Reflecting on Erich Fromm’s “To Have or To Be”

Erich Fromm is an influential social philosopher and prolific writer, whose life work offers a provocative synthesis of Western capitalism, Marxist humanism and socialist rational planning. He defines two modes of being: “to have” and ” to be”, and examines the characteristics and values of lives led in each mode with respect to materialism, politics, religion, spirituality, knowledge, love, sex, language and economics. He asserts that modern living is dominated by the “to have” mode and generalizes it as a soul-less and thoughtless pursuit of material things that disrespects the human soul, love of nature and fellow humans and leads to unsustainable pursuit of things which can lead to poverty, war and extinction.  Fromm discards the idea that either conventional Western capitalism or Soviet-style communism offer a way out of the darkness, since both systems remain entrenched in the “to have” mode of being.  He offers an escape from this bleak vision of the future, by suggesting that a shift to the “to be” mode of being will bring a change in perspective and behavior at the individual, family, tribe, state and national levels. He asserts this change can bring lives back into harmony with the needs of the human spirit and permit sustainable societies to emerge.His utopian vision of modern living blends the freedom, liberty and productive power of Western capitalism, the central planning and rationality of Soviet style communism, and the tempered and non-materialistic spiritual centeredness of Buddhism and European- style mystics like Meister Eckhart. A society organized along these lines could manifest as economically linked villages of perhaps 100 families. They would be voluntarily joined in support, satisfying the legitimate needs of healthy living through the free exchange of goods and services produced by craftsmen. As craftsmen, people would take pride in and develop a sense of identity through their careful, mindful work and whose stewardship of precious resources would be reflected in a sustainable, respectful partnership with nature and their fellow man. Appetites are suppressed to just those that are commonly and wisely thought to be legitimate. Common spiritual needs are valued and encouraged at each level of social organization. Language itself is amended to reflect the importance of creating “states of being” that reflect nurturing, loving spiritual lives, families, and communities. You will notice this description is full of passive voice, because it is never quite clear “who” will be taking the lead or being the instrument of action in a transformation on a species level. I will address this later in greater detail.

I admire the scope, depth and breadth of Fromm’s vision, and the passion he brought to his life work, and his commitment to living his principles, as seen through his direct engagement with the dominant issues of his day. He was a social philosopher who lived his words and put himself into the arena of ideas and actions to make a difference. He made a positive difference in the lives of millions and those who worked closely with him testify to his optimism, energy, and basic human goodness. Granting all of that, and acknowledging that I have changed my opinion of Fromm’s work after spending time in background research and reflection, I want to engage his work in two useful ways: through disinterested philosophical discourse, and through an abbreviated dialectical materialism: a method of argumentative inquiry that would have come naturally to a Marxist. I decided on this approach after Dr Armstrong asked what Fromm might have said in response to a couple of extended Moodle discussions that were critical of some of his positions.Constructivism is a world view that asserts we are active participants in the creation of our knowledge of the world, particularly in the human, social areas of our lives. There are two well-known forms of dialogue that have been instrumental in the development of social, political and economic knowledge: the disinterested philosophical discourse of ancient philosophers described so well by Hadot (2002) and the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx, which is a fusion of Hegel’s dialectics and Feuerbach’s materialism with roots that reach back to the ancient Greeks as well. (S.E.P, n.d.) (Mao, 1938)  

Hadot’s discussion of discourse is thorough. Discourse obliges you to set aside your own perspective,  to accept the other participant’s positions and truths, and to transcend disinterestedly to a new perspective which leads both to increased self knowledge, knowledge of the other, and to a new appreciation of the synthesis that is possible through a fusion of different opinions. There is a sense of philosophical cooperation and wisdom in play for true discourse. (Hadot, 2002)Marx’s dialectical materialism describes a dialogue between opposing views as a struggle between forces, with each committing passion and insight to argue a position. The initial argument is known as the thesis, the opposite view as the antithesis. Out of the tension of the vigorous exchange between thesis and antithesis, a broader, more comprehensive synthesis is created, which contains elements of both previous positions but which can be said to resolve the tension, encapsulate the essence of both, and  move on to a new and deeper understanding of the situation. As an example, Marx characterize the struggle between owners (thesis) and workers (antithesis) over the means of production as a dialectic which becomes resolved into a synthesis of communism, after the tension of class warfare has run its course and been resolved.

 I experienced both of these modes of dialogue and constructive knowledge in my readings of and reflections on Fromm’s work. The effect of the two different modes on my thinking has been instructive for me and serves to demonstrate the utility of both modes. I like the idea that they contribute both heat (the dialectic) and light (the discourse) to my own understanding of Fromm.

 Dialectic:

 The dialectic generated heat from my emotional reaction to my initial reading of Fromm, as I discovered deep seated and argumentative reactions to his assertions, conclusions, and matters offered in in evidence to support his claims. These responses have roots in my undergraduate days as a student of Asian history and political science in the 1970s when I did a lot of work in the historical events surrounding socialism and communism in Asia and Europe, while simultaneously experiencing and exploring non-Western cultural and religious responses to the challenges of defining and living the good life as seen by Hindus, Buddhists and Taoists.

 I read Fromm from that perspective: as a modern who sought to synthesize the ancient and modern thoughts of the good life and human nature with the tidal forces that were defining and shaping human culture through economics and political struggle. I understood his perspective and rationale for opting to follow the path of enlightened Marxism with its foundations in rationality and central planning, its concern for social justice, and his belief that freedom includes the ability to shape our destiny through choice and action, even if it means confronting and opposing what has been thought of as human nature combined with the power of tradition.

The heat came from the difference between his choices and my own, since I have chosen a different approach to understanding, framing and drawing policy conclusions from the same data set. My beliefs and values follow along the lines of valuing individual freedoms in the traditions of Payne and Locke, the political freedoms and limited government of Jefferson, the lack of central planning found in the tenets of laisse-faire capitalism, and the intellectual humility and disbelief in the perfectability of man epitomized by Twain. When the dialectical smoke had cleared though, I found room for Fromm and I to coexist:

Here are three samples of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis threads that I worked through in the dialectical tradition. In each case Fromm plays the role of thesis, as is his right as “first speaker” since we are using his text, not mine. They are representative of the more than 20 different annotated emotionally charged differences I discovered upon my first reading.

 a. Tennyson’s poem: Fromm’s thesis is that Tennyson’s speaker tore the flower from the ground to understand it, while the enlightened spirit became one with it as co-members of the scene. My antithesis is that it is a matter of interpretation as to whether Tennyson’s speaker killed the flower, since it could have carefully and mindfully been moved to a new place for examination and understanding without harming it. Indeed, later in the book, Fromm describes the wisdom of a Japanese gardener who transplants plants without harm to create beautiful, spiritual gardens. My synthesis is that while the passive appreciation of the flower in nature is groovy, it is the Western scientists’ inquiry which leads to new knowledge of the world around us, but that a science without humble mindfulness can easily lead to disaster for the race given the reach and consequences of modern technology.

 b. Human nature and central planning: Fromm’s thesis is that we can reshape our actions beliefs and destiny through the power of rational thought and disciplined action, and that we can design a universally applicable, better life for everyone. My antithesis is that man is in equal parts, a rational and emotional being; that there are limits to rationality and the persuasiveness of logic and reason; that life is too complex to be reduced to centrally planned, universal designs for the good life; and that the political realities of life do not permit simple transitions due to the nature of power.  My synthesis is that we can appeal through dialogue and discourse to the good that is in human nature, and aspire to an improved life for others, and that rugged individualism is not the ideal life for everyone either, despite its personal appeal to me.

 

c. Black and White classifications:  Fromm’s thesis is expressed in absolute terms, making mutually exclusive distinctions in almost every category he considers. Examples include his unqualified support for the success and goodness of the sexual revolution of the 1960s; the characterization of language itself as a conscious means whereby those in power create the meaning of individual words to further their materialistic agenda; that the choice of capitalism must inevitably lead to unbridled appetites for more and more until we exhaust the planet. He takes everything to its logical and often illogical extreme to dramatize the differences in the modes of beings and in the choices presented to people and nations. My antithesis is that there are checks and balances between your values, between members of your family, between friends, interest groups, communities, branches of government, and between nations themselves. Further, these checks and balances are adaptive and dynamic and that it is in the peaceful accommodations and adjustments we make that we have hope for a better future for all; that there are limits to how far a theory or model may be taken to explain phenomena; that there is a limit to the region of fit for any theory. My synthesis is that black and white characterizations can be useful to make dramatic statements that get your attention; that sometimes taking things to the logical extreme is a valuable way to demonstrate the very need for the compromise and discourse that I favor. Discourse:

            After declaring a week of truce for reflection and research, I engaged Fromm discursively. I researched his background, his other writings, and the testimony of friends and colleagues concerning his impact on their lives as a scholar and a person. I found that by conducting dispassionate research, I was able to transcend the heat of the dialectic, which actually helped me to complete the synthesis portion of each dialectic thread where I’d experienced an emotional reaction. The syntheses in the three example of dialectic above were only reached after a cooling off period of discourse, research and reflection.

             I found that the heat of the dialectic helped me raise the energy to conduct the research. Once engaged in research, my natural curiosity took over and carried me deeper than I would have gone if just motivated by a need to be right in some fanciful, contrived “argument” between Fromm and me. Fromm’s Germanic background reminded me of Hesse’s story of Magister Ludi and the Glass Bead Game, where a traditional game continued to be played long past the time when its origin, relevance and importance had been forgotten.

             I grew to respect for Fromm’s independent thinking, even as it caused him to depart over and over again from groups once friendly to his thinking, and where he could have remained and enjoyed the fruits of inclusion. He was a German Jew who left both Germany and the Jewish faith in search of a better life and a deeper spirituality. He was a trained psychologist and psychiatrist who left the confines of the Freudian, Rogerian and Jungian schools of thought to elaborate his own ideas of personality and psychological balance. He was a social philosopher who engaged in the practical worlds of politics and punditry by fighting peacefully against nuclear proliferation and  the Vietnam War , and in support of social justice. He was a prolific scholar, yet he wrote many popular books that made his ideas on the good life accessible to the masses. He was a systematic thinker, yet his ideas and concepts evolved through time as he reflected on his experience and the world around him. He was a good friend and a generous humble person by the accounts we have from his friends and co-workers.

 And so, I find in Fromm all the elements of the good life defined by Socrates and the ancients.  He is a man of passion, intellect, scholarship and good works, who lived an examined life, and who sought to apply his values in daily life.  If he and I disagree on certain aspects of how precisely to define the good life and how completely we might propose a design for a good life for all, surely the world is large enough for us to both live in it at the same peacefully and in mutual support.

In the course of thinking about this paper, the design of its concept and flow, the research I conducted, the Moodle discussions where I began to partially explore some of these ideas and in the actual writing this paper, I found the heat of dialectic and the light of discourse to be useful and enlightening. I think that the combination of both perspectives was more important that the exclusive use of either by itself would have been. To have applied just the dialectic would have resulted into an argumentative essay between Fromm and I, whereas a pure discursive paper, with the energy of passion, may have been a theoretical inquiry without the motivation to go beyond my own beliefs.

 In conclusion, I have enjoyed and learned from my engagement with the life  and works of Erich Fromm.

References:

 Currie, N. (2008). To Have or To Be.  frieze magazine: a leading magizine of contemporary art and culture.. Retrieved Nov 20, 2009, from http://www.frieze.com/comment/article/to_have_or_to_be/

Daniels, V. (2003). Lecture notes on Erich Fromm.  Victor Daniels’ Website in The Psychology Department at Sonoma State University.  Retrieved Nov 20, 2009, from   http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/frommnotes.html

Fromm, E. (1976). Fromm: To have or to be? New York: Continuum.

 Hadot, P. (2002). What is Ancient Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Infed editors. (n.d.) erich fromm: freedom and alienation, and loving and being, in education. infed: the encyclopedia of informal education.  Retrieved Nov 20, 2009, from http://www.infed.org/thinkers/fromm.htm

 Maccoby, M. (1994). The Two Voices of Erich Fromm: The Prophetic and the Analytic. The Maccoby Group: Agents of Change. Retrieved Nov 20, 2009, from http://www.maccoby.com/Articles/TwoVoices.shtml

  Mao, T. (1938). Dialectical materialism. Marxist Internet Archive. Retrieved Noc 17, 2009, from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_30.htm

 MGM830 Moodle entry authors. (2009). Assorted.  MGM830 Moodle discussions. Retrieved Nov 15, 2009, from http://www.instituteforadvancedstudies.net/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=26503

New World Encyclopedia editors. (n.d.) Fromm, Erich. New World Encyclopedia.  Retrieved Nov 20, 2009, from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Erich_Fromm

 Pace, G. (1977). Erich Fromm Interview: To Have or To Be.  scribd. Retrieved Nov 20, 2009, from http://www.scribd.com/doc/8895007/Erich-Fromm-Interview-To-Have-or-to-Be

 Raapana, N, & Friedrich, N. (2005). What is the Hegelian Dialectic?.    Crossroads: the Kjol Ministries. Retrieved Vov 15, 2009, from http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/05/dialectic.htm

 SparkNotes Editors. (n.d.). SparkNote on The Communist Manifesto. Retrieved November 17, 2009, from http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/communist/

 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy editors. (2008). Karl Marx: Theses on Feuerbach. The Stanford Encyclopedia on Philosophy (SEP). Retrieved Nov 17, 2009, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#2.4

 

Reflections on critiquing the writing of others

Giving feedback about the paper is a way to show who you are and how much you care about the author.

Suppose, in your opinion,  the author has made a glaring error in logic or has not supported the thesis, or mischaracterized an opposing view, and because you are concerned about hurting their feelings, you don’t say anything.

How are you helping them? By letting their paper out into the world?

If you were right about the paper, and didn’t tell them, shame on you.

If you were wrong about the paper, that should emerge in the continued dialogue between professionals and now you have a chance to sharpen your own tool. You miss that chance if you don’t CRITIQUE THE PAPER, NOT THE PERSON.

If you comment on the paper without regard for the human who offered their vulnerability, their knowledge, their insights, THEMSELVES to you, try remembering to walk a mile in their shoes and ask yourself, before sending, have I been fair? have I been constructive? What is the tone of voice I used?

If you would say things anonymously about the paper in a double blind, but not to their face, that says more about you than about the paper you are critiquing.

Envision the paper as it leaves their hand and lands on a community table of knowledge for consideration. Focus on the paper on the table, not the person who offered it. The paper is not the person; restrict yourself to examining what has been offered. Don’t assume you know anything about their feelings or how they might take it. They have offered a piece of academic writing. Your duty is to evaluate it academically, while remembering there is a person on the other end, eventually.

The author has given us all a gift. Respect the gift by giving it your best critique: with support, with care, with your best work.  Respect the author for their gift and vulnerability. The critiques we offer are more important than anything we are likely to write on our own, and we will do a lot more of them than our own writing.

If you are an author, recognize the boundary between your Self and your paper. Be clear about what you are asking for when you offer it for review. If you want self-esteem more than honesty, you’ll get both, but not as you might want it.

A reflection on “intentional living”

 

Consider Socrates’  choice to join the army and constrain himself to the dicispline and regulations of the army in defense of Athens. he made a choice to submit to those constraints because he made a principled value judgment that it was worth giving up some of his freedom and comfort in support of a higher value for him: defense of Athenian democracy.

I dont equate  a “philosophical life” with  a life of complete autonomy and unlimited choice.  The philosophica;l life is worthwhile precisely because it helps us make the tough tradeoffs in a way that are consistent with our values. Your decision to wear the uniform and accept the constraints allows you to support other values you place higher than the freedom to wear PJs.

You probably have decided that a choice to wear PJs might prohibit you from earning a living to supoprt your self and family and achieve other goals you value more than maximum comfort.

To me the philosophical life comes from a desire to live intentionally, to make choice son the basis of your own values, and not simply as an animal life form reacting instinctively and thoughtlessly to random environmental pressures. To live intentionally is to ask of your self, “which intentions?” and “what values?” and “what tradeoffs?” It is then fair to examine our decisions for consistency and integrity.

Principles mantter precisely because of the consequences they lead to.  To select principles without consideration of the consequences begs the questions about the values that would allow such a decision.

Living a “full time philosophical life” in this schema, becomes an extraordnary effort: to live intentionally in all things?! and with consistency to set of carefully chosen and prioritized principles?! thats the work of a lifetime for sure, a worthy goal. Its an ideal that led the Stoics and the Buddhists to ask of themselves, each in their own way, what’s the difference between want and need? They came to different conclusions, as did the Epicureans etc  but they all shared the goal of living the examined, consistent, intentional life.

Thanks for your patience to let me think out loud

A reflection on action research “storytelling”

What follows is a 1st person, stream of consciousness  reflection written to my mentor & committee chair.  

I describe  what it was like to record a 10 min video “telling the story” of  some preliminary findings emerging from my action research cycles into curriculum and adult learning. 

The video is hosted  at YouTube.

It will be shown at an international conference in Athens, as part of the Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN) annual conference, as part of a bundle of reports from the Future(s) of Education project, an international  participatory action research network.  

Dr Alana:  

i am just glad to get it out of my head  

i had a real out of body experience recording that one;  

i  am a very effective briefer in person, because i can read the audience pretty well.  

i have recorded hundreds of mini lectures etc for my business and for use here at the college on various topics.

i have never, ever needed more than a single take to record, decent and sometimes even inspired voice-overs  until  last night and that briefing.  

I literally needed about 30 takes to get thru it; most i stopped when less than a minute into it because the tone just didn’t feel right

 i think it has to do with being a fish out of water, and the difficulty i felt in trying to tune my story for an audience i couldn’t see, but more importantly didn’t have empathy for

because the audience characteristics still feel fuzzy to me, i couldn’t call up the right tone, voice, persona to apply  

 this caused me to have almost a split personality in the moment, when i am ordinarily dialed in

 i had a “talking part” and a “look ahead part” that is concerned with shaping the transition to the next point/slide  

but now i had a disconcerting 3rd part that was trying to anticipate the possible reactions of an unfamiliar, and hard to imagine audience  

this is what made me feel so out of sorts

 until i “wore out” the last, 3d part and was able to trust in just telling the story, and accepting the vulnerability of knowing that i couldn’t know the audience, i found i just couldn’t get thru it.  

this is the same phenomenon I spoke with Prof Mike Wesch, the digital anthropologist at Kansas State University, and world thought leader on social dynamics in social media: the camera eye represents the unlimited, unfathomable infinite future of all possible audiences across time and space who can be looking in on the “telling moment”.  

in a sense, its like coming face to face with the unblinking eye of God and wondering what she is thinking  

 it is trust that lets us get thru that moment, the accepting of vulnerability, that creates the empathy that hopefully fills the story, as told, with hope.  

that’s a clumsy way of trying to express my meaning of the risk and vulnerability to “telling” and why it can be such a powerful learning moment, and why we need to model it, embrace it, encourage it, and support it. 

Your “producer’s draft” was exactly what i needed to be able to get out of my own comfortable fishbowl; 

you gave me a bridge to the audience that i could not create on my own.  

this has become an interesting reflection to me already  

please put the video on the website, and any or all of this reflection as you deem suitable  

have a great time at the conference!

A Reflection on Personal Learning Environments, blogs and wikis

Dr John Persyn  from the Dean of Academic Operations  started up a study group to look at what InstructorNet could/should/might/ought be. He made the mistake of asking me to think out loud. If you don’t disagree with anything that follows, or at least wonder what I am smoking, then I have failed 

I take the InstructorNet working group inquiry questions to include: 

1. What should InstructorNet be and why should we care? 

2. How can we give Voice (and action) to instructors to better align resources with efforts 

3. How do we improve the connections among the members (nodes) of an Instructor Net (I am thinking of this as a utility function:  bringing electricity/water to rural areas) 3. What technologies will unleash classroom excellence? 

4. How do we eliminate the boundaries of walls, bricks, mortar and time to support lifelong learning across the force (for our demographic to begin with)? 

5. How do we shift from an Industrial Age frame of education to a Network-centric, connectivist frame? 

(a short oversimplification and misstatement of Connectivism: the knowledge resides dynamically in the network, its participants and their connections, and has a shelf-life; the network adapts its tacit knowledge much more quickly than its explicit knowledge in response to an increasingly dynamic environment, and so we need nodes of cognitive excellence creating knowledge artifacts rigorously, but connection modes and tools that facilitate making the tacit knowledge explicit AND the ability to sense educational needs and assemble rapid response teams of connected nodes from across the network, etc) (I’ll develop this definition better later) 

Useful metaphors:

1. An “InstructorNet Mall” of available resources in one spot for instructors to meet their needs 

2. A Google “Knowledge Map” of available content that’s searchable, zoom-able, and subscribe-able thru RSS so the network alerts you for items meeting your interests instead of waiting for you to craft a search every time you feel a conscious need. 

3. The Amazon/EBay “smart network” that automates the search and recommend function based on stated interests AND by remembering searches & paths 

4. Customer Service center for instructors seeking help 

5. Tour guides/Marketing Aide to demonstrate “How to use these resources” 

6. Magazine model of info mgt/distribution: a targeted demographic, whose readers shape the course of the magazine/tools (Dear Readers! We listened to you!)  Lean 6 Sigma techniques have a way of accomplishing this, and a partnership with an LSS project seems like a natural one 

Other work to be done:

1. Considering how we encourage/reward professional writing like lesson notes, course content, blog/wiki work that contributes to the practice of knowledge, in the same way we have tied promotion and retention to academic writing. 

2. An FDP that incorporates more ideas related to “Master Classes in graduate teaching” on a regular basis. Some ideas include:

                a. Group learning vs Team-Based learning.

                b. RSS in the classroom (and blogs and wikis and podcasts…oh my)

                c. Live dialogue mapping skills to frame group discussions better (Google “Compendium” for demonstrations)

                d. How about giving Voice to faculty to let them nominate classes they want to receive, or challenges they face, and target the top vote getters? 

3. An InstructorNet Mall should have a “store” that has searchable index of available, recorded FDPs with quick summaries of what’s available for the individual instructor looking to sharpen his practice. 

4. UCTV (University of California “TV”) is a branded channel on YouTube with thousands of hours of content of their best instructors delivering on their best topics. 

                a. Why don’t we have Geoff Babb’s China lectures recorded and available in a catalog of Quality? Or Chris Paparone giving his best pitch on technical rationality and ADCON? 

                b. Why doesn’t the college actively seek and reward these mini-centers of excellence?  The Foundation should give cash awards to the mini-lecture each month that has the most (downloads x the highest quality rating) (like Guitar Player of the Year) 

                c. MIT has put their entire curriculum online. We need to do a better job of finding the tacit expert knowledge and making it explicit. We have replaced the value of SME for an industrial Age approach to standardizing curriculum delivery around uniformity, discipline and control, at the expense of risk, artistry, and informed speculation (some evidence that is loosening up I assert, by looking at Dr Kem’s study group pilots, and Dr Paparone’s innovative use of the Blog of Log to engage student critical thinking and professional writing in the new milieu under control) 

                d. The students should be able to give cash awards to their picks for instructor of the Section. Or POGs redeemable for valuable cash prizes at the PX. Or student nominations for Excellence in Innovation, or for Trying Really Hard Even Though The Experiment Blew Up In The Lab But Didn’t Hurt Anybody (the TRHETTEBUITLBDHA award) 

                e. Students should be able to record a 20 second praise  for instructors or AAPs, filed by AAP and instructor to guide next cycles towards our real excellence, that is searchable only by students.  Need more emphasis on Rate Your Instructor mechanisms 

5. I think we need a DDE rep on the team to assist the inquiry 

6. I think the instructor needs survey is essential 

7. I’d like to see a process map of instructors of all forms for CGSS: an operational graphic, who, where, what, and their AO and AI. We write curriculum for them in a vacuum; they have little to no voice in our design decision-making 

8. The instructors need a persistent forum for nominating “the policy that most gets in the way of my effective teaching is…” with room for public, persistent dialogue, instead of periodically asking for feedback snippets that get lost in the OPTEMPO 

9. Personal Learning Environments (PLE):

                a. Officers and faculty should have a profile page in their Personal Learning Environment that identifies, in one place their research interests and their research offerings. 

                b. It should have links to their writings on blogs, papers, wiki’s available, with their ability to make their writings public or private from their personal page. 

                c. It should have an RSS aggregator/reader integrated that automates a wide daily search of the early bird, BCKS AKO, DKO, Joint knowledge online, Small Wars Journal; in fact a listing of highly recommended sources they can check off for inclusion in their search, with the list expanding as a function of the community-wide ratings hit a threshold. 

                d. It should have a world class search engine that truly gives us ask once, search many capabilities; unlike AKO. All you need to know about AKO search is that when you search for “FM 3.0 download”, the first link is NOT to where you can download the manual. (I have a current screen capture, but don’t make me use evidence, because I will if pushed to the limit) 

                e. The amount of information being added to the Web each day is so large that we cannot afford bad “Search” AND we cannot afford to wait for people TO SEARCH, especially since we can give them a Voice in creating their default, persistent, context sensitive, active search profile on a Personal Learning Environment 

As part of the InstructorNet workgroup, I am focusing my personal efforts on:

1. a short summary of various educational applications of wiki, blog, podcast, RSS with bibliography

2. If I can find some practical details PLE (personal learning environment)info, I’ll do that as well

3. Creating a departmental resource catalog to support the ideas noted above.

4. Encourage the shift from Industrial Age to Network Age education

 

 

Reflecting on Mentoring and counseling

the faculty i respect the most at our college are the ones who voluntarily take on the challenge of being a faculty advisor and engage the students in one on one educational and career counseling.

there is a move afoot in the Army to formalize and systematize the mentoring “program” across the force, and I hope that it doesn’t take hold though, as a formal process which then will get measured and assessed.

In my judgment what has made mentoring a very high quality experience for me (on both sides of the event) has been the voluntary aspect of it, and the freedom of the junior to seek out a meaningful or respected senior that is outside of the chain of command.

I have always considered it to be a badge of honor to have been selected by juniors, from afar, to help them through career choice points etc. It let me know I must be doing something right.

I have tried to carry on this idea as a faculty advisor on graduate monographs and have been honored by having students that I have taught, and also not taught, to review their work.  It’s  my highest priority work effort, and the one I am the most diligent with;  more so than even my own reseach I think.

I’d be disappointed if we started to measure how many mentor relationships a senior offier had and if we made it a compulsory program.  Would send the wrong message entirely.

I was speaking with a trusted and respected friend, an Army Command Sergeant Major serving in the field, and he echoed some of these same concerns.  To the extent we formalize it, we begin to lose the real value of it.

Designing education for uncertainty

Being comfortable with being uncomfortable is turning out to be an essential element of our curriculum.  Our officers are routinely being put into situations where their training is not helpful or where it can even be counterproductive.  They’ll have to rely on the principles we have educated them on (rather than training) and their own on-the-spot judgment.

It is an interesting design problem to figure out how to create classroom conditions that allow us to experience planning and decision making under uncertainty, which we then cant easily assess to see if we got it right. It represents a large cultural challenge to shift to a world view that encourages us to end the class with a question mark (uncertainty and reflection) rather than  an exclamation point! (the right answer!)

It’s getting to the point that we have to be on the look out for an excessive amount of confidence in our conclusions. This doesn’t mean we dispense with professional solutions and sound judgment, only that we have to remain humble enough, and alert enough to know thelimits of any tentative conclusion or plan we develop.  we know that constant change in the world means we have to have iterative planning and decisionmaking processes, linked up to robust sensing processes that constantly evaluate the fit of our mental  constructions (plans , assumptions, world views, “successful” endstates, measures of effectiveness etc) and the world around us.

Action research, personal journal entry 20090124

The first time I prepared this for an entry on our doctoral discussion forum , I constructed it inside Moodle (our discussion environment; its horrible),  attached the file, pushed the upload button only to lose it  in hyperspace when my Internet connection crashed. It was important enough to me to rework the piece, however and so here it is.I will now and forever construct in Word and then paste to Moodle. I wonder how many times I have to learn this before it becomes a habit?

The original posting was a self reflection in the form of a stream of consciousness conversation with myself as part of my first person action research work. I have noticed that as I have become more reflective and critical of my own beliefs and assumptions that every thought and piece of communication I craft is becoming subjected to an inner voice that questions everything I say and mean. This is still in the interesting phase and has not quite yet become annoying. In the table below I will reconstruct the original stream of consciousness dialogue by showing in the left column the phrases I was initially writing and in the right column the inner voice of reflection and its effect on my writing and thinking.

 

One of the consequences of continuous first person inquiry is that you weigh and measure everything you say in the search for deeper hidden meanings and alternative insights into your own purposes. The utility of this is that in these few simple sentences I’ve come up with three or four very important fundamental questions to ask of the college administration and leadership and the students themselves with respect to my central research question which is circling around the idea of student voice in education.

What I began to write	What my inner critical reflective voice noted and demanded that I write
In my PAR	Well, it’s really not your PAR isn’t it? Isn’t it our PAR? Or the PAR? No, it’s our PAR because we are co-researchers and I am an active part of it. If it were my PAR I would be in outside expert consultant dictating the outcome and process. If it was the PAR I would be a third person objective outsider trying to measure objects at a distance. I am a part of this, for better or worse and then committed to the process and outcomes whatever they may be. So, it’s our PAR
In our PAR we are asking the question: how can we give students a voice…?	Now, why did I frame that is giving students a voice? I must ask them why they don’t take their own voice?   Now I must ask myself why am I framing this as a power struggle between give-and-take? Is that the only form of dialogue I know?   Is there something about our culture and hierarchy and situation that frames this question in a power struggle format?   What if we consider this to be a choir? or an open forum of free and independent voices who more or less respectfully asked to be heard and are prepared to listen when it’s others’ turn?    Or are we a formal parliament following Roberts rules of order?   I could ask the students a provocative question like what are you waiting for? Why aren’t you taking charge of your own education? Now, that would be fun!   I also have to ask the Dean and Commandant why we don’t have students represented in our curriculum decision-making meetings?   Why don’t we evaluate the quality of our meetings in the same way that we evaluate the quality of our classrooms? If accountability of the classroom experience is important to validate our educational program, shouldn’t we also be validating the quality of our management system itself?   Right now the student voices are disembodied statistics and their feedback is always after the fact. They have no voice in shaping the curriculum when they determine it’s going astray.   I am thinking of the equivalent of a tribune of the people in ancient Rome elected representatives who had the veto authority to protect the interests of the club means.   Note to self: do I think of the students is lesser citizens? Am I a patrician acting for the benefit of those below me? If true, what an arrogance!   Actually, not an issue because upon reflection the plebeian class were full citizens while the patricians simply had long and distinguished family names and money.  However, I must be on guard for that creeping attitude of superiority entering into my framing and speaking, since I know I have a tendency to think I’m smarter than the average bear.
In our PAR we seek to create conditions where student voices are encouraged, heard  and thoughtfully considered. We established a professional blog in order to give voice to important and interesting discussions that spilled outside of the contents of formal classes and classrooms and gave students and faculty alike a way to engage on issues of concern.	I like that!
Attached is a snapshot in time of blog traffic from the last 30 days which shows on average over 100 hits a day and 25 high-quality essays on the area of change management and force generation for the U.S. Army.	I need to maintain and monthly log of traffic. The hypothesis sound something like: an increase in the confidence and power of student wastes should be reflected in elected forms of communication and if we are making progress then we should expect to see an increase in the amount of blog traffic. How to state and measure this will be a topic for the PAR.

 

Reflecting on personal learning environments: teacher as model student

 At the last CTU residency, on the last day my breakthrough insight was to approach the research question on leader curriculum development at the Command and General Staff College from the perspective of giving voice to the students, who are professional military officers operating at the graduate level and fresh from combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

My insight was to shift the perspective to the student point of view.  Previously, I had been relying upon my expertise as a master practitioner of logistics and change management combined with my skill at curriculum development to generate my own ideas of the appropriate set of skills and classroom environment required for best classroom experiences. My insight was that of all the participants in the student education: command, administration, faculty, curriculum development, field army at large, and students, only the students were voiceless in the process. And yet it is a stated goal of the college to develop mature, critical thinking, leaders with a lifelong love of learning who are capable of acting with initiative under conditions of uncertainty, and yet we were not creating the conditions in the classroom for them to learn in this way. Our classroom retained the qualities of industrial age production and education which features mostly lecture from professors with little to no student input in their educational outcome.

Our discussions of personal learning environments allowed me to see that empowering students and ensuring that this change in perspective was established in the college’s infrastructure and processes was far more important and enduring than any specific curriculum content changes that I could arrange. And further, I understood that my own opinions, naturally heavily supported by facts and science, were simply one of the voices should have a vote in the outcome of the research.

We have a new school Commandant, a General officer. fresh from the field, with ideas about the most important educational gaps in the field army that it is our mission to bridge. We have a new civilian Dean who will be a long-term force for stability and wisdom for the processes of education in the college. His commitment to what we call the accountable instruction system is such that transformational changes to our functional processes are beyond the limits of my research. However, the accountable instructional system does allow for the kinds of action research that I propose to undertake. A very important part of my research will be my inquiry into self and improving my own educational practice, along the lines of living theory espoused by Jack Whitehead.

My insight from this week has been that I can be a force for good in this action research project r by becoming the best student I can be and in that inquiry help uncover the qualities we want all students to manifest in our college. A few examples: an attitude towards the value of independent research and critical thinking; speaking truth to power about the results of quality research; creating and using forums where that voice will have meaning and impact. In these times of transformational change in our society, country, politics, and Army, it is more important than ever that voices speak truth to power with conviction about important matters. I am in a position where my opinion will carry weight and have meaning for others. So, I want to ensure that I am an excellent student both in the doctoral process and in my capacity as a teacher and a curriculum developer and an opinion maker in the college.

It happens that our commandant shares my opinion that one of  the most important gaps in our field army’s education is in the area of force generation. This is a curriculum area that is rich with the opportunity to educate students on important content and important process which will help them to experience taking responsibility for their own education and being leaders in the Army who will appreciate the importance of that freedom for their subordinates. So, we have an opportunity to model in the classroom the behaviors we expect our leaders to value when they return to the field.

My hypothesis is that by improving and understanding my own optimal personal learning environment I will be able to help create the conditions for improving the personal learning environments of our students in the college and beyond. Our belief is that education does not stop with graduation. Our educational mission continues on past graduation and so we must provide reach back capability to support our students lifelong learning. To that end, I expect to make significant infrastructure changes through use of digital technology to enhance our classroom learning and to support learning in the field. I have already started that project with a professional blog at the college where we revise and extend our remarks concerning classroom materials and seek to engage a wider audience of interested practitioners in the art of army change management. This is already paying dividends and came about as the result of initial rounds of action research that included faculty, administration, students, and curriculum developers.

The link to this “Blog of Log” is:  http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/BLOG/blogs/dlro/

Our next step is to engage a much wider audience of interested researchers to answer important questions about the educational needs of our students in the area of force generation. This next round of action research will include students of course and we are looking to make an Army wife contribution. A wiki will be a central feature of our inquiry and infrastructure. Tied together with our existing blog to make this a dynamic learning environment for students while they’re here and when they return to the field army.

We’re just starting this project this week as a result of a successful briefing to my commanding general who has given me the green light and high priority to develop this project. I am assembling a team of expert faculty, curriculum developers and students will engage in a series of guided inquiries into future educational needs which I expect to be able to contribute to the future of education project and as the action research to guide my dissertation. I expect the dissertation to include the action research process and my own internal inquiry into improving my own educational practice. I have in mind the diagram we discussed about doing action research in one’s own organization but I don’t have the diagram handy.

Our top level questions are:

1. What do Army Majors need to know about Force Generation?

2. What are the qualities of the educational environment that will best support personal learning environments? (translation: How can we best create the conditions for learning?)

Our supporting questions: these are what we are asking of all the stakeholders to help construct our group knowledge:

1. Who are you and what do you know about Force Generation?

2. What does your organization do in Force generation?

3. What do you think Majors need to know?

4. What can you contribute to our knowledge base?

5. What can majors do with your knowledge?

6. What are your questions about force generation? (we want everyone to learn)

7. What would you do with the answers and why is it important?

8. Who else should be prt of our team?

Our stakeholders list includes a number of Army staff agencies, major commands and organizations that are part of the Generating Force, units and leaders in the field, equipment and personnel providers, administrations, faculty, students, curriculum developers, IT staff (for digital support) and other schools. We have ongoing partnerships with field units to help them learn as they (and we) go thru force generation together.

Pardon the length, but the tale grew in the telling.

Edge.org: this should be interesting and challenging

Sigh: because i dont have enough on my plate to keep my attention fully engaged.  Still, they have some powerful info from one of my heroes, Daniel Kahneman whose intellect spans the whole globe. 

“To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge,
     seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds,
     put them in a room together, and have them ask each
     other the questions they are asking themselves.”

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Edge.org is the web publication of Edge Foundation, Inc which was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.  Edge Foundation, Inc. is a
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