Thinking, Flexibility, and Dogma: Survival or Extinction

Dogma has a meaning related to an official opinion or a set of principles or knowledge that is handed down from some sort of authority. But, we often use this word to mean any sort of knowledge claim that is presented in an authoritative way. I’ve used it that way. However, I am not sure that usage falls within the definition of “dogma.” Nevertheless, the point I’m working up to here is that both dogmatic and authoritative ways of presenting things bug me. My immediate reaction is to tense up when I hear or see something being presented in that way.

I react the same way when I’m trying to resolve an issue with some company and they come back with a statement like, “well, it’s our policy.” Or, just the other day, I called a doctor’s office to see what they would recommend doing for my son. He has an appointment coming up with a doctor who comes with a high recommendation from another doctor who we really respect. I was asking if someone could see him in the interim or if he could go to an ER with a note from the physician we are going to see. However, the only suggestion was that he could see someone else tomorrow, but he could never see the doctor we want him to see. That was the policy.

These kinds of situation of dogma, authoritative claims, policy, and so forth are all examples of trying to solidify some “thing,” some process, some set of knowledge claims, or whatever. Such solidification processes are really problematic. They only serve to benefit a certain set of people (in the case of human social systems), but only in the short-term. In the long-term, such solidification processes are detrimental. Solidifying processes, procedures, knowledge, and so forth interfere with an individual’s or a group’s ability to adjust or adapt to changes in the environment. In terms of corporations, policies may seem to make things run more smoothly and increase profits, but could prevent them from responding quickly enough to changes in the market place. The same hold true for governments, institutions, and organizations of all kinds. In fact, this is a basic principle of evolution. Those species that are flexible in their responses to changes in the environment are more likely to survives than those that have rigid limits of response.

As individuals, we may get considerable comfort from our personal authoritative views and statements, but they may not serve us well. On the other hand, not believing everything we say is a bit disconcerting. But, it’s a slogan I try to remind myself of everyday.

“Don’t believe everything I think and say.”

“Don’t believe anything I think and say.”

After a while, it lightens up things a bit. Helps in the humor department, too. But, it still isn’t easy.

The Tragedy of Simple Science Illiteracy

I’m a science educator, but I’m not a big fan of promoting science as more important than the arts or any other subject matter area. I often cringe when I hear people talk about the importance of science literacy. But…. there comes a point, when I think, “wait a minute! Everybody should know this.”

Last evening, I took my dog as usual to the dog park. It was perfect timing. We arrived just before sunset and moon rise and the lunar eclipse. As I stood around talking with people about the impending eclipse, one woman, said, “but, where is the moon? It was way up here last night at this time.” I gasped silently, thinking that people had no clue how the whole Sun-Moon-Earth system worked. Yes, it does confuse people, but if you just observe the sky a little bit, you can figure out a lot of things.

At the same time, I found it pretty cool to watch the 1/3 blocked moon rise above the horizon. And, from the vantage point of the Phoenix dog park, one could see the moon move upwards. We don’t usually see the movement so clearly. But, with buildings and other structures on the horizon, it provided a foreground that made the movement very obvious. I went up to a group and excitedly pointed out this observation, which was met with something less than a ho-hum shrug.

When I was teaching elementary science teaching methods the vast majority of students had no clue how the Sun-Moon-Earth system worked. So, it really shouldn’t have been a surprise. But, for some reason, I thought that older adults would know or should know. But, we’ve destroyed our relationship to science… and to knowing for that matter. We really do not seem to value knowledge and understanding. People like the eclipse for the “magic show” quality, but not for the actual science of what’s happening.

My students and future teachers seemed to care less about how things worked. They cheated on their moon studies, which asked them to observe the moon for 5 minutes a night and record their observation and reactions. I told them, I didn’t care about “right answers,” but I did want them to struggle with trying to figure out explanations for the observations they made. But, too many years of schooling had damaged them. They had to look up information and make it sound like they had made the observations. I could tell they cheated, because they said they saw the moon when we had heavy snow storms and no visibility. Or, they did really poorly by just making up things without looking it up, in which cases nothing made any sense at all.

It really isn’t all that important to our survival that we understand how the Earth-Moon-Sun system works at this point. Maybe if we have to return to living without technology, it will be more important, but for now it isn’t. But, it just seems odd, that people have no curiosity about how the world around them works. It seems odd that people don’t look at things in the world. People don’t ask questions. They don’t try to explain anything. It’s just downright strange.

Teaching, Learning, and Time

Almost all of schooling is focused around warped uses of time. By “warped” I mean trying to squeeze a lot of material into a short period of time. “Efficiency” is the key word that marks this insidiously warped use of time.

When I talk about schools in this post, I am generalizing about the vast majority of schools. I’m talking about the institution of schooling in this country (the United States) and those in many other countries. This “institution” is the ephemeral, fuzzy bordered context of schooling that includes public, private, and charter schools. It’s a political, corporate hegemonic spider web of stuckness. There are, of course, exceptions. Courageous teachers who buck the system. And, odd schools that manage to do their own thing in the midst of their district’s craziness. Or, the occasional charter or private school that manages to break away from the hegemony of schooling, but then these schools bring up other problems of undermining the public system and serving elite populations. But, in general, when I talk about schools and schooling, I am talking about that big fuzzy institution of schooling and the schools that fall within this context.

The underlying push of schooling is “efficiency.” Schools and teachers have to be efficient. They have to cover the curriculum in the shortest possible time that will result in the highest student test scores. Time is the big issue in schooling. Time is marked by bells. Students’ lives are run by bells. Bells end classes. Bells begin classes. Bells tell when to go to lunch. Principals observe teachers with stopwatches. They go from one class to another to make sure all of the same grade level teachers are teaching the exact same thing at exactly the same time. Tests are timed. Some teachers set strict time-limits on activities, jumping from one activity to the next like grasshoppers going from one plant to the next… except that grasshoppers actually stop to take a nibble.

In life, most of us have jobs that require showing up at a specific time and leaving at a specific time. Some jobs are very much like schools with bells for starting and stopping and for coffee breaks and lunch. I worked in places like that. They were factories. In fact, the ways schools manifest now were designed to train people to work in factories. They haven’t changed much, even though the majority of jobs that children will eventually get have changed from factories to offices and other settings. But, the attitudes and characteristics of being obedient and compliant haven’t really changed. Corporations and politicians do not want people to question or challenge authority or to think critically about the issues they face in their everyday lives.

From the corporate and political perspectives, it is best to play this game that appears like they care about education by promoting higher standards, accountability, and measures of success. But, standards, accountability, and measures are all ruses. In fact, they are worse than ruses, they actually do the exact opposite of what one might think they are supposed to do. They prevent real learning, which is just what corporations and politicians want.

And, then on top of all of this, they put time constraints on learning in terms of efficiency. “Efficiency” in schooling may be the greatest misuse of time. Real, deep, meaningful, relevant learning takes time…. maybe lots of time. To speed through a curriculum is just another way of preventing real learning from taking place. Real learning is a way of…

Savoring
Considering
Reflecting
Pondering
Wondering
Exploring
Making mistakes
Playing
Fiddling
Meandering
Laughing
Screaming

With real learning there is no hurry…. The longer… the better.

Real learning gives us the tools to make difficult decisions. And, difficult decisions take time. We need to ponder possibilities and see things from different perspectives. Some real critically important decisions are going to be presenting themselves to our children in their lifetimes. Many of these issues and problems are already happening. They are only going to become more intense. And, our children have had no models of how to tackle such decision-making processes. Schools never take the time to model such processes. Schools pretend as if everything is going to be just fine in the future. They keep teaching the same old things as if life will just keep rolling along like it always has. When sea levels rise and parts of this country disappear, when food sources begin to disappear, when droughts become so bad that nothing will grow and people become desperate for jobs and water, when states are fighting over water rights, when diseases plague vast proportions of the population, and when energy resources can’t supply the demands – what tools have we given our children to cope with these problems?

The problem with schools and schooling isn’t the teachers. It isn’t the curriculum. It isn’t the children. It isn’t the parents. The problem is a systemic problem of faulty assumptions about what learning is, what schools should be, and what we want for our children. And, one of these assumptions is time. What about time?

Alternatives to Consumerism in Life and Schooling

Over the past few days, I was thinking about this week’s blog entry as a re-analysis of some old research data from a teaching unit. I was looking through old transcripts of students working on a ship building project and how their thinking naturally involved multiple perspectives and seamless multiple interacting systems. I think I’ll get back to that later in this entry, but as “things” go, this morning, Nora Bateson posted something on Facebook about how we should stop buying things and simplify… Here it is:

Today I found this quote in a Wendell Berry story. It has been a week of head banging with the wall of non-communication between the humans and the corporations– frustrating to the bone. I thought of revolutions, evolutions, uprisings and social media viruses. I have been feeling tiny and silenced– and noticing acutely how tightly we are coupled into the corporate web. At this moment, we have not got the infrastructure to live without it. It thrives on our wanting… luxuriates in our insatiable need for having… so: this.

1 – Be happy with what you’ve got. Don’t be always looking for something better.
2 – Don’t buy anything you don’t need.
3 – Don’t buy what you ought to save. Don’t buy what you ought to make.
4 – Unless you absolutely have got to do it, don’t buy anything new.
5 – If somebody tries to sell you something to “save labor,” look out. If you can work, then work.
6 – If other people want to buy a lot of new stuff and fill up the country with junk, use the junk.
7 – Some good things are cheap, even free. Use them first.
8 – Keep watch for what nobody wants. Sort through the leavings.
9 – You might know, or find out, what it is to need help. So help people.

FROM: Nora Bateson, on Facebook, September 21, 2015

This entry started me thinking about how my Dad, who was a young married man and first-time father during the Great Depression, used to save everything many years later after I was born. Our basement was filled with all kinds of things. If something broke, he’d fix it. If he couldn’t fix it, he’d save the parts that were useful and toss the rest. He’d save old nails and screws. Although he was barely literate, he was a genius in all things electrical, mechanical, and structural.

Fortunately, a little bit of his “saving everything” and an even smaller bit of his genius rubbed off on me. I save the screws and nails from things that fall apart. I build much of my own furniture and repair things myself. I often try to do what he called “jury-rigging” things… just making up solutions to problems by using parts in ways for which they were not designed.

These types of actions are not “chores” or “impoverished” approaches, as we’re led to believe by the corporate world of buy-more-new-things-all-the-time-or-you-are-not-a-worthy-person messages. In fact, there is something that feels very wealthy about making and fixing your own things. When I make or fix something, I feel empowered. I feel enriched. I feel like I am a more complete and capable human being. And, as I was mentioning to a neighbor yesterday, I have even stopped calling repairmen. More often than not, they charge a fortune and screw up the job anyway. So, I told my neighborhood, “I can do screw it up myself for a whole lot less money.” But, as it turns out, it may take me a little longer, but I usually end up doing a better job than the so-called experts, who also seem to be out to scam people, but that’s another story altogether.

So, back to the children and their ship-building project. I had just given the kids some letters from fictions people asking for bids on ships to take tourists around to natural history sites. Each group had to act as a company to come up with these ship designs over the next couple of months. But, on this first day, they could explore some prototypes and test out their designs. These are mixed groups of grade 5, 6, 7 girls and boys. Here are a few excerpts. The lines are coded as Group# = Group Number, g# = girl number, b# = boy number.

Group 1
g1 Oh, you have to fill it out and then bring it back. You gotta … Wait a minute. Okay. A cylinder won’t work actually … cause even if it does … like it can’t tip, right? But even if it does, if people are sitting on one end and it tips, it all falls to the other end …
b1 Unless …
g1 … and they won’t get there safely.
b1 … unless you had like another cylinder inside the first a cylinder that like at the center (???) … so like there’s another cylinder that moves …
MUCH LATER ON…
b1 We should make up a name for it, like … (???) … like you know how they have names for sailboats and that …
g1 Mm hm.
b1 … (???) … … How about “The sub appeal?”
g1 The what?
b1 “The sub appeal.”

Group 2
b4 No, that’s too ordinary. We want something that people want to come to.
[Pause. Seem to be listening to group three and their discussion of ferries, ferris wheels and so forth.]
b4 Yeah, put a ferris wheel on it. Put a (???) on it and a swimming pool. Actually a swimming pool would be a good idea. Yeah, swimming pool would …
b5 No, no. If we had a swimming pool, we’d have like a really deep, deep hole? … (???) swim in it underneath and it would go …
b4 Yeah … yeah.
b5 So you could just jump into it, and it would be, it wouldn’t be on the ship, because then there would be bars and gambling machines and stuff. [Slight laugh.] No, no gambling ’cause that’s illegal.
b4 No, no, that’s good to … no, it’s not illegal.
b5 Yeah, it is.
b4 No, it … Yeah, that’d be cool.
b5 That would be good though …
b4 A pool, pool hall.
b5 Yeah, a pool table and stuff. Like a bar, a really nice bar and a fancy restaurant. … [Responding to someone at another table.] Yeah, we are.
LATER IN THE CONVERSATION
b5 No, and you can look out them, like underwater, from underwater.
b4 Yeah.
b5 It’s like a little underwater thing down there … and you can look down …
b4 No, it’s like, has like a glass bottom.
b5 Not … no, that’s not good. [Semi-giggle.] This really heavy guy comes along and steps on it. Kshaaa! [Vocal sound effect for heavy guy falling through glass bottom.]

In both of these groups, I’ve selected excerpts that show how children move from the technical-scientific (which is what is generally expected of children) to other “important” issues, like names, bars, and gambling machines. Children do not separate out the “disciplines” of science, mathematics, etc. All of the disciplines (or subject matter areas) arise in their thinking and conversations in blended ways and naturally become part of their thinking. But, this type of thinking is borderless systems thinking. Although we can easily dismiss these tangents as trivial, these tangents are where the important potentialities lie. This is where the creativity is. These tangents are where insights and problem solving arise. This type of thinking is the same sort of thing as keeping odd assortments of screws, nails, and pieces of metal. This is the type of thinking that helps children feel like complete and capable human beings. This is where they feel empowered and enriched.

Consciousness of Trees and Our Need to Move Beyond Simple Systems Thinking

Trees and shall we say plants have much more going on than we’ve assumed. We need to pay attention.

This powerful short video points to how our thinking needs to move beyond mechanistic thinking and even beyond simple systems thinking to a much more complex way of thinking about interrelationships.

Even though the film depicts some of the relationships with diagrams, these relationships are only a tiny picture of the complexity. There are so many things going on with their roots acting as neural networks with a complete set of neurotransmitters, bacteria and other living things that assist with many communal functions, their mere presence as mini-ecosystems for millions of other creatures, their abilities to affect local and global climate, and the list goes on.

We cannot capture the complexity in diagrams without getting lost in the webs of interconnections, which move and morph anyway. Systems thinking suggests a certain stasis, but in reality the world works in ways that are dynamic and ever-changing in order to meet the ever-changing conditions.

Meat, Veggies, Water, Sentience, & Perplexities

At certain times in my life, I tried following a vegetarian lifestyle. But, each time, no matter how careful I was, I couldn’t do it. I lost way too much weight the first and I was already very skinny; and I got sick a lot. The second time, I really got sick a lot. A few years ago, I suggested the idea to a naturopath I saw thinking that she would encourage me and have some suggestions for how to do it correctly. But, she said, “Nope. You have to eat meat. Your physiology is different. You’ll get too sick, if you don’t eat meat.” Interesting that I knew this all along. But it’s too bad in many ways. It is ecologically more sensible to eat only vegetables, especially if you grow them yourself or buy locally grown vegetables. You’ll get more energy-bang-for-the-buck.

However, this got me thinking about a number of things that keep getting posted on Facebook and elsewhere on the internet. The general dogma is that meat is bad and vegetables are good, because animals are sentient and plants are not. Well, that dogma seems to be threatened by increasing evidence that plants may have a lot more going on than we previously thought. Here are a few of many links (investigate some on your own):

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-green-mind/201412/are-plants-entering-the-realm-the-sentient

Research Shows Plants Are Sentient. Will We Act Accordingly?

http://letthemeatmeat.com/post/79193241820/what-would-plant-sentience-mean-for-vegan-ethics

So, if plants are able to think and plan; are aware of their surroundings, including other plants and animals; can solve problems, care for others; and so forth; the argument about sentience may no longer hold true. Hmmm… We may need to rethink our positions from a high moral horse. We may have to consider that all living things are here together. We may need to think about how we can eat another sentient being with sensitivity and appreciation for their sacrifice, rather than as some sort of disconnected right. We may have to realize that we are part of a larger set of relationships where no single type of being is better than any other. Oooh, what a crushing blow….

But, I also came across postings from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and all I’ve got to say is BEWARE. They aren’t who you think they are (and neither is the ASPCA). Check out a few of many links:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/lucy-uprichard/the-many-failings-of-peta_b_2945870.html

Home

http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/the-problem-with-peta-20120725-22ouo.html

10 Insane Facts About PETA

As for me, I’m trying to thank the plants and animals for their sacrifices and I’m trying to spend some time trying to imagine what it would be like to be a plant or some other animal. But, I’m also spending time appreciating my dog and my two cats. They are teaching me a lot about relationships and being present.

“Oh, Look He’s Wagging His Tail” – A Little Girl’s Exploration of Earthworms and How Current Approaches to Schooling and Systems Thinking Short-Change Students

Many years ago, I was studying how children thought while they worked with earthworms. The approach was pretty much like the approach I preferred to take as a teacher… Put the earthworms in front of the children with minimal instruction, then let them have at it. I then tape recorded each child as they explored and asked questions from time to time.

At one point, one of the 7-year old girls said, “oh, look, he’s wagging his tail.” She went on to other ideas very quickly, but this stuck out to me. In fact, I’ve thought about this statement for years. It’s a kind of flag or marker for hidden treasures.

If we think about this for a minute, we have “tail” – “wagging” – “earthworms.” These three things hold so many possibilities for exploration, inquiry, stories, and more.

  • What are tails?
  • What do tails do?
  • What makes a tail a tail?
  • What things have tails?
  • What things look like tails, but are not tails?
  • Why do tails wag?
  • Do wagging tails have a function?
  • What does it mean to wag a tail?
  • What other things mean the same thing as wagging tails?
  • In what contexts or situations, do wagging tails mean same or different things?
  • Why do earthworms move the way they do?
  • How do they manage to move?
  • Can we move like an earthworm?
  • What other things move like earthworms?
  • What makes earthworms look like they have tails?
  • Do they really have tails?
  • Can we create a dance about earthworms?
  • Can we write a children’s story about “my pet earthworm”?
  • Can you play music that will make you feel like an earthworm?
  • Where can we find earthworms?
  • Where do earthworms like to live?
  • What do they like to eat?
  • Are earthworms important for anything else?
  • Do they help other things?
  • What would happen if all earthworms disappeared?

These questions point to some of the many directions one can take with children. And, they all arise from a statement like, “oh, look, he’s wagging his tail.” Wagging is rich in function and meaning. Even though technically earthworms don’t have tails, the notion of tail is one of pattern and relationship. And, it is significant and worth exploring. The same is true of wagging. Wagging is pattern and relationship. From such simple statements, children can jump into a rabbit hole that can take them into all kinds of wonderful explorations of patterns and relationships and the stories they weave. As teachers, we cannot plan out these activities. We cannot predict the outcomes. We cannot create rubrics or measure student learning. But, we can provide children with the resources and opportunities to follow their interests and questions.

Traditional systems of schooling and even current approaches to teaching systems thinking fail to provide children with such opportunities. Schooling is stuck in trying to control everything. Keep everything boxed in (in rubrics). As a result, children are never able to stretch and explore the limits of their curiosities and imaginations.

Beyond Systems 2: Borderless Cognition

As discussed in my last posting, the mere mention of “systems” brings to mind images of mechanistic-like dynamics. But, this sort of association with living “systems” is problematic. In the embedded video of hawks catching prey and flying through various habitats, we can think about the dynamics of what is occurring, but not so much as a system, but as something beyond a system … as complex interactions and complex, non-linear paths of information flow, and all kinds of relationships and the dynamics within these relationships.

EBS Global Documentary: Goshawk, the Soul of the Wind Spot
Posted on Facebook by: Atmaca Alemi / Sparrowhawk World Community

This is a great video to consider in terms of what we might think of as distributed, borderless cognition. If this Goshawk had to think about each maneuver and each object, he or she would not do well at all. In fact, these maneuvers would not be possible. When you look at this video, the hawk is acting as if her thinking is at the tips of her wings and the edges of the tree limbs and at the tips of her talons and the edges of the tree trunks and in her eyes and all the way along in front of her to whatever objects there are. This is what Gregory Bateson talked about as a cybernetics of cognition. The information flows from the wings to the air to the trees and back again; from the legs to the talons to the trees to the talons to the legs; from the brain to the eyes to the scene in front to the eyes to the brain; and so forth.

There is no real separation…. Just what we impose. And, that imposition is just that… “an imposition.” We impose separation. We impose mechanism. We impose parts and wholes, We impose all sorts of labels. But, they are all an imposition to seeing and understanding the reality of our living world.

The same holds true for an athlete. If a basketball player had to think about every move, he or she could not dribble or make a shot, especially in the midst of an intense game. The thinking has to be distributed and borderless.

We also can call this cognition “being present in the moment.”