Comments on: Beyond Repair – Letting Go

By: Sicheii Yazhi; Dinosaurs, Schools, and Fossil Fuels

Sicheii Yazhi; Dinosaurs, Schools, and Fossil Fuels — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 02:50:09 +0000

[...] Doug Noon added a post to his blog, Borderland, that addresses important but complex ideas. His basic argument is that our current model for schools is outdated and probably past the point where mere "reform" can help. Instead, we need to let go of the old model and construct a new one. Unfortunately, there’s no consensus yet on what that new model should look like. In his words: We’re asking [schools] to do what they were never designed to do. We probably need to let them die in order to move forward … The real problem is that we haven’t yet arrived at consensus for what kids should be doing while their parents are at work. We don’t have a replacement vision. [...]

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 22:36:21 +0000

Brad, your response is helpful. It gives me a couple of ideas to consider when thinking about change and culture, because that’s what this is really about. It isn’t a strictly technical matter. What we’re discussing here is the nature of cultural change, of which schooling is one piece. A big piece, I think, but maybe that’s just because it’s in my face so much. As Brian pointed out, most people seem to not think about it very much.

By: Brad Hoge

Brad Hoge — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 15:34:20 +0000

Doug, you asked me if about the evolution metaphor used by Kelly in my trackback to this post, so I thought I’d transfer that question and my answer here. Your question was:

Brad, thanks for your interest in my post. I’m curious about your point of view on the article that stimulated my thinking. As a scientist you may have a helpful perspective on the use of evolution as a model for understanding organizational change. In the article I referred to, under the heading Complexity Kelly said,

What we find in nature are self sustainable, self repairing, self replicating systems. Isn’t that what we would want for the things that we make? What we would love to create is an organization that went on for a hundred years, got better, continued to grow, repaired itself, exploited itself, and overall governed itself. In order to do that we humans, we creators, have to let go of the thing. We have to surrender some of our control and let the system run itself.

I’m not sure if “letting go of the thing” is the same as starting over. Starting over sounds like a lot of work, and may not result in anything that even comes close to an improvement. Letting go gives us the flexibility to exploit advantages without wasting energy trying to overcome a myriad of obstacles.

Here’s my answer:

The only caveat to add from the metaphor of evolutoin is that change must come from available resources. Evolution cannot simply create a feature out of nothing, no matter how adaptive. There are many examples of “poor engineering” in organisms because selection pressure utilized a preexisting feature for a new purpose. This often results in somewhat contrived features, such as a stressed lower back or backwardly wired eye.

We have the advantage of conscious consideration in effecting change, however. Kelly is suggesting something similar to Asimov (the science fiction writer)in that complex sociologic structures can be modeled as unconcious entities and prediction of their behavior can be made reliably and similarly to the invisible hand of economics (and evolution), but I hope we can expect more from a dedicated campaign to effect change.

I agree that letting go is better than starting over. Letting go just may be the conscious attitude needed to make a behemoth social structure malleable.

Thanks again for such a thought provoking post.

By: Brad Hoge

Brad Hoge — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 12:51:19 +0000

There may be some momentum for scrapping the system and starting over, so this discussion could turn out to be valuable. We need to continue to ask ourselves what we need and how to get it so that by the time a strong enough movement is created to rebuild our public school system we’ll be ready with the right questions which are more important than the right answers.

I especially like Vicky’s comment. If only . . .

By: Mark Ahlness

Mark Ahlness — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 21:07:17 +0000

Doug, this is a great post with a wonderful ensuing conversation. I’ve probably been teaching a couple years longer than you. There are lots of variables in this equation, but I’m not giving up. Here’s why. Brian stated, “How many teachers or administrators do you know that feel education is really going in the right direction?” My feeling is – “hey, I KNOW the right direction!! Just let me go there!” When I can’t do that, I’ll start looking for somewhere else to make a difference. Hey, aren’t you on vacation? – Mark