Next Steps
Where do we go from here?
The first step in a plan to bring about needed changes in our systems of educating is suggested by the analyses of the four categories heretofore discussed and included here.
A strategy for changing conventional education
Introduction:
Over the years as a professional educator, I have gradually identified what licensed teachers and administrators, and the lay public knows about the fundamental elements that shape our public education systems. Some of these elements are not new to those groups; they are preserved in traditions that have not been sufficiently examined or validated.
These include what little is known about (1) individual learners, (2) communication and group development, (3) the content and processes of becoming knowledgeable, (4) modern systems concepts that relate to learning, assessment, and evaluation of learning outcomes, and finally, (5) personality characteristics of professional educators that have to do with facilitating learning.
One might think that educators have expertise in these fundamental topics since they have been licensed to teach. While supervising students preparing to be teachers in hundreds of classrooms, observing behavior, and having studied and taught about the foundations for effective education for many years, including frequent meetings with State level Boards of Education and local Boards, I have found this to be far from the truth.
Furthermore, parents and the lay public possibly know even less, and this is critical when attempting to improve the existing system. Experience has taught us; the demands of an educated public may stimulate attention to these critical issues when our society is in this troublesome state. We seem to be at that stage, now.
What is currently known about individual development and learning both alone and in groups and institutions that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these matters in-depth?
What is currently known about communication between individuals, and how groups develop into teams of learners, that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these topics in-depth?
What is currently known about the nature of knowledge and knowing, including processes of learning as practiced within a full range of disciplines of general education that represent six interrelated “realms of meaning,” that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these topics in depth?
What is currently known about modern systems theory, especially systems design as a process of learning and systems analysis as a strategy for assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes, that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these topics in depth?
What is currently known about personality characteristics that foster productive human interactions that facilitate learning in others, that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these matters in depth?
The above foundation elements form the parts of a system, a theory of education, that must be interrelated and translated into a reformed school system that meets the needs of 21st century students.
However, after attempting several major innovations from within the educational communities across this land to achieve changes that would reflect the elements above, I have concluded that unless the public can be educated about updated knowledge regarding these elements, only piecemeal changes will occur from within the schools while systemic change will remain a distant goal vital in this troubled world.
The following proposal is designed to address this need. A Strategy for launching interactive multimedia (IMM) aimed at educators, politicians, and the public to engage them in a dialogue about the foundations for education required to accomplish sustainable change and vast improvement in cost-effective educational systems.
OVERVIEW/ABSTRACT
Concerns over the quality of education have frequently initiated a worldwide discourse about needed changes. Without an alternative, spelled-out in detail and comprehended by the lay public, a piecemeal approach and continued controversy will likely prevail. It’s time to seriously initiate the dialogue that can lead to systemic changes that address our perplexing social problems, poverty and discouraging performance indicators that are manageable, cost effective, theoretically sound, and sustainable in this age of rapid changes in electronic communications and global connections.
Steps to achieving meaningful change:
Objectives:
Step 1: Convene a working group of those who have a genuine interest in changing education, who are familiar with the concepts contained in this thesis and in the book: Remaking our Schools for the 21st Century – A Blueprint for Change/Improvement in Our Educational Systems authored by Robert L. Arnold, Professor Emeritus of Education © 2013, and the contents of a later publication: Fraud In the Shadows of Our Society - What is Unknown About Educating is Hurting us All.
Step 2: Create an organizational structure. Seek start-up funding from Foundations and forward- looking individuals.
Step 3: Support an interactive website(s) supported by an extensive social network. Seek advice regarding organizational structures and formulation of strategies for fund raising to guarantee sustainability.
Step 4: Develop a presentation for an alternative field-tested assessment, record keeping and evaluation system that would replace the widespread use of standardized, one-size-fits-all standardized tests, and a standardized core curriculum. Display the material on the website, with marketing strategies for creating widespread dialogue and sufficient income to cover expenses, royalties, and salaries.
Step 5: Encourage creation of supportive monographs (Blogs) that would be displayed on expanded, supporting website(s).
Step 6: Design multimedia presentations to introduce the lay public to a shared set of assumptions and beliefs about education.
Step 7: Organize, train, and manage a cadre/team of facilitators who will contract with both private and public schools across the USA to implement changes based on the materials displayed on the website.
Step 8: Establish a data gathering mechanism for validating the operational components that lead to an improved/changed school system.
Step 9: Establish a national educational conference center.
Project components:
Title: A Project to Educate the American public about the critical needs and direction for Remaking our Schools for the 21st Century.
Goal: To initiate a widespread dialogue about the fundamental principles that underlie an effective education to stimulate real, theoretically sound and sustainable change in the way schools are conducted.
A systems-oriented school system would have the following characteristics: Its major components are listed below:
1. An individualized, computer-based (student constructed and maintained) record of learning with assessment techniques that honor different learning styles, interests, individual capacities, unique experiences with life, and evaluation criteria that allow for individual differences while maintaining the commonly shared goal of mastery of systems.
2. A diagnostic orientation directed to reduce impediments to learning for all individuals, regardless of age, race, emotional, social, physical, or intellectual capacity, with an acceptance of the values and ethical standards for dealing positively with diversity, pluralism, and inclusion.
3. A teaching/learning transactional strategy that features independent and collective planning for learning, facilitated through supportive group processes and the implementation of plans where individuals and groups are held accountable for accomplishing agreed-upon goals.
4. A competence-based curriculum that focuses on “life in all its manifestations” (Whitehead) with a balanced, student-constructed integration of the arts, sciences, mathematics and other languages, history/geography/cultural anthropology, ethics, and self/career development.
5. A primary goal that centers upon the most socially useful learning in the modern world, learning how to learn, utilizing the methods and materials of all disciplines, in all “realms of meaning” (Phenix), fostering an openness to experience, incorporation into oneself of the processes and acceptance of change and the skills needed to organize and communicate one’s thoughts and feelings.
6. Using the creative orientations of all disciplines as strategies for learning that will bridge the longstanding philosophical gap between the interests of child-development and those of the acquisition of knowledge and skills.
7. Information management systems and appropriate uses of modern technology, configured to maximize learning and developmental maturation.
8. A support system for learners that involves highly skilled professional educator/facilitators, informed parents, trained leadership, community input, selected outside professional resource agencies, higher education faculty and students, and volunteer retired experts from a variety of specialties.
9. A written, continuously updated, and validated foundation for education that contains a statement of validated assumptions and beliefs about how individuals learn, grow, and develop, alone and in groups, that will guide and sustain decision-making by all the stakeholders, including parents, students, and professional staff.
10. A governance system modeled after our constitutional form of participative government to guarantee checks, balances, and meaningful/orderly input from all stakeholders, distributing responsibility, authority, and accountability to many members of each school community.
11. A health and fitness program for all learners, staff, and other stakeholders.
12. Facilities and learning environments designed to respond to the needs of a reality-based curriculum and active learners in this age of electronic communications and expanded learning opportunities encountered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week throughout one’s lifetime.
13. A research-oriented laboratory for beginning teacher/facilitators and an intellectually challenging, cost-effective environment for professional staff, parents, students, and volunteers.
A Demonstration Project in Teacher Education for Facilitation of Individualized K-12 Schools
A report by the Massachusetts think-tank, Populace, and activities sponsored by Stand Together, deserve congratulations for their efforts in capturing the current desires for K-12 education among the citizens of this country and searching for better ways to educate. Having spent the last seventy plus years as an educational reformer attempting to bring about systemic change in this most important enterprise, it is heartening to see individualized education as chief among those desires.
A draft book entitled: “On Becoming a Facilitator of Learning” links this author’s background with that report. Born in 1931, the youngest in a family of twelve who operated a nearly self-sufficient farm, we each grew up believing education to be a means of achieving a more prosperous life.
For the past seventy plus years I have searched for ways of improving what happens in schools. I spent over fifty years in elementary teacher education at several universities conducting seminars in the foundations for education aimed at developing teaching careers with awareness of the shortcomings in the present system along with specific dimensions for a revamped K-12 system. My role as a facilitator of learning has involved aiding the in-depth analysis of the physical, psychological, sociological, emotional, and historical dimensions that underlie the processes of educating.
The thrust of this inquiry has been based on the application of an updated theoretical framework that includes what is currently known that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of reputable scholars who have studied and written about each of the four categories listed below, including:
1) individual development, the functions of mind from a psychoanalytic point of view related to learning and mental health,
2) communication between and within individuals including small group dynamics, especially group development,
3) a framework for constructive inquiry based on Philip Phenix’s formulations regarding Realms of Meaning – A Philosophy of Curriculum for General Education that focuses on the disciplines of general education as ways of creating and communicating meaningful and lasting knowledge,
4) general systems theory applied in education, with particular emphasis on systems design as a process of individualized learning and systems analysis as a strategy for authentic assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes. A comprehensive theory of education designed by the learners, composed of these four interrelated parts of its system, is the outcome desired.
Viewed through the lenses of scholars, the practices of the current one-size-fits-all program are found to have gaping holes in its rationale and supporting assumptions, discussed in numerous publications of mine and others. Building from the collective findings of these scholars, I have pursued the implementation of a new systemic design to be implemented through the construction of a prototype that can provide a firsthand view of what’s involved, based on the four parts of the system outlined above.
In Summary:
I am presently initiating discussions concerning this plan with two established colleges facing serious financial difficulties. They are asked to consider becoming a host for the project. Outside funding is required to launch this comprehensive attempt to define the requirements for implementing an individualized education for K-12 students.
Individuals reported in newsletters that describe individualized learning activities appear to be doing their best to change education, one step at a time. Unfortunately, their efforts are like putting iodine on a cancer.
How much progress have we been able to achieve with the current emphasis on high stakes testing and drill/regurgitate methodology approached one topic at a time that does not produce a unified approach to improvements nor recognize the complexities of education? In 1993, Bela Banathy, a leading advocate of systemic change in educational institutions had this to say in the first chapter of a book that sounded the alarm for the need for systemic reforms. ( Reigeluth, C.M., Banathy, B.H., & Olson, J.R. (Eds.) (1993). Comprehensive Systems Design: A New Educational Technology. New York: Springer-Verlag.)
“The ship of education is sailing on troubled waters. One national report after another highlights the current crisis of a ‘nation at risk,’ pointing out dangerous currents and menacing shoals. There is an ever-increasing realization that unless we change course, the ship will sink. But people are still trying to ‘rearrange the chairs’ on the deck of a sinking ship.”
There is a wide range of activities designed to test the efficacy of this plan for systemic change based on many years of study. Among the activities is the project outlined below, followed by numerous others.
In 1995, the Superintendent of the Willsboro Central School asked me to write a proposal to obtain a grant to improve his school, a program sponsored by the NYS Education Department funded under the Goals 2000 legislation of the Clinton administration. At that time the State was engaged in a plan based on developmental concepts called “The New Compact for Learning.”
I informed the Superintendent that funding would not be available for a single, small rural school, hence a plan was submitted that involved seven rural schools under the title, “A Rural Schools Consortium for New Standards Implementation.” This program’s outline is also used in other projects outlined herein.
The consortium plan was envisioned in two parts. 1) Under a separate grant, $375,000 was obtained for the first two years of a five-year commitment to establish with teachers of rural schools a new foundation for K-12 education based on the four components listed earlier that developed from my work at SUNY Plattsburgh’s teacher education department, teaching Block one, foundations of education. 2) The remaining three-year segment was projected to be dedicated to implementations consistent with the foundation established in the first two years. The amount of funding for that segment was not determined at that time.
Workshops rotated among consortium schools drawing upon expert assistance from scholars from throughout the region, including SUNY Plattsburgh and Rutgers University. The research component of the plan certified excellent progress in establishing an understanding of a new foundation. Detailed descriptions of every workshop were compiled by an assigned writer, available for review by others.
In 2001, resulting from “The No-child left behind legislation”, the then existing philosophy of education based on developmental theory was arbitrarily shifted from a human development paradigm to a behaviorist one that created the Common Core Curriculum, teacher proof instructional practices, and frequent standardized testing. Without discussion, the Goals 2000 grants were arbitrarily discontinued as the State assumed a drastically different philosophy.
Another effort to secure funding for this plan nearly succeeded. The New American Schools Development Corporation proposed by President George H.W. Bush attempted to raise capital for funding thirty proposals to change education across this country. The proposal I submitted was ranked seventeenth among nearly seven hundred submitted to the Rand Corporation for evaluation. Unfortunately, insufficient investments were obtained to fund thirty proposals, and eventually only a few received limited funding, and their impact faded into the woodwork.
Facing this disappointment, another effort occurred that involved the proposed implementation of the theory that involved development of a regional charter school for a rural region of Northeastern New York State. This comprehensive proposal was not considered consistent with the traditional understandings of decision-making agencies. It received criticism by officials that bordered acts of slander.
Several related projects that featured the concepts drawn from the proposed theory were spearheaded by me including a successful plan to establish one of nine model primary health care centers in this country, occurring in the early nineteen seventies. My plan received funding in the amount of $520,000 resulting in the creation of the Smith House Health Care Clinic in Willsboro, New York, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This project was designed to reflect the new rationale applied in family health education with computerized medical records, among other innovations.
A second project involved facilitating learning experiences in cell biology designed to upgrade instruction/learning with medical students across this continent. This project was conducted at the American Tissue Culture Association Headquarters, then located in Lake Placid, New York. The project originated from the Cell Science Department of the University of Saskatchewan Medical School at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. It was my job to facilitate the work of a group of leading cell biologists in accomplishing the goals of this project.
A third project involved facilitating a federal initiative known as a “Job’s Seventy Program” designed to prepare first line supervisors to successfully integrate underemployed or unemployed males, mainly Afro-American, into the production lines in a textile factory in North Carolina. This project demonstrated its applicability for leadership requirements in industry, confronting the well-worn prejudices of the time.
My website, www.Edupultz.com, is a work in progress that provides more details regarding these and other attempts to bring about needed changes designed to pave the way for initiating individualized learning throughout this country.
As I studied the Populace report, it became clear that one of its essential premises is a teaching paradigm. One only needs to examine closely the implications of the nature of communication to recognize that the concept of teaching and learning are not synonymous. We have been teaching as much information as time allows, but learning has been minimal at best.
Clearly, teaching through course offerings appears to be part of the problem. A major reorientation is needed that replaces the teaching paradigm with one focused on individualized learning that would establish individual mastery of a systems orientation.
Systems thinking consolidates ideas that reduce the complexities of life’s problems to manageable units. Through design and construction of models, students form the representations of any subject of inquiry expressed in “enactive, iconic, or symbolic forms.” (Bruner)
Models have four important functions: 1) Organizing thoughts, 2) Predicting events, 3) Measuring quantities and relationships and 4) Heuristic considerations that stimulate interest in further investigations. In-depth analysis of each variable or parts of systems, and a search for interrelationships among these parts is the central theme for this continuous-progress curriculum.
Drawing on the wisdom of A.N. Whitehead who wrote that the legitimate curriculum for the school is the study of life in all its manifestations, aimed at developing an eye for the whole chessboard and the bearing of one set of ideas on another. This has become the guiding philosophy for this plan.
He warned us of inert ideas simply taken into the mind and never placed in fresh combinations. He claimed these inert ideas are not only useless but also harmful.
The departmental, compartmentalized teaching paradigm promotes the process of conditioning through instruction of disconnected inert ideas. That process produces a low level of learning where the products are easily forgotten. When the findings of research and writings of a list of experts are studied, it paints a much different picture of what can produce competent and compassionate citizens.
What is learning according to reputable studies?
Students who have reached a level of cognitive development, referred to by Piaget as concrete operations, wherein individuals exhibit capabilities for beginning logic that enables the construction and assimilation of conceptual relationships, these individuals can fulfill the parameters of Robert Gagne’s cognitive model of learning while heeding Whitehead’s admonition.
According to Gagne, all learning begins with experience, preferably direct and purposeful. This results in simple associations that are communicated non-verbally and later verbally. When followed by continued experiences, multiple discriminations occur that lead to concept formation. Concepts are mental images that reflect the distillation of past experiences, retained, and applied in the translation and interpretation of past, present, and future personal beliefs. The more differentiations, the richer the concepts.
When these concepts are found to be repetitive and useful, they become simple rules. With further thoughtful experiences these rules are refined to form principles and later laws that maximize the abilities to problem solve.
The time it takes to proceed through this sequence varies with the developmental readiness of individuals along with the type and extent of exposure to learning opportunities. This requires uninterrupted time for achieving mastery. When reached, the learnings become part of personal belief systems likely retained.
Of course, cognitive learning is not all there is to learning. It simultaneously involves physical, psychological, social, emotional, moral, and spiritual dimensions as well.
The foregoing is just one example wherein teaching defined as conditioning becomes a problem.
Information regarding each of the four parts of this new theory contain other examples of how updated information can reveal the failures of education and provide direction to what should be included when designing a new system for K-12 education featuring individualized learning.
The Education Index is a report of the findings resulting from the collection and publishing of current vital statistics that could undergird the efforts of reform in K-12 education in this country. Among the report’s many findings is the desire on the part of our citizens for individualized K-12 education. (Contact the Purpose of the Education Index at Populace. Org)
The report includes an underlying assumption that teaching in general education, fine-tuned, is a necessary ingredient in restructuring a new K-12 system. But, given the abysmal record of learning among approximately seventy-five percent of third through eighth grade students in this country, resulting from a teaching process, that should have raised concern for a new concept. It should be noted that special needs facilitators are already conducting individualized activity through mainly one-on-one involvement and occasional group activities.
A new concept for schools should be focused on individualized learning for all built on updated assumptions supported by reputable studies regarding each of the component parts of a foundation for quality education – 1) the individual, learning and dimensions of mind related to learning and mental health, 2) communication between and within individuals, 3) group dynamics and group development, 4) the general education curriculum composed of the disciplines found within six “realms of meaning” experienced as ways of creating knowledge, 5) an application of general systems theory, treating systems design as an individualized process of learning guided by the modes of inquiry within each discipline, and 6) systems analysis as a strategy for assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes.
Individualized learning is maximized through participation in groups that function at their most mature levels where consensual validation occurs reflecting cooperative, team enhanced learning. Accommodating developmental differences and personal preferences in learners will happen at this level of cooperation.
A facilitator of learning must be able to facilitate the development of groups that support the range of developmental differences in learners. They must be prepared to respond appropriately to promote individual growth in a cooperative enterprise.
A K-12 proposal to revamp teacher education was initially focused on local analyses of historical and geographical factors working with elementary and middle school level students. This plan was formulated and reviewed in the 1980’s by reputable institutions such as the Rand Corporation.
The plan seeks to provide the foundation that enables students to meaningfully assimilate the vast knowledge that is stored in our libraries and data banks and offered by specialists in later educational experiences required for making career choices.
It contributes to dealing meaningfully with the potential information overload that has occurred due to internet connections, worldwide. Systems thinking is key to confronting this problem.
Within the plan is a new approach to authentic assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes. It’s entitled: The Constructive assessment, recordkeeping, and evaluation system (CARES), created by this author, and field tested by educators.
The system features a student managed computerized record, likened to an expanded diary of personal experiences which contains detailed student explanations/responses to their experiences and the unique meanings gleaned and retained by them. This record is organized with an application of general systems theory applied in education with particular emphasis on individualized systems design as the process of learning and systems analysis as an authentic strategy for assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes.
Each student keeps track of their experiences using existing computer software, containing four files, namely: Who am I? Natural/physical features of the world and universe, social/cultural characteristics of oneself and of societies, and economic and political structures and practices that addresses the study of life in all its manifestations. A fifth file contains the unique products of inquiry constructed by each learner.
Secondary educational changes would evolve from an analysis of the recorded results of a changed curriculum for the elementary and middle school level students, drawing upon the academic departments of the college for assistance in creating a competency-based curriculum.
Locating a school in which these newly oriented teachers would live out their profession would be determined later. A maximum of twenty enrollees in the program will constitute the first group, each paying tuition etc. initially underwritten by outside funds. Completion of the program is anticipated to be based on the construction and defense of a student-generated “Facilitator’s Handbook” that meets specific competency requirements, modeled after the CARES procedures.
The classes will require a spacious room either on or near a college campus with basic scientific instruments, duplicating and scanning equipment and innovative elementary classroom supplies, with reliable internet connections and modern communications technology, also underwritten by initial funding from outside sources.
This plan evolved in the late nineteen fifties from an experiment with a group of public school seventh and eighth grade students who were enrolled in the Congdon Campus School on the campus of SUNY Potsdam. They were engaged in creating a detailed image of their local and state history and geography by treating the disciplines of history and geography as ways of creating knowledge.
Among the outcomes was the construction and field testing of The Environmental Relationships Test that, according to Benjamin Bloom, measures the higher order skills of analysis, synthesis, and critical evaluation, consistent with Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, cognitive domain. This test was listed by Educational Testing Service as an example of innovations available for assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes.
The test has been administered across a wide range of age differences. The results indicate a high level of ignorance about the environment in which they live. This is found even with those who have passed relevant courses that deal with environmental issues.
A professor of history at SUNY Potsdam and this author teamed-up to design and implement the experiment whereby students created knowledge from utilization of primary sources and methodologies professional historians and geographers use, accommodating the developmental differences in student capabilities. This experiment occurred from 1957 through 1960. It was known as The Discovery Approach to the Teaching of Social Studies.
This study initially focused on local history and geography where students had direct access to essential resources available for learning how to learn. The students pieced together their detailed images of the evolution of their local county, its physical geographical features, including bedrock and minerals, relief features, drainage patterns, soils, weather and climate, and location within the world and universe.
Creating the history that took place within those natural physical features utilized detailed information on the social-cultural (including individualized ancestral information), economic, and political structures and processes that create an integrated view.
Primary and authentic secondary sources were furnished by the historian who specialized in New York local and state history. The geographic sources were drawn from many government publications, such as the US geological Survey, and climate and weather data furnished by this author, the facilitator of learning assigned to the students. His background from having worked the land while growing up on a nearly self-sufficient farm served him well in this task.
Our historian had previously studied the local history of the county using the primary and secondary sources for producing a narrative based on the findings. The students did the same with the same documents used by the historian, after which they compared their products. The students were particularly focused on the differences and similarities of the narratives, and the reasons for them.
This project stimulated discussion nationally resulting in many invitations to demonstrate the plan and its processes. It served as an epiphany for this author who abandoned the traditional role of a teacher and replaced it with a role as a facilitator of learning, using the disciplines as ways of creating knowledge to guide the change.
During the time between 1960 and the 1990’s, workshops required advanced preparations by searching the archives of each local area and reproducing local primary documents for use in the sessions. These documents were not readily available to teachers, nor were teachers skilled in finding them on their own.
The need to solve that availability problem prompted extensive studies that were conducted during a three-year project at the Reidsville, North Carolina Schools, and in preparation workshops for a new faculty in Mentor, Ohio, among others, searching for new photographic processes other than microfilm. Color microfiche and computerized access equipment were developed in response to this need.
It was not until the nineteen nineties that digital images of the highest quality became accessible in every school. Local documents are now available on demand with a computer command, making this plan entirely feasible.
This experience has been expanded in this new plan to include all the disciplines of general education supported by the reputable theories that provide the underlying rationale.
An in-depth understanding of the interrelated variables of local physical geography and the social/cultural, economic, and political structures and activities is a missing link in the education of youth in the current curricular offerings. Without this background, that should have begun during early educational experiences, students are left with limited understanding of themselves, their environment and that of other geographic areas. They have seldom explored the implications of their behavior, or how ignorance contributes to the problems of climate change or the careless exploitation of resources.
Such a program proposed would have an appeal with members of our citizenry who are looking for a new approach to education that features individualized learning opportunities. This program could seek certification from interested states in this country and from others, thus tapping a huge potential student recruitment pool.
I am aware of the existence of several required funding sources available to launch this plan, chief among them can be reached at standtogether.org whose main goal is advertised as fostering individualized K-12 education.
The initial task in bringing this plan to fruition requires the involvement of a variety of interested parties in a concerted effort to execute a strategy for the host college’s approval. Local discussions have begun to create a think-tank atmosphere focusing on planning and affecting that strategy.
Recruitment of the initial teacher/facilitators would be drawn from students who were formally enrolled in Block I of the Teacher Education Program at SUNY Plattsburgh and others who have intuitively reached similar or identical concepts of individualized education. An effort is underway to recruit participants who attended Block I and found it invigorating and inspirational.
Block one was conducted during a fifteen-semester hour block of time. Each group met with me, their facilitator, four mornings a week, three hours each day for one semester during their junior year at the college. During this time a variety of visits occurred to local classrooms that offered an opportunities for these students to gather data about child development and observe firsthand the results of a teaching methodology.
Currently, a former student of Block one is conducting seminars with seniors of the Saranac Lake CSD and the surrounding area who are hoping to become teachers. She contacted me and we have continued that connection for the past year and into this one. This teacher found Block a life changing one, is eager to gather information to update her prior experiences that she found so important in her life. I have been furnishing essays that deal with what I have learned since the days of Block one.
Block one students and selective others will become the facilitators who would engage entering students in examining and internalizing the theoretical foundations currently being promoted, facilitated by this author through Zoom.
These individuals will need to become conversant with the landscape and resources available at Colleges. Their foundation experience will occur during a two-semester timeframe. This group will be prepared with credentials to assume an active role in facilitating learning. Those experiences will be thoroughly documented with the intention to disseminate the record.
This group will become the cadre of professionals who will become the spokespersons for the program, skilled in describing the program and how it can be implemented. They will serve in a professional capacity as the facilitators of learning within the program and elsewhere.
Respectfully submitted:
Robert L. “Bob” Arnold
Professor Emeritus of Education.
Recipient of the Potsdam Alumni’s 2018 St. Lawrence Academy Medal for outstanding contributions in the field of education.
518 963 7982
518 441 5827 (cell)
[email protected]
remakingourschools50@gmail
The first step in a plan to bring about needed changes in our systems of educating is suggested by the analyses of the four categories heretofore discussed and included here.
A strategy for changing conventional education
Introduction:
Over the years as a professional educator, I have gradually identified what licensed teachers and administrators, and the lay public knows about the fundamental elements that shape our public education systems. Some of these elements are not new to those groups; they are preserved in traditions that have not been sufficiently examined or validated.
These include what little is known about (1) individual learners, (2) communication and group development, (3) the content and processes of becoming knowledgeable, (4) modern systems concepts that relate to learning, assessment, and evaluation of learning outcomes, and finally, (5) personality characteristics of professional educators that have to do with facilitating learning.
One might think that educators have expertise in these fundamental topics since they have been licensed to teach. While supervising students preparing to be teachers in hundreds of classrooms, observing behavior, and having studied and taught about the foundations for effective education for many years, including frequent meetings with State level Boards of Education and local Boards, I have found this to be far from the truth.
Furthermore, parents and the lay public possibly know even less, and this is critical when attempting to improve the existing system. Experience has taught us; the demands of an educated public may stimulate attention to these critical issues when our society is in this troublesome state. We seem to be at that stage, now.
What is currently known about individual development and learning both alone and in groups and institutions that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these matters in-depth?
What is currently known about communication between individuals, and how groups develop into teams of learners, that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these topics in-depth?
What is currently known about the nature of knowledge and knowing, including processes of learning as practiced within a full range of disciplines of general education that represent six interrelated “realms of meaning,” that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these topics in depth?
What is currently known about modern systems theory, especially systems design as a process of learning and systems analysis as a strategy for assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes, that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these topics in depth?
What is currently known about personality characteristics that foster productive human interactions that facilitate learning in others, that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these matters in depth?
The above foundation elements form the parts of a system, a theory of education, that must be interrelated and translated into a reformed school system that meets the needs of 21st century students.
However, after attempting several major innovations from within the educational communities across this land to achieve changes that would reflect the elements above, I have concluded that unless the public can be educated about updated knowledge regarding these elements, only piecemeal changes will occur from within the schools while systemic change will remain a distant goal vital in this troubled world.
The following proposal is designed to address this need. A Strategy for launching interactive multimedia (IMM) aimed at educators, politicians, and the public to engage them in a dialogue about the foundations for education required to accomplish sustainable change and vast improvement in cost-effective educational systems.
OVERVIEW/ABSTRACT
Concerns over the quality of education have frequently initiated a worldwide discourse about needed changes. Without an alternative, spelled-out in detail and comprehended by the lay public, a piecemeal approach and continued controversy will likely prevail. It’s time to seriously initiate the dialogue that can lead to systemic changes that address our perplexing social problems, poverty and discouraging performance indicators that are manageable, cost effective, theoretically sound, and sustainable in this age of rapid changes in electronic communications and global connections.
Steps to achieving meaningful change:
Objectives:
Step 1: Convene a working group of those who have a genuine interest in changing education, who are familiar with the concepts contained in this thesis and in the book: Remaking our Schools for the 21st Century – A Blueprint for Change/Improvement in Our Educational Systems authored by Robert L. Arnold, Professor Emeritus of Education © 2013, and the contents of a later publication: Fraud In the Shadows of Our Society - What is Unknown About Educating is Hurting us All.
Step 2: Create an organizational structure. Seek start-up funding from Foundations and forward- looking individuals.
Step 3: Support an interactive website(s) supported by an extensive social network. Seek advice regarding organizational structures and formulation of strategies for fund raising to guarantee sustainability.
Step 4: Develop a presentation for an alternative field-tested assessment, record keeping and evaluation system that would replace the widespread use of standardized, one-size-fits-all standardized tests, and a standardized core curriculum. Display the material on the website, with marketing strategies for creating widespread dialogue and sufficient income to cover expenses, royalties, and salaries.
Step 5: Encourage creation of supportive monographs (Blogs) that would be displayed on expanded, supporting website(s).
Step 6: Design multimedia presentations to introduce the lay public to a shared set of assumptions and beliefs about education.
Step 7: Organize, train, and manage a cadre/team of facilitators who will contract with both private and public schools across the USA to implement changes based on the materials displayed on the website.
Step 8: Establish a data gathering mechanism for validating the operational components that lead to an improved/changed school system.
Step 9: Establish a national educational conference center.
Project components:
Title: A Project to Educate the American public about the critical needs and direction for Remaking our Schools for the 21st Century.
Goal: To initiate a widespread dialogue about the fundamental principles that underlie an effective education to stimulate real, theoretically sound and sustainable change in the way schools are conducted.
A systems-oriented school system would have the following characteristics: Its major components are listed below:
1. An individualized, computer-based (student constructed and maintained) record of learning with assessment techniques that honor different learning styles, interests, individual capacities, unique experiences with life, and evaluation criteria that allow for individual differences while maintaining the commonly shared goal of mastery of systems.
2. A diagnostic orientation directed to reduce impediments to learning for all individuals, regardless of age, race, emotional, social, physical, or intellectual capacity, with an acceptance of the values and ethical standards for dealing positively with diversity, pluralism, and inclusion.
3. A teaching/learning transactional strategy that features independent and collective planning for learning, facilitated through supportive group processes and the implementation of plans where individuals and groups are held accountable for accomplishing agreed-upon goals.
4. A competence-based curriculum that focuses on “life in all its manifestations” (Whitehead) with a balanced, student-constructed integration of the arts, sciences, mathematics and other languages, history/geography/cultural anthropology, ethics, and self/career development.
5. A primary goal that centers upon the most socially useful learning in the modern world, learning how to learn, utilizing the methods and materials of all disciplines, in all “realms of meaning” (Phenix), fostering an openness to experience, incorporation into oneself of the processes and acceptance of change and the skills needed to organize and communicate one’s thoughts and feelings.
6. Using the creative orientations of all disciplines as strategies for learning that will bridge the longstanding philosophical gap between the interests of child-development and those of the acquisition of knowledge and skills.
7. Information management systems and appropriate uses of modern technology, configured to maximize learning and developmental maturation.
8. A support system for learners that involves highly skilled professional educator/facilitators, informed parents, trained leadership, community input, selected outside professional resource agencies, higher education faculty and students, and volunteer retired experts from a variety of specialties.
9. A written, continuously updated, and validated foundation for education that contains a statement of validated assumptions and beliefs about how individuals learn, grow, and develop, alone and in groups, that will guide and sustain decision-making by all the stakeholders, including parents, students, and professional staff.
10. A governance system modeled after our constitutional form of participative government to guarantee checks, balances, and meaningful/orderly input from all stakeholders, distributing responsibility, authority, and accountability to many members of each school community.
11. A health and fitness program for all learners, staff, and other stakeholders.
12. Facilities and learning environments designed to respond to the needs of a reality-based curriculum and active learners in this age of electronic communications and expanded learning opportunities encountered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week throughout one’s lifetime.
13. A research-oriented laboratory for beginning teacher/facilitators and an intellectually challenging, cost-effective environment for professional staff, parents, students, and volunteers.
A Demonstration Project in Teacher Education for Facilitation of Individualized K-12 Schools
A report by the Massachusetts think-tank, Populace, and activities sponsored by Stand Together, deserve congratulations for their efforts in capturing the current desires for K-12 education among the citizens of this country and searching for better ways to educate. Having spent the last seventy plus years as an educational reformer attempting to bring about systemic change in this most important enterprise, it is heartening to see individualized education as chief among those desires.
A draft book entitled: “On Becoming a Facilitator of Learning” links this author’s background with that report. Born in 1931, the youngest in a family of twelve who operated a nearly self-sufficient farm, we each grew up believing education to be a means of achieving a more prosperous life.
For the past seventy plus years I have searched for ways of improving what happens in schools. I spent over fifty years in elementary teacher education at several universities conducting seminars in the foundations for education aimed at developing teaching careers with awareness of the shortcomings in the present system along with specific dimensions for a revamped K-12 system. My role as a facilitator of learning has involved aiding the in-depth analysis of the physical, psychological, sociological, emotional, and historical dimensions that underlie the processes of educating.
The thrust of this inquiry has been based on the application of an updated theoretical framework that includes what is currently known that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of reputable scholars who have studied and written about each of the four categories listed below, including:
1) individual development, the functions of mind from a psychoanalytic point of view related to learning and mental health,
2) communication between and within individuals including small group dynamics, especially group development,
3) a framework for constructive inquiry based on Philip Phenix’s formulations regarding Realms of Meaning – A Philosophy of Curriculum for General Education that focuses on the disciplines of general education as ways of creating and communicating meaningful and lasting knowledge,
4) general systems theory applied in education, with particular emphasis on systems design as a process of individualized learning and systems analysis as a strategy for authentic assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes. A comprehensive theory of education designed by the learners, composed of these four interrelated parts of its system, is the outcome desired.
Viewed through the lenses of scholars, the practices of the current one-size-fits-all program are found to have gaping holes in its rationale and supporting assumptions, discussed in numerous publications of mine and others. Building from the collective findings of these scholars, I have pursued the implementation of a new systemic design to be implemented through the construction of a prototype that can provide a firsthand view of what’s involved, based on the four parts of the system outlined above.
In Summary:
I am presently initiating discussions concerning this plan with two established colleges facing serious financial difficulties. They are asked to consider becoming a host for the project. Outside funding is required to launch this comprehensive attempt to define the requirements for implementing an individualized education for K-12 students.
Individuals reported in newsletters that describe individualized learning activities appear to be doing their best to change education, one step at a time. Unfortunately, their efforts are like putting iodine on a cancer.
How much progress have we been able to achieve with the current emphasis on high stakes testing and drill/regurgitate methodology approached one topic at a time that does not produce a unified approach to improvements nor recognize the complexities of education? In 1993, Bela Banathy, a leading advocate of systemic change in educational institutions had this to say in the first chapter of a book that sounded the alarm for the need for systemic reforms. ( Reigeluth, C.M., Banathy, B.H., & Olson, J.R. (Eds.) (1993). Comprehensive Systems Design: A New Educational Technology. New York: Springer-Verlag.)
“The ship of education is sailing on troubled waters. One national report after another highlights the current crisis of a ‘nation at risk,’ pointing out dangerous currents and menacing shoals. There is an ever-increasing realization that unless we change course, the ship will sink. But people are still trying to ‘rearrange the chairs’ on the deck of a sinking ship.”
There is a wide range of activities designed to test the efficacy of this plan for systemic change based on many years of study. Among the activities is the project outlined below, followed by numerous others.
In 1995, the Superintendent of the Willsboro Central School asked me to write a proposal to obtain a grant to improve his school, a program sponsored by the NYS Education Department funded under the Goals 2000 legislation of the Clinton administration. At that time the State was engaged in a plan based on developmental concepts called “The New Compact for Learning.”
I informed the Superintendent that funding would not be available for a single, small rural school, hence a plan was submitted that involved seven rural schools under the title, “A Rural Schools Consortium for New Standards Implementation.” This program’s outline is also used in other projects outlined herein.
The consortium plan was envisioned in two parts. 1) Under a separate grant, $375,000 was obtained for the first two years of a five-year commitment to establish with teachers of rural schools a new foundation for K-12 education based on the four components listed earlier that developed from my work at SUNY Plattsburgh’s teacher education department, teaching Block one, foundations of education. 2) The remaining three-year segment was projected to be dedicated to implementations consistent with the foundation established in the first two years. The amount of funding for that segment was not determined at that time.
Workshops rotated among consortium schools drawing upon expert assistance from scholars from throughout the region, including SUNY Plattsburgh and Rutgers University. The research component of the plan certified excellent progress in establishing an understanding of a new foundation. Detailed descriptions of every workshop were compiled by an assigned writer, available for review by others.
In 2001, resulting from “The No-child left behind legislation”, the then existing philosophy of education based on developmental theory was arbitrarily shifted from a human development paradigm to a behaviorist one that created the Common Core Curriculum, teacher proof instructional practices, and frequent standardized testing. Without discussion, the Goals 2000 grants were arbitrarily discontinued as the State assumed a drastically different philosophy.
Another effort to secure funding for this plan nearly succeeded. The New American Schools Development Corporation proposed by President George H.W. Bush attempted to raise capital for funding thirty proposals to change education across this country. The proposal I submitted was ranked seventeenth among nearly seven hundred submitted to the Rand Corporation for evaluation. Unfortunately, insufficient investments were obtained to fund thirty proposals, and eventually only a few received limited funding, and their impact faded into the woodwork.
Facing this disappointment, another effort occurred that involved the proposed implementation of the theory that involved development of a regional charter school for a rural region of Northeastern New York State. This comprehensive proposal was not considered consistent with the traditional understandings of decision-making agencies. It received criticism by officials that bordered acts of slander.
Several related projects that featured the concepts drawn from the proposed theory were spearheaded by me including a successful plan to establish one of nine model primary health care centers in this country, occurring in the early nineteen seventies. My plan received funding in the amount of $520,000 resulting in the creation of the Smith House Health Care Clinic in Willsboro, New York, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This project was designed to reflect the new rationale applied in family health education with computerized medical records, among other innovations.
A second project involved facilitating learning experiences in cell biology designed to upgrade instruction/learning with medical students across this continent. This project was conducted at the American Tissue Culture Association Headquarters, then located in Lake Placid, New York. The project originated from the Cell Science Department of the University of Saskatchewan Medical School at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. It was my job to facilitate the work of a group of leading cell biologists in accomplishing the goals of this project.
A third project involved facilitating a federal initiative known as a “Job’s Seventy Program” designed to prepare first line supervisors to successfully integrate underemployed or unemployed males, mainly Afro-American, into the production lines in a textile factory in North Carolina. This project demonstrated its applicability for leadership requirements in industry, confronting the well-worn prejudices of the time.
My website, www.Edupultz.com, is a work in progress that provides more details regarding these and other attempts to bring about needed changes designed to pave the way for initiating individualized learning throughout this country.
As I studied the Populace report, it became clear that one of its essential premises is a teaching paradigm. One only needs to examine closely the implications of the nature of communication to recognize that the concept of teaching and learning are not synonymous. We have been teaching as much information as time allows, but learning has been minimal at best.
Clearly, teaching through course offerings appears to be part of the problem. A major reorientation is needed that replaces the teaching paradigm with one focused on individualized learning that would establish individual mastery of a systems orientation.
Systems thinking consolidates ideas that reduce the complexities of life’s problems to manageable units. Through design and construction of models, students form the representations of any subject of inquiry expressed in “enactive, iconic, or symbolic forms.” (Bruner)
Models have four important functions: 1) Organizing thoughts, 2) Predicting events, 3) Measuring quantities and relationships and 4) Heuristic considerations that stimulate interest in further investigations. In-depth analysis of each variable or parts of systems, and a search for interrelationships among these parts is the central theme for this continuous-progress curriculum.
Drawing on the wisdom of A.N. Whitehead who wrote that the legitimate curriculum for the school is the study of life in all its manifestations, aimed at developing an eye for the whole chessboard and the bearing of one set of ideas on another. This has become the guiding philosophy for this plan.
He warned us of inert ideas simply taken into the mind and never placed in fresh combinations. He claimed these inert ideas are not only useless but also harmful.
The departmental, compartmentalized teaching paradigm promotes the process of conditioning through instruction of disconnected inert ideas. That process produces a low level of learning where the products are easily forgotten. When the findings of research and writings of a list of experts are studied, it paints a much different picture of what can produce competent and compassionate citizens.
What is learning according to reputable studies?
Students who have reached a level of cognitive development, referred to by Piaget as concrete operations, wherein individuals exhibit capabilities for beginning logic that enables the construction and assimilation of conceptual relationships, these individuals can fulfill the parameters of Robert Gagne’s cognitive model of learning while heeding Whitehead’s admonition.
According to Gagne, all learning begins with experience, preferably direct and purposeful. This results in simple associations that are communicated non-verbally and later verbally. When followed by continued experiences, multiple discriminations occur that lead to concept formation. Concepts are mental images that reflect the distillation of past experiences, retained, and applied in the translation and interpretation of past, present, and future personal beliefs. The more differentiations, the richer the concepts.
When these concepts are found to be repetitive and useful, they become simple rules. With further thoughtful experiences these rules are refined to form principles and later laws that maximize the abilities to problem solve.
The time it takes to proceed through this sequence varies with the developmental readiness of individuals along with the type and extent of exposure to learning opportunities. This requires uninterrupted time for achieving mastery. When reached, the learnings become part of personal belief systems likely retained.
Of course, cognitive learning is not all there is to learning. It simultaneously involves physical, psychological, social, emotional, moral, and spiritual dimensions as well.
The foregoing is just one example wherein teaching defined as conditioning becomes a problem.
Information regarding each of the four parts of this new theory contain other examples of how updated information can reveal the failures of education and provide direction to what should be included when designing a new system for K-12 education featuring individualized learning.
The Education Index is a report of the findings resulting from the collection and publishing of current vital statistics that could undergird the efforts of reform in K-12 education in this country. Among the report’s many findings is the desire on the part of our citizens for individualized K-12 education. (Contact the Purpose of the Education Index at Populace. Org)
The report includes an underlying assumption that teaching in general education, fine-tuned, is a necessary ingredient in restructuring a new K-12 system. But, given the abysmal record of learning among approximately seventy-five percent of third through eighth grade students in this country, resulting from a teaching process, that should have raised concern for a new concept. It should be noted that special needs facilitators are already conducting individualized activity through mainly one-on-one involvement and occasional group activities.
A new concept for schools should be focused on individualized learning for all built on updated assumptions supported by reputable studies regarding each of the component parts of a foundation for quality education – 1) the individual, learning and dimensions of mind related to learning and mental health, 2) communication between and within individuals, 3) group dynamics and group development, 4) the general education curriculum composed of the disciplines found within six “realms of meaning” experienced as ways of creating knowledge, 5) an application of general systems theory, treating systems design as an individualized process of learning guided by the modes of inquiry within each discipline, and 6) systems analysis as a strategy for assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes.
Individualized learning is maximized through participation in groups that function at their most mature levels where consensual validation occurs reflecting cooperative, team enhanced learning. Accommodating developmental differences and personal preferences in learners will happen at this level of cooperation.
A facilitator of learning must be able to facilitate the development of groups that support the range of developmental differences in learners. They must be prepared to respond appropriately to promote individual growth in a cooperative enterprise.
A K-12 proposal to revamp teacher education was initially focused on local analyses of historical and geographical factors working with elementary and middle school level students. This plan was formulated and reviewed in the 1980’s by reputable institutions such as the Rand Corporation.
The plan seeks to provide the foundation that enables students to meaningfully assimilate the vast knowledge that is stored in our libraries and data banks and offered by specialists in later educational experiences required for making career choices.
It contributes to dealing meaningfully with the potential information overload that has occurred due to internet connections, worldwide. Systems thinking is key to confronting this problem.
Within the plan is a new approach to authentic assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes. It’s entitled: The Constructive assessment, recordkeeping, and evaluation system (CARES), created by this author, and field tested by educators.
The system features a student managed computerized record, likened to an expanded diary of personal experiences which contains detailed student explanations/responses to their experiences and the unique meanings gleaned and retained by them. This record is organized with an application of general systems theory applied in education with particular emphasis on individualized systems design as the process of learning and systems analysis as an authentic strategy for assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes.
Each student keeps track of their experiences using existing computer software, containing four files, namely: Who am I? Natural/physical features of the world and universe, social/cultural characteristics of oneself and of societies, and economic and political structures and practices that addresses the study of life in all its manifestations. A fifth file contains the unique products of inquiry constructed by each learner.
Secondary educational changes would evolve from an analysis of the recorded results of a changed curriculum for the elementary and middle school level students, drawing upon the academic departments of the college for assistance in creating a competency-based curriculum.
Locating a school in which these newly oriented teachers would live out their profession would be determined later. A maximum of twenty enrollees in the program will constitute the first group, each paying tuition etc. initially underwritten by outside funds. Completion of the program is anticipated to be based on the construction and defense of a student-generated “Facilitator’s Handbook” that meets specific competency requirements, modeled after the CARES procedures.
The classes will require a spacious room either on or near a college campus with basic scientific instruments, duplicating and scanning equipment and innovative elementary classroom supplies, with reliable internet connections and modern communications technology, also underwritten by initial funding from outside sources.
This plan evolved in the late nineteen fifties from an experiment with a group of public school seventh and eighth grade students who were enrolled in the Congdon Campus School on the campus of SUNY Potsdam. They were engaged in creating a detailed image of their local and state history and geography by treating the disciplines of history and geography as ways of creating knowledge.
Among the outcomes was the construction and field testing of The Environmental Relationships Test that, according to Benjamin Bloom, measures the higher order skills of analysis, synthesis, and critical evaluation, consistent with Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, cognitive domain. This test was listed by Educational Testing Service as an example of innovations available for assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes.
The test has been administered across a wide range of age differences. The results indicate a high level of ignorance about the environment in which they live. This is found even with those who have passed relevant courses that deal with environmental issues.
A professor of history at SUNY Potsdam and this author teamed-up to design and implement the experiment whereby students created knowledge from utilization of primary sources and methodologies professional historians and geographers use, accommodating the developmental differences in student capabilities. This experiment occurred from 1957 through 1960. It was known as The Discovery Approach to the Teaching of Social Studies.
This study initially focused on local history and geography where students had direct access to essential resources available for learning how to learn. The students pieced together their detailed images of the evolution of their local county, its physical geographical features, including bedrock and minerals, relief features, drainage patterns, soils, weather and climate, and location within the world and universe.
Creating the history that took place within those natural physical features utilized detailed information on the social-cultural (including individualized ancestral information), economic, and political structures and processes that create an integrated view.
Primary and authentic secondary sources were furnished by the historian who specialized in New York local and state history. The geographic sources were drawn from many government publications, such as the US geological Survey, and climate and weather data furnished by this author, the facilitator of learning assigned to the students. His background from having worked the land while growing up on a nearly self-sufficient farm served him well in this task.
Our historian had previously studied the local history of the county using the primary and secondary sources for producing a narrative based on the findings. The students did the same with the same documents used by the historian, after which they compared their products. The students were particularly focused on the differences and similarities of the narratives, and the reasons for them.
This project stimulated discussion nationally resulting in many invitations to demonstrate the plan and its processes. It served as an epiphany for this author who abandoned the traditional role of a teacher and replaced it with a role as a facilitator of learning, using the disciplines as ways of creating knowledge to guide the change.
During the time between 1960 and the 1990’s, workshops required advanced preparations by searching the archives of each local area and reproducing local primary documents for use in the sessions. These documents were not readily available to teachers, nor were teachers skilled in finding them on their own.
The need to solve that availability problem prompted extensive studies that were conducted during a three-year project at the Reidsville, North Carolina Schools, and in preparation workshops for a new faculty in Mentor, Ohio, among others, searching for new photographic processes other than microfilm. Color microfiche and computerized access equipment were developed in response to this need.
It was not until the nineteen nineties that digital images of the highest quality became accessible in every school. Local documents are now available on demand with a computer command, making this plan entirely feasible.
This experience has been expanded in this new plan to include all the disciplines of general education supported by the reputable theories that provide the underlying rationale.
An in-depth understanding of the interrelated variables of local physical geography and the social/cultural, economic, and political structures and activities is a missing link in the education of youth in the current curricular offerings. Without this background, that should have begun during early educational experiences, students are left with limited understanding of themselves, their environment and that of other geographic areas. They have seldom explored the implications of their behavior, or how ignorance contributes to the problems of climate change or the careless exploitation of resources.
Such a program proposed would have an appeal with members of our citizenry who are looking for a new approach to education that features individualized learning opportunities. This program could seek certification from interested states in this country and from others, thus tapping a huge potential student recruitment pool.
I am aware of the existence of several required funding sources available to launch this plan, chief among them can be reached at standtogether.org whose main goal is advertised as fostering individualized K-12 education.
The initial task in bringing this plan to fruition requires the involvement of a variety of interested parties in a concerted effort to execute a strategy for the host college’s approval. Local discussions have begun to create a think-tank atmosphere focusing on planning and affecting that strategy.
Recruitment of the initial teacher/facilitators would be drawn from students who were formally enrolled in Block I of the Teacher Education Program at SUNY Plattsburgh and others who have intuitively reached similar or identical concepts of individualized education. An effort is underway to recruit participants who attended Block I and found it invigorating and inspirational.
Block one was conducted during a fifteen-semester hour block of time. Each group met with me, their facilitator, four mornings a week, three hours each day for one semester during their junior year at the college. During this time a variety of visits occurred to local classrooms that offered an opportunities for these students to gather data about child development and observe firsthand the results of a teaching methodology.
Currently, a former student of Block one is conducting seminars with seniors of the Saranac Lake CSD and the surrounding area who are hoping to become teachers. She contacted me and we have continued that connection for the past year and into this one. This teacher found Block a life changing one, is eager to gather information to update her prior experiences that she found so important in her life. I have been furnishing essays that deal with what I have learned since the days of Block one.
Block one students and selective others will become the facilitators who would engage entering students in examining and internalizing the theoretical foundations currently being promoted, facilitated by this author through Zoom.
These individuals will need to become conversant with the landscape and resources available at Colleges. Their foundation experience will occur during a two-semester timeframe. This group will be prepared with credentials to assume an active role in facilitating learning. Those experiences will be thoroughly documented with the intention to disseminate the record.
This group will become the cadre of professionals who will become the spokespersons for the program, skilled in describing the program and how it can be implemented. They will serve in a professional capacity as the facilitators of learning within the program and elsewhere.
Respectfully submitted:
Robert L. “Bob” Arnold
Professor Emeritus of Education.
Recipient of the Potsdam Alumni’s 2018 St. Lawrence Academy Medal for outstanding contributions in the field of education.
518 963 7982
518 441 5827 (cell)
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