The Best of Creative Computing Volume 2 (published 1977)
The Art Of Education: Blueprint For A Renaissance (Education as a Craft, Summary)
If educational administrators run unimaginative educational shops, it's because
they must spend most of their time responding to anti-imaginative pressures.
no exaggeration to assert that the rewards of such efforts will be structures
with elegances considerably greater than those found in any of their parts.
Education as a Craft
We now come to the problem of translating artistic ideals into reliable practice
in an imperfect world. We must now ask what policies, skills, techniques,
materials, tools, and craftsmen are needed to successfully put together and
maintain the kind of educational enterprise we have described.
Particular attention needs to be given to developing new ideas about educational
administration, especially the "killer demands" of overhead. lf educational
administrators run unimaginative educational shops, it's because they must spend
most of their time responding to anti-imaginative pressures. Very few of them
are given the chance to break out of this pattern. lt's definitely the squeaking
wheel that
seems to grab most of their attention. As a result, fresh ideas are seldom
supported, and initiative soon dies of loneliness. The solution to this problem
is not to ignore administration, but to design new administrative climates.
Making distinctions between "creative", "logistical", and "fiscal"
administration will be an important first step.
There is not space to discuss the other crafts needed except in summary form.
However it is worth reporting that a number of us working with these ideas have
found that many of the needed talents are best developed "in-house." The idea of
using older students and alumni as part of a first-rate staff works very well in
practice, especially when there are good teachers around who know how to
energize young talent.
Summary
Our experience at Soloworks indicates that the learning phenomena we (and others
doing similar work) have observed in settings of the type described in this
paper are extensible, workable, and applicable. We believe that this experience
can be applied to new educational structures that have been explicitly
engineered from the ground up as advanced artistic enterprises.
[image] All photos are from the Soloworks Lab
Some of the elements that we see as essential to such an undertaking are the
following:
1. A Set of Advanced Goals
2. An architecture based on the idea of education as a complex art made possible
by new ideas. theories, strategies, and technologies.
3. A view of education that sees more power in the ideas of community and
culture, than in the methodologies of business or science.
4. Craftsmen with complementary skills, including teachers who like to teach,
all kinds of students, theoreticians, engineers, and imaginative administrators.
5. An extensive collection of the orthogonal materials needed to support an
adaptive curriculum.
6. Advanced tools, especially those related to the general purpose computer, and
post 1970 man-machine interfaces.
7. An administrative sub-structure that fosters initiative, controls
unproductive overhead, and encourages continued experimentation.
8. A built in proof-of-performance mechanism which gives constant attention to
good communication with others through use of imaginative media.
9. Most important of all, the recognition that good art is the product of
singular devotion. A great deal of attention should be given to mechanisms that
make it impossible for vested interests, or committee-type compromise and
mediocrity to ever settle in.
While we have some specific ideas on the forms such structures might take, a
true educational renaissance will be possible only when a multitude of
"artistic" views are brought to bear. We have received many letters at Soloworks
proving that there are lots of such good views, representing lots of good
people, and we continue to invite this feedback. We'll try to synthesize as many
of these views as possible in our 1976 final report on Soloworks.
1 A complementary view is found in Mark Van Doren's book "LIBERAL EDUCATION"
where he urges that the work of education "be done as artists do things, with
skill and thorough care, and with a reverence not hostile to high spirits."
2 Soloworks is the informal name of an NSF project entitled "A Computer-Based
Laboratory for High School Mathematics."
3 For further detail, see page 142 of T. Dwyer "Heuristic Strategies for Using
Computers to Enrich Education" (Soloworks Newsletter #26).
4 That most students view this as their function is easily proved by listening
to student conversations in the hall after an exam. "What did you give for #4?,"
"I don't think that's what he wanted," and "l'm glad that's over" are common and
revealing reactions.
5 To illustrate by example we cite the adult who still (35 years later)
remembers every single word of a German translation of a silly song because it
was create by a class plot to have each student interrupt the lesson every few
minutes and ask the teacher for the German equivalent of successively needed
words.
6 For further detail, see "The Significance of Solo-Mode Learning for Curriculum
Design", Soloworks Newsletter #33.
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