Monday 28 February 2011

New education...a time to rethink - again?

A sad education system which seeks continuation of a defective system...unsustainable, inefficient, fun for the few, failing to realise potential, failing to ensure individual responsibility-taking and true choice.

Economies have been built on tulips and trinkets and they are currently built on games (golf, football, yachting), fun, dance, music and violence. We can choose our sustainable market in anything for which we can educate if we want money as the base; a recent/current one was manfacturing where limits of resources and of later problems of disposal form a slowly arising awareness in boardroom educations of later life. The highest marks in education must focus on those changes which actually deliver a better world - food where food is needed rather than more food with un-health, less population, no unnecessary journeying, production, messaging, etc., and extra marks for more time to enjoy our lives.

It would also be healthy to award extra marks to those who educate to produce ideas which remove those who spend their time pressurising others to work for them rather than for themselves - Human Capital Theory.Schultz et al.


One answer is in E. M. Forster's The Machine Stops. It actually gives us the answer to 'Where does all the go, go?'

Sunday 20 February 2011

Time to update the freedom and responsibility discussions?

Engaging with our friends, community, society, nation, humanity is a progression of values (no, not family – this is too non-committal and unchanging). How much of this particular progress do we want, how much do we have and how much do we need?

Self-responsibility has to be our starter, and yet do we consciously choose? Our education and parenting systems should focus on developing the independent, fully empowered, fully realised personality. Such educated personality might be decisive, informed, creative, independent, resourceful, empathetic and courageous.

From here we can move to our engagement with society. Such engagement will then be in ways which are productive and meaningful to one another taking into account the all. This may mean the future requires greater individual sophistication than before, not just to a greater degree, but to a universality of sophistication – an expectation of higher values, commitment, self-belief and intention across humankind. This is not a huge step away from seeing humanity evolve – and expectation is a powerful tool of such change, although as yet we poorly learnt to use it.

The future is not isolated, but it is also not directly connected to the past – this is a matter of choice, albeit for some and in some circumstances, a difficult choice. Individuals and organisations, .collectives, governments and nations, none may escape such challenges which exist right now. Putting off means at best putting off; we should all be benefiting now from our potential to change. Humanitiy's greater sophistication would suggest not putting off, but choosing, deciding, acting soonest.

And so, too, the organisation and the nation, as well as its people. The educated personality of the future must be affective[actually acting] not merely effective[knowing why and being capable of acting], across the key facets of society including the ethics of science, markets, dignity, administration/red-tape...poor words or great words: universal humanism or survival and joyous wondrous healthy lives for all in this, our amazing world.