N. Without prejudging the outcomes my perceptions are that what needs to be educated will depend on who we are trying to educate and what we think the world is going to look like – perhaps borrowing from the Crisis-Diagnosis-Response approach that we employed at QUT.
While I think some (response) elements will be generic (good to learn regardless of a range of potential futures) we didn’t really set the scene for the most likely global outcomes or timeframes. I wondered if that was a deliberate ploy to allow free-ranging ideas to flow in the absence of certainty but noted some comment from Camilla about being ‘a little too abstract’?
I’m afraid my current view is that we may only be a few years away from catabolic collapse and the time required to rearrange a resistant education system with multiple worldviews and a corporate profiteering ethic will not enable many learned practitioners to be pumped out between now and then. Consequently we need to work with those most enlightened about the uncertainties and needs not necessarily try to convince those that already ‘know it all’.
I think therefore that we need a meta-communications strategy recognising the need for content and teaching/learning models to suit multiple audiences at different stages of maturity and capability. This is the sort of stuff I am really keen to discuss with you and J (and others). I look forward to reading B’s work as I now better realise the need to broaden my ‘teaching’ style to suit multiple ‘learning’ styles.
I found a great quote yesterday and would have read it had time permitted:
“Ethics and leadership are deep topics of the humanities. They are also practical matters. They need to be put into action in the world; our understanding of them needs to grow from close reflection on the actual experience of individuals; for ultimately the relevant knowledge–the relevant capacities and abilities–is held in the minds of agents. In other words the education of ethical leadership is a collaboration between people who are in or about to be in positions of real power and those who think deeply and carefully but at a certain distance from the action…. the path to progress doesn’t lie in just telling people that they don’t know the truth.” John Armstrong ‘Reformation and renaissance – New life for the Humanities’ Griffith Review Autumn 2011.