On the art of dying, shopping in supermarkets and 16 to 19 year olds in schools

There were six kinds of apples, there were exotic melons in several pastels. 

Everything seemed to be in season, sprayed, burnished, bright. People tore filmy bags off racks and tried to figure out which end opened. I realized the place was awash in noise. The toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and coffee-making machines, the cries of children. And over it all, or under it all, a dull and unlocatable roar, as of some form of swarming life just outside the range of human apprehension.

''Everything is concealed in symbolism. . . . The large doors slide open, they close unbidden. Energy waves, incident radiation . . . code words and ceremonial phrases. It is just a question of deciphering. . . . Not that we would want to. . . . This is not Tibet. . . . Tibetans try to see death for what it is. It is the end of attachment to things. This simple truth is hard to fathom. But once we stop denying death, we can proceed calmly to die. . . . We don't have to cling to life artificially, or to death. . . . We simply walk toward the sliding doors. . . . Look how well-lighted everything is . . . sealed off . . . timeless. Another reason why I think of Tibet. Dying is an art in Tibet . . . Chants, numerology, horoscopes, recitations. Here we don't die, we shop. But the difference is less marked than you think.'' White Noise Don DeLillo

This passage aligning the sterility of shopping with the art of dying from Don DeLillo’s White Noise always makes me think of schools ... where everything is also concealed in symbolism ... where everything is sealed off ... and for the most part timeless .... and our OECD stats on 16 to 19 year olds suggest that many of them  find “the difference is less marked than you think”

I am still reading Jonathan Zittrain The Future of the internet and how to stop it and am currently enjoying thinking around the ideas in Chapter 4 - The Generative Pattern.

For starters I like Zittrain’s term for the quality of the Internet - generativity.

Generativity is a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.” (p70)

As he notes “Terms like “openness” and “free” and commons” evoke elements of it, but they do not fully capture its meaning, and they sometimes obscure it.”

Zittrain describes the five principle factors at work in generativity as:

1. How extensively a system or a technology leverages a set of possible tasks;
2. How well it can be adapted to a range of tasks;
3. How easily new contributors can master it
4. How accessible it is to those ready and able to build on it; and
5. How transferable any changes are to others – including (and perhaps especially) non experts

If we accept Cuban’s suggestion that school is a technology (or way of doing stuff) then perhaps we can use Zittrain’s notion of generativity and the five principles as criteria to help us develop more generative ways of “doing school”.

Generative thinking that might be quite useful for those School Plus folk who are charged with writing policy around

.... transforming secondary schooling to encourage young people to stay and complete qualifications, and strengthening partnerships between schools, tertiary education organisations, employers, industry training organisations and non-government organisations to extend the learning opportunities available to students, and to connect young people to their next steps beyond school.

It sure sounds like they are after a system that facilitates changes ... that they need a  generative system that will provide...

1. Unanticipated change: innovative output new things that improve people’s lives
2. Participatory input – a life well lived is one where there is opportunity to connect to other people, to work with them, and to express one’s own individuality through creative endeavours 

Given that it is likely that it is our existing school systems sterility, has contributed to The Land of Milk and Honey’s distressing OECD demographic for 16 to 19 year olds not in school, not in training and not in employment implementing a transformation towards generativity is no small task.

And in truth we probably need to do all this whilst maintain some measures of sterility within the technology of school .... for as  Zittrain notes about generative tools .... they are  individually useful but not inherently better than their sterile counterparts ... could just as easily be claimed for generative systems – the tools and practices that develop among large groups of people.

Generative tools are not inherently better than their non-generative (“sterile”) counterparts.  Appliances are often easier to master for particular uses, and because their design often anticipates uses and abuses, they can be safer and more effective.  For example, on camping trips, Swiss Army knives are ideal.  Luggage space is often at a premium, and such a tool will be useful in a range of expected and even unexpected situations.  In situations where versatility and space constraints are less important, however, a Swiss Army knife is comparatively a fairly poor knife – and an equally awkward magnifying glass, saw and scissors. P73

Just imagine for a moment that you were charged with both developing the programme logic and overseeing the implementation for the following outcomes. 

A.  Change the behaviours of young people so that they:
1.    Stay in school
2.    Complete qualifications

B.  Extend the learning opportunities available to students by strengthening partnerships between schools and:
1.    Tertiary education organisations
2.    Employers
3.    Industry training organisations
4.    Non government organisations

C.  Connect young people to their next steps beyond school.

I am puzzling about what will go in all the programme logic boxes ...and whether the limitations in thinking through boxes - all that subjectivity in problem identification, policy imperatives, political sensitivities, complexity and heterogenity and absence of an evidence base stuff will mean the whole initiative will be yet another case of  "The difference is less marked than you think".

Comments

[Janet Hawtin]

imho Generative tools provide a different kind of context.
An appliance, a DRM copyrighted piece of information, or someone's best china
all have something about them which says beware. This is not really yours to use or explore. Be cautious. Generative tools are tools which do not scope
and caution. They are designed to encourage users to participate. Not to be seen as end users.

It is possible that a TV program has different production mechanics than a user generated youtube movie.
http://37days.typepad.com/37days/2008/07/animate-your-li.html
But the relationship is different also. In a learning context in particular there is a different hope which means that generative tools have something differeent to offer than restricted resources.
A learner should be more than an enduser.

What happens if the locus of control shifts in the education sector.
Imagine the student puts out a tender for what they would like, or a group of students collaborates and discusses ideas and then identifies a peer or an educator or a facility which has some technique, method, passion, expertise, service, which they feel is valuable. What happens if the students are able to effect negotiations on their own behalf for information, practice, space, work, which is meaningful.

Instead of looking at education as a method for improving the sector's own validity or market share, what happens if learning is understood as a function which students can apply vouchers towards? They might choose to spend their time in community practice, or identify which kind of accreditation or recognition might be interesting for their chosen path.
What would an economy find in a cohort of students who shopped in this way?
Both a useful and a challenging sense of personal agency.
What would that look like?

How do we find an economics which is sustainable and find our ongoing optimal place in its fabric. How do we value all that isnt product, in people, ideas and our ecology.

This video is interesting re money, debt, scale, ecology.
http://tinyurl.com/27jppm
Michael Wesch is tackling economic and participative issues:
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=174
Gardner Campbell on the impact of university context on learning:
http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/?p=618

Who are we if we don't use this kind of model?
What other kinds of collective self do we have or can we imagine?
Earth doesnt scale. All of it is valuable.
How do we collectively learn that and also make our own way?

[Artichoke]

RE: Imagine the student puts out a tender for what they would like, or a group of students collaborates and discusses ideas and then identifies a peer or an educator or a facility which has some technique, method, passion, expertise, service, which they feel is valuable. What happens if the students are able to effect negotiations on their own behalf for information, practice, space, work, which is meaningful.

This bit made me smile in a sad way Janet much like your link to the Progressive Education 40 Years Ago video did.

That was because around 25 years ago I worked in a state school in central Auckland that was doing just what you suggest - students interviewed and appointed the staff, suggested curricula, timetables, courses, were free to enrol for the courses that interested them, were involved in all the decision making processes in the school from finances to discipline ... Auckland Metropolitan College ...

[Janet Hawtin]

Yes I am a bit too ahistorical. Learning.
What happened? Where are those students now?

I guess I am just seeing that globally people are making learning communities for themselves. Some of the TALO folk initiate events which bring people together and which involve funding and making a concerted effort. Alex Hayes is working on this one. http://mobilizethis.wikispaces.com/

Wikiversity is another piece of concerted applied learning
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page

I guess I feeel that the wider economics is becoming more wobbly, shifting and distributed. And that some of these different approaches might help us learn how to unpack/reconceive that as well as to learn constructively for its own sake.

[Artichoke]

You are not ahistorical Janet ... you identify a model for school/ learning system that in my experience was generative ....and did create community ...real community not espoused community ... and I reckon it is a "step back in time model" that the School Plus folks ought to seriously consider ... what happened ... now that is a story with many different perspectives

[nix]

I wondered when programme logic might come up ...

and

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

[Janet Hawtin]

via Jim Groom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7GvQdDQv8g

[Janet Hawtin]

rereading the White Noise and
imagining a future memorial service which shows the lifetime vapor trail or consumer pilgrimmage of a life on the planet; her Via Dolorosa.
We come here to remember ... A formal pattern of her passage, an economic Way of Sorrows, or simply, 'She shopped well'.

[Artichoke]

Ha I can see it Janet ...

Imagine the backdrop - a virtual wall of scrolling electronic purchasing and viewing detail ... exposing the identity profiles we create online though consumerism and voyeurism

[lucychili]

Pan backwards. Her trail is overlaid with other paths, some which converge at the memorial service, and panning back further, we see our own paths join the mesh.

Some of the paths cling to edges like the writing of spiders on caffeine. Some bounce a regular pattern, or follow optimal routes. A few are hesitant, stopping and retracing, moving forward. Together they form a fabric augmenting and contracting in response to memes, tides, seasons and lives. Together they begin to blur and it is possible to feel the flow as a pulse. To follow our paths through the capillaries of our lives and to imagine ourselves as agents within a wider form.

From this vantage point it seems useful to ask myself again, whether I am shopping well, whether I am useful, whether the paths I make are constructive vectors. Whether the pattern we make can heal and give life to our context.

Book sale. Family dinner. Work and whimsy. Flailing and sleeplessness. Making space for other paths. Nonsense and meaning.
Finding the way.