Education's EcologyWhy Teaching, Textbooks, Testing & Technology are Not Enough.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.
Uploaded 29 March 2020 |