Submissions shared with me - these could go public when authors give permission ..

 N4W.AoNZ - public as soon as I find it again.

Elaine's "oops" with preceding notes - coming shortly

Niki's - pending approval.

About entities

 

About entities:

• I see 7+ as an entity
• And every person is an entity.
  
• So is every group and network.
  
• And the Whanganui River is an entity which has gained the status of personhood.
• I find it helpful to use the idea of a person based entity (such as a person, or a group, or a network, a collective, a culture, a society) as having ideas, beliefs, understandings that are flexible, not internally consistent, nor externally correspondent, but pragmatically growing, changing and adapting to the reality around us.

snippet - education is on the wrong track

Update - I am starting on a summer of tidy up - where I go through all sorts of stuff and throw things away.  This is where interesting snippets will be dumped for tidy up later.  The context is obvious for this one. 

Hi everyone - it could be that we discuss education again today - or not - it could be that topical issues fill the time for us. 

However - here is a key quote from the article I mentioned last week. 

"Education is on the wrong track largely because of “solutions” that have isolated teachers and students from one another and from sensible ways of spending their time."

I have written the following without referring to the article.  It could be that, next week, we unpick some of the ideas - in a way that is analytical rather than competitive. 

Cheers

Elaine

-------

The key idea in the article is that education is being treated like the deck chairs on the Titanic - successive political and educational hierarchies juggle ideas, adapt things, seek popular support, and upset the ways children are raised.  But the whole system is failing, a disaster.  One of the tools that maintains this is the need to judge and compare learners, teachers, schools, countries.  

This ongoing judgemental system maintains the status quo where the children of those with privilege maintain their social AND/OR economic AND/OR cultural privilege - and arguably, gendered privilege (certainly in mathematics). Their kids are fitted to the kinds of education where competition is the key to development - their kids play in the top teams, go to top schools, beat others in written examinations, and are taught skills of self-confident dominance.  And in the case of mathematics, the curriculum itself is biased so that the majority leave study at a point where they lose interest and label themselves as being "no good at it".

The article supports the idea that education, as it currently exists, maintains and drives inequality.  Teachers and children struggle to find ways to foster learning.  The article suggests we should figure out what works well - and do more of it - let's let the kaiako figure it out - and kaiako includes whanau who are at the heart of supporting learning. (Kaiako, as I understand it, refers to teachers and learners working together, not separated - and the fact that we all constantly learn from each other.)

My belief is that if we ever have an effective education system, there will be no comparison based on assessment of learning.  Assessment in its current form will be viewed much as slavery is now.  (And, yes, slavery still exists but it is recognised as being grossly wrong.) 

Successive waves of educators have shifted the goal posts - I was deeply involved in the era where "girls in mathematics" and "women can do anything" enabled different ideas about maths education to emerge - and they are having an effect - for privileged girls who come from powerful backgrounds and/or who have gifted insightful teachers.  

But - the fact is that as soon as the underprivileged begin to catch up with the majority, the system changes the goal posts. 

This is the end of my rant for now.  I might re-read the article ...  Let’s declare education and disaster and get on with our lives –

Frank Smith – from Phi delta Kappa in the 1990s.

Elaine Mayo <h.elaine.mayo@gmail.com>	19 Nov 2024, 07:40
to Brian, Cliff, Clyde, David, Gillian, Jon, Michael, Paul, Roy, Russell

TCP - Fresh start - now that the public blog for N4W is under way

 Okay - bullet points

• the N4W blog has a structure which I will emulate here - search engine, followed by categorised headings.

• The really big ideas emerging from within N4W are 
• three levels of abstraction / generalisation 
• societal/cultural
• collective/networked
• Individual cognitive
  
• discourse / communication linking all these
• different levels of observation
• zettels - philosophical level 
• snippets - collective level / story-telling level
• insights - intra-personal. 
  

•  Toward Collective Praxis: complexity, pragmatism and practice
• A paradigm shift - an increased focus on 
• emergence as opposed to fixed truth
  
• language as a tool within discourse 

That's enough for today! Let's see where I get to

Big Ideas - flowing from a conversation between Ian and Elaine

Talking one-to-one (kanohi ki te kanohi -(kktk)) is so very helpful.  Yesterday's conversation led to the following snippets. ("I" is Elaine in the following; "We" stands for Ian and Elaine)

• Toward Collective Learning seems to work as an ideal for the movement which is N4W. 
  

• The two dimensional model of a three circle Venn diagram representing three entities  i.e. (*Seven Plus *Networking for Well-being *Transitions65) suits both of us when we are looking at the level of the interests of individuals.   We agreed that the boundaries are porous in that people can shift their interests. 
  

• I can also think of this 2D diagram as having depth which links to the interest or commitment the individual has in the topic.

• It is useful to think about the same diagram at the level of collective knowledge and understanding - the assumptions and culture of each of the entities.

• About the three entities:  {N4W} has a whakapapa dating back to the time of the earthquakes.  {Tr65} also has a long whakapapa.  {7Plus} is an entity that emerged as a result of the meeting of these two histories on 07/07/21. 

• This two dimensional model can be used for any project that arises out of an interest in collective learning. The third entity in the conversation space for {7+} {N4W} in Ian's case is {Transitions65}.  Mine, right now, would be {games} i.e.  the people who are interested in learning and exploring ideas through games.

• We also agreed on a three dimensional model where the entity of N4W.AoNZ is about ideas - it is a movement toward the (unwritten) aspirations of creating a better world through Networking for Well-being with a focus on Aotearoa New Zealand {N4W.AoNZ}  The entity is a movement. It is about adaptating ideas and traditions (it is not a gathering of people or organisations) with the aim of shift our society toward better, more democratic, healthy spaces.  
• In this sense, the entity which is 7+ (not the individual people, but the shared values etc.) is part of the movement which is N4W. And also, the individual people as entities are part of the movement. 
  

Concepts that need definition - Mahi, Kanohi ki te kanohi, whakapapa, entity

Casuistry - thanks, Tony

 

I learnt a new word yesterday while reading a retirement-finance-article: “casuistry”. A new one for my vocabulary. Has a couple of distinct meanings, but the one that applied in the context I was engaged with was:

specious, deceptive, or oversubtle reasoning, especially in questions of morality; fallacious or dishonest application of general principles; sophistry.

Elaine to sort - Links to articles

Ian has pinged through some links to articles that he would like to appear on this blog.  See the list on the right. 

 

Worthy articles are being collected here - 

** Maths education - from GOrdon's link

 

** climate change

 https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018937961/climate-change-from-a-wild-animal-s-point-of-view-adam-welz

 

** simpsons from Roy