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THE EDUCATION PIECE
OF A POSSIBLE FUTURE
by Berenice D. Bleedorn
SUMMARY: This article is a reminder of the
urgent need for a new kind of thinking for a new kind of complex, integrated, interactive,
dynamic world. It is argued that the mandated educational experience everywhere needs to
include the understanding and practice of higher-order or quality thinking, which is said
to include: creative, critical, systemic, futuristic, paradoxical, global, and complex,
problem-solving thought processes. Since every important thing we do is said to
"depend upon our habits of mind", a reference is made to the importance of
quality thinking by both leadership and followership in a functioning democracy. Examples
of enlightened educational programming and speculated predictions for educational futures
are included.
Introduction
Most predictions of the future will include speculations on scientific developments,
electronic breakthroughs, economic trends, new discoveries and treatments in the health
field, explorations of space, evolving communications systems, materials of war and
defense systems, and occasionally changes in institutions of church and government Often
missing from the list of trends and speculations are forecasts regarding the institution
of education.
Are we to believe that institutionalized education is unrelated to the radical change
patterns perceived in other world developments? Or are we to believe that predictions of
major changes in education have little credibility, given the traditional and bureaucratic
nature of the established system? Whatever the reason, it is time to make the argument for
the influence of the mandated years of formal education on the minds and spirits of the
educated public and, subsequently, on leadership and decision-making habits of thought
that govern the lives and destinies of individuals, the collective, the state, and,
ultimately, the planetary society.
A Costly Imbalance
There can be little doubt that advances in science and technology have been made possible
partly by the support and promotion of educational programs and the allure of careers and
profit in exciting fields. At the same time the information age and the computerization of
communications have thrust both young and old into the world of immediate contact with new
opportunities and knowledge outside of formal education. Scientific developments have made
possible the most extreme options for creating and preserving life as well as for making
war. The art of thinking in ways that make the best possible choices for personal well
being into the future and for serving the common ideals of peace and justice on a world
scale---specific attention to that art is often missing from school curricula.
The deliberate teaching of creative, critical, and other higher order thinking
processes has been traditionally left to chance. Almost fifty years after the
establishment of the discipline of Creative Studies as a component of Educational
Psychology, the teaching of Creativity continues to fall well behind standard and
traditional courses on the balance sheet of learning. A heavy emphasis on memorization,
understanding established knowledge, and arriving at a predetermined right answer
relegates the teaching of original thinking and problem-solving processes to secondary
status in most classrooms. Assessment of learning through the use of standardized tests of
basic skills provides one kind of check on the effectiveness of education. What is left to
chance is the teaching of higher order uses of the mind that include mental processes of
creative and critical thinking, systemic thinking, global education, visionary, futuristic
thinking, philosophical and paradoxical thinking, and more. With the rapid pace of changes
in the world and the interactive complexities of global human affairs, it would seem that
mandated education would do well to include practice in the processing of the vast
collection of information in ways that address the present realities as well as the
studied perception of their future directions. Such quality thinking can be taught. In
addition to the specific teaching of complex thinking, there is an urgent need for school
programs that recognize and reward complex thinking in students at any age whose intellect
is already leading them to think at levels well beyond what is expected. All minds need
stimulation and challenge. Serious thinkers of all ages have a right to think and be
heard. The future world has need of their service.
Possible Trends in Education
Enlightened educators and administrators are asking themselves, "What shall we teach
and how shall we teach it if we are to prepare students for a life of personal growth and
to cultivate the natural human inclination to participate in and contribute to their
society"? The basic skills as a starter and as tools for accomplishing the greater
learning. Teaching the art of thinking with its full range and potential of the brain/mind
is a proper addition to the list of basic knowledge and skills. Creative and critical
thinking, problem-solving and conflict resolution, global and futuristic thinking,
systemic and paradoxical thought patterns are all of inestimable value for leadership and
for citizens of a democracy. The right to think should not be denied to anyone. No student
should be left behind, but no student should be deprived of the right to move ahead and to
develop to the highest possible individual level of intellectual capacity. Add to the
teaching of thinking processes a more serious academic attention to the teaching of
environmental studies, global futures, the United Nations and peace studies, cultural
diversity and human behavior, and certainly more foreign language.
The natural integration of learning and thinking has never been adequately addressed in
the school experience. The inclination to structure education based on labels, categories,
specialized fields, and a strict hierarchical organizational pattern has little provision
for recognizing and practicing the integration of the separate parts into a total system.
Adequate attention to interdisciplinary studies and integrative thinking in programs of
higher education is overdue. Master teachers within the existing system have for years
been serious advocates of change in the upper levels of educational administration. They
look a shift from the hierarchical model of top-down management and government regulation
to the genuine leadership style that listens to ideas all the way up and down the levels
of authority. Enlightened leadership practices the productive inclusion of undesignated
leadership from dedicated educational personnel with a vision of the future and a
perception of individual possibilities based on direct human contact with the learners,
perceptive observations, and serious reflection.
A Sampling of Enlightened Education
Reports of successful, sometimes bold new ways of learning and teaching continue to
provide encouraging expectations for positive changes in official school experiences. Many
breakthroughs in educational efforts to serve the evolving realities of today’s
society are the result of initiatives far removed from official, traditional educational
management.
An optimistic prediction would be that the history of bureaucratic,
"top-down" management of the institution of education would move from business
as usual to a leadership style that adopts and supports effective programs that
"bubble up from the bottom". Examples of entrepreneurial educational leadership
continue to appear in news reports throughout the country.
A recent segment on a "60 Minutes" television program included a segment on
plans for a radical change in leadership in New York City schools. The city mayor, along
with other professional and public servants, were interviewed regarding their expectation
to take over the operation of the city schools with new administrative patterns and
attention to updated, more integrative curricula. A bold redesign to replace a failing
traditional system of education, if successful, would answer critics who have been
claiming that educational reform from the top of the administrative structure was
impossible.
Many of the initiatives for effective, realistic teaching in a radically changing world
have been coming from outside of the official domain of public education. A program
featuring leadership on environmental education across levels of schooling is an example.
Eco Education is a nonprofit organization based in St. Paul, Minnesota whose mission is
"to foster within young people the appreciation, knowledge, values, and skills
necessary to inspire ecologically sound decisions and actions." The public sector,
through the generous support of donors and the efforts of committed environmentalists is
providing leadership for the future of the critical and fundamental problem of
environmental sustainability.
The Association of Waldorf Schools of North
America base their program on a holistic model thata balances academic, artistic, and
physical curricula. They provide a model of learning that "promotes creativity and
critical thinking in an interdisciplinar;y fashion"----exactly the direction that
public education needs to move.
In Lanesboro, Minnesota, John Davis, an artist/philosopher with a talent for
persuasion is conducting a national Kids Philosophy Slam for students in Kindergarten
through High School. Thousands of kids respond with their answers to questions like,
"Which is more powerful, love or hate?" Stimulating serious thinking and
legitimizing carefully considered individual thought is as much a task of educators as
counting and measuring and comparing responses to standardized tests.
The Friends School of Minnesota in St. Paul is teaching Conflict Resolution to children
from Pre-School through eighth grade. Applications of the process are made to school
situations and are integrated with the school’s declared values of "Equality,
Community, Non-violence, Simplicity, and Integrity" throughout the curriculum.
The Creative Education Foundation in Buffalo, New York, has been the international
center for the study and teaching of creative thinking for fifty years. The American
Creativity Association continues to attract scholars and practitioners of creative
thinking
from all over the world to their annual conference. The National Center for Teaching
Thinking at the University of Massachusetts has been conducting major international
conferences on thinking for a number of years. All of these models of educational
leadership in the deliberate teaching of higher order thinking processes deserve the
immediate attention and support of official centers of power and influence.
Communities everywhere are providing examples of organized learning and thinking
programs that serve the need of students for individual challenge and self expression as
well as the need for attention to the common good and its future development. Elements of
successful programs outside of the box of traditional education are overdue for
incorporation into official, government-regulated requirements.
Summary and Prediction
Evidencea grows that public education needs fixing. Efforts at reform
through allocation of funding and an absolute dependence upon government regulations,
testing, and measuring for an assessment of quality....these have done little to correct
the fundamental problems of intellectual growth and development. The movement to private
education and charter schools is serving the diversity of student needs more effectively
than most current public school programs. There is an increase in public awareness of
education as it affects individual students or local communities, but there seems to be a
lack of public acknowledgment that all of our institutions, our safety, our global
interrelationships, the quality of our lives and our planetary home, the human ideals of
peace and justice—all of these depend upon the intellects and attitudes of the
people. If we grant to "the educated mind" the privileges, responsibilities, and
formal certification to act with authority in a democracy, then those minds ought to be
capable of the kind of complex, holistic, futuristic thinking designed to meet the
shifting realities of change in behalf of the common good.
There are many excellent teachers and administrators with vision and a sense of the new
global realities in schools all over the world. It may be idealistic to predict that the
teaching of creative, critical, and other quality thinking processes will move with
authority into educational programs worldwide. It is also a logical expectation and
purpose if world leadership will come to recognize the power of mandated public education
to influence the state of the world and its human affairs. Institutional leadership is
positioned to make the case for keeping a balance between support offered for fields of
science and technology and for studies of human behavior and human thought processes.
The human intellect is the most powerful force for change and for meeting the
challenges of a complex, interrelated, global society. The understanding of this fact
within educational establishments, along with their honest assessment of the desperate
need for new kinds of thinking in the world, could justify a few general predictions
regarding education:
- Educational programs will factor into their formulas for instruction a basic belief that
it is natural to all humans to want to learn, to grow and to enhance themselves, and that
there are individual differences in learning styles that need to be considered.
- Traditional administration in education will move from a hierarchical pattern of
top-down authority to a more inclusive, systemic system of leadership across levels of
influence, thus capitalizing on quality thinking throughout the system.
- Assessment of learning will include, along with standardized measurable tests of
achievement, the record of independent thinking and individual accomplishment across the
entire spectrum of intellectual expression.
- The practices of labeling and categorizing students, of strict requirements and absolute
rules will experience a more flexible interpretation of regulations based on student
individualities.
- Requirements for admission to college and university teacher education and educational
administration programs will include evidence of intellectual and humanistic purpose.
Large numbers of additional teachers required in the years ahead will be expected to meet
new standards for educating a new kind of citizen for a new kind of world.
- Increased requirements for Environmental Studies, Global Education, and Futures Studies
will be added to curricula at all levels of learning.
Serious educationists are grappling with questions of educational reform. Predictions
for positive change will have a better chance of becoming a reality when the voting public
and the public media, centers of government, church, and social organizations recognize
the influence of the mandated educational experience on the quality of thinking that is
rewarded and modeled during the school years. The world is watching for educational
futures with a vision of a democratic society with leadership and followership of
intellect, integrity, and a sense of their individual agenda within a dynamic, interactive
system.
The reality remains that good intentions cannot be accomplished by old ways of
thinking. A serious look at the state of the world raises a question regarding the thought
processes of decision makers in positions of overwhelming power and influence. Although
leadership may bring advanced degrees and certifications to their positions of authority,
the scope of their thinking may fail to go beyond a focus on present and personal
political agenda. Years of traditional education are no guarantee of a mature intellect.
Entrenched mentalities need to change or institutions will continue to play the same old
games and repeat the same old tunes. Schools of the future have an opportunity and
responsibility to change the tune.
