate context.

Technology can hardly be expected to protect teachers from the changes being heaped on education by society including inequality, poverty, parental expectations, racial overtones and undertones and many more. That teachers are overwhelmed, retiring, burning out or just plain quitting should not be ignored. Burnout may signal a catastrophy in education that could foreshadow evolutionary or revolutionary channge.

Testing

The application of technology to testing has long been a goal of educators. Machine scoring with perfect accuracy is the holy grail. And even beyond a holy grail is instantaneous statistical interpretation of not just an individual score but the score on a single test item for both an individual and for a group or cohort that may share with the individual some seemingly important characteristic such as age, gender, race, prior education or experience, family, geography, demographics, prior schools success and on and on and on.

Machine scoring is no longer limited to so-called “objective” testing with multiple choice questions in their variety of forms. Essay exams can now be graded or at leasst ranked according to multiple protocols with spelling and grammar at the base and ranging toward complexity of vocabulary and expression.

We should take a minute to distinguish two major forms of testing that are quite different particularly with regard to goals and outcomes. These two forms are formative and summative. Formative tests seek to measure the extent to which a student has successfully traveled along a path toward learning or development. Summative tests are “for keeps.” These are the big elephants in the testing room. High stakes tests that determine any of many things such as passing, achieving elite grades, advancing a grade level, meeting graduation requirements set by a local district or the state in which the district is afforded a franchise to operate, the status of a school and its teachers, principals or certain support staff, admission to college, and on and on. Our national prestige is reflected in the massed scores of high school students on an International exam, the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment).

Teacher constructed tests are fine for formative evaluations according to some educators who carry labels of psychometricians. However, it is the summative evaluations that are honored and widely supported. These examinations are being produced through educational testing serivice firms such at ETS and Pearson. They don’t come cheap and evaluation and validation of what results mean now requires an army of individuals who never enter a classroom but spend workdays in front of screens sorting and analyzing data from test results.

Alternative evaluations will evolve to embrace a paradigm for personal choice and self-directed personal development. Each person will evaluate themselves and their relationships to a group of group with which they either intermitently or continuously affiliate. This already happens, though admittedly somewhat unevenly, within professional organizations. For instance, there is ongoing professional development in medicine, law, accounting, computing and many high end trade crafts and with special skilled workers like airline pilots, and, very conspicuously, in scholarly disciplines where peer review is de rigueur. Members are recognized for their leadership and potential for contributions to the working standards of the whole. Medical practitioners are required to satisfy annual requirements for hours devoted to keeping current with research and best clinical practice routines in their field of specialty. In medicine, perhaps more than other professions, the advancement of new scientific knowledge is making bedside decisions increasingly complex through technology transfer—bench to bed—as the saying goes.

Computer Adaptive Tests (CATs); adaptive testing; CATSIB; Differential Item Function (DIF);are taking place alongside more conventional means of tests and evaluations. It is foreseeable that artificial intelligence will enable machines to enable self-testing to occur across virtually all dimensions of work, life and play. Physical fitness regimes are already making highly personal strategies for health and fitness possible without a trainer required. Video tools are even making the role of coaches unnecessary if not more highly specialized and focused on points of relevance where machines do not yet fit effectively and comfortably.

Textbooks

I don't find it at all difficult to imagine a day, fairly soon, when textbooks will be a thing of the past, relegated to the dustbin, a memory of a bleak period in the history of education. The first textbook was probably the Torah and Bible along with the later emerging Queran. These books represented the so-called Word of God, writing that was divinely inspired and therefore an unquestioned source of everything important for life. Accordingly, schools formed along with a temple, church or mosque to assure that these books were known and the dogma followed, yes, religiously. Until about the 15th Century little could be read personally and the readers of holy text included a hierarchy of priest-like beneficiaries and benefactors. Gutenberg changed all that.

Printing with ink on paper and the binding of paper between rigid covers has been a mainstay for education across a few hundred years. Knowledge was passed from practitioners to apprentices and acolytes by word of mouth to direct and adjust action in craft-like manners. Preaching and teaching were nearly synonyms and little distinction differentiated education and indoctrination.

Of course certain other non-religious sources of knowledge emerged. Medical practices come to mind. The foundations for medical practice included anatomy. For many centuries the dominant textbook of anatomy was that of Galen. The words of Galen were followed with almost religious fervor and allegiance until the Renaissance when Vesalius took time to dissect many bodies and draw a broad range of anatomical structures. Later Gray's Anatomy became dominant. Its plentiful illustrations were rendered with black ink on white paper until enterprising printers were able to add color; arteries rendered in red, veins in blue and nerves in yellow. Photography never quite replace the beauty of hand drawing that could render images depicting a third dimension that could not actually exist on paper. Then along came 3-D models, stereoscopic photography (Viewmaster) and layers of drawing on acetate pages. The lecturer was also equipped with brighlly colored slides. Dissection of gross anatomy became de rigeur and microscopic anatomy assumed a firm place alongside the cadaver. A Fourth dimension was added with a timeline of development from egg, embryo, fetus and an infant that grew through multiple stages to an adult and then an aging adult.

The textbook began to take a secondary place in anatomy classes. Gray's Anatomy reached toward 1,000 pages. Primary source literature with peer reviewed articles encouraged looking beyond a static body of knowledge to facilitate broad expansion of concepts, principles and ideas leading to innovation is specialized medical fields including but certainly not limited to surgery.

Textbooks are products, produced as they almost inevitably are by authors of stature, recruited by publishers working for profit and sharing royalties from sales with authors. Publising houses are big businesses and must remain competitive to succeed. Accordingly the publishers and editors are constantly seek an edge or competitive advantage. This often takes the form of inclusion of cleverly written topics, eye-catching illustrations and so-called “learning aids” the purchase or adoption of atextbook is often accompanied by a shower of gifted support materials.

Lecturing and writing for education will almost inevitably take on a new vistige. In every field of human endeavor, development will be led by experts; those individuals who press forward to advance the state of art. It will likely remain that these talented people will write and lecture in order to share their experiences and the stories of their path to development of skills and knowledge. With the advent of ubiquitous and simple media, the day may not be far off where authoring and publishing a textbook will be superfluous—even gratuitous.

Technology Itself

Technology cannot be separated from the skills needed to make use of what technology may have to offer. Accordingly it is often a necessity to provide training for potential users. Technology can be uncomfortable and, aside from early adopters who will gamely try anything, most people will require some period of “hand holding” before they are willing and able to venture forth without a chaperon. Chaperones are expensive and sometimes the lack of a chaperon is even more expensive. Accordingly there is a synergy emerging with new technology to make it more and more forgiving when a novice tries out a new venture and clogs the working of a machine. With digital technology it has become a rule lately to just “shut down” and restart. The industry has come to rely on users to do a great deal of preliminary troubleshooting before calling the help desk. It is also more and more common for the help desk to be handled by an algorithm. People are the last resort because people are expensive. It is hard to find a helpdesk that is not ‘helped’ by artificial intelligence.

Here it may be useful to distinguish between demands for technology and the actual benefits of technology in the forms with which it has become available for education.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the extreme sequestration demanded for public health had a huge impact on education and propelled educators to almost instantly switch from the familiar routines of face-to-face classroom instruction and make use of technology. Now that the COVID pandemic has receded in intensity, at least in many places, educators are once again expressing their preference for face-to-face teaching. However, despite a propensity on the part of the public and educational professionals to agree with the body of the teacher corp, there is now a base of evidence about benefits of remote teaching that will not long be ignored. The irrefutable fact is that there is a sizable cohort of both teachers and students that loved remote access to teachers without the constraints of school buildings and schedules. A new world for personal human development has been evealed and there is no going back.

I used to lament that when using audio-visual tools for teaching, I was competing with Walter Cronkite. His access to technology made anythng I did look amateurish at best and incompetent at worst. Trying to keep up with media companies with their seeming unlimited resources to tell the stories of news every night, was fraught. One look at the credits rolling at the end of a segment or program should convince anyone who cares that no teacher can compete with that for quantity or quality.

It should be noted that drivers of evolution in technology are not dependent upon what schools may do or prefer. Most technology arises from other societal (read business, commercial) needs and is then adopted for education. However the education industry is slowly acquiring a potential place for itself in accelerating technology improvement and innovation. There will be a struggle to shed the practices of the past; practices that are perceived as effective even while evidence for effectiveness is very thin. Nevertheless, education can be a driver and the emerging paradigms of Eduction Science and Education Ecology may well become a new force for technology creation, application and advancement.

The source of resources for major media companies is advertising. Looking more closely at contemporary media companies like Google, Apple, Facebook as well as Amazon and Microsoft, and not to mention a host of broadcast and cable outlets it is clear that advertising has accelerated and has brought with it a rich array of media itself in the forms of music, animation, directing and acting skills; all suported and enhanced by motion picture technologies. One could erroneously think that this is all just entertainment and art. It is more, much more. The technology space at play may be orders of magnitude beyond education. If you doubt it, just take a look at the technology that Pixar is able to bring to bear, at a cost of $millions, to roduce blockbuster story releases probing the meaning of Souls and our emotions.

Who, beside embedded schoolists, believe that schools with teaching, textbooks, testing and even spectacular technologies will ever be enough? That is, enough to grasp the enormity and meaning of human life on earth and the universe. Education today is barely a kiss and a promise. Certainly nothing to be taken very seriously. It is time to break the mold and design something better and fully worthy of our humanity.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Kurzweil, Ray. 2005. The Singularity is Near. … multiple titles

Chapter XXXVII

Public discourse has ben polluted now for decades by corporate-funded disinformation—not just with climate change but with a host of health, environmental ans societal threats. The implications for the planet are grim.

Michael E. Mann

Wicked Business

Splitting Our Future

The matter of technology in education’s ecology is not going to be settled or closed with any comments I may provide, but this chapter will touch on a few factors and forces at play going forward that have not been considered yet but that may be important for designing alternatives to the so-called “systems” we currently endow with our language about education. Expanded application of thinking in systems for education is a worthwhile goal for future planning or designing but education is such a many headed monster and so closely tied to society that efforts to make sense of new initiatives are fraught to say the least. It is likely that the notion of “design” for education is no more possible than it is for evolution or any feature or facet of society and culture that can be identified or named.

I don’t see any global remaking of education along the lines I have either criticized or eulogized along the way though prior chapters. My sense is that education will continue to take well worn paths and occasionally put down some new surfaces, refresh some signaling guideposts to accept careful alternatives and loosen the direction to enable useful efficient, customized routing. I do believe that schooling as it has been known will diminish but not relinquish its strangling grip on education. I regret my difficulty in being optimistic about revolution or even evolutionary changes. Too many “what ifs?” remain.

Systems

Any ecology of education must recognize the importance and role of systems. Future change across any dimension of education will depend upon finding the elements of the system that are most critical to maintaining the system and leverage those elements for change. If those elements were obvious or easy to find and alter, education as a body within society could have changed dramatically long ago. The problems listed in part one are just my list. There are plenty of other lists, some global, embedded and practically intractable, some easily correctable. Thinking in and about systems is important for acting globally, interacting regionally and thinking critically and creatively about how developing local approaches for education that attack whatever problems are on someone’s list.

Systems have been addressed or invoked frequently in prior sections of the book. Thinking in systems means envisioning a smaller part of greater complexity and attempting to understand input that affects output and outcome, while identifying borders and acknowledging limits for control systems. Here we will expand on systems thinking in the context of schools and education, but that must also embrace society writ large, if for no other reason that education is a societal function and itself a system for both stabilizing and changing cultures.

Systems thinking is embedded across economics, environment and justice to name just three important societal functions. Education’s ecology must be increasingly included with systems thinking as a framework for reworking details that make up the enterprise that will enable a planetary imperative.

It is now time to look at education in terms of the systems involved. Unfortunately with the paradigm of schooling so dominant in education, systems analysis will focus on schooling systems as well as a host of systems that support these schooling systems.

We say “school systems” as though the local districts sufficiently represent educational systems. The organization of local school districts are enfranchised by state statute with authority but also with considerable restrictions, to act responsibly on behalf of constituents to enable a collection of systems that provide for development of children from roughly age 4-5 through age 18.

Funding is one such system. These local franchises are funded locally by collection of authorized tax revenues, most typically on property, and increasingly by grants or contracts funded and enforced by state and federal department of education, and through grants through private foundations. That is a system for providing or supplying revenue for all of the other needed systems. All of which are systems, we may say, at a higher order. And, equally, within a school systerm are a host of sub or lower order systems.

The impact of an enormous collection of systems providing and supporting digital technologies in, on and for education is an extension of what has happened around the globe. Although higher education contributed greatly to development of concepts and principles for the digital revolution, the revolution for education has yet to fully materialize. The recent global pandemic brought on by the respiratory virus SARS Covid-19, jolted schoolists to rapidly use digital tools for remote learning while school environments were too dangerously contagious. Yet the return to normal classrooms with 20-3- students and a single teacher, has been equally rapid, although a few participants—students and teachers—saw potential for individualization and deviation from customary pacing practices. A few essential systems for digital access were put in place and some will remain. For instance, systems for broadband WiFi and use of laptop computers or handheld devices greatly expanded and represent reasonably stable emplacement of hardware.

One promising advance even prior to the pandemic, was development of instructional design. Those of us who embraced instructional design did so within a framework that supported the efficacy of schools, colleges and universities along with all of the accumulated traditions and historical baggage. There were some very worthwhile outcomes from the makers and shakers of instructional design thinking and the actions that flowed from design deliberations. Many teachers saw themselves as instructional designers with structured strategies and plans emphasizing more individualized student outcomes and new schemes for engagement and evaluation.

The for-profit sector, particularly in higher education, was built from design ideas that emerged from new roles for carefully selected, trained and coached faculty as delivery systems of independently designed curriculum using digital technology. Capella University in Minnesota is recognized as a highly successful model. Many others have run aground or afoul and have disappeared.

Charter schools at the pK-12 level, sought to open new thinking to foster innovation by designing to avoid the strictures of rigid schedules, age-based progress, mastery of skills, and other perceived short comings of traditional schooling systems. Charter School were initially seen by journalist Ted Kolderie and others as small test-beds for innovation that would eventually propel broad change for systems of education.

In California, Bela H. Banathy, a sociologist, saw design of instruction as one element of designing education to better fit and guide social systems. An early leader of the International Society for Systems Sciences, Banathy had played an important, even pivotal role, in designing the White Stag leadership program of the Boy Scouts of America. He gathered a cohort of systems advocates for an annual conversation at the Asilomar Conference Center near Monterey. An outcome of these affiliations, study, research and teaching at the Saybrook Graduate Institute was his 1991 book “Systems Design of Education: A Journey to Create the Future”, which recognized the needed co-evolution of social and schooling systems. I have been greatly influenced by the book as a work of startling prescience and depth.

Education’s Ecology, following Banathy, recognizes education is a social system that has opted for schools as a framework or paradigm. We now witness a monster in our midst that has all the charming characteristics of a factory to turn out youth-products to fit neatly into an industrial mold making merchandise, products for for able marketing by commercial firms and consumption by consumers. Military and Industry shake hands to assure a complex national sense of security and growth of an economy. Schools seem well suited to fit the mold. As a student, with Banathy, and pre-eminent professor of instructional design, Charles Reigeluth has written “it is time to break the mold.” The system based on schooling, has been in place too long, and has become too shop-worn to remain valuable.

Systems design of education may be a way to work beyond the embedded systems of education and see education in a very different frame. This can mean enlarging our scope or vision of what education is and who and what it should serve. However the problem or challenge for education does not lend itself to simple and straightforward solutions because the problems are neither simple nor straightforward. Education fits perfectly into what has been identified as a Wicked Problem.

After a topsy turvy consideration of Wicked Problems broadly, the chapter will look at Limits of language, Split Screens, and Our New World.

Wicked Problems

Definition is typically considered an essential first step before a problem can be solved. Wicked Problems are complex and such many-headed monsters they are nearly impossible to define. A consequence is that there is no single solution to a wicked problem. The borders of a wicked problem are fuzzy at best and nearly impossible to delineate.

Recognizing a problem as wicked is itself a challenge because attempts to create language for the problem is difficult, contradictory and in such a state of flux or change with layers of nuance that little can be pinned down or fixed sufficiently to enable productive conversations. Every wicked problem is probably unique, unmatched in any of the essential details that may have been described. Looking for models is fraught.

The discussion of a wicked problem is (typically)fragmented, incoherent, scattered. Participants talk past one another, often with egos bursting. Questions are difficult to formulate and too often demand such a rambling narrative to even frame the question, that questions fail to end with a tidy question mark.

Education is not a solution as has been too frequently assumed. This assumption usually has taken the form of just throw more information at the people who seem connected with the problem. Money is thought to substitute for information and educational leaders (the administrators) are too willing to take the money and run in some direction or another that looks something like progress. More research may be called forth, even when research questions remain in some form of limbo.

Wicked problems are, in a very real sense, political problems that almost cry for dictated, top down, solutions needing or demanding to be accepted reluctantly at a point that seems like the tip of a spear—or muzzle of a gun. Urgency is a frequent characterization. An authoritarian, often charming, pronouncement that takes on the flavor of dogma, winds up motivating bobble-headed acceptance. Presenters are often trained to nod their heads to get the audience to do the same. Questioning is not certainly not easily, casually or comfortably accepted.

Accordingly wicked problems do not spotlight simple, single minded solutions. A solution may actually appear as evil to some, while it also continues to be idealized by others. Misunderstanding from incomplete explanation, too often gives rise to accusations of nefarious motives, attributed to those attempting to articulate either problem definition or a partial solution. The partial solution may be characterized as misguided or evil itself.

Yet every wicked problem can be broken down, or reduced to parts and pieces. These can be solved partially and thus partially (potentially) contributing to solution to one or a few parts of a wicked problem. A result is disappointment or worse, demoralization about future of attempts to attack even tangible parts of the larger problem.

With a wicked problem it is too often necessary to abandon the quest for something resembling truth, as little can be established as absolute. Even gathering facts is troubled and too extensive or expensive to manage. With science, falsification is a stepping stone, yet with a wicked problem there may be nothing stated with enough clarity to falsify. Accordingly the methods of science are suspect or reasonably characterized as inadequate. It may only be possible to rank a proposed solution on a scale of better or less adequate, but well short of endorsement. Labeling a solution as adequate or inadequate may displace some potentially useful thinking. The result may be taking what seemed to be a productive conversation off the rails or into a collision with another forceful idea about a solution.

Attempted solutions are caught on the horns of a dilemma in that an attempt rarely lends itself to replication because conditions change and a cohort may have characteristics that only come together or come into statistical focus once. A descriptive account may represent an incremental or phenomenological increase in knowledge but may be impossible to fit into a usable context, denotation or even a suitable, satisfying connotation.

Wicked problems tend toward a vicious cycle. Solutions may become part of a vicious cycle because in attempting to find features of the problem that are unique, these features may seem to (or may actually) overlap with another problem that may tend to be treated as fostering the wicked problem. Put another way, a wicked problem may seem like a symptom of a totally different or a seemingly unrelated problem.

With wicked problems an attempted explanation tends to become embedded; a sort of framework for a solution. Where there are multiple explanations it may or may not necessarily follow that there are multiple viable solutions. Creativity may be swamped in muddy water pooling around each explanation and solution. For the most part, innovation is only fragmentary and isolated in some dark part of the wicked problem.

With wicked problems the explainer or solver takes on an unreasonable level of liability for the path that has been hacked out of a thicket. If the path leads nowhere it is discounted from future consideration. The result is abandoning chaos rather than seeking any form or forms of clarity. Nevertheless some sense may remain that worthwhile progress has been developed from the effort.

If we agree that education is a wicked problem, and keep that agreement in mind, our work with education’s ecology may hold some promise of tackling the system designs of education with some equanimity, a tranquility buoyed with some confidence that progress toward a worthwhile ideal is enough. At least we reduce our angst to a smaller part of the whole.

Limits Of Language

The limits of mind have bee said by Ludwig von Wittgenstein to be the limits of language; what I cannot say I cannot know.

Wittgenstein's work is attached to a school of philosophy know as phenomenology. Other adherents to this branch of philosophy were intent on exhaustive description of the world as they experienced it. It should come as no surpise that phenomenology was consistent with the behaviorism that took hold of psychology and fanned the flames of knowing the mind though the descriptions of actions rather than the speculation of what was then considered unknowable and thus non phenomenological—non objective—concepts as soul, mind and understanding. Little wonder that these concepts were relegated to the metaphysical practices in philosophy. Likewise there was remaining room for mystical interpretations to continue though the ranges (and ravages) of theology.

Within our focus on Education Ecology it is worthwhile to consider what it may mean to “understand” something. Language seems clearly linked to understanding, even as it may seem possible to understand what cannot be expressed. It is a vague “Yes, I get it!” that is expressing a feeling or sense that something now makes sense or feels good or right with an internal framework as well as the condition of an external world.

To understand is a verb rather than a noun. Nouns are considered in elementary grammar to be a person, place or thing. Pretty clearly understanding is neither person or place, leaving open for some additional consideration whether understanding could be a thing, an object that could be examined objectively and described phenomenologically. This would objectivize the matter of what it may mean to understand, even as understanding remains a verb.

There was a point in the late 1960s and early 1970s, greatly influenced by the rage of behaviorism in education where powerful advocates argued for elimination of the term understanding. I was left baffled but nevertheless tried to purge understanding from my vocabulary. We did that by meticulously couching all of our expectations for students in strictly behavioral terms. We said in every course syllabus or other statements of expectations; Upon completion of this (course, topic, lecture, activity) the student will be able to: recognize, relate, write, describe, compare and contrast, evaluate … and so forth. In other words we attempted to describe worthwhile outcomes of instruction in behavioral terms. Accordingly, our evaluations of students were intentionally constructed to seek performance of indicators from students that were parallel to our specifications of student expectations. One critical reaction was that we were “spoon feeding” students and should be looking for whether the students “understand” the material. What goes around, comes around!

That led some of my colleagues to look for indicators that students were making “connections” and that those connections or connectors were the real indicators of learning, understanding or changes in behavior and thinking. They were, of course, confident that they were being “objective.” Students who didn't seem to them to be making relevant connections were simply “stones” and beyond remediation, redemption or repair. I found these colleagues exhausting. And, I’m sure they felt exhausted, as well. They really wanted their students in large lecture classes to “get it.”

The guru of linguistics in the 1960 and 70s, and to a not inconsiderable extent today, is Noam Chomsky. His writing began to crack open the shell around behaviorism, opening potential for finding the way brains may be central to matters of language including the seemingly innate structures of grammar. Development across time and experience modified brain structures but the inherent capacity for acquisition of language must have been a result of our unique human evolution. We humans, almost universally, inherit capacity for acquiring language. The linking of language and cognition emerged along with evolutionary psychology and opening connections between neurology, neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and psychology including educational psychology. The construction of bridges is far from complete but progress continues. Of course, there there is considerable controversy.

The lingusit George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson fueled controversy within linguistics as they linked language to cognition and thinking through metaphor; suggesting that all language is metaphor, including grammar, and thus emphasizing the inevitable influence of experience on mental development. They have also seen language in and around the field of physiology. There is, for example, no escape from the role of breathing in making language through vocalization whether that language that emerges is filled with a rich vocabulary of words or an elaborate assembly of click sounds.

Evolutionary psychologist Stephen Pinker followed Chomsky and wrote the Language Instinct. His further venture into neuroscience with How the Mind Works may be considered a critical while illuminating a bridge beyond behaviorism and into a contemporary cognitive science that is fully aligned with the emerging new knowledge from the application of fundamental principles of biology that are fully aligned with evolution and developmental neuroanatomy.

Anatomical or structural explanations are beginning to illuminate the meaning of another awesome and awkward expression, the verb to learn. Learning is active and learned is passive. There is some tacit assumption that learning is gained or learned and that what has been learned can be lost; presumably some process of unlearning goes on. The angst of “learning losses” from the years of the global pandemic have been all over the literature of education.

Now it is common to turn the verb to learn into a noun—those who learn are called “learners.” These learners even in Kindergarten as also referenced as “scholars.” But then perhaps kindergarten is actually an open university of sorts, while MIT encourages engineering majors to work, think and play with the same enthusiasm they had in kindergarten.

Yet what it means to learn is rife with ambiguity and uncertainty. Memory is certainly an element, and demonstration of a memory by various means is taken as evidence of “learning” some thing or another thing. Recall of a traumatic expericne is equated to recall the spelling of a list of words. Could be! But that begs questions about what forms or changes in the brain for memory and how can that formation be reversed or lost, temporarily or permanently?

Eric Kandel, MD, received the Nobel Prize for his elegant work on memory using the snail Aplasia. His research showed that memory involved the formation of new connections—synapses—with and between neurons in the brain. The work fortified the field of neuroscience, for which Dr. Kandel is principle author/editor of the principle textbook. More recently, psychologists and neuroscientists Dan Tucker and Phan Luu made a case that cognition or thinking is related to development in specific areas of the brain; again facilitating critical connections.

All of this work in neuroscience points toward a biological explanation or even a tight (taught?) definition for learning that may someday prove helpful as our language evolves with new knowledge. Meanwhile I much prefer to simply scratch “learning” and focus on development. That still leaves us with profound ignorance, about what happens and why it happens through education but is not quite so well camouflaged with language that enables us to think we know something useful.

A Split Screen

Ted Kolderie a Minnesota journalist widely credited for the concept and legislation leading the the first Charter Schools in America; and Bela Banathy (along with Reigeluth) mentioned earlier, see the matter of schools in very different frames. Anytime a frame is formulated it is essential to take time to look outside of the frame to see what has been or may have been missed. Kolderie, in particular, has emphasized that reform of education will not be revolutionary.

He along with colleagues from the days of Charter School development in the 1980s & 1990s have formed an organization called Education | Evolving, which mainly seeks to empower teachers as school administrators, recognizing that teachers are in the trenches with students all day long and are therefore somewhat better able to recognize what form education should ideally take. By empowering teachers, the scenario goes, there will be incremental reform. When teachers manage budgets, dollars will better flow in the direction of better student development.

Kolderie and colleagues have made the case for co-existence of traditional schools and innovative, teacheer- run Charter Schools. Their model is the New Country School in a small southern Minnesota town, Henderson. This chartered school is uniquely run by a cooperative formed by teachers and contracts with a board to run the New Country School. These teachers, through their Coop are empowered to advance changes in both curriculum and instructional methods that enables and fosters much more individualization as well as peer-teaching. The result is incremental reform of the ways schooling is done, but continues the framework of school as a fundamental unit of education. It is this duality of tradition alonside innovative demonstrations of reform, that Kolderie has called “The Split Screen.” His strategy is to foster innovation.

New approaches are most frequently a mix of prior approaches but assembled in a different arrangement that makes them seem innovative. And, in some sense they are innovative because no one has ever done quite the same assembly at a time and location—in space-time. Also known as piece meal, incremental development of schooling is essentially reductionist while being highly pragmatic.

The pragmatist must look for a practical and often an immediate solution. Practicality means fitting the solution into an immediate and tangible circumstance. This is almost always local. Regional and global considerations must be put aside in favor ot much more narrow conditions and solving a problem and advancing a useful next step.

Fluid solutions need to be favored or hold sway over solid solutions. Fluid solutions are often watered down from an ideal. Nevertheless, skills, knowledge and attitudes may emerge that are useful at a future point.

Our New World

The world has become a much different place across just the last 50-70 years. At the midpoint of the twentieth century, digital technologies were in their infancy and mostly shrouded in military applications. Their future tentacles into the economy writ large and the personal lives of individuals was not imagined. Our perceptions about the digital impacts on the global way of life is still emerging through the minds and pens of a few individuals. But clearly we have come a long way.

Many year ago I wrote a short essay entitled New World Learning that identified six characteristics that seemed to make sense at the time. Little did I know, the extent my forecast would emerge from so many nooks and crannies, and that I would almost completely alter my own views about the title itself. I no longer casually use “learning” to frame anything about education. Perhaps the title should have been then and should now be New World Education. The University of Minnesota College of Education was renamed the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD). My personal inclination would be to drop Education and focus on Human Development. This inclination is fostered by my growing realization that development is a vast challenge for all of humanity.

Yet given the context of systems design and the role or education as a social system applying the phrase New World is also out of order in light of both biology and the planetary imperative. While it is tempting to see our world in light of what exists (or what is) and impute something akin to nature and naturalism (an ideal of nature) the reality may lie closer to recognizing that the massive bulk of humanity has changed nature and that the anthropocene is not ever to be fully reversible. What is possible is to design new systems while keeping in our collective minds an image of nature's wisdom borne of evolution across billions of years. Our evolving systems can take our planet to a much better place than what we have so far created. What remains is not predestined to deteriorate. What remains leaves Homo sapiens with choice; but, not an unlimited free choice. We must recognize that our available choices are bound inside a bubble of responsibility.

In the paragraphs above, we have attempted to explain the wicked problem of a unifying, systems design of education. There is a natural desire to look for complete and satisfying solutions and to seek a holistic explanation where the reductionist provides only a slice of what is possible with increments of value.

Wicked problems are unlikely to have holistic solutions. That may mean that we are left with incremental or piece-meal colutions. It does not mean however that the paradigm should continue. It may well be that even a paradigm shift is incremental. Nevertheless a new paradigm may enable the framing of questions in language that is able to differentiate elements that could not be differentiated or were never differentiated under a prior paradigm of schooling.

Our next part (VII) will tackle the seemingly intractable wicked problem of spirituality but attempts to whittle away what spirituality currently entails and look for a common core—a likely case of a fool stepping in where a wise person would fear to tread. Spirituality and quicksand have a lot, perhaps too much, in common.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Banathy

Reigeluth , Reinventing Schools: It’s Time to Break the Mold

Charles M. Reigeluth and Jennifer R. Karnopp | Jul 1, 2013

Senge 2X …

Kolderie, Ted. 2X …

1. Part VII
2. Spirit Doesn't Die

The following two chapters will make the case our Constitutional blind spot has been the distinction between spirituality and religion. The Framers were so afraid of intrusion of religious dogma into governance that they wrote that Congress shall make no law establishing a national religion. Coming on the heels of the fiasco between British Royalty, French Royalty and Papal Royalty the strong language is not at all surprising and the US has probably been better off because of it. However, something was missing and that is the fundamental spirituality of every living entity including every member of Homo sapiens. Living is what we all do between conception, division and death.

As I emphasized in the introduction to Part Five, atheism and agnosticism are irrelevant. I should add that freedom from religion is irrelevant also, religion is a consequence of our spirituality and demands understanding no more and no less than our science and objectivity, rationality, consciousness, and our origins, existence and death. Extinction and death are not inseparable. It is not the extinction of life on earth demanding our attention, but the existence of conditions supporting all life, including human life, that is now at risk. Our life supporting choice may well be to better understand our spirituality. Spirituality is not irrelevant.

Chapter XXXVIII—The Connected Independent—recognizes that we are never alone in a universe that so far keeps us tethered to earth and our earthly companions.

Chapter XXXIX—The Will to Do—our existential intelligence is the result of expanding on a spirit possessed by everything that lives; at least, that lives on earth. Our confusions about origins, knowledge and ethics may never fully cease, yet human capacities bear responsibility for ourselves, our earthly companions and for the future of earth itself. Education, in all of its form and function, must never ignore that enormous obligation.

Finally in Part Seven two chapters are devoted to our near universal neglect of spirituality in education and how it needs to be embraced in a system that is fully secular and untainted by the rituals, practices and traditions that were established in world religions long before the reckoning of contemporary science.

Chapter XXXVIII

The best teamwork comes from [people] who are working independently toward one goal in unison.

James Cash Penney

The Connected Independent

Independence is an exceptionless myth. We are connected and we congregate. We are so connected that it is impossible to enumerate the details, the nuances, the links; and why we congregate. For this I can say impossible without much worry that there is an exception. Connection may be so fundamental to who we are that connection may be the soul of our being. Soul may also enable us such immersion in self that we acquire an illusion of independence. But independence is impossible.

Oh, maybe there is a number that could be applied thus limiting the frame of impossible to something that is numerically possible but the number is so small — on the order of the reciprocal of Avogadro's Number — all we can say is “Gee whiz!” connection are truly ubiquitous.

Nevertheless there is something appealing to the mythology surrounding independence. We love to think that we are our own agent in the world and that what we do makes a difference; that we can act in a way that seems independent and is free from constraints. That doing the impossible is only a matter of doing what is possible. Taken in small increments, something that seems to be impossible can, sometimes be accomplished. Steep hills and mountainous cliffs may be difficult to climb but they are still climbed without immediate help by others. What human's have accomplished is amazing, of course, but anything that seems to have been done independently has, with analysis and careful observation, been done because support existed ins some form or another. However connected it may seem or even be, discovery is very personal. Being first to scale the cliff is a personal accomplishment; no doubt about it.

Ventures are a part of human life. Risk is a part of venturing beyond what is comfortable, outside a personal or common comfort zone. The processes of growth and development involve risk. Adaption, accommodation, resilience, challenge, tension, uncertainty is an inevitable part of life. Often making connections is not for the faint of heart. Extreme avoidance of connection is anti-social and a sign of developmental pathology—a partial hallmark of autism.

There may be many connections that are never acknowledged or about which we have no conscious knowledge or any discernible information content—connections without meaning. The pronouncement everything is connected to everything else is also in some sense meaningless, although we attach some sense of meaning to the pronouncement. It is one of those things we sort of take for granted, and move on in search of meanings that matter.

This chapter is already appearing to be abstract but it seems necessary in order to begin looking at spirituality, which seems to be a justifiably unique property of an individual suggesting that no two individuals experience spirituality in quite the same way. Maybe so. Maybe not. What is clear is that we don't have any data to help us out. No information. No knowledge. Although sometimes there is a hint and we feel for a moment in time that we understand spirituality. Spirituality seems to be a feeling that can't be put on a page with ink.

What follows will explore a few notions about spirituality including enterprise, soul, metaphysics, our need to explain, and posthumous matters.

Enterprise

Adventure and venture — taking a new idea forward — often means starting a business. The can do spirit of the creator, entrepreneur, innovator or inventor may be built into our being by evolution and development. What makes a person entrepreneurial is about as impossible to define as spirituality, although a business college may have a whole curriculum on entrepreneurship. Our society esteems and rewards the people who give us new satisfactions through products and services that either did not exist or were far too costly for ordinary consumption. The history of our civilization (becoming civil) includes a vast array of stories of those individuals that achieved fame and fortune, not to mention power, from their creations and marketing of products and services locally, regionally, or globally. This ranges from spices from Indonesia to the iPhone. Across more than five centuries, humanity has found trade routes and has come a long, long way. Our civilization has evolved in no small part because of adventurers and entrepreneurs.

Humanity has evolved along with our products and services, but we have also retained a few traits that are roundly regarded as evil. In our economy it is often said tht nothing happens until something is sold. The sale may be subtle or strong-armed. Ethics is too often blinded by the immediacy of demanding action. A sale is concluded by an agreement, a written or verbal statement signifying a decision ot buy, an action on the part of a consumer of a product or service. Getting to YES is a process of negotiation between a seller and a potential buyer. The seller is duty bound to pitch benefits, but but there is no duty to be truthful. Hiding the truth may foster a sale but a false representation can land a seller in jeopardy. Too often sales are moved by half-truth or an outright lie. Some people with an unquenchable spirit to acquire wealth are untroubled by truth. Very regrettably our retail politics too often mimic making sales based on qualities that do not exist.

Soul

The search for soul has been around since the word or concept was tendered in one language or one culture or another. Its origins are fuzzy and looking at world religions it is hard to find one that lacks something akin to the Judeo-Christian Soul.

Soul seems to have a lot to do with our spirit and what makes us, well, us. Business may seem useless and without meaning, in somewhat the same way that soul seems useless and devoid of meaning. Yet there are many who go about their daily lives carrying the concepts of business and soul as through meaning is so ubiquitous and universal that even their meaning pertains to everyone living life as a human being.

Death signals that the soul has departed the body. But what is it that leaves. Anatomists have looked long and hard for the physical substance of the soul and have been disappointed, although the pineal body found deep at the base of the brain received some favorable attention, perhaps because it was difficult to find with postmortem dissection. But, of course if the soul leaves the body on death, the least likely place to find it would be in a cadaver. Maybe even the surgeon would be unable to find the soul because the anesthetic also causes the soul to leave the body temporarily. The stages of anesthesia may reflect stages in the loss of soul.

Does soul find expression in pain and pleasure?

Continuing to ignore this thing called soul is hardly tenable for humanity. Somewhere in our distant past we (the collective humanity) thought about it and named it. Accordingly it seems incumbent to respect and study what has been named even if there is no anatomical, physiological or empirical evidence that a soul exists.

Animation can fool us at least while we are able to suspend our disbelief. Perhaps disbelief is a dangerous thing and we had better pay attention to what disbelief actually means. Perhaps disbelief and suspension of disbelief is a uniquely human property. That could be and should be explored; here or elsewhere … does it make a difference? We won't know unless we explore it. Soul and spirituality may warrant additional dissection, at least in the evolutionary section of the lexicology lab.

Metaphysics

There is a physical world and metaphysics attempts to explain or ponder what is beyond or what surrounds the physical. The Hebrew interpretation of meta is “dead,” which may well be appropriate. However, meta has acquired many other important connotations and is included in compound expression such as meta-cognitive and meta-data. Meta analyses are used to examine how many separate lines of study may or may not be related. Where relationships are discovered or are discoverable, new knowledge may emerge. Accordingly meta and emergent may be connected. Nevertheless, philosophers regard metaphysics as one of the foundation of philosophy.

The prefix meta carries a connotation of thinking about. So metaphysics is thinking aobut physics. We use metacognition to indicate we are thinking, or have been thinking, about thinking. And so forth. “I'm having a metacognitive moment.” Or, “I had a metacognitive moment.” I was reflecting on something I had been thinking about. And so what? In all cases we are indicating there is something out there that needs to be given attention in the form of whatever these mental processes are, or may turn out to be, that make up what we seem to know and even understand as thinkng. Some might persuasively argue that we are a lot better off if we just don't think. Thinking needs to be turned into action. It is only action that matters. There is no such thing as meta action; or is there? What about reflection? Isn't reflection a matter of thinking about past actions; what is remembered about what has been said or what has been done? Our consciousness speaks to us and creates feelings or good or evil; of pleasure or pain.

Educators want to “teach for thinking.” Reference is made to higher order thinking as something to be taught and learned. An objective of teaching and learning. Something, we are frequently told is much more praiseworthy than memorizing and reciting. A goal for education and educators to seek and hope to reach or achieve with their students.

So what? What does it all mean? How do we know? What difference does it make or will it make? Perhaps it is philosophical metaphysics that holds an explanation.

Our Need To Explain

Explanation is of such importance that philosophers have ventured new terminology for explanation. The explicandum is a statement of some fact, expression, object or externally observable event or phenomenon that is to be explained or explicated. An explicans include the statements that carry and support the explicandum. However, new vocabulary does not replace our quest to know and understand. For that more than explanation is needed. Our need is explicans’ that provide confidence and willingness to accept an explanation. We seek truth in assertions we receive and we need critical processes to determine the truth of assertions. In this sense, critical implies skepticism, questioning, doubt, objection. A part of explanation is relating concepts, principles and context to measure validity of assertions.

Are there any truly irrational beliefs? Does irrational mean unnecessary? A belief may be unnecessary when there is an alternative explanation. Our beliefs in the origins and ends of life have emerged when the limits of our observation left gaps that were filled with speculation and stories to explain the speculation were created to fulfill some immediate need that arose from a question. Among the most basic questions were Where do we come from? and, Where are we going? . Without a microscope to observe cells, the myth of spontaneous generation of life was commonly held. Observation and experimentation rendered the myth superfluous, unnecessary.

Belief seems to fit here but there are subtle and important considerations as to what role explanation plays or holds in our quest for survival and then understanding. When does explanation effectively substitute for experience? When do we need to figure it out for ourselves rather than listening to or reading an explanation? When do we need personal experience in order to understand and make meaning of an explanation? Unfortunately education has become so well adapted to explanation that it seems to obviate the role of experience. The result is faith in the efficacy of “the text” the authority of books (or contemporary media) almost as though the role of authors, editors, publishers and marketing were irrelevant.

Textbook authors are, it seems, compulsive explainers, and many are very good tellers of story. Teachers, scientists, medical to be sure, but other as well, act like priests or preachers conveying a truth that is hnaded down or passed along. Leaders, and even most managers, tend toward explanation as their raison d'etre—their purpose to exist. Is that also a compulsory tendency for control? Using some superior knowledge to control behavior along a desired path. Inducing others to tow the line. Discipline is following and it seems that following is what is most desired—”My way or the highway.” Or, “It’s in the text!” This also tends to bleed between discipline and entertainment. Following, liking, and conferring attention to a person or set of attitudes, stories, principles, conceptses and making ideas attractive is the sine qua non for a seemingly necessary form of human cohesion beyond the family or even within a family.

Connection is so much a part of our human reality that it is itself demanding explanation. The explainer holds power. The illusion of knowing and explaining is inherent in the ways we communicate with words that may be easily defined or impossible to define. The use of words can be intentionally ambiguous and cast a shadow over our equivocations when what is needed is better light. The metaphysical is almost by definition that which cannot be explained. Nevertheless the unknown and unknowable is named and the very act of naming suggests something real and tangible. Knowledge is power even when it is fake or faked.

Atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett and his co-author Linda LaScola published “Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind” a story of preachers who are faking belief, they are pastors who maybe once believed in the content of their own sermons and the practices of their religious traditions. But now no longer hold the beliefs but keep on preaching to the faithful anyway. Atheist psychologist, Valerie Tarico, published “Trusting Doubt:I A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light” With new knowledge it becomes possible to rip apart irrational beliefs.

Posthumous Matters

Life after death is a challenge. The condition of Existence (beginnings) and non-existence (endings) is baffling to even the deepest thinking philosopher. Theologians, of course, have an answer from mentors and books, whether their bafflement is active or hidden. But then so too is knowing anything about an afterlife. The ultimate questions of ontology and epistemology revolve around existence and what comes before existence and what comes after existence. Where did we come from? and Where are we going? What are we between coming and going? Maybe we are damned if we know and damned if we try to know.

That symbolic apple in the myth of beginning in a garden continues to hold forth a handle for distinguishing power and powerlessness—Good and Evil. Holding on to power is a corrupted extension of belonging and esteem, but emphatically not likely and only a twisted relation to self-actualization. I don’t hold any case for the entire concept of sin and certainly not original sin as a base for my own living and thinking. Yet for many families, sin is used, and by extension their children are affected, to develop in an environment where the tenets of sin are flying high and visible in the form of “do this” but more likely “don’t do that” because Santa Claus and God are always watching. It is hard not to imagine the negative impacts this environment will certainly have on developing youth—positive but more likely negative impacts. And that is for those who grow up in an environment where the notions of sin are embedded. What happens when youth encounter the notions of sin later in life? If the wages of sin are death, then where does anyone accommodate the hocus-pocus of two forms of after-life: heaven and hell, together with the dichotomy of God—the Good figure-head of heaven, and Satan—the Evil figure-head of hell. I must confess that I find little virtue in parents creating an environment where this form of confusion reigns supreme as a determinant of an afterlife.

Reincarnation is a fairly popular myth among even the non-religious, atheist and agnostics, the Nones. The never-believers may speculate about returning to a condition of living in some other form; maybe another human being, but maybe an aphid or armadillo. But then what? Insects get swatted or eaten and armadillos get hit by vehicles. Is there yet another life after another life and another death?

It is easy enough to concede that the CHONPS atoms from one life are recycled into another life. Enough said … and yes we will likely return as part of another life. There is, in this sense certainly no away. Yet reincarnation in another body does not mean that there is any cognitive or affective connection. It is only an affirmation of the physical law of conservation of matter. Making anything more of it is not mystery but myth. It is a story to begin and end all stories. Including, perhaps, our story of Education's Ecology.

Conclusion

Spirituality is a part of our existence and its continual denial as a legitimate subject within education may be part of producing the disaster that public education has become. The first amendment clause that the government shall pass no laws establishing any religion is vastly different from trying to say that all topics with any relationship to a religion are out of bounds. Yet inevitably, with a First Amendment backstop, some zealot will mount such an argument.

Education should, perhaps we should use the stronger must bring things as basic to human existence as spirit into the dialogue about what it means to be alive and human. That dialogue should explicate soul, metaphysics, explanation itself and the beginningw and endings of life. There are eternal questions that must be addressed even when we have only tentative or even no explanations for the time and space in which we live. Yet, science is our metaphysical tool—open and free to use for a common good.

It is as curious as hell that this chapter was first drafted on a Sunday morning. Perhaps some seer and sage could make some story about that and hold a bit of someone’s attention. But I am neither a seer nor sage, so it will be best to leave that for different days that carry no connotation of spirituality. Stereotypical behaviors associated with Sunday rituals of religion are well suited for mass consumption and the practice of congregation. Nevertheless without a known congregant bit with all the confidence that goes with ignorance, in the next chapter I will try to explain my concept of spirit and why it should be a part of education.

Recommended Reading & Sources

James, William.

Smith, Huston.

Tarico, V.

Dennett, D and LaSorda, L.

Harris, Sam.

Chapter XXXIX

We can no more do without spirituality than we can do without food, shelter or clothing.

Ernest Holmes

The Will to Do

The will to live is all about doing the next thing that will retain life; organized, metabolizing and perpetuating. Life on Earth has continued without interruption for over 3.5 billion years. It has been a fabulous ride, a constant exploration and conquest of new frontiers. Life is always about the future. Every step of evolution has solved problems of living and remaining alive to pass life on to new life. For the ephemeral adult mayfly reproduction seems to be enough; for humans life continues beyond reproduction and seems to lend new challenges to sustain doing. Doing is a delicate and ephemeral balance between choices and values. A single choice can end a life or chart a course for a lifetime. A lifetime may be a course of serial choices networked with choices framed by history and dependent upon the choices of others. The other may be proximal or distal, bearing both relationship and responsibility. Life is chaotic and complex. Yet life continues until it doesn't; we exist until we don't. There is being until there is nothing. That is, at least, as for as we know. What we choose to believe about a condition beyond life is another matter and totally outside the realm of individual and collective material being.

In chapter XVII we introduced autopoiesis as characteristic of life. It is extremely rare that a living creature ever gives up on living; essentially saying enough. There is one more thing to do before a last breath is admitted. That struggle to live is present in all life and I submit for your consideration that the will to live is the spirit of life. That spirit exists at the cellular level of life's organization and we know that cellular life continues beyond the capacity of an organism to exist.23

This is not, emphatically. vitalism in some disguise. It is not at all a belief that this will to live is some magical or mystical form that we do not understand and cannot understand because it has been designed and given by a supernatural force, an omniscient and omnipotent entity—a godly being. This entity exists widely in a human mental model in in a form resembling human form—in a form beyond what human intellect is able to ever fully grasp. Most everyone who pauses for deep thought about gods or a God will agree that knowing about deity is beyond empirical knowledge.

Autopoiesis is the result of physical chemistry that both is known and can be known. Life is fully accountable by way of (all?) known physical laws that operate in the universe. It can be postulated that life began as a result of some single event or a coincidence of events in the physical world. If that may be true, iit is still a physical, not a metaphysical, event and in principle could be repeated if similar conditions were to arise on Earth or on some other planetary body in the universe. Just because we don't know doesn't mean that we can't know. And it certainly doesn't mean that we must accept a vital force that we cannot ever understand. Our privilege is unrestricted on this or any other planet.

In this chapter we will explore the intersection of faith and reality, the limits of knowing, a new look at spirituality and the sources of religious belief.

Intersection Of Faith And Reality

This intersection is dangerous and there have been so many collisions that it may well be beyond time to erect a huge red STOP sign. That stop-sign would signal a need to pause and reflect before accelerating into the intersection. Finding reality at the intersection with faith is a very fraught condition. Trouble is an angry animal that is red in tooth and claw. Looking both ways will only obscure reality; never, it seems, faith. Collisions are physical but more often laden with emotional tensions that are never far beneath the surfaces involved.

Faith may be our way of easing the pain of uncertainty and never being capable of knowing with certainty where we come from and where we are going. Faith for humans, if as we suspect faith is possessed only by humans, is a way to avoid pain that is an almost inevitable result of living. That may be the case even in contemporary, relatively affluent, societies, but it was almost certainly true for our ancestors in ages past where affluence had yet to emerge. Even the beginnings of agriculture must have been filled with anxieties ( a form of pain?) over the ravages of weather and the vicissitudes of climates, locations, soil fertility and sufficiencies of water. Hope needed an object, and faith provided an object in an image brought forth by imagination and communication. The stories that perpetuate faith were entangled through communication of mythical accounts of magical causes. The capacity to systematically evaluate causes and effects without invocation of supernatural (or impossible to understand) forces, powers and intelligences has very recent origins; within just a few, perhaps just 15-30, centuries, and, some would argue, even more recently.

Trusting our senses comes naturally if for no other reason than there is every reason to trust what we see, hear, taste, smell and touch. Our organs of sensation are built into our being and there is no escape from being—beginning with conception. We sense ourselves, our body, from internal signals including motion, change, position, pain and pleasure. Time is embedded in our existence and marked by external changes. Death is the only permanent interruption of sensation and death comes in stages sometimes spread across even decades. Life inevitably leads to death. Between conception and death, sensations are our reality and our interface with external light, sound, the chemical substances of taste and smell and certainly are the physical forces generating both external and internal pressures sensed by the body. The flow of these sensations is our reality. We have a built in belief—a faith—in the messages of this reality.

Sensations are what we know and our way of knowing. That is subject and verb of our existence; our survival is dependent on constant adaptation to conditions and how we relate to those conditions. Relationships are, for the most part, proximate and approximate. That is, relationships are close and uncertain. Meaning may be attached to a relationship even while it is uncertain. Nevertheless reaction may mean survival or not—life continuing or death following. Acting in the absence of knowing; acting on the basis of a belief can have great value—survival value. Rooted in biology, belief is unambiguous; survival or death. Life or not life.

However, sights, sounds, and even smells and tastes are open to interpretation through naming and through stories about them. It is these interpretations that require trust. Trust begins with openness about interpretation and this initiates a cycle that can take the mind in many directions. Comfort or pleasure accompanies trusting the validity and value of a story. When there is no alternative story being told and no discussion or debate is taking place the only available path is to trust. Faith and belief become embedded in thought and required for further interpretation.

The Limits Of Knowing

Knowing and ignorance are linked in potentially interesting ways because they share a common border. Knowing is not the opposite of ignorance or even an absence of ignorance. Ignorance is often fuzzy and incomplete because a state of absolute and unquestioned knowledge never exists except in a mind that is willing to fore-go questions, skepticism and reflection. Minds just don't work that way without extraordinary effort. Knowledge resides along with doubt. Ignorance is buffeted by partial knowledge. As I am perhaps too often wont to say “I know just enough to be dangerous.”

Knowledge and insight straddle a chasm of ignorance that does have a bottom even when the bottom cannot be seen with an unaided eye. Vision may require assistance from other senses and/or with technology in the form of physical instruments that can detect limits, edges, forces and gaps.

Before the invention of the microscope and the telescope, humans could not know about invisible microbes or distant galaxies. Explanations nevertheless were ventured. Conjectures about realities, observations and speculations regarding causes and effect. Observing coincidences often suggested explanations. The “rise” of the sun every day on an eastern horizon suggested the movement of the sun, not a rotation of an earth that to all appearances and common sense was flat as far as the eye could see. The stars seemed so real that they could “almost” be touched. Where did everything come from? God put it there for his purpose. Arguing that point was dangerous; it could and did get people killed.

Death came from sources other than the sword or stone. The mystery of death also called forth stories of evil spirits. Yet more than a century elapsed between the first observations of microbes “animacules” by von Leeuwenhoek and the evidence of germs in a theory of disease provided by Pasteur and elucidated by Koch that ushered in the golden age of microbiology in the late 1800s in which the bacteria causing more than a dozen diseases—tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, gonorrhea, syphilis, to name a few—were discovered. The result of those discoveries provided a basis to search for preventions and cures such as disinfectants, antiseptics and antibiotics. Yet medical science continues to question and probe for expanding our understanding of diseases and searching for cures within the limits of what is known. Looking for evil spirits as causes of disease have been abandoned through applications of scientific thinking and experimental methods.

Nevertheless, human beings continue to push and probe the limits of our knowledge with continuing inventions of instruments to improve our senses and advance our knowledge of our universe, while also seeing the atoms of matter and the molecules that organize our metabolism and perpetuation.

A New Look At Spirituality

Our notions of spirituality have for almost the fullest part been linked to religion. Relations tend to define the look and limits of what spirituality is permitted or permissible. The Abrahamic religions retain the tripartite god; described or labeled with the words Father, Son and Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit). These labels have been interpreted has unduly masculine and a suggested, but rarely adopted allternative would be the gender neutral Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Feminism may have made a worthwhile mark but has not yet gone far enough. Continuing to push for representation of women in the clergy will not abate nor should it. The millennia of male dominance of relations and religions is, as it should be, over and permanently. To repeat, the ancient Abrahamic religions express their belief in a Supreme Being as Father, Son and Holy Spirit; all seemingly masculine. A recent revision with unchallenged feminist influence is gender neutral and names the Christian Trinity as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Not bad. I particularly like the later Sustainer designation because it comes a bit closer to what I refer to a the will to live.

Belief in supernatural beings and forces is a part of human spirituality; but a will to live is justified without invocation of the supernatural. Autopoiesis accounts for perpetuation of organization of self and the physical mechanics of biochemistry and metabolism fully support life. Our cognition and affect are embodied with enormous coordinating power being revealed through contemporary neuroscience; a dimension of science that is gaining ground on understanding our consciousness. What will emerge is a new look at spirituality, and, I believe, a recognition that spirit is a universal part of life. My belief, a faith of sorts, will peal back ignorance to replace faith with empirical justification and a new foundation for understanding our humanity.

The Sources Of Religious Belief

If spirit is what keep us alive, regardless of its being fully analyzed and synthesized, its fully understood source, it had to find expression simply because it was and is observably present in every life. When life became cognizant of itself, there were the eternal questions of Where did I come from? and Where am I going? Questions demand answers or at least attempts to find answers or explanations.

Before about 400 year ago, answers could only be guessed and could rarely be refuted. The history of philosophy and theology is replete with arguments supporting a supreme being. That these arguments, in whole or in part, were very successful and highly persuasive is probably not arguable and attest to the enormous adoption of the major religions globally. Belief likely became a tool for survival, at least in the realm of coercion. The historical record provides ample evidence of what could happen when disbelief or conflict of belief occurred as a social or cultural matter. Conflict bred violence and death. Being burned alive tied to a stake was a public event and certainly could persuade an observer to be careful about expressing any doubt. It did little good to challenge authority that was bigger and stronger than self. Safety and survival demanded adhering to and even frequently repeating stories that mugged as meaning even if gaps appeared that were hard or impossible to ignore. Ignorance became another tool for survival. Joining the force that held and told the story also enhanced chances for survival. Each story gathered its troop of supporters and made sure that the unquestioned beliefs were dutifully passed from person to person and generation to generation. Belief and enforcement of belief became a critical tool for the maintenance of power and passing of that power to successors. Protesting the hierarchy of the powerful could almost certainly get you killed.

Unfortunately or fortunately according to point or view or purpose, it was realized that youth were particularly easy to persuade. It was Augustine who said “Give me the child before age six and I will have the [person] for life.” Early education is nothing new. Taking children away from parents is highly regarded by those who are disposed toward changing cultural practices and belief. In the United States this was borne out by governmental collaboration with religious groups, both Protestant and Catholic, in removal of Native American children from their tribes and sending them off to “government” schools where some pretty awful conditions of violence, isolation and capital punishments prevailed. A child’s belief and behavior solidified around what was taught by those adults in power.

The contemporary private and parochial schools attest to the sustained practices of sequestering children to assure lifelong embedded systems of belief. Of course not all of these beliefs are rooted in religion and bear strongly on the fundamentals of philosophical ontology or theological eschatology.

In point of fact and contrary to a rich vein of thinking, it is argued that too much of public education is not sufficient in emphasizing spiritual values simply because these values are so thoroughly integrated with religious practice, that any injection of spirituality into a curriculum may bring a charge of “establishment” of religion. This is, in my view, nonsense. Public education is accused of indoctrination of youth to not believe, eschew religious values and forcing a certain nihilism in which “belief” is subordinated to objectivity and reason.

Conclusion

This chapter may seem like a pretty wimpy way to end a book intending to reformulate education. However, I do not feel that what I have tried to say in all the previous parts of the book could stand alone without an attempt to say in this chapter what is about as fundamental to the past, current and future practices for education as spirituality. Spirituality in its many forms and iterations, not the least including the drivers of our commercial, industrial age with its economic beliefs and precepts, occupies our collective human minds above virtually everything else on the planet. Certainly these beliefs and all manner of resultant systems in society are way beyond science to understand. Stephen Jay Gould was far too modest when he suggested that science and religion were something akin to magesteria with equal weight. Of all the 200 plus topics explored in prior chapters, these comments on spirituality may be the least important topics with one important exception. The quagmire of education will continue to be burdened and even ravaged until our species is able to unravel and understand the role of spirituality in human life.

I wish for myself the intellectual muscle to explain it for all to understand. But even if I should have the temerity to try, my efforts would likely be grossly outweighed by minds more clever than mine. But, perhaps, I will leave a message of hope and necessity. That is hope that spirituality will remain a part of human dialog, that is questioning what spirituality is and why it persists. That will necessitate that better and constantly improving insights will emerge from rich conversations that will enable an evolution of consciousness to provide a permanent and productive place for spirituality in human life and that our understanding of all life forms and their essential relationships will foster stewardship for our little blue orb, the delicate and robust place we live. That will be a magnificent ecology of education.

Recommended Reading & Sources

Sagan & Margulis

Biology of Belief

Autopoiesis Maturana & Varella

Varela, Thompson and Rousch …

Harris, Sam.

Epilogue

The Futures for Education

This Epilogue will make a claim for new ways of considering education in the future. All of the potential for education's futures will call upon a new paradigm based on recognizing Education’s Ecology. Education is a living system embedded in and for society’s future and the cultural foundations of our collective humanity. Enabling the future will call for making a profound change—begin everything with questions. Foster Dialogue! Answers are for theology, some mathematicians and machines … engineers test and scientists experiment … skepticism reigns.

The only reliable answer rises every morning!

Everything else requires a search. My searching and conclusions are tentative. That is as it should be. However I find myself drawn toward seven elements that I believe have value for future considerations. These points are sumarized with the acronym A-N-S-W-E-R-S—Autonomous, Neighborhood, Self-directed development, that is Wide-screen, Ecological, Resource-rich and Systems-based. I begin by defining Education as a self-directed practice of freedom throughout a lifetime.  [Nothing in this definition recognizes a role for Schools or for Teachers, Textbooks, Testing or Technology. ] I believe that what has been written in the foregoing chapters builds a case or argument that none of that is necessary or essential. The futures for education will find alternatives that will fit the definition and fulfill a value of worth and dignity for everyone. This is a humanitarian value. 

———

What follows was originally drafted in Chapter4.

This chapter will foreshadow the content of several future chapters.

A multitude of challenges face society … and should but don’t interface with education through schooling.

Our next effort v(Part Two) will be to consider why teacher's can't teach when they have a primary task of classroom management. As a prelude, and consistent with expecting better results, I feel compelled to make additional points regarding teaching and teachers and why better results seem so stubborn to emerge.

Teachers are struggling in the education world. They have careers that have emerged from an old paradigm that has cast them as questioners and lecturers. They have forced the questions that their lectures have answered on schemata of known answers. For the most part, answers have assumed a base of knowledge that has been cast down from sources obscured by passage of time. A lecture is best when presenting fresh information. Unfortunately lectures are a performance, the sage on a stage, a preacher charged with proselytizing on behalf of knowledge believed to be true and accepted without question—not ulike the dogmas of religion.

Teaching carries a legacy of futility and trying to “teach.” Part II will drill down on why Teachers Can't Teach. This is where I will argue that teaching must change—change will happen because change is happening in a way or ways that have never been experienced in the history or humankind. Change is evolution and change drives evolution. Evolution and development are linked in ways that is only marginally associated with what we have perceived to be a useful meaning of “learning” and those perceptions are also changing. More of this will emerge in Part Three.

What will a new paradigm for education include? I will suggest three categories that will be important for all of us to consider: 1.) neighborhoods will innovate to produce interwoven solutions that could scale; 2.) development will be cast in a new light that will force us to revisit what it means to “learn;” and 3.) teachers will be recast in a new role as community developers. Finally, our insatiable quest for owning anything will give way to a new perspective of a planetary imperative to protect, preserve and restore what we all own together—our Earth. Some of this will appear in several subsequent chapters and in the Epilogue.

———

There is a massive shift across society that the foregoing chapters do little more than hint about. It is no longer rational to question the impacts of technology on the lives of nearly everyone on this planet. Smartphones are ubiquitous. Electrical generation is (at least, potentially) distributed. And, most importantly, people are energized to alter the human impact on earth. De-schooling and self-directed education will arise from our current stumbling attempts to innovate and modify the schooling paradigm that has dominated education for far too long. Neighborhood and community development fostered through new social service agencies are a keyhole through which to look forward.

I invite readers of expand both the list and the narrative with creative ideas submitted to the website: www.educationecology.net …

Some changes for education are inevitable and what follows are a few bullet points to consider … supplying the reasons why educations future direction must change course from the past, is not my goal but can be passed forward … My frequent use of ellipses signal how much more is needed for education’s ecology to take great ideas into a future New World of Development …. An evolutionary journey to shape our collective futures … .

Society is the real generator of problems and challenges. Accordingly it is society that must look inward and outward for solutions to the wicked problems in its midst. New social agencies must assume responsibility for human development throughout life and between generations. Schools and grouping by age, sex, or any other label is futile. Development requires community and every commmunity includes neighbors and families. Our emergent social agencies should focus on helping and guiding the well being of neighborhoods that exist 24/7/365.

A good start is with one student to manage an Individualized Educational Program (an IEP). Those demonstrating skill managing one may elevate or escalate to a group of perhaps seven, and ten at most.

When an Architectural firm is commissioned by a Board of Education (aka, School Board) to design an educational environment, whether a building or a campus, the central focus of the past was to build a school. New or remodeled, the essence of a school is to hold classes in classrooms. Accordingly, the architect’s first step is to identify and define the classrooms and student population numbers that are to be provided in the new building. Imagine the trauma for American public education if classrooms were to disappear. Every school building in the USA would be a candidate for demolition or remodeling. What would these new and remodeled buildings look like and what would they be called? How would or could they be used or useful for practicing freedom … Architecture is a social function and architects can be enlisted by communities to design new environments for education that are first and foremost focused on our planetary imeprative.

This calls forth a multitude of questions about how education would function and how buildings would facilitate those functions. Virtually every function would begin to take on the shape of a cluster of interconnected systems. Put another way, education’s ecology would begin to call forth designs based on our existing and anticipated social systems. This, in turn, would force evaluation of these social systems and raise questions about how social function might be better designed to serve people through all of their developmental stages across a lifetime.

• There are simply too many demands on schools for them to continue as social service agencies.
• There are too many demands on teachers for them to continue managing classrooms of 20-30 students.
• Good classroom managers are poorly positioned to provide individualized attention to the individuals in a group of students they have been assigned, … and have been assigned to them for months at a time with little provision for flexibility.
• There will be increasing demand to customize curriculum that will be impossible for public education to meet in its current form, function and financing.
• Transportation demands are way too inflexible to meet the needs of all but a few children in grades pK, K and 1-4. Fleets of Yellow Buses are an anachronism.
• Home and neighborhood are foundations for the Decade of Dependent Development.
• As children proceed through a Decade of Dependent Development, every child deserves a champion and not all parents are sufficient champions. The Village, Community or Neighborhood must supply a sufficient champion for each and every child without exception. This is way, way too big and too important for a city, state or national strategy; it must be local.
• Emancipation begins around ages 8-11 and proceeds unevenly through ages 14-25. Education and emancipation entails the practice of freedom. Emancipatory Human Development is initially and increasingly self-directed. Guidance is, for the most part, imperative and universally available, but it should never be authoritarian or oppressive.
• Human Development is life long and life wide. Development begins with conception and ends with death. Throughout a lifetime individuals develop skills, knowledge and attitudes that enable wide advancement that is at least physical, cognitive, affective and spiritual.
• It is no longer possible for a teacher to emerge from a few years (~4) with a range of skills and knowledge of human development to begin management of a classroom with 20-30 students.
• Growth of knowledge about neurodevelopment and neurodiversity will entail new structures,, organizations, specializations and responses by educators at all levels—including guides and MKOs for everyone over age fourteen (14).
• The efficiencies of digital media and artificial intelligence will preclude the existence of textbooks and testing based on models of the past. Self-directed education will be facilitated rather than hampered, restricted or blocked (taboo subjects will be celebrated for developmental potential) …
• Buildings for education (aka, former school buildings ) will be in greater demand and efficiencies will drive development of new structures to be open and available 24/7/365. … Use paradigms will embrace and facilitate community engagement. … through remote monitoring of open, free and responsible use will be facilitated by digital technologies and AI/ML. … Comprehensive Maker Spaces will emerge and evolve in these buildings …
• Education is multidimensional … not monolithic. It is not collected disciplines in a curriculum. The illustrations in the book by Bella Banathy should be consulted. It may be necessary to disseminate these illustrations to build a dialogue. Seeking permission to reproduce one or more of the book;s illustration is only necessary for commercial exploitation, which is emphatically the wrong approach to building a new paradigm for education. The new paradigm will build on open access to ideas and open dialogue about how to implement those ideas through “strategic doing” and evaluating the efficacy (falsification) of ideas. (See K. Popper.)

  Inside or outside of a school situation, questioning opens potential for dialogue and evolutionary developmental conversations. Facilitators, guides and leaders begin their work with solicitation of questions from all participants.

  For example, in a school, instead of beginning a lesson with teacher generated questions, let the questions emerge or rise spontaneously or serendipitously from living in an ecosystem. Sources of questions could be from any trigger—a word, phrase or visual stimulation. A photograph displayed would stimulate a small group to pause for 3-5 minters and write one or more questions that come to their mind. Following this a small group can share their questions without comment or criticism. Everything is in the game. Then the group picks 2,3,4 of the questions to pass up the line to other groups or to the whole group. Rather than the teacher leading the give and take, a student or a panel of students could facilitate a discussion asking which of the questions may be most relevant to development of concepts and additional knowledge about the stimulant.

  A similar protocol could be modified for a community or neighborhood gathering. The intent would be to enable a group to begin a dialogue, perhaps with a goal, for instaance to develop a plan for next steps and actions to enlarge on what they decide is the relevant knowledge. The role, only role, of the leader—a guide—is to facilitate the processes of thinking and emphasizing the importance of factual information in the process of knowledge development.

  We are now in an age where information is ubiquitous and the gaps will only be filled through generation of questions—that is, research questions. The art of development of research questions cannot be expected when the focus of education is the passing of information and the testing of how well that information has been retained and recalled on the demand of someone else. It is a process centered on questioning that holds some promise for a whole new approach to education as a way for individuals to build or develop a self that understands the value of others. A question asked when no one is around to hear it does not make a sound.

  CITE the SOURCE …

  The constant pressure for greater and greater performance on standardized tests as a measure of educational quality cannot continue to grow if education in its current form is to be retained. The fetish on high stakes testing is insane, yet we keep escalating it. Project evaluation is a wholly different matter—Does it make a difference? We know it when we see it.

  Age as a grouping criteria is crude. Too crude to be useful. Gender is likewise too crude. And, absolutely, of course, skin color is not only crude but is also dehumanizing and immoral. Skin color grouping is never ethical, even when there may be some so-called “natural tendencies” for it to occur and to justify it. These justifications are phony, pseudoscience.

  Thee are a host of reasons for forming groups as apart of an educational experience. These reasons should be the basis for exploration of new and creative ways to encourage fully voluntary formation of groups. A common vision can be shared and those adopting or being persuaded by the articulation of a vision can form a group to advance the vision. This may presume that there are some common skills inherent in the members of the group and that the group will commit to increasing skill development along with building a base of relevant knowledge as well as attitudes to support agency, action and doing. (See Distributed Leadership)

  For an example of grouping … A young adult is dissatisfied with access to a nearby lake and wants to build a swimming beach. S/he describes the vision to a friend and they begin spreading the vision. Others join and an effort forms to approach the town council with a proposal. They write and edit a proposal … now think about the range of skills to develop and employ in getting a new beach for the town … writing, persuasion based on numerical evidence of costs and benefits, survey and interviewing, consensus building, local history, sales and marketing, as well as interpersonal communication. And, these are just the skills that can be named. Along the way choices become paramount and the engagement of group members will inevitably acquire points of view from sources outside the group itself. Leadership will emerge … from distributed assignments and self-assignment … attitudes will “git r'dun.”

  The US Constitution provided in its initial amendments, the Bill of Rights, statements that established “freedom” for speech, journalism, religion and religious practice as well as the right to gather and take issue with the practice of government (redress of grievance). These constitutionally enumerated freedoms are aspirational, not absolute. Treating them as absolute is degrading of their values. The result is a need to recognize that for every enumerated freedom there is a concomitant responsibility.

  It is with and from these responsibilities that it is possible to live together, to recognize limits for our freedoms. For certain of these freedoms there has been some legally enforceable and/or tacit agreements on limits. For instance freedom of speech is limited when there could be immediate and irreconcilable harm to others; such as falsely screaming “FIRE” in a crowded theater. No one is “free” to do such a thing.

  However, there tends to be no enforceable restrictions on most other speech. While there is significant legal scholarship regarding freedom of speech as well as some of the other enumerated and implied “freedoms” embedded in the Constitutional Bill of Rights these pronouncements are mostly sequestered from the general public and even from most members of the legal profession. When a specific case is brought before a court, the presiding judge and the attorneys will consult the law and precedent-making by other courts. Occasionally these conditions may be enacted into statutes by Congress and state legislatures, although the constitutionality may be challenged even for decisions of the US Supreme Court. The only safe route for modification and clarification of a constitutional freedom is another superseding constitutional amendment. These amendments would very likely, have to spell out specific exceptions.

  My own sense is that these amendments and exceptions will inevitably occur due in no small part to the flagrant abuse of such things as guns for aggression against certain non-favored groups and including non-sensual self-defense, religious abuses of the tax codes, violent outcomes and property damage resulting from the right to gather to redress grievance, and many others.

  The Bill of Rights was formulated at a time before any foreseeable development of technologies for electronic amplification and broadcasting of voice and sound, commercialized disbursal military flight enabled automatic and remote controlled weapons as well as others.

  Other means of insuring domestic tranquility and public safety will evolve and new legal structures will be formulated and enacted. These societal challenges will demand new social structures if for ho other reason than our structures of the past, including schools, have failed society.

  Schools have been charged with providing so called civic education. Schools have obviously done a miserable job of handling their assigned task. Nearly half of the public and members of Congress state that violence is an acceptable strategy for creating changes in governance.

  Respect for truth has vanished from nearly half of all of white voters and the other half is, to be charitable, confused.

  Our rampant economic, political and social inequality must be reconciled. If it is not our schools will persist and become another tool for control of the electorate and control of cultural and social norms. Indoctrination and education are not easily differentiated.

  Most regrettably the rise in dictatorships around the world is now being paralleled in the US with the threats of a Trumpian mob. Retaining our democracy, or what is left of our democracy, is now more urgent that it has ever been. The attraction of fascism not only does not go away, it can become an acceptable alternative to democracy when democracy does not function in societies.

  • Questioning – Make Just One Change. This is an essential change for not only education but for all of the places where humans live, work and play. It is a foundation for the future of society. An art of questioning is honored as a skill to be developed and practiced universally.
    • Projects → playing with peers … Projects by their very nature bring people together with a purpose. Linking people and purpose is fundamental to education and has almost nothing in common with the structures and schedules of schools. When a project emerges from dialogue there is a foundation of questions and questioning that drives action. The challenge of a project can rival any competition and is authentic. In short, projects are fun in a way that schooling can never be, particularly in this era of centralized, high-stakes evaluations.
  • Non-authoritarian Environments. Anti-authoritarian thinking … awards no author … is anti-fascist … is and an egalitarian approach within a democracy that respects individual’s intrinsic worth and dignity, until or unless they do something or anything to abrogate respect. Non-authoritarian environments will call forth the skills of social workers who are prepared with a strong and powerful understanding of neuroscience and psychology …
  • Grouping only as needed v. Inflexible schedules … Human development is independent of time and place … There is nothing about education inherent in grouping. Groups are simply an administrative convenience and schools are built on grouping for administrative conveniences. Although nothing is inherently educational about the formation of a group, there are certainly some elements of socialization — the process of an individual acquiring the skills and knowledge of self (attitude) necessary to function in a group — that call for experience with groups. This can be achieved without a whole system of education forming around administratively convenient groupings based on age.
  • Freedom only with responsibility … Freedom is never absolute. There is so much about western culture, but particularly cultural values in the United States, that have created mass confusion and an irrational subset that is leading to chaos. One important consequence is that the very definitions of freedom are so severely eroded that the term is used without restraint and applied almost anywhere for political persuasion and exercises of power. Education, with a new paradigm, must contribute to a societal solution. Education is not the solution.
  • Neo-capitalist paradigm … a post-capitalist economy will emerge as the demands of and for a circular economy become increasingly obvious. Capital expansion seems a matter of destiny and even divinity. Community Wealth Building may be highly copacetic with neighborhood and community development embracing a new educatinal paradigm.
  • Engineering will become increasingly localized through formation of networks of makers and ubiquity of engineering solutions explained and demonstrated through Intenet links.
  • Agriculture will become increasingly localized and enable neighborhoods to thrive as they emerge from food deserts dependent on global commerce and transportation to embrace local cooperatives that are fully engaged as producers, and effectively engage barter to utilize excess production with contiguous neighborhoods.
  • Neo-democracy regarding new considerations for hierarchy, republicanism, representative governance … the electorate in the United States may not be particularly far from realizing that what we have been so proudly calling our democracy has some very serious flaws. We do not now, and have never had, a pure democracy. Our representative form of democracy is entirely dependent on the electoral processes and the public confidence in those processes. Somehow we have permitted doubt to creep into our electoral process without significant challenging responses. The recent outburst of labeling virtually every election that a Republican does not win, as a fraud, will call forth change. Calling an election fraudulent without immediate open, challengeable citation of solid, empirical evidence is, for democracy writ large, fully equivalent to screaming “fire” in a crowded theater without first seeing smoke or flame.
  • Collective and cooperative approaches will advance new paradigms for human growth and development within which guiding and mentoring will lose hierarchical and dogma-driven approaches to community development. No community will be seen as other. … Separation is not a solution and can only lead to conflict and stagnation.
• Assessments of human development will increasingly utilize and even demand Portfolios & Digital Badges that document accomplishment and provide direct esteem as they reward doing/acting v. exam scores with highly ambiguous meaning. Substituting performance in real, non-artificial situations will see increasing demand. …
• Minimizing Management … in particular top-down decision-making and hierarchical stratifications in organizations … de-emphasizing “Us v. Them” relationships and competition in favor or greater cooperation and collaboration … distributed leadership in the style advocated by Deborah Ancona and James Bresman …
• Personal mastery → involving the basics embedded in the mix of the ancient trivium and quadrivium with rhetoric evaluated through performances … AND → balancing special interests with community benefits to enhance local governance through democratic principles and practices that are fully open for societal evaluation and falsification. …
• Neo-spiritual paradigms will replace dogmatic religious practices … as a result of recognizing the universal attributes of all organisms, ecosystems of the biosphere and its interfaces with the lightsphere and atmosphere.
• Mergers (P4+P4) … lawyers do civic education … business does STEM and personal finance (banking v. investment), insurance is mutual benefit and non-profit … Profit for a mutual and equitable future …
• Expression is Everything – writing and speaking are performances that enable relationships to emerge. Everyone beginning at about age eight is encouraged to write and share questions, proposals, opportunities …
• The Rising Tides … feminism and the impacts of the LGBTQ as a cultural disruptor. Gender Studies, trans and anti trans …
• Behavioral Genetics … Don't assume that progress will stop … The OMICS together with neuroscience will continue to reveal and refine the biological foundations for our humanity … as well as all of the choices and options open to our species … education with an orientation toward understanding and resolution of the nearly timeless questions of philosophy that are historical artifacts of our human cognitive development.
• ANDCs —Autonomous Neighborhood Development Centers—are scalable alternatives to our contemporary educational paradigm of schooling. These developmental communities are in pursuit of massively distributed leadership and self-sufficiency through self-development … an outgrowth of a new paradigm for education.

Further Reading and Sources:

Banathy, B. 1989. Social Design of Education.

Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. 2023. Strongmen.

Kelly, Marjorie. 2023.

Ancona & Bresnan.

Senge, P. The Fifth Discipline.

Buber, M. Dialogue.

Illich

Reigeluth

Gray, Peter

Sudbury Vally

1 Australia may be an exception.

2 Throughout this book I will try to avoid the use or our familiar word, learning, but will instead refer to human development or, simply, development. It is my contention that learning carries connotations that have become far too vague.

3 Kerwin, Ann.

4 Packer, George. 2021. Last Best Hope; America in Crisis and Renewal. Frerrar, Straus & Giroux.

5 Domzalski, Kaylee. 2021. Education Week. 17 Nov. 2021.

6 Ancona, Deborah & Bresman, Henrik. 2007. X-Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate and Succeed. Harvard.

7 Senge, Peter. 2010. The Fifth Discipline: The Ar and Practice of the Learning Organization. Currency. Revised edition.

8 Gaias, L. M., et al. (2019). Examining teachers’ classroom management profiles: Incorporating a focus on culturally responsive practice. Journal of School Psychology, 76(5). 124-139. DOI:0.1016/j.jsp.2019.07.017

9 I first heard the phrase future-fit over ten years ago in a talk by Nina Rothschild Utne in Minneapolis.

10 the late Maka Abishaker. Personal Communication.

11 Litecky, Lawrence. 1992. Creating Active Learning with Examples Drawn from the Social Sciences. Strategies & Solutions.

12 Litecky, L. 1992. Great Teaching, Great Learning: Classroom Climage, Innovative Methods, and Critical Thinking. In C. A. Barnes (ed). Critical Thinking: Educational Imperative. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass.

13 The late Theodore Paul and his life partner Linda Elder were leaders in the movement to infuse critical thinkiing in education. Their Foundation for Critical Thinking and its website https://www.criticalthinking.org// is a rich source of resource tools for anyone including teachers. The foundation is also a successful, non-profit enterprise offering books, speaking, seminars and professional development experiences.

14 Waterhouse, Lynn. `2013. Rethinking Autism; Variation and Complexity. Elsevier.

15 Van Gulick, Robert, "Consciousness", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/consciousness/>.

16 In the forward for Ader's book on Psychoneuroimmunology, Good wrote that using the tuburculin test under hypnosis, an injection of tuburculin in to the right arm of a subject, the characteristic wheal would appear at a corresponding location on the left arm.

17 Garmezy, Norman; Masten, Ann S. (1986). "Stress, competence, and resilience: Common frontiers for therapist and psychopathologist". Behavior Therapy. 17 (5): 500–521. doi:10.1016/s0005-7894(86)80091-0.

18 Masten, A. S.; Hubbard, J. J.; Gest, S. D.; Tellegen, A.; Garmezy, N.; Ramirez, M. (1999). "Competence in the context of adversity: pathways to resilience and maladaptation from childhood to late adolescence". Development and Psychopathology. 11 (1): 143–169.

19 Masten, A. S.; Hubbard, J. J.; Gest, S. D.; Tellegen, A.; Garmezy, N.; Ramirez, M. (1999). "Competence in the context of adversity: pathways to resilience and maladaptation from childhood to late adolescence". Development and Psychopathology. 11 (1): 143–169.

20 ERIC Number: EJ298103

21 ERIC Number: EJ1204090

22 Mitchel Resnick. 2017. Lifelong Kindergarten. Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers and Play. The MIT Press.

23 For instance, a man is pronounced “dead” by a coroner due to disease or accident but his facial hair continues to grow for a day or two. The cells of the hair follicle are able to continue organized and metabolizing sufficiently in the absence of circulatory support to perpetuate through cell divisions that produce elongation of the hair shaft.

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Uploaded  29 March 2020