Memorandum
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 07:49:54 -0500
From: Henry van Eyken
To: unrev-II@onelist.com
Thanks, Eric, for positive, uplifting language. We ABSOLUTELY need to apply
the principles of this colloquium to education and, through that, to society
at large. And if anything is urgent, that is!
Most of those (us) coming
through the school system today have their minds cast in forms they (we) are
stuck with for a lifetime in the world community. Here we are graduating,
say, 50 years of not only huge waste in the "Collective IQ," but
hard-to-bend minds are mountainous obstacles to progress. And I don't care
how well educated and how intelligent everybody on this forum is, we all
have much waste and pollution between the ears. (Yes, I know, I know, who is
to dictate what is waste and what is pollution?)
Just to validate your comments about appropriate books, I happen to have
some family history here that ought permit an anectotical sketch on the
subject. Which brings up a point.
I hope that when the ten weeks of our colloquium are up, this experience
will be prolog. As for a societal DKR, I perceive (for now!) something
encyclopedic in core set-up, but with "formal" subject areas in some form of
authorative (but not autocratic) control of appropriate bodies, with a means
of updating that makes for efficient (easy, pleasurable) use, with some
graded approach to accomodate readers' "learning sets" (i.e. what they
already have in their very own mental kits), etc., etc.
I hope that there will be enough binding and mutual patience in our group to
continue on. This, of course, means attracting other people to the group to
at least replace those who go on with other things. Ms Christine Peterson of
Foresight reminded us of numbers of people required to get the kind of
things we are thinking about over the top. This means that we must cast the
fundamental subject matter in a form that can be readily digested by
interested, middle-of-the-road intelligentia at large. Bootstrapping must
become a household word, one whose meaning must be clearly understood and
preserved within society at large so as to permit public policy to be tied
to it. (Extreme example of a household word going awry: "quantum leap" has
come to denore precisely the opposite of what it is, the tiniest actions
that move and shake nature.)
Eric, you are just about to start me off, but today I better attend to
Session 6. The sooner I catch up, the sooner I shall be less of a nuisance
to other participants and, perhaps, more productive.
Thanks again,
My comment on the situation you observed, etc. ...
... a number of important things.
Sincerely,
Henry
Henry van Eyken
Subject:
Improving education