Open Course in Education Futures

I am not sure I understand naturalisic decisions as a general topic but by default I will start here. George reminds us that "this week's topic will prepare us for the decisions we'll start making next week about likely/prospective/ridiculous future(s) in education!" and so I want to piggy back on discussion Ruth Howard and I have been having in the forums and bring up human nature to base decisions on emotional response.

Are we strengths based or fear based as a stance on any given issue? Do we trust in our fellow man or do we fear him/her and feel the need to protect ourselves? In a fun backyard video George discussed, in part, the need for society's to build institutions - and which of the two stances does that need come from?

I digress a bit when I think of Argyris' work on the challenger project - he found that the engineers knew something was wrong in the design but that since the emotional context in which they worked was to "shoot the messenger" they kept quiet with their concerns due to natural defensiveness." Perhaps I should have put this post under decision making errors because I suspect that decisions made when we feel defensive are often in that category.

The first year of the future(s) project (see my first blog post if this interests you) decided that educators in the future needed to take a stand on when and how much student driven curriculum and process could evolve in their teaching/facilitation practice. If/when the system is afraid kids won't do well on their own then it responds with decision from one angle and engenders one set of results. On the opposite end of the spectrum when we truly believe that our young people or other adults are brilliant and that they bring with them equal measure to what we can give them, then the decisions we'll start making will be very different.