The Regenerative Education System and Practice — Part 4
Time for an Epistemological Shift
Premise Six: Laser Focus to Nodal
It is likely clear by now that the educator role has had a seismic shift. I call it an Epistemological Shift. The epistemology becomes a non-expert one with self-directed discovery as the core guide to roles in the system. This is the heart of the new paradigm. The nodal idea. Learners are the teachers of themselves — in the context of a value-adding process they create or join that serves specific others. They bring themselves to it from an essence awareness. They make promises to serve in a meaningful way that stretches them as a whole being. They have resources and infrastructure that is designed and administered to ensure this and a developmental plan they have created, detailed, called in resources for and are pulled by the promise they made. They are also reflecting on the nested context they exist in and effect as well as are affected by. The development is guided by the idea that they test everything with the own reflective experience rather than accepting the ideas of others. They value science, great writing, and thinking, but not as received ideas, rather as ideas to experience and reflect on, then from that position incorporate it into their life, or not. Evolve it or leave it behind.
They accept nothing without examining it in terms of the source of the idea: what paradigm is it framed from, what belief about humans and how they change. They are looking to expose any machine, behavioral, and anthropocentric hidden premises. They know that even science has a paradigm and influences what can be studied and seen as possible answers. They are rigorous and disciplined, and do not accept any teacher’s word for anything. They don’t so much question authority as they question the thinking behind what is offered.
A teacher in the new system not only tolerates that, they foster it and are delighted to design experiences to test ideas and theories. They have learned to manage themselves and their ego, hubris, and arrogance that can be triggered from the old paradigm interpretation of their roles.
The teacher works to displace the toxic and degenerative practices while growing what’s evolutionary, simultaneously. They are also drawn to what is meaningful which is self-directed learning based on the 7 First Principles behind the premises offered here.
What does the education system do?
They redesign themselves to foster the self-directed nature of learning. They mostly give up the behavioral view that humans in life cannot see themselves, that inner work cannot be observed so is to be ignored; that all answers exist in experts, that science is never to be questioned. They shed the machine view that there are a set of facts, knowledge, and skills that everyone needs at the same age, with standards and procedures for teaching and with a set of materials and processes that are uniform.
They adopt a disruptive mode of content and process creation, working with specific learners who are managing their own promise as a project, evaluating themselves in the context of the value adding process in which they are nested, and knowing that the system can create ways to support that because it has already been done and can be done at scale.
Why 21st Century Nations Need this?
It is exhausting and costly to try to manage the behavior of citizens who are not contributing and developing as beings. You drive us to create legal, guiding and external enforced regulation. Or you can build the capability of humans to be self-directed. But to do that they need a particular form of mentation. They need to see their effects in the world, feel responsible, want to make a difference for others, society, and the planet. This is the means of creating what is sought.
Premises Seven: Regenerate Energy Fields
The Western world has affected all parts of the world with its science, commerce, and governing modes. But we have been fooled by one particular idea since the 18th Century. Einstein was not fooled and set out to test something that in theory is untestable. And he came up with a more accurate explanation for how change happens when it is about humans, human systems, and in fact all more complex systems. The idea that Einstein was not fooled by was an idea in classical physics called a Law of Physics related to movement and motion.
Classical physics, which is the foundation of most current education, parenting, managing, governing systems holds that since you must strike the billiard ball with the cue for it to move, it must be true for living, dynamic, complex, systems. It must be true for humans and complex systems. This leads us to confront issues and problems we want to change, directly. In humans and non-human animals, on large and small scale (e.g. individual, nations).
But it turns out that complex systems work differently which was Einstein’s great contribution to understanding how the world works. Humans work differently. The direct approach is not necessary or the best route, and it tends to escalate restraint (resistance, pushback, or worse: in some cases easy adoption without examination) slowing the capability to shift paradigm and make the change. The idea that the change process must be — Immediate! Forceful! — regardless of state of being or capability of parties is flawed. It turns out that forces collide and escalate unlike the billiard ball that goes directly to the pocket and sinks into line to return to be played again.
What does the new System look like?
The developmental approaches are based in Einstein’s quantum science, based on the idea that change happens even when only observing. Indirect work can shift a field. Examples are building capability that is not skill or application directed but intended primarily for human evolution. This is the basis of evolving a culture in an organization in order for greater changes to happen.
In the developmental approach here, the change process is indirect and self-guided. It does not tend to activate restraint because it works with how the system and individuals are working, aspiring, and pursuing a direction. The new thinking ableness is developed to support that. The choice is that of the parties to the process, not an external instigator to produce change. The center of control moves from external teacher to internal learner’s choice and evaluation; from other expert driven to designed by parties who initiate, implement, and evaluate. The new paradigm works on effects indirectly- through energy fields called culture and capability, building on a self-directed project and by learning to manage thinking and states of being as we work. It is how we work while we work on subjects.
There are quantum principles at work in teaching, designing, and initiating change in all the first six premises and not Newtonian principles which are held in the older paradigm .
Why does the 21st Century Nation needs this?
It is what makes everything happen. But sticking to the classical physics approach prevents the movements we work on from directly shifting systems. A cue hitting a billiard ball, when humans are the ball, is to no avail. To move into the 21st century, we have to adopted 20th century science, not 18th century laws of classical physics. It is used in medicine, mathematics, ecology, and climate science now. But the world of humans and human systems still work with old science including the inappropriate machine based theories and rat study theories applied to humans. WE use the new quantum theory, accidentally sometimes, when working on culture and watching it have effects on the human organizations. WE will never be effective at creating timely change until we teach people how quantum change happens, how to design and lead it and how to apply it to systems design
Conclusion
Letting go of the old paradigm, by examining it, each person for themselves, is the first work of education system re-designers and educators themselves who are responsible for the processes previously held in classrooms. In each case, seeing the contrast with the ancient/new paradigm and how different it is in what it can produce. But the nations of the world, the economy and social systems, as well as ecological systems, cannot wait for this to happen piece meal. The world is on fire, metaphorically in some places, literally in others. How we think and educate is the best chance of creating real meaningful change, fast and deep. But only if the designers and educators can step up to the self-educating work to be done. The good news is that is it very enlivening. To know we are the nodal point from which change emerges. And we can start with ourselves where we have authority, opportunity and foresight.