Re: Apparent disagreements on improvements

[Myron Tribus <mtribus@home.com>]

At 12:19 PM -0400 10/6/00, Richard White raised the question of 
whether the entire educational system is founded on a faulty paradigm 
and, therefore, attempts to improve it are doomed to failure.

I believe that the existing system is indeed based upon a faulty 
paradigm.  I fault no one for this state of affairs because I spent 
over fifty years as an educator before I learned there was another 
paradigm of which I had been totally ignorant.  Now I spend my days 
teaching this different perspective to teachers wherever I can find 
people willing to listen.  Having spent a lifetime involved with 
paradigm shifts (quality management being one example) I recognize 
how difficult making this shift can be, especially in a well 
established tightly coupled (but not necessarily managed) collection 
of components.  It is easy to forget that, for example, schools 
across the nation are bound together by a need to be able to place a 
newcomer to the system in the proper grade.  When a twelve year old 
girl comes to a school district from somewhere else in the USA, 
everyone, parents, administrators and the girl, expect that she will 
be placed in an appropriate class.  This informal linkage makes it 
very difficult to change anything.

The different paradigm of instruction is due to the work of the 
Israeli Psychologist, Reuven Feuerstein.  I recently created a web 
site where interested people may learn more about his theory of 
structural cognitive modifiability..  Go to:

http://icelp.org

The "icelp" stands for the "Inteternational Center for the 
Enhancement of Learning Potential" in Jerusalem.

It is not at all uncommon when teaching groups of teachers this 
different way to approach learning to have them, at the end of a 
week's instruction, come to me with tears in their eyes, saying, "I 
never understood my job before."

Myron Tribus,  350 Britto Terrace,  Fremont, CA 94539
Ph:510 651 3641  Fax: 510 656 9875   e-mail: mtribus@home.com
Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in men (Sarnoff).