Inside Constructivism
Constructivism gets its name from "Constructing Knowledge" in the students mind. Constructivism has its roots in Kant's synthesis of rationalism and empiricism, where it is noted that the subject has no direct access to external reality. The problem with pure theoretical Constructivism:
Constructing and learning togetherWithout such a selection criterion, constructivism would lapse into absolute relativism: the assumption that any model is as adequate as any other. The two most often used criteria are coherence, agreement between the different cognitive patterns within an individual's brain, and consensus, agreement between the different cognitive patterns of different individuals." Francis Heylighen
The flaws in theoretical Constructivism do not mean that it is worthless. It just has to be refashioned for use in real life. This would be the applied version of Constructivism. Once you infuse Constructivism with some realness, it has some valid points. To understand why the current schools don't work, you have to understand their origin...
"Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndike of Columbia Teachers College and some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled." - Gatto, NYC teacher of the year.
The one to focus on is Edward Lee Thorndike: His work on animal behavior and the learning process led to the theory of connectionism and helped lay the scientific foundation for modern educational psychology. Note that he worked on animals, and treated children as animals.
A theory called "law of effect": a principle of psychology described by Edward Thorndike. It holds that responses to stimuli that produce a satisfying or pleasant state of affairs in a particular situation are more likely to occur again in the situation. Conversely, responses that produce a discomforting, annoying or unpleasant effect are less likely to occur again in the situation. This is where we get the A = "good child" F= "bad child". There are two main problems:
- Student apathy and massive drop-out rate
- Thorndike's ideas, taken to their logical conclusion, takes you places that you really don't want to go; Orwellian totalitarianism.
The psychologist Abraham Maslow, in the early 1950's, gave education a new goal. The goal was for people to reach their full potential; this he called "Self-Actualization". A former student of Maslow's - Barbara Clark, an educator, noticed that students that were off the charts on the Benet tests (IQ tests) were failing in their classes. The reason was that the traditional education system was set up to "Program" people, and gifted children put up a mental block to stop it from affecting them.
OLPC Macedonia is somethingHer solution was the first instance of Constructivism backed by the Government. The reasons she could do it were:
- Only 2% of the student body is gifted.
- It would be implemented within the framework of Special Education.
However, something is better than nothing. To advocate a head on challenge to the education system would have resulted in her being crushed by the prevailing education system.
Philosophy of cybernetics
AI is predicated on the presumption that knowledge is a commodity that can be stored inside of a machine, and that the application of such stored knowledge to the real world constitutes intelligence. Only within such a "realist" view of the world can, for example, semantic networks and rule-based expert systems appear to be a route to intelligent machines.
Cybernetics in contrast has evolved from a "constructivist" view of the world where objectivity derives from shared agreement about meaning, and where information (or intelligence for that matter) is an attribute of an interaction rather than a commodity stored in a computer. These differences are not merely semantic in character, but rather determine fundamentally the source and direction of research performed from a cybernetic, versus an AI, stance.
Limits to knowing
In working to derive functional models common to all systems, early cybernetic researchers quickly realized that their "science of observed systems" cannot be divorced from "a science of observing systems" - because it is we who observes.
The cybernetic approach is centrally concerned with this unavoidable limitation of what we can know: our own subjectivity. In this way cybernetics is aptly called "applied epistemology". At minimum, its utility is the production of useful descriptions, and, specifically, descriptions that include the observer in the description.
Ivan: steering educationOrigins of "cybernetics"
The term itself began its rise to popularity in 1947 when Norbert Wiener used it to name a discipline apart from, but touching upon, such established disciplines as electrical engineering, mathematics, biology, neurophysiology, anthropology, and psychology. Wiener needed a name for their new discipline, and they adapted a Greek word meaning "the art of steering" (the term "governor" derives from the same root).
OLPC's descendence from Special Educational
There have been programs that have implemented the cybernetics and construction combination. It has evolved far beyond the more obvious combinations.
- Biofeedback centered learning (Barbara Clark) students learning with computerized biofeedback
- Visual Spatial learning (Alexandra Golon) students learn via computer graphics
- Brain based learning (Linda Williams) students with computerized brain activity monitoring
It should be noted that most people are not aware of such programs due to the deals made between Clark, the Teachers Unions, and the Department of Education. It was this Clark doctrine that alternative forms of education would be tolerated and allowed to exist only if it was agreed to stay within the confines of special education.
Thus, it would be unfair to consider that such alternatives "just didn't catch on". It ignores the reality that such researchers and programs had to remain under the radar.
The OLPC project would be first time such teaching methods and the fruits of decades of researcher would be made available to a large population...any large population. They are not new or experimental, but rather suppressed.
Tags: Barbara Clark | Biofeedback | Constructivism | Cybernetics | Francis Heylighen | Norbert Wiener | Robert Lane |
