LEADERSHIP, EDUCATIONAL REFORM, POWER
SUMMARY FOR PAPER
Knowledge has become our key resource. But this
type of required knowledge can only be acquired through some type of
schooling. However, it is not tied to any country. It is portable.
It can be created everywhere, fast and cheaply (Drucker, p.
18). In
the short future, the possibility of acquiring knowledge will no longer
depend upon obtaining a prescribed education by a given age (p.
10).
The essence of management is to make knowledge productive (p. 14). Likewise, the essence of teaching is to make learning productive for every student, whether they be gifted with divergent and conceptual mind-sets or gifted with convergent and concrete mind-sets.
We will continue to have to think through education—its purpose, its values, its content. We will have to learn to define the quality and productivity of education, to measure both and to manage both (p. 22).
In the last decade, the changes which technology has
provided in our world are mind-boggling. But technological change
does not need to be feared, only respected and understood. President
Clinton has seen an golden opportunity in his presidential role to take
the lead in challenging America to make radical changes in our educational
arena. In the long history of humankind, the fundamental direction
of education has always been in the hands of a few. Now, with the
introgression of the computer and the Internet, this power can be
equalized and shared among all individual citizens residing in free
countries.
The primary question parents must ask today is, "Should our children be allowed to teach themselves—learning without being taught in the traditional way? Are our children capable of constructing and building their own minds? Who decides the right questions to ask and the right answers that follow, if not the individual?
Aristotle (383-322 BC) believed that education should be controlled by the state, and that it should have as its main objective the training of its citizens. In Politics, Aristotle’s last book, he opens with these words:
No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth . . . . The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives (History of Education: Higher Education).
In the 12th century, no one but Peter Abelard believed in the freedom of the individual mind. He wrote, "This kind of questioning excites young readers to the maximum effort in inquiring into the truth, and such inquiry sharpens the minds" (Peter Abelard, p. 2). All others in his generation feared this educational freedom to question would only produce heretical ideas and conclusions.
Abelard’s new intellectual instructional movement, termed Scholasticism, played an important role in the rise of European universities and helped lay the groundwork for the later system of scientific inquiry, which is built upon the free-questioning mind (Saettler, 1990, p. 27).
Can we have as much faith in our children as Abelard had in his students, with the ability to explore, question, discover and create for themselves? Or will we continue to follow in the path of Lombard and Aquinas, students of Abelard, who stymied the minds of their students by supplying the right questions and the right answers?
This is the issue we must respond to, or consciously concur that it be answered by someone else who is perfectly willing to answer it for us and our children.