Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as saying “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” I believe it. Yet, if this is true, the philosophy of this generation deserves some scrutiny.

Right now the philosophy of government is “pile on the debt” and the philosophy of higher education is also “pile on the debt”.

The world becomes outdated more and more frequently in less and less time. With the age of information and biology right on top of us, the generations referred to in Lincoln’s quote above may be a little tighter knit than in Lincoln’s day.

Today, our government today operates in a very pro-debt and conveyor-belt or rather assembly line fashion. It’s no wonder that our educational model should come to look the same as our government or perhaps the education model was the origin of the government we see today as Lincoln’s quote suggests. In the recently past century or so, students spent 4 years in higher education away from the world, building themselves as products to go out and provide.

But the product of this industrial education model generally required large debt loads, the use of gov. assistance (for which we pay a high price in taxes), scholarships or draining the student’s or parent’s savings. Each of these funding methods is dependent or independent in varying degrees and of course in corresponds to the students disposition.

I would suggest that the majority of the funding and normal living conditions of the college student today increases the student’s dependence on others (both mentally and physically) and that this dependence could be replaced by more powerful ownership based methods. I would further suggest that the government and society we want for our children, as difficult as it may seem, requires just such a shift.

Students will continue to need more education as industries become more interdisciplinary. The rise of interdisciplinary learning seems to conflict with the increasing need for specialized learning, which is also on the rise and they compound the need for a new educational approach that can merge them together. If we keep on our current track, the student owes so much in debt by the time he leaves he pays interest rates that require paying two times the original loan amount. At this rate students can spend the better part of their lives paying for school.

Schools today are becoming more and more integrated with the outside world. Our present situation may require that we further embrace that trend and allow it to work for us, resolving the interdisciplinary, specialization and debt needs. By making this shift we may raise the bar and help to establish a new level international leadership in education.

So what do we do?
One option that emphasizes ownership and which is becoming more do able as new technologies continue to emerge is to cut out the funding middlemen and to change the student’s role. This involves two elements:

1.) A new kind of student that owns his or her education from the beginning to the end. This suggests that students graduate both “in and out” of an education program–more on this below.

2.) A new kind of student and school funding, where the funds are directly connected to the transformation of the student and therefore owned in some respects by the student.

Not all students would choose this type of education. Students choosing this model would enroll on campus twice and only enroll full-time when they owned their education, their house, their time and many other basic aspects of life.

Students would also graduate twice, the first graduation would occur after completing the academic requirements of his or her program and the second once he or she had substantially contributed to the chosen fields of specialized study. This latter graduation would occur in conjunction with multiple people or institutions concurrently in the student’s field of focus.

Example of a “New Student’s” Schedule:

1^st yr students might spend their time this way:
1/3 earning (20 hrs)
1/3 studying (20 hrs)
1/3 residual (20 hrs residual type income or skill set that increases income)
Working his way out of a job so that he can study a greater percentage of the time.

2^nd yr students may to spend his time this way:
1/2 earning (30 hrs)
1/4 studying (15 hrs)
1/4 residual/impact (15 hrs)

3^rd year students should be in a different place:
1/6 earning (10 hrs)
1/2 studying/impact (30 hrs)
1/3 impact/residual (20 hrs)

4-6^th years or even up to 10^th year students gradually merge the 30 hours of studying and 20 hours of impact. When they graduate there would really not be a very great change in their lives:

1/10 Earning (5 hrs)
9/10 Study/impact (45 hrs)

Family-life may be the only trump card and even the time constraint involved with a family becomes less of an obstacle when ownership, training and education are all set on autopilot.

Higher-education schooling may take a person 2+ extra years following this model. But once students are out, they are empowered with zero debt, a powerful education and with momentum in many areas, including the habit of learning while providing.

This is what might be called both graduating in and graduating out of school and a school can design their program to foster this approach. So, what is it that limits us to 4 years of undergraduate schooling and a few years of graduate work? Was this tradition a result of the pre-industrial and industrial eras, solidified by the industrial machine, its assembly line and conveyor belt?

Summing it up:
Students may not now have the luxury of waiting until after college to “make a difference” or get out of debt—and maybe that’s OK. Was it actually a luxury? And, do we want the philosophy of government to change for our children and the generations that follow?

The first was published July 1st 2009:

http://www.storifoundation.org/dl/STORI_Newsletter_1.1.0.pdf

Shift an event to a procedure

Early in the development of Dating 360° we asked: What kind of seminar would make a difference in the lives of our participants long term? A person often comes to a traditional event and:

1.) Is exposed to an information download and often overload
2.) Seldom associates with the other people at the event in a substantive way
3.) Doesn’t implement the material in a way that affects the people closest to them
4.) Doesn’t therefore experience real lasting change

We chose to offer a totally different kind of event. The seminar:

1.) Spurs on the person’s “make a difference” momentum.
2.) Participants come to know the person sitting next to them, they know their “make a difference momentum” and know their feelings about the seminar material.
3.) The content has already been delivered and experienced before the person arrives so they can ask questions.
4.) Defers and stimulates action after the event automatically.
5.) Small groups use content in behalf of other participants.
6.) Involves participants so they come ready to contribute.
7.) People’s natural relationships continue the transformation at home.

This type of event we’ve developed we call an “un-event”. Un-events are centered around not just coming but becoming. Through un-events participants transition from the mindset of events to “the process of becoming”.

Participants will often be invited to a follow-up un-event 3 months later in the same place and with many of the same people. The un-event will then work even better because they will have more to share and contribute.  As the web services expand we will make these contributions available to all of the other participants so they can be rated and used by all. We combine the best that people have to offer all over the nation and perhaps eventually the world.

After the first seminar we introduce books and resources taking you to the next level for the following un-event.  We encourage the use of all available resources on the subject and to communicate with the other participants (using the teams to kick off the dialog) in their area regarding experiences and innovations in the new frontier of “procedural dating”.

Because the seminar is a type of event, we are using it as a model un-event (and date). Usually events are thought of as the substance of time. We look forward to them and then spend time remembering about and recovering from them. The problem is that our day to day routines and habits do not seem to be affected by events. Lasting change happens as we integrate what we become into our daily life.

The seminar “Becoming: The Dating Revolution” will likely be the first time participants experience aspects of the “un-event” style seminar. ]]> http://www.storifoundation.org/?feed=rss2&p=71 0 http://www.storifoundation.org/?p=68 http://www.storifoundation.org/?p=68#comments Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:24:12 +0000 Allen Levie http://www.storifoundation.org/?p=68 Wait a minute; what is elocution? And how can a person suggest that it come before food production, defense, crime, fixing government or even education?

Well to answer the first question, a narrow definition of elocution is the skill of speaking in which vocal production and gesture are emphasized. A more broad definition would encompass the source of elocution as tapping or exploring the depth of the human spirit and then our ability to communicate ‘who we are’ with others.

Taken one step further our proficiency in elocution encompasses our ability to move others, it is in essence the language of inspiration. As we join in expressive performance through our natural associations and local communities, elocution establishes the very common ground with which we can associate and unite as people.

This unity provides the fabric and foundation of social interaction including government and trade. We begin our “social contract” and “basic exchange of goods and services” as we feel the need to help each other and thereby ascend to greater heights in the happiness and comforts of life.  This united association describes the essence of society.

Does society need to be fixed? Is society broken or sick? These questions may seem redundant and a grossly understated inquiry. Do we have a fever, high blood sugar or are we terminally ill? If we were to take the metaphoric temperature of society to see if the sickness is a bad one, how would we do it?

As we have sort-of assumed that elocution is an important factor, let’s narrow the question to elocution; where is our society at on the elocution scale? Do we have common language? Do we each express ourselves with clarity, with depth of character? Are we understood? Do we enjoy each other’s unique interpretation or rendering of our common stories? How united are our neighborhoods, our families, our friends?

These may be just the questions we must be asked as a people and as a society. Are we capable of asking them? Are the normally high-ranking problems symptoms of something deeper? This little article is not intended to have all of the answers, nor it intended to speak with authoritative expertise, it simply suggests that elocution may be a good place to start in making a difference and hints that there may be a critical need we have overlooked worthy of some exploration. Where do you stand?

The idea of “Beyond the Classroom” presents a restructuring of roles and relationships for students, teachers, parents, admin and outsiders; whether in-person or virtual. Is anyone integrating relationships like this in education?

#1 Most schools would agree that if a student communicated success stories with core and semi-core relationships their education would improve. If this was done consciously and with some foresight it may improve education dramatically.
#2 Most schools recognize that they have no natural role or responsibility to be involved or manage a students personal relationships (or the capability to do so).
#3 Most parents agree that it is their natural place to know the relationships of their student.
#4 Few if any schools in the country have any systems for engaging parents (or others) in this way whether on campus or virtual.

There are 5 databases that need to be optimized (restructured to self-manage). Her are a few ways they might be impacted by such a change:

#1 the school’s (administration’s)

a. PR, branding, recruiting, fundraising (connects funders/contributors directly to student transformations, this has never really happened before), community work/study relations,
b. less parent issues
c. less discipline issues
ability to involve info age technologies in the learning process cell phones, computers, etc.
d. quality goes up and institutions history is better established
e. provides a seed bed for other innovations (new kind of campus, etc.)
f. schools need to release the pressures and responsibilities they have acquired and they need to be trained and coached––weened from them.

#2 the parents,
a. core family relationships are strengthened by shifting the dialogue from “How’s school going?” and the typical response of  ”good” to substantive discussion and actual results.
b. are connected through new natural role over relationship but not intrusive. Parents do their thing and third party institution does their thing; this is not happening parents feel like they should be connected but there is no vehicle.

#3 the student’s,
a. Progressing year by year to greater degrees of independence, ever expanding types of relationships and increased numbers
b. this allows the student to mess up but polish through publishing a sort of natural accountability putting the responsibility of great education more and more on the student rather than the the institution or other.
c. Gifts and talents of students can be integrated more fully into the edu. process.
d. A model for how cognitive knowledge develops through the relationships of synapses can be occurring all around the student as their relationship structure takes shape.
e. They can be taught the skills of managing local and distant relations which are not being taught anywhere in education.
f. By so teaching love and diplomacy can be integrated in to the educational process which are also lacking.
g. student to student relations are weak, disconnected and not lasting. In short they are a distraction
h. allows the long tern systematic development of a personal portfolio to be developed because education is in the right context
i. epiphany can become more of a focus because the student’s work excellence has a place to go; it is organized and in the right context

#4 the teacher’s,
a. Involving experts and people in both the student’s and parent’s as they connect.
b. Cohesion of the whole educational experience from one phase to the next including different schools (grade school, jr. high, high school, mission, college, business/life);
c. Class to class and subject to subject both in the school and out (chemistry, piano lessons, sports, leisure, leadership) is dependent on how well this process works.
d. Interdisciplinary learning has always been limping along best accomplished by Montessori but barely scratching the surface of what is possible.
e. The teachers shift their mindset from teaching and grading knowledge and skills to working with relationships and students take more and more responsibility for knowledge and skills. The student’s newfound communication drives their need for mentors up.

#5 the outsider’s:
a. Whether funders, businesses, social entrepreneurs, experts and specialists, politicians, religious leaders, future instructors, neighbors, or family. They now have a connection to the education process that works and is not overwhelming.
b. this will connect the outside world to education so that education doesn’t continue to be disconnected and therefor behind the times and less obsolete.
c. cutting edge innovation, discovery and entrepreneurship (affective use of choice/agency hard work reinstated) can reconnect with the US educational system and the US can be back on top

Course of action:
- Teach a semester long course which can be delivered through: live online medium (Elluminate?), web radio, web-group dialogue (Google group?), phone calling, newsletter, YouTube video or webcasts, local group exercises (which would often be associated with sponsoring schools and include: colloquia, simulations, participant presentations, think tank work, projects, campaigns, etc.).
- Organize this group of learners so it could eventually be expanded to up to 1 million learners at once.
- Instigate a viral marketing campaign.
- Develop software to help people manage their personal and institutional databases in the context of both education and personal/community transformation.

Through out this whole project these 3 keys need to be central:

Key #1: Real transformation is measured by its affect on your relationships.
Key #2: Relationships should have the chief hand in choosing to what degree they are involved with your life.
Key #3: Personal and community transformations occur in proportion to the extent to which the 6 elements of transformation are integrated into the process; i.e. groups, interdisciplinary, gifts, hands-on, cycles and ownership.

The world has been changing our current approach to education is not enough to meet the need. The onset of new technologies, social fragmentation and specialization all call for a change in education. As part of this change, students’ personal core relationships will likely play a bigger role in the process of education. If done correctly, this may increase the quality and amount of education students receive while preparing them more fully for life in today’s world.

There are two reasons why relationship-education may play critical part in this change:
1.) Change is difficult and an infusion of new relationships will shake it up.
2.) Wisely integrating relationships with education will allow the use of cell phones, laptops and other technologies which are currently considered distractions.

A longtime friend and colleague recently suggested that I read the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. Toward the beginning of the book the author describes the difference between riding in a car and the experience of riding a motorcycle:

“You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer, and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on; it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.”

The car/motorcycle comparison is a perfect parallel to students learning from with-in the 4 walls of the classroom vs. those students learning in and beyond the 4 walls through relationships. The current educational systems: public, private and home school, struggle with the 4 walls problem.

The need for a more robust learning system has been building for quite some time. Bill Gates said it this way:

“America’s high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I don’t mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and underfunded. . . . By obsolete, I mean that our high schools–even when they’re working exactly as designed–cannot teach our kids what they need to know today. . . . This isn’t an accident or a flaw in the system; it is the system.”

Schools and students are having to add or use distance programs. Both the classroom and virtual classroom environments are weak. But, more can be done with relationship-education and this may revitalize the traditional classroom and connect the distance/virtual classroom with real life.  The challenges inherent in both distance and in-person learning can largely be resolved through relationship-education.

Today’s classroom and distance environments might be compared this way:

The limits of the old classroom:
1.) The social environment of comparison which can distract the student
2.) Students often treat the four walls of the classroom as mental barriers cutting the student’s most important relationships out of the educational process
3.) Only one student can communicate at once in a classroom
4.) Classroom dialogue is limited to the people in the room

The limits of distance education:
1.) The distance between the student, the teacher and the class

The benefits of the old classroom:
1.) Powerful synergy of the in-person atmosphere, especially among peers
2.) The powerful transfer of personality that occurs when great teachers go to work

The 3 most common reasons for distance education:
1.) Money saved by cutting the cost of brick and mortar buildings
2.) Convenience of teaching a large audience through broadcasting and recording
3.) Convenience of studying from home or anywhere

Now with Relationships-education you may not have to choose between the two. As each is complimented by relationships their weaknesses are less of an issue.

7 Reasons for adding relationship-education

#1 Relationships:
Relationships are key to resolving the education crisis in America for many reasons.

a.) Abundance of good information is increasing. Due to supply and demand people value what is scarce. As information becomes personalized through relationships this new information becomes scarce and valued. This personalization can be more easily facilitated through relationship-education.

b.) Stability and integrity: What do students have that they can rely on? Careers will shift perhaps dozens of times throughout their lives. Relationships if managed well can provide a constant core during this change.

c.) The specialization crisis: We are so specialized that we don’t talk to our neighbors.
The maintenance of core relationships and the natural need to teach and practice the skills of managing distant relationships is growing.

d.) Relationships can have a positive affect on how classrooms work.

# 2 Student-to-student relations:
Relationship-education can train students to better work with each other. C3 Method below explains how this can be done:

C3 Method (Consultant Conference Calls)
Students present their current project or discovery (epiphany) to four other students on a phone conference call. In this setting the student presenting becomes the living classic. The listening student consultants are provided with a feedback template and several trainings as they transition into the C³ system. The presenting student receives an email from each of the 4 listening students with thoughts, questions and suggestions. Additional relationships are introduced onto the call as proficiency increases.
See JAAA Student-parent Handbook for context

C³s affect student-to-student relationships. Each student begins valuing themselves and other students for what they can contribute (gifts, talents, skills, etc.) This sort-of structured interaction results in a love that can grow as students effectively help one another on a consistent basis.

#3 Genius:
Why are relationships critical for helping discover and develop a student’s genius (gifts and talents)?
a.) Students in the classroom are often just one of a crowd. The pressures of the classroom such as disruptive behavior, schedules, immaturity, social pressures, hormones or poor teaching, do not allow for optimal development of each students unique contribution. Relationships can provide a support network so the student looks beyond the distractions.
b.) A student’s unique personality and talents become apparent at a young age. These gifts are often first noticed outside the classroom among core relationships. Relationship-education can engage the community to help develop those talents.  This keeps the autonomy with the student and their core relationships.
c.) Relationship-education allows for a wide range of gifts and talents and includes more personalization, which is hard to accomplish when moving large groups of students together.

#4 Communities:
Education needs to be stabilized by relationships but this will require change. This new change involves the whole education community. It shifts the roles of the parent, the teacher, the community, the administration and especially the student. Local communities are not going to begin helping the student until the full responsibility of education moves, at least partially, away from the classroom.

Change often doesn’t happen unless a reason is presented, a place to move to is prepared, and then a way to move into that new place is introduced. Relationship-education throws the student into the community’s hands. This natural accountability from the community can be infused into the learning process and is key to the success of a more versatile education model.

#5 Speed:
When genius becomes the focus of education, students will come to know themselves better; as this occurs they should be encouraged to communicate what they are discovering. As students are applying themselves they will likely have at least 3-6 discoveries on a daily basis. Each of these discoveries needs to be developed and needs to find its context. This doesn’t often happen as well as it could in a classroom 15-30 students.

The classroom is itself an example of this problem. If a good dialogue ensues in a classroom only one student can talk at once and then only one student can respond at a time. In relationship-education all students can talk at once. This is one of the reasons for small student-to-student groups (class sizes)

Students need to be able to teach what they are learning on a consistent basis. The vast amount of material produced by this kind of behavior is too much for one teacher to process. Relationship-education allows multiple relationship groups to more easily work with the student on different projects.

The information age is the kind of environment where everything is moving fast, if only because of the sheer amount and accessibility of information. The relationship-education model allows information age tools to be used more readily helping with this constant flux.

#6 Become:
In the industrial age we separated the behaviors of seeing, learning, doing & becoming. Now, with the new interactive, visual and recorded media, these operations can be fused together as one choice-based procedure. Procedures can be instigated by the school, but often need to be carried out among the student’s core relationships. The whole process can be stabilized by the student’s distant and local relationships. Students need to be able to track their own progress as they change and communicate it in the right way with the right people.

#7 Interdisciplinary:
The interdisciplinary aspect of learning is often overlooked in traditional settings. It cannot be overlooked anymore. Interdisciplinary learning carries three absolutely necessary attributes. These attributes are key ingredients of success in the coming years.

a.) Desire and initiative are byproducts of interdisciplinary relations.
b.) Creation is also a natural result of interdisciplinary learning. When students create they own the material and will retain it if they can teach their own material several times in different settings.
c.) Interdisciplinary learning is also a short cut to depth. It is sometimes difficult to get a student to look beneath the surface.

These three results increase as communities participate in periodic experiential learning exercises or similar events in their communities. The education environment naturally becomes interdisciplinary as students progress quickly in diverse areas and help each other with projects.

A Shift in Relationship-flow

The old classroom prepared students for the market place. It coldly assessed them as a product through market criteria. Our focus as a society was on quality control through regulation, making sure students pass the bar for the market.

Today, if the classroom is to compete in the knowledge economy it must adopt some new techniques. No longer can a teacher simply move from point A to point B in conveyor belt mentality, moving through material by using a set lesson plan. The becoming process must replace the ‘class’-time event. No longer can the teacher take what a student says at face value, quickly passing on to the next student to keep everyone on the same page. Every student is a genius and must be treated as such; comments made must be assumed to be of more depth than they appear on the surface.

When relationship-education is added to the classroom students can be arranged into small groups of 3-5 and can then give each other the attention they need. These small groups can be stabilized by each student’s system of relationships, which expands systematically as learning expands. Students may then produce the amount of work requisite for information age, stimulating and expanding choice while increasing output and quality through natural accountability and redundancy.

As relationship-flow is optimized the conveyor belt aspects of individual comparison and student exclusion will dissolve. Mentors, parents and specialists can interact with students more fluidly in the context of the student’s relationships giving the student more autonomy but greater need for the mentor.

In the traditional classroom of the industrial age, students were products to be prepared for the ‘real world’. But when transformation becomes the focus, more people are involved. While the choice to learn is still individual, education that facilitates complete transformation is a family and community affair as well. Adding the new component of relationship-education to the classroom engages the local community as the student orchestrates the transformation. In the end the new paradigm we must adopt requires a shift in the flow of relationships and the role each relationship plays in education.

Archive 360° is an organization that will empower social entrepreneurs by automating much of their work and connecting them to the people through a dynamic relationship.

There are 6 critical elements which which must be included to stabilize the transformation of a community. These 6 elements make up the 360° method. The Archive team uses the 360° method to organize the social entrepreneur’s services into a product that can be accessed by individuals and communities.

The Product is a transformative procedure that can be initiated by just one member of a community or by a group with in the community. As the community moves through a 6 to 12 month process of change, they experience a step-by-step succession of life changing events which stimulate the engagement of all different facets of the community.

The Archive 360° organization helps find, develop and produce these products and then make them available on their website to be rated and used as they roll forward. Archive 360° serves as a sort-of business incubator, a production studio and an innovative storefront for social entrepreneurs. As the site is accessed it serves as hub (a sort-of social entrepreneurial app strore) where social entrepreneurs can get exposure and communities can share their success stories.