Tuesday, August 28, 2004
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Wednesday, August 28, 2004
bead game thread on educational renewal
In a bead game, the discussion is generalized to remove specific references; also the wording is modified over time to make the statements as positive as possible and to reflect changes that occur as a result of the passage of time. This bead was edited from others posted August 11 to reflect the decline of my application as a professor of computer science at NMHU.
Perhaps one might frame the issue of cultural resistance of educational reform, and then have a structured dialog about the completeness of a framework and details related to specific institutions. As a matter of everyday consequence, to develop such a framework is to be declined acceptance into the academy. This everyday consequence indicates a type of bias that disallows those of us who would really reform the educational system from having positions from which we could act. The educational system can know that we are not fully balanced, but not know what is the cause of the imbalance. There are more than one cause, of course.
There are several aspects of cultural resistance. Certainly each community has a diversity of opinions, as does the faculty and administration of each university or college. The small rural universities have specific issues that are common, but each part of the educational system sees little value in learning about the limitations and difficulties of other parts. “Our problems here are unique and can only be understood by being part of here.” It is often said. But the problems are universal and can be understood simply as a consequence of avoiding understanding the influence of single mindedness.
Many in the rural community in New Mexico have expressed a specific opinion:
. . . (This) is one more piece of evidence to
show that the intellectual level of thought of most administrators here is not
of the highest caliber. The games we play here have very little to do
with Hesse Bead Games and more to do with political power games. I do
believe that these same people have a sincere belief in the principles that
guide them, but they are also deluded into thinking that a veneer of sincerity
is enough to keep the wool pulled over everyone's eyes. The result of
this is shortsightedness and bad decision making.
There is a problem in living in the now when planning for the future is not adequate.
A high level of enlightenment exists in many rural communities, and this is certainly true of communities in New Mexico. We have specific histories and have developed specific understanding about the Hispanic, Native American and Caucasian cultures. However, individuals whose background is agnostic about the three cultures and their similarities and differences inhibit this understanding. In many cases, the individuals are not born in the Americas and do not have an appreciation of the nature of the crisis that American education has been in during the entirety of my life. In West Virginia, one of the academic vice presidents told me that she felt it would be wonderful if someone could get the mathematics department to address the poor retention of students in the freshman mathematics classes. If one checks, one finds that 80% of the department speech Chinese well, and English poorly. They think that the reason they are there is to advance a part of number theory and abstract algebra.
One might ask that citizens review the situation in mathematics education, in our schools and in local rural universities, in an objective fashion. As this review occurs, the fidelity of the opinion expressed above appears to be re-affirmed.
So what can one do?
In the most positive terms possible, how might we develop an objective dialog that leads to actions that make the types of deep reforms that are envisioned in some of the recent statements by university presidents, such as by the new president of New Mexico Highland University:
Welcome to the website of New Mexico Highlands University. I
hope you find enough on our site to pay us a visit and, better still, become a
part of this university with a rich history and bright, exciting future. We are
about to create one of our country's outstanding small universities and we'd
like you to be a part of it.
Highlands University already leads the way in important
academic areas that prepare students for some of the world's newest and most
challenging jobs. We're going to build on that record, and we're going to build
on our record of equal opportunity. We're also going to build on our reputation
for being a small, friendly university where people all work together to help
one another succeed.
Working with others is a critical element of success so we
will reach out far and wide as an institution to develop partnerships that help
us excel. We will strive for excellence as a university because we want each of
our students to strive for excellence.
The NMHU Board of Regents is comprised of very distinguished
and accomplished New Mexicans who have left their marks nationally and
internationally. I am honored that they selected me in June 2004 to be the 16th
President of Highlands University.
Together we are going to challenge this institution, and we
will rise to the occasion. We're going to have fun but we're also going to be
known for our hard work because I believe the best way to predict the future is
to create it. People around the country will come to know that we are good at
Highlands - good in academics, good in character, good in our resolve, good in
our desire to contribute to our families and our communities.
We are looking for people who can help us make a difference
in this exciting new era. I hope you're one of them.
The Herman Hesse bead game concept re-enforces a type of collaboration between virtual and geographically separated communities. The technology that I developed, and synthesized from other corporations, for the US intelligence community allows the type of concept aggregation needed to play the bead games.
These potential games are about the thoughts that people have. In these thoughts is expressed our profound desire to be released by the limitations that educational dysfunctionality has caused and continues to cause. The collective “systems of thought” is not filtered by the media, nor by the advertising industry. The collective “systems of thought” do not conform to the single mindedness that has become manifest due to the independent separation of the academy into centers of self-interest. The collective systems are aware that society must move into a different type of social discourse than what has been created by the unified economic/military/political/educational system.
Life is not a single coherent “thing”, at least not at the level of individual life and social life. Our educational system needs to reflect this diversity of opinion and to celebrate the American concept of cultural diversity. This celebration cannot be done by denying the cultural realities of the Native American, or the perceptions of individuals whose potential contributions are marginalized by very poor instruction in arithmetic.
My original vision statement was rejected by two faculty who where the only ones involved in hiring decision.
The current discussion started with the controversy over the decision to not appoint someone who specifically applied for a position based on an appreciation of this vision statement. How is the larger community to respond to these types of controversies? What can be done when there is the perception that a profound and positive vision statement has been somehow violated?
We conjecture that the situation is constrained by the following factors [1]:
1) A number of rural universities have suffered a decline in the recent decades. During this decline many of the faculty left or retired. Those that stayed were affected by this history. Those that were left have a type of cynicism and/or a type of narrow self-interest that justifies actions that keep competing ideas from being expressed.
2) In some small rural universities, former PhD programs were eliminated and the leadership role in some areas was replaced with mediocrity and the accommodation of certain aspects of long standing cultural conflict between native communities.
3) Political and financial instability has dominated the recent history of many rural universities.
4) As is the case in many universities, the separation of class by racial background is re-enforced by ignoring the imbalance in preparation for entering students. No real remediation program is developed and no real outreach to the teachers is developed.
5) In rural communities, the local population is concerned about two things. First that "outsiders" not flood the area and cause changes to the culture. Second that our children do not leave the area. One of the consequences of wanting our children not to leave is a social viewpoint that justifies and even supports poor K-12 education so that the kids do not have the skills to make it on the outside.
6) In the case of local populations, a second teaching is provided. This teaching is about the values and understanding of the culture that is unique to our area. This second teaching recognizes the unique social values held within the native community regarding the stewardship of the Earth’s resources and the nature of family.
7) Educational renewal based on this second teaching provides a path forward for the university. The second teaching is one where great cultural pride can be enhanced and a feeling that one’s native culture has something to add to the values expressed in the mainstream culture. In terms of education and computer science curricular reform, this native content is important. We collectively know that something is profoundly incorrect about the way computer science saps our social energy and feeds a community of programmers – whose notions about interface design can be seen in any of the current generation of cell phones. These interface designs seem to have no principles except to lead the user into new functions that serve the interest of the phone companies. Computer science has developed a similar quality.
8) A type of bias exists that is hard to pin down. This bias might be related to something like church membership. If one graduates from High School at the top of one’s class, earns the BA or BS in four years, gets the Masters degree in two years and the PhD in three; and then gets an appointment into a tenure track position; then one is a member. Otherwise one is not considered “one of the boys”. Of course, it is easy to see that this ideal academic career is why the general population regards academics as living in ivory towers.
9) The group that I have been working with has been planning, since 1992, a National Project that would renew mathematics and computer science education based on a modern understanding of the values and limitations of Hilbert mathematics and discrete computing. We believe that this renewal in the mathematics and computer science curriculums and pedagogy is necessary to the founding of the knowledge sciences.
[1] In the first version of this list of factors, we included the percentage of professors and instructors who have difficulty speaking English while teaching mathematics of computer science. This factor is removed as being not relevant to the current discussion.