What do op-eds, Squawk Box, and SimCity have in common? The are all examples of models -- simplified systems that help us understand the world -- mental models, financial models, and sociopolitical models.
I don't read newspapers anymore. I glance at headlines, but head straight for the last page of several papers to read the opinion pieces. I find that I get enough of a news feed through my iGoogle page, mobile news, TV, and NPR. What I'm really interested in are opinion pieces that reflect one smart person's mental model. Most Op-Eds are second order news -- current events processed through one person's model. They usually interpret events (sense making) and often advocate actions they think will produce positive outcomes (predictions).
I don't trade individual securities, but I like to watch CNBC while I work out because I enjoy listening to people attempt to interpret a dynamic set of inputs. The futures markets are particularly interesting and sophisticated attempts to predict the outcomes of multiple scenarios, like what does Libya have to do with Iowa corn?
The objective of SimCity is to build and operate a city. Simulation games like SimCity simplify millions of social, political, and logistical variables in to a few hundred and collapse decades of time into hours. It's a useful and stimulating lesson in cause and effect. Massively multiplayer online role playing games (like World of Warcraft) are even more complex system.
I haven't factored a polynomial for a decade (and then it was to help my daughter with her homework), but I spend most of the day doing multivariable problem solving. Algebraic thinking is a keystone skill that every young person needs to engage in the idea economy and to be a contributing citizen.
Systems thinking is a step beyond algebraic thinking with hundreds of equations and thousands of variables -- and that's where there's real value-add. Systems thinking is more about differential equations and rate of change than algebra.
A good op-ed from Arianna, David Brooks or Fareed Zakaria, or an interview with investor Warren Buffet, or a game from Will Wright exhibits systems thinking and can influence your own mental model. A trip to a foreign country or a scifi thriller can make you conscious of your own mental mental (a meta-cognative moment).
College should be about systems thinking and a few places understand that. But I think personal digital learning can introduce systems thinking in secondary schools. Core Knowledge advocates would immediately suggest that knowing stuff makes for better mental (and computer) models. They are right, but it's tough pushing kids through a content-centric approach. More efficient drill and practice software will help, but simulations and virtual environments have the potential (like historical fiction) to teach facts as well as systems thinking -- potentially a super-efficient way to build mental models.
Smart schools will help students develop rich mental models by engaging them in systems thinking early and often with fames, sims, and virtual environments.
Follow Tom Vander Ark on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tvanderark
Even once that is the case, our educators need to have a "Robust Mental Model" in order to help our students build a "Robust Mental Model."
I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Vander Ark. However, the question really is "HOW?" We're asking educators who have been educated under the 'old-system' to teach to the 'new system.'
As I've said a million times on these boards, what we need to do is reform the eduational requirements for an MAT. Teach these teachers how to build a "Robust Mental Model" before we expect them to actually build one. Having recently been in the MAT program in one of the 'best' schools on the east coast for teaching, I can say for a fact that analytical thinking is not something that's pushed very hard.
Western society’s system of orientation is grounded in reductionism and dualistic thinking which supports the importance of results in the short-term. Hence teaching these thinking abilities are not part of the traditional curriculum offered in K-12 or in colleges and universities. Clearly we prefer to continue focusing attention on the in-the-moment urgent symptoms while overlooking and failing to understand the system and its emerging patterns and avoiding so many crises.
http://www.forprogressnotgrowth.com/2011/03/26/statistically-speaking/
If we say that 90% of students need to graduate High School in order for our system to be "successful" then we need to lower our standards such that 90% of students are capable of passing.
Critical thinking skills are associated with the Left Hemisphere of the brain. Already we are talking a significant handicap for a large portion of the student body. So long as we're of the mindset that we need to include EVERYBODY, focusing heavily on a task that is not easily learned by a large handful of the population is simply unrealistic.
UNFORTUNATELY.
I agree with the argument that schools should create mental models. Not sure I feel "systems thinking" is all that important.
I try to argue that school should be more about models of thinking and doing than about content whenever I can.
Please be aware that you are exhibiting behavior that, if you thought about it in context, would, I believe, deeply bother you. Association, friendship, or even funding from people does not necessarily mean that you agree with or support everything they do. Simply listing Tom Vander Ark's association and funding from those organization borders on the guilt by association of McCarthyism. That realization should deeply concern you.
I find that I do not agree with many of the policies of those associations. I believe that, good intentioned or not, they are leading schools down a dangerous path. I believe that these association lack the very systems thinking that Tom Vander Ark's proposed. At the same time, I can find nothing to fault with Tom Vander Ark's post. It is well-reasoned and well-stated. I can appreciate and strongly value statements like this, even if they come from unexpected locations.
I hope I have given you something to consider.
Tom is an unapologetic member of the edupreneur movement, the movement that has the privatization and computerization of public education in its sights. He is a Gates guy.
To ignore Tom's ulterior motive--to create a lack-of-tech-in-education panic--is to give him licence to do what he's doing.
I hope that gives you something to consider!