Education thread

[ccp]

Hello! New to the list, I was following the NM education thread, and a few  
points drew my attention:

1) Being from South America, the anecdotes about massive embezzling,  
crumbling infrastructure, obnoxious burocracy, etc. made me feel right at  
home. Maybe you should start thinking of NM as a Thirld World country, and  
investigate what they are doing, or trying to do there about the problem.

2) I got the impression that the discussion seemed to be about ways of  
placing a better prepared, better paid warm body in front of a group of  
kids. Keep in mind that child confinement/custody is a different problem  
 from child education, even if the same person is trying to do both jobs.
I feel that a group with your intellectual firepower and background is  
much better qualified to tackle the education part, thinking out of the  
envelope.

3) And the most surprising part, taking into account the Institute  
orientation, is the fixation on improving the old top-down model, while  
everything is waiting to be done about tools and methods for facilitating  
bottom-up educative systems.
The technology and theory are already here.


Cheers,

Carlos Cesar

[Robert Holmes-2]

Hey Carlos - great post. I think your item #3 hits a key point: we're
falling into a major failure of imagination when we spend our lives pushing
these bottom-up models but only really perceive of their being used within
top-down power structures.

Maybe it's a south american thing :-) I'm reminded of the explicit
bottom-upness of academics/activists like Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal and
am wondering whether we shouldn't be taking a page from their books. Which
makes me think that maybe the corruption and nepotism in NM is just the
driver we need - Freire & Boal's work was a direct reaction to the
oppressive structures that they found themselves in. If things get really
bad we might actually get our asses in gear and do something....

Robert

On 10/12/05, ccp <ccpizzarotti at fibertel.com.ar> wrote:

>
> Hello! New to the list, I was following the NM education thread, and a few
> points drew my attention:
>
> 1) Being from South America, the anecdotes about massive embezzling,
> crumbling infrastructure, obnoxious burocracy, etc. made me feel right at
> home. Maybe you should start thinking of NM as a Thirld World country, and
> investigate what they are doing, or trying to do there about the problem.
>
> 2) I got the impression that the discussion seemed to be about ways of
> placing a better prepared, better paid warm body in front of a group of
> kids. Keep in mind that child confinement/custody is a different problem
> from child education, even if the same person is trying to do both jobs.
> I feel that a group with your intellectual firepower and background is
> much better qualified to tackle the education part, thinking out of the
> envelope.
>
> 3) And the most surprising part, taking into account the Institute
> orientation, is the fixation on improving the old top-down model, while
> everything is waiting to be done about tools and methods for facilitating
> bottom-up educative systems.
> The technology and theory are already here.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Carlos Cesar
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9:30a-11:30 at ad hoc locations
> Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.:
> http://www.friam.org
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20051013/ec16a155/attachment.htm