Education thread

[Michael Agar]

RE Robert and Carlos' comments: The political ideology implicit in
complexity has fascinated me from the beginning, as have efforts to
re-assimilate it to the traditional top-down command-and-control models.
Over time a social organization needs distributed authority and bottom
up innovation as well as central control and top down guidance. It needs
both in some kind of mix, some kind of continual conversation, that
shifts over time. Ancient question in political philosophy, and one that
needs to be tightly coupled to resource flow, but interesting to rethink
in light of a theory that celebrates emergence and self-organization.
SFI's Elizabeth Woods wrote a book on the insurgency in El Salvador
that's a good case study.

A friend, in the midst of a political protest, said, "You know the
problem here? If we win, the first thing we'll do is appoint a chief of
police." On the other hand, Chief Lennen of the SFPD does a great job
and used an ABM in all the right ways.

Mike

>>> rholmes62 at gmail.com 10/13/05 9:05 PM >>>
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
>
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