Feedback from Larry Victor...

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The following are the beginning of a longer doc found at:

http://azstarnet.com/~nuu/drafts/edu21.htm titled Education for the 21st Century

We need a wholly new educational system for the 21st century. We need it now, asap, to assist in our preparation for Y2K and beyond.

Our contemporary education systems, at their best, have totally failed us in assisting the population learn about the Y2K crisis, both the dangers and opportunities. The research arm of higher education has been as a corpse in the presence of critical issues and questions calling for study, and is blind to the impact Y2K may have on their ongoing and forecasted research, as well as missing the opportunity of being able to study a major planetary human event (possibly the first) from within. Both faculty and students, as components of these educational systems have not chosen to act, being paradigms of Y2K denial. The informal educational efforts of the media have also failed us. The Y2K movement, itself, has treated Y2K as an informational issue, not an educational issue, and Y2K organizations are not learning organizations. Neither are the more formal educational organizations - although learning does go on among persons, the structure and processes of educational systems blocks them from becoming viable learning organizations. Contemporary educational systems are impossible to reform in any significant way.

We cannot expect contemporary educational institutions to assist in providing human populations with needed services after Y2K and as we enter the increasingly turbulent 21 century. Educational services relevant to the critical issues facing humankind have always been at the periphery of the curriculum. People and organizations concerned about relevant, critical issues didn't push for appropriate educational services during the 20th century - primarily because they shared a distorted comprehension of the nature of learning and education with the rest of the population - the "already educated" and the "under educated", alike. This distortion has been a characteristic of all human civilizations throughout history - and the telling of this "story" will take some time, and must be delayed. It can only be shared when augmented by a wholly new educational system that demonstrates through action the viability of new educational ideas and practices, and contrasts the gross inadequacy of contemporary and historical educational practices. Learning about our educational potentials cannot be communicated via passive informational exchange processes. The paradox is that a new type of educational process is required for people to learn about the limitations of the best of their contemporary educational systems (what to do if the best is crap?) and the potentials of a new educational system. As a practical call, less than four months to Y2K, I recommend a crash program to establish a few proto-type educational systems for the 21st century, with the potential to rapidly expand in numbers and competency into the 21st century. For any person who participates in this action (and I have no expectation that this will involve more than a very small percent of the population before Y2K), they can feel assured that what they are doing will also be most appropriate for their personal preparation for Y2K and beyond, and most appropriate as efforts to reduce disruption and to assist community preparedness. I do not present this proposal as competition to other efforts underway today re Y2K and beyond. I suggest that any effort given to this proposal will have very significant positive spin-offs to other relevant endeavors.

New education has been at the core of my holistic development for many decades - if not my whole life. Education as a social process and educational systems as essential functional subsystems of communities and societies have always co-evolved with the whole of societies. So, the emergence of my holistic views of life and humanity (with a futures orientation) has always co-emerged with my views on education and learning. Click here for an index of links to some of my prior writings on education and learning. My first personal task will be to organize these documents as learning materials in a proto-type educational process to assist you in comprehending what I have already discovered. I don't claim to have most of the answers as to what to do - other than concrete ideas about many new queries we must pursue in our learning, and some concrete suggestions as to tools and processes we might use in our action-research. I will postpone further elaboration on the nature of education for the 21st century, and defer to other documents.

-- Larry Victor (nuu@azstarnet.com), August 12, 1999

Answers

"Click here for an index of links to some of my prior writings on education and learning"...

Larry, what's the URL to your index of links?

-- Critt Jarvis (critt@critt.com), August 18, 1999.

I am now in the process of constructing that index. I've been digging into my archive for some older but still relevant docs. Until then, try:

http://www.azstarnet.com/~nuu/edu_web/index.htm contains some docs,also http://www.azstarnet.com/~nuu/RelDocs/index.htm

-- Laurence J. Victor (nuu@azstarnet.com), August 18, 1999.

I edited the first URL to present itself as a hotlink.

Do you want to try editing the second reference? You can view the source code for this page to see what code renders the page.

-- Critt Jarvis (critt@critt.com), August 18, 1999.