This is excellent thinking, Will. The responses of the NY teachers are not surprising, but based on the parameters you articulated in advance, they illustrate just how stuck we are in the treadmill of quick fixes.
That cultural treadmill is baked into the corporate world. It is the basis of evaluation, the source of status, and the pathway to the executive suite. Recall Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Those who did not require analysis or debate but could make decisions on the fly without a moment for reflection were praised as talented executives.
The results you observed with educators are harder to understand. Our field touts itself as one focused on process rather than outcomes, but that narrative may be a myth. Or the narrative has been reduced to defining process through the lens of social efficiency, which would effectively shortcut the kind of reflection you are advocating for.
In the social efficiency world, we grab lesson plans from publishers like Pearson or McGraw-Hill, and more recently, we may ask ChatGPT to deliver them. There is a certain efficiency in having others do the work for us and then using their well-crafted materials, but it doesn't facilitate thinking deeply about the goals of the lesson, the course, and the education environment in which our kids live.
There are educators out there who are emulating what you are suggesting. They create their own lessons, course content, and adaptable pedagogies because their goal is to meet the needs of their students, regardless of what they are being asked to do. They throw social efficiency down the crapper, despite the toll it may take on them personally, because they want to get at the root of the forces that are shaping today's world and their students.
Sadly, as we have discussed, their techniques are not scalable because they are tailored to incorporating the personal narratives of the teachers with young minds. Perhaps scalability is not what we are looking for. Perhaps it is simply another flavor of social efficiency. It may be that every one of us has to go through the process of seeking ultimate explanations rather than proximate ones. As you say, it will require slowing down, and that will require giving social efficiency its last rites. It also means the team of you, Vanessa Andreotti, Otto Scharmer, Daniel Schmactenberger, and others will have to work with one small group of educators at a time, as you did in NY.
This is excellent thinking, Will. The responses of the NY teachers are not surprising, but based on the parameters you articulated in advance, they illustrate just how stuck we are in the treadmill of quick fixes.
That cultural treadmill is baked into the corporate world. It is the basis of evaluation, the source of status, and the pathway to the executive suite. Recall Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Those who did not require analysis or debate but could make decisions on the fly without a moment for reflection were praised as talented executives.
The results you observed with educators are harder to understand. Our field touts itself as one focused on process rather than outcomes, but that narrative may be a myth. Or the narrative has been reduced to defining process through the lens of social efficiency, which would effectively shortcut the kind of reflection you are advocating for.
In the social efficiency world, we grab lesson plans from publishers like Pearson or McGraw-Hill, and more recently, we may ask ChatGPT to deliver them. There is a certain efficiency in having others do the work for us and then using their well-crafted materials, but it doesn't facilitate thinking deeply about the goals of the lesson, the course, and the education environment in which our kids live.
There are educators out there who are emulating what you are suggesting. They create their own lessons, course content, and adaptable pedagogies because their goal is to meet the needs of their students, regardless of what they are being asked to do. They throw social efficiency down the crapper, despite the toll it may take on them personally, because they want to get at the root of the forces that are shaping today's world and their students.
Sadly, as we have discussed, their techniques are not scalable because they are tailored to incorporating the personal narratives of the teachers with young minds. Perhaps scalability is not what we are looking for. Perhaps it is simply another flavor of social efficiency. It may be that every one of us has to go through the process of seeking ultimate explanations rather than proximate ones. As you say, it will require slowing down, and that will require giving social efficiency its last rites. It also means the team of you, Vanessa Andreotti, Otto Scharmer, Daniel Schmactenberger, and others will have to work with one small group of educators at a time, as you did in NY.