Curing Death By PowerPoint

Before closing, I thought I would discuss the need for integrative education in lieu of information transfer. In my previous works, I discussed how information transfer – that is the process of one person exchanging an idea with another – is analogous to genetic information being inherited by organisms. Allogamous information is not just data which has been mixed, integratively from interdisciplinary sources, but also refers to the physical process of communicating an idea from person to person. Edward Tufte is an information exchanger who champions his own version of integrative allogamy. Tufte is an American statistician and professor at Yale University in the fields of statistics, and computer science. But more so than that, Tufte is a data artist who pioneered information graphics (infographics), visual literacy, information design, and invented the sparkline – an inforgraphic which represents trends amongst data in compact, zigzags looking something like an EKG graph. Tufte’s work, in itself, is integrative – combining art, graphics, data, statistics, mathematics, sociology, politics and popular culture.

As a master of intergrative education, it is no wonder Tufte is critical of one of the most autogamous tools used in education, business and government: PowerPoint. He says, in his Wired Magazine article PowerPoint is Evil; Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely, “Several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint are churning out trillions of slides each year. Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience. The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch” (Tufte). Although the phrase was originally coined by Angela R. Garber, Tufte is certainly noted for his stance on “Death by PowerPoint.” Although he is particularly critical of PowerPoint’s use in business – especially marketing and financial meetings, he is appalled by its use in the classroom: “Particularly disturbing is the adoption of the PowerPoint cognitive style in our schools… children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials” (Tufte). Tufte is absolutely right – PowerPoint is an autogamous disservice to education. What other method makes the teacher the sole focus of the learning process? When a teacher uses PowerPoint it serves the needs of the teacher not the student. Most PowerPoint lectures start with a template and include the text of the speech – instead of the teacher memorizing his/her lecture or speaking extemporaneously, s/he simply reads from the slide. Or the slide contains an entire outline of the textbook which the students frantically copy down before the dreaded “spacebar click.” Excessive bullet points and hierarchies do nothing for the content. These hierarchies are often used incorrectly – a large bullet point makes a claim, and the user feels the need to supplement this claim with supporting points (even if no support is needed). And because of PowerPoint’s automatic font size function, words and phrases are often shortened or replaced with acronyms to maintain “readable size” – that dreaded warning PowerPoint offers reminds you that you have included too much text on your slide. Another critique, Tufte offers, concerns the imagery of PowerPoint. The templates, default styles, and “effects” PowerPoint offers do not enhance information – oftentimes, these effects make the information impossible to read. Random clipart or animations, simply detract from the content.

Obtrusive color schemes distract the learner. And worst of all, the information provided in these formats is lost – instead of just keeping a simple, readable design which would be much more user-friendly (Tufte). Tufte, frustratedly adds: “If your numbers are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won't make them relevant. Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure” (Tufte). The old mantra of “7 lines per slide” and “7 words per line” is an example of how PowerPoint kills information and kills the audience. All this does is establish an artificial structure, and most often, create content with very little meaning. So is PowerPoint useless? No. That would be like shooting the messenger. It is not PowerPoint’s fault that students struggle paying attention. It is the autogamous teacher, who delivers this message in this way. PowerPoint can be useful – but like all things, in small doses. As Tufte explains, information needs to be designed. This is very much the message of Pink when he discusses design and function, aesthetics and meaning. The information presented, if it must be presented, should be enhanced by functional imagery not distracted by cluttered decoration. It’s not about a “pretty slide” or “pretty presentation” – it’s about simplicity, conscious decisions, and intention. In his Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, Garr Reynolds echoes the need for design sense when putting together a presentation. He draws a parallel between presentations and eating Japanese food.

He explains: “In Japan, food is about experience as much as it is about sustenance…” and he supports this with: “the kanji characters for [meal] literally represent “harmony” and “food,” and harmony is indeed a key principle embodied in Japanese traditional cooking (Reynolds 5). This is a beautiful metaphor for education – an experience that nourishes the mind. If we are going to use visual aids to enhance the experience then those visual aids need to be visual communication, not just decoration. Reynolds outlines how to use typeface, color, space, emphasis and harmony in order to create visually stunning and informative presentations. Color is perhaps the most powerful of the elements of art and design. It simultaneously embodies value (dark and light), vibrancy, saturation, mood, temperature, and contrast. Reynolds gives us eight key lessons about the use of color: 1. you can express more with less 2. never use more color when less will do 3. careful use of light and dark is important for creating clarity and contrast 4. use color with a clear purpose and informed intent 5. clear contrast, visual suggestion, and subtlety can exist harmoniously in one composition 6. omit useless details to expose the essence 7. in all things: balance, clarity, harmony, and simplicity 8. what looks easy is hard but worth it (Reynolds 65) These principles are not just useful when using color, but when organizing anything visual. There is an old graphic design mantra: “a piece is not done when there is nothing else to add, but when there is nothing else to take away.” So is it true for PowerPoints. Keeping it simple, succinct and clean is far more important than flashy colors and fancy special effects. Space is as important as objects. Space, referred to as the white space or negative space in a design, is the area that is not filled in. When we are placing objects on the page we are tempted to fill in all of the spaces. This is a natural thing our mind does.

But let the audience fill in the space. Let the viewer use his/her imagination to fill in the emptiness. This will engage the viewer. And this means as the designer, you need to only put the essentials on the page. “Space is not just something to be filled in; it is itself a valuable tool for achieving engaging, clear visual messages. White space can help direct the viewer’s eye to positive elements. White space is necessary for creating designs with balance, harmony and clear hierarchy” (Reynolds 157). When we talk about composition in graphics, printing, layout or design we try to create a balance between imagery, text and white space. This use of text, imagery and white space helps create focus. “Many ineffective slides can be improved by simply making it clear to the viewer what is important and what is less important. Guiding viewers with purposeful choices in the design and leading the viewers’ eyes with clear focal points in a slide presentation takes better advantage of the audience’s natural ability to process visual information quickly” (Reynolds 179). Reynolds creates a very strong set of practices which are useful in designing purposeful presentations. But I think we can apply his rule of simplicity and “less is more” to Tufte’s critique of the use and overuse of PowerPoint. Instead of lecture being the mainstay of education, in integrative education presentations are simply a way of sharing content. There are far many more ways of sharing content which will also need to be utilized. From my time as a student at North Central College and my teaching at Benedictine University, I have encountered some remarkable, yet simple, techniques which really engage students in the learning process. I have taught at all age levels from elementary school, to high school, to post-secondary school. And I have been able to apply these techniques in every one of these settings. PowerPoint is one of the tools I have used – but never the “7 line, 7 word” sort of presentation. My PowerPoints take two distinct forms: 1) hypermedia and 2) multimedia.

As hypermedia, I build PowerPoints similar to websites with interconnecting trees of information. I use hyperlinks to build these trees in many ways like a “Choose Your Adventure Book.” I also create PowerPoints like mini-multimedia presentations. Each slide consists of: a single line or quote, a statistic or small collection of data, large images following Reynolds rules of color and space, and audio voice-overs. The slides stream together in true presentations – not just slideshows. I typically have my PowerPoint displayed in the background. I reference them only when I need too. Otherwise, the class dynamic is structured not around my lecture or my presentation, but around the students. We sit in a circle, like a conference room. This helps the students see one another’s faces and invites conversation. In rows, the students face the backs of others. This is not how we as a species evolved to communicate. So much of how we talk with one another does not involve our words but our facial expressions, body language and voice tone. In rows, we lose these nuances which add meaning to our words. In a circle, students can make eye contact with one another and share. Information is exchanged as opposed to a random short phrase spoken by student A and followed by another, often disjointed, phrase spoken by student B. I say we sit in the circle, because I sit with them. This immediately changes the dynamics of the room. As I sit with them, at their level, I enter their environment. When a teacher stands a podium at the head of the room, there is a separation of space. There is a gulf between the teacher and the rows of desks. Sitting in a circle, at their eye level, communicates an equality of respect. Many traditional, autogamous teachers will immediately critique this method. By placing yourself in their environment you lose your authority. Or at least this is what teachers have been taught. Granted, you become equals with the students, but does a teacher’s authority really stem from physical superiority? Is classroom management really established by separating oneself from the student body and looming over them? I think authority comes from knowledge. If a teacher has rich, comprehensive information to offer, then the students will give that teacher authority. When in a conversation and a person is charismatic others are drawn to what that person has to say. A good storyteller always draws an audience.

Garr Reynolds keeps a blog continually discussing issues of presentational design at Presentation Zen (www.presentationzen.com). His entry on June 28th, 2011 reviews the career and success of Bill Cosby. Reynolds explains that Cosby’s success comes from his ability to be a storyteller. Reynolds lists the keys to Cosby’s ability of being a good storyteller: 1. be confident – don't talk yourself into not being you, just be who you are 2. be authentic – tell stories from your own life 3. be the visual – Cosby did not use any multimedia in his routines, he was the visual captivating the audience with his animated form of speaking and his caricature like facial expressions 4. timing is paramount – know when to pause to create suspense, try not to rush important ideas and repeat ideas for emphasis 5. overall – “Bill Cosby was great at 25 but he was even better on stage at 50 (and he's still great at 73). You do not have to be as polished and as smooth as a professional entertainer, but your audience will appreciate it very much if you take a lesson from entertainers like Dr. Cosby and bring your true authentic self to the stage and engage, teach, and illuminate through your own stories and examples” (Reynolds) So while within the circle I try to be a Cosby-esque storyteller. However, any teacher will tell you there is always that extrovert, “class clown” that wants to dominate the conversation. How do you keep that person in check? And what about the introvert – that shy person who is uncomfortable in the conversation? In order for this integrative approach to be effective it must be genuine. Redirecting or arbitrarily calling on students creates an artificial conversation. But if you are trying to engage all students, how can you avoid be artificial? The technique I use is talking points (borrowed from my professors at North Central who used talking points in our seminars). Talking points add structure to the discussion. Talking points are lists of key ideas or key phrases used during public speaking, speeches, meetings, or conferences. These points outline the speaker’s agenda, the speaker’s purpose, and act as cues for the speaker’s pacing. Students use talking points to outline the course topics. Students also use the questions and problem based frameworks introduced in class to locate key concepts, important points and key terms.

When students have lists in front of them, that they themselves have generated, they find it easier to speak. The challenge for the instructor is to allow for an informal flow of the discussion. The students direct the path the discussion will go. This is also why I keep a PowerPoint in the background. In this hypermedia or multimedia presentation I have discussion topics prepared. In case the students’ talking points trail off or they bring up an idea that I would like to emphasize, I can refer back to the PowerPoint to help re-engage the conversation. I think of my PowerPoint as a coffee table book or a conversation piece. When a natural conversation starts to die down, these are great ways to keep it going. I think of this as a seed-idea, seeing the conversation. Another way I seed the conversation is through the problem based learning strategy. I introduce themes and large concepts, like Shoemaker, and use this to keep our talks within general parameters. I also hand out a daily agenda for each student, so they can see what I would like to accomplish. Unlike an autogamous agenda, I keep it very open. In fact I divide the agenda into two portions: the Block and the À la Carte. In the Block the lesson tends to be more teacher-centered and autogamous, although, I keep this to a minimum. It is in the Block I introduce the themes, goals and any “business” that needs to be attended too. Then in the À la Carte I have listed activities, discussion topics, and other seed ideas that I have prepared in case the talking points do not keep the conversation going. I try to make this as natural as possible. To keep things allogamous, I spend most of my time listening and paying attention to details. I listen for cues within the conversation or wait for things to slow down. This is when I try to introduce something new, but I do my best to keep it as natural and flowing as possible, as to blend this in with what has already been transpiring. In order to avoid teacher-direction as much as I can, I like it when students prepare case studies. Instead of arbitrary word problems or fictitious scenarios, I try to encourage natural, realistic, case studies from the students’ experiences and research. Each course is structured by problem based learning strategies, and these problems are always thematic. In this theme, the students are encouraged to explore ideas. When they find inspiration and information that interests them, we play “what if?” scenarios or try to link the information they have found with the current world situation. I strongly encourage the students to amass current events.

During discussion, I encourage them to “show and tell” whatever information they’ve learned that particularly interests them – especially when it is goings on in the news. In this way, through conversations and discussions, talking points, current events and information sharing the students design the courses. Instead of the courses being manipulated and structured by arbitrary curriculums, the course content is fluid and alive – it grows, evolves and shifts based on the students’ needs. Only integrative, interdisciplinary education offers such opportunities. This is the true beauty behind allogamy. I must say that I did not create this methodology. I merely cross-pollinated the ideas from many great teachers and built a system that works for me. There are many parallels in what I’ve created to those schools showcased in the PBS special Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century. Although, each of the instructors tackles a problem based, integrative, interdisciplinary learning model in different ways, there are commonalities. In order to overcome the old paradigms new normal education must refute ineffectual methods such as teacher-centered lectures, poisoning PowerPoint presentations, and antiquated courses structured within the 20th century paradigm.

Those schools featured in Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century and the methods I employ center around the learning environment. The courses must be unique and topical, targeting the needs of the 21st century. The atmosphere must be open, informal and positive, encouraging creativity and fostering innovation. And students must feel safe in sharing, exploring, and developing unique ideas. The new normal in education relies on storytelling to share information in a true exchange of seed-ideas between teacher-student, student-student, and student-teacher.

references

1. Rimer, Sara. "Study: Many College Students Not Learning to Think Critically." The Hechinger Report January 18 (2011). Print. Teachers College, Columbia University

2. Pink, Daniel H. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead, 2006. Print.

3. Peat, F. David. From Certainty to Uncertainty: the Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry, 2002. Print.

4. “Grow up? Not so fast,” By Lev Grossman. Time, January 16, 2005.

5. Robbins, Alexandra, and Abby Wilner. Quarterlife Crisis: the Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2001. Print.

6. Palmer, Parker J., Arthur Zajonc, and Megan Scribner. The Heart of Higher Education: a Call to Renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Print.

7. Shoemaker, Jean Eklund, and Larry Lewin. "Curriculum and Assessment: Two Sides of the Same Coin." The Changing Curriculum Number 8 50.May 1993 (1993): 55-57. Print.

8. Fiero, Gloria K. Landmarks in Humanities. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. Print.

9. Tufte, Edward. "PowerPoint Is Evil; Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely." Wired Sept. 2003. Print. Issue 11.09

10. Reynolds, Garr. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Pub., 2008. Print.

11. Reynolds, Garr. "Storytelling Lessons from Bill Cosby." Rev. of Keynote Speeches and Comedic Career. Web log post. Presentation Zen. Garr Reynolds, 28 June 2011. Web. 30 June 2011.

Landmarks

For some time now, I have been teaching humanities at Benedictine University. One of the texts we use is Landmarks in Humanities by Gloria Konig Fiero, who has a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Humanities and has taught about the human condition for over twenty five years. Fiero’s text reflects her intergrative background, and is organized as a survey of global history, focusing on the most notable monuments of the human imagination or what Fiero calls landmarks. Unlike other texts, these landmarks come from all walks of life: science, art, politics, philosophy, and culture. Each chapter is thematically and chronologically organized.

Overarching cultural themes and systems frame the unit, while these units themselves are more or less in a timeline from the first civilizations to the postmodern era. In each chapter Fiero includes encyclopedic entries on the landmarks which shaped the designated, historical time period. So as you are reading about the Romantic period you will see samples of: art from William Blake and Francisco Goya, the conquests of Napoleon, Darwin’s theory of natural selection, the advent of the Industrial Revolution, critiques of Beethoven’s symphonies, and an analysis of architecture including the Houses of Parliament in London. Each of these entries from various subject matters and disciplines are juxtaposed with one another under the greater context of the chapter theme and chronology. This sort of examination of the human condition and culture demonstrates that all subjects were products of the zeitgeist. Fiero says, “Landmarks in Humanities is interdisciplinary. It builds on a definition of “humanities” not as a collection of disciplines (literature, philosophy, and the arts), but as a discipline in itself: the study of humankind in its creative and communicative dimensions” (Fiero xiii).

Furthermore, she says, “Landmarks in Humanities specifies key ideas that bring focus to both teaching and learning… it reflects the thematic relationships between various works… and explains their significance in their own time, as well as for ours” (Fiero, xiii). We, at Benedictine, use this text because of its integrative and interdisciplinary structure. In these humanities classes, I have found myself discussing mathematics, scientific achievements, philosophy, literature, art and politics all in the same evening. Although we call these courses humanities, they are less like a Western Civilization class and more like a study of the human condition in all aspects of human knowledge and pursuits. I think this is how integrative education will begin. It will start like Fiero’s text, with an overarching theme (say a time period or system) and explore the problems and solutions against this context. When you have a resource like Fiero’s, you can cross-pollinate quite easily. We can ask questions like, “How did the Scientific Revolution give rise to the founding of United States of America?” Under such a framework, we can explore such questions – in fact, I have in my classes. The students start with how Descrates and Newton systematically removed the divine from the foundation of the universe and replaced spirituality with mathematics and a clockwork mechanism. From this we can extrapolate that reason and humankind’s intellect serve as the center of the world, not the divine presence.

From here we understand Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and others were trained in science and Newtonian physics. They were products of the Enlightenment and the emphasis on reason. And when you no longer needed a divine power to govern the cosmos, you no longer needed a divinely chosen monarch to govern the world. A new country and a new system was invented from reason and mechanism. We explored these connections between physics, philosophy, politics and literature by cross-pollinating ideas and investigating unconventional connections. By exploring ideas without the boundaries of subject matters we could travel in all sorts of directions and have natural conversations about a people – putting the human back in humanities. Why can’t all information be taught in the same way? Why is science or math removed from the history and context which helped shape its progress? Why are politics discussed without the backdrop of philosophy and literature? Integrative education simply means blurring the boundaries between disciplines until those boundaries evaporate. Instead of framing knowledge under headings like mathematics, English or social studies, why don’t we use Shoemaker’s model of framing knowledge with society, systems, changes, or power? Or we could use Fiero’s divisions of zeitgeist, where the new products of a generation of people emerged from that people’s culture and societal organization. In ways, this connects integrative education with Palmer and Zajonc, emphasizing the humanness in the studies of knowledge. From this, values, aspirations, altruism and purpose can be developed – by cross-pollinating ideas from within a time period and between the past and present.

We need to stop titling classes World History or American Literature, and we need to start titling them like Arthur Zajonc’s Eros and Insight. When I was at North Central College, completing my Masters degree in Liberal Arts, I had the pleasure of taking some wonderful integrative courses: Creative Thought, The Third World, Public Discourse and Changing Models of the Universe. It’s amazing how much a course title evokes an interdisciplinary framework. We need courses which reflect Pink’s six senses, Csikszentmihalyi’s flow, and Edwards’ discipline of creativity. We need allogamous courses which encourage cross-pollination of ideas and help students find meaning in themselves and in their world. We need to start with questions and big picture frameworks, allowing students to discover their own answers by pulling from resources like Fiero’s Landmarks in Humanities. But above all, for integrative education to work, we need to focus less on a cost-benefits model, and more on the human, the humanness and the humanity of information. The industrial model offers no comfort or support to the twixter.

And if we are going to service the needs of the emerging, twentysomething demographic, we need to start fresh, at the bottom – we need integrative reform at the Kindergarten level all the way through college. This is how we will compete globally and solve the creativity crisis and educational failures plaguing our country. This is how we will implement institutional change.

references

1. Rimer, Sara. "Study: Many College Students Not Learning to Think Critically." The Hechinger Report January 18 (2011). Print. Teachers College, Columbia University

2. Pink, Daniel H. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead, 2006. Print.

3. Peat, F. David. From Certainty to Uncertainty: the Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry, 2002. Print.

4. “Grow up? Not so fast,” By Lev Grossman. Time, January 16, 2005.

5. Robbins, Alexandra, and Abby Wilner. Quarterlife Crisis: the Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2001. Print.

6. Palmer, Parker J., Arthur Zajonc, and Megan Scribner. The Heart of Higher Education: a Call to Renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Print.

7. Shoemaker, Jean Eklund, and Larry Lewin. "Curriculum and Assessment: Two Sides of the Same Coin." The Changing Curriculum Number 8 50.May 1993 (1993): 55-57. Print.

8. Fiero, Gloria K. Landmarks in Humanities. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. Print.

9. Tufte, Edward. "PowerPoint Is Evil; Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely." Wired Sept. 2003. Print. Issue 11.09

10. Reynolds, Garr. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Pub., 2008. Print.

11. Reynolds, Garr. "Storytelling Lessons from Bill Cosby." Rev. of Keynote Speeches and Comedic Career. Web log post. Presentation Zen. Garr Reynolds, 28 June 2011. Web. 30 June 2011.

Filtering

At risk of overstating the issues of autogamy and the 20th century educational model, I would like to reiterate that the compartmentalized, fifty minute class, eight period day is a result of the assembly-line model. We see that this model not only affects education but also the disciplines themselves. However, the issue runs deeper than merely adopting an assembly-line practice that was the cultural, conventional way of doing things. The educational model used today is the result of efficiency and cost-effectiveness – it is a capitalist education model. As Hall makes the word adolescent common vernacular, educational reform adopts a policy of educating every child in the secondary school. This legal mandate poses budgetary and organizational issues. How can we teach the most students for the least amount of cost? Instead of one teacher teaching a handful of students all of the information needed, the tasks were industrialized. Have teachers specialize in an area. Then have students grouped in rows. The teacher will dictate information to the students who will memorize it as quickly and efficiently as possible. The teacher will teach to the greatest common denominator, ignoring the lowest achievers and the highest achievers. This is cost-effectiveness applied to culture and learning. Look at how our system is organized – elementary schools are made up of small classes with a single teacher instructing most of the day to the same students.

Those students are filtered into a middle school or junior high, where the classes become more specialized. At the high school, thousands of students are funneled into the most efficient assembly-line, autogamy. And finally, at the college or university level, students specialize in majors and only take courses relevant to that major (aside from a few 100 or 200 level gen eds). The current school system is not only a product of 20th century industrial models, but of American values. Capitalism is the root of much of America’s fundamental, driving principles. The education system is a direct product of that capitalist mantra. Now I am not calling for an anti-capitalist system, but what I am alluding to is that American ideals have changed. From this white paper, Rimer, Pink, Peat, Robbins, Wilner, Palmer and Zajonc have all pointed in a shift from the collective to the individual, from the individual to meaning, and from meaning to the collective. In my previous papers, Grace Lee Boggs, Robert B. Reich, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Dr. Betty Edwards, and Tom Kelley have all argued along the same lines – the culture of the Conceptual Age is developing vastly different from the industrialized culture of the 20th century. The current education system may be more cost-effective, but it is certainly less effective when compared to our competition in Europe and Asia. Americans, in general, have a great deal of pride and oftentimes are unreceptive to arguments based on Europe or Asia. But we are faced with a new age, where pride, in many ways, is just stubbornness. If we abandon autogamous schooling, and its cost-benefit structure, we are left with a blank slate. In my pervious white paper, I argued for a problem based learning system which used the cross-pollination of ideas to generate innovative solutions.

This, alone, would be a step in the right direction. But I would like to add to this allogamous educational architecture a component borrowed from Palmer and Zajonc: integrative education. In the current system, disciplines capture information in the parameters of their paradigm. Each discipline only captures a small fragment of the greater whole. “The divisions that fragment us and our world… [are] rooted in our failure to recognize the reality of interconnectedness [which] are found not only in the ontology, epistemology, pedagogy, and ethics that form a silent backdrop to university life [but] are reflected in the fragmentation of our personal relationships within the academy” (Palmer 127). Palmer and Zajonc argue that the paradigmic, fragmentation of learning is so deep rooted, it informs the fragmented visions of our own selves. Palmer and Zajonc identify five reasons education is unwilling to make an institutional change in order to remedy this issue of fragmentation (both of knowledge and of the person): 1) the current system is founded on weak philosophical arguments which claim the worlds of the inner person and the outer universe must be separated, 2) the myth that integrative education is haphazard and too hard to control, 3) the commonly held belief that emotions have no place in the classroom, 4) there is a resistance to community and a large emphasis of the self, and 5) the notion that rationality and empiricism are at odds with subjective, soulful pursuits (Pamer 23 – 47). They specifically combat this: “our current conception of education and the treatment of our students derive from such a fragmentary and incomplete understanding… we do not have the whole student in mind” (Palmer 65). When we ignore the whole student, we ignore the multidimensionality of the world – and we are left with inadequate solutions (Palmer 65).

Palmer and Zajonc say: “we can choose the way we teach” (Palmer 89). We do not need to continue to uphold the fragmented belief system, and we can embrace integrativeness. Currently, most integrative education is simply a juxtaposition of disciplines, lacking breadth. Palmer and Zajonc are critical of this form of integrative work, feeling that the richness of learning and true breadth is lost (Palmer 89). The type of integrative learning they call for is outlined similarly in the article Curriculum and Assessment: Two Sides of the Same Coin by Jean Eklund Shoemaker and Larry Lewin. Shoemaker writes, integrative education "cuts across subject-matter lines, bringing together various aspects of the curriculum into meaningful association to focus upon broad areas of study" (Shoemaker 55). Shoemaker, Curriculum Coordinator at Eugene School District 4J in Oregon, says that integrative education must reflect the integrated world we live in – this is the real world, not the philosophical representation of the real world. Learning experiences based on this integrated real world "provide a greater understanding than that which could be obtained by examining the parts separately" (Shoemaker 55). Integrative education is based in the human learner who is him/herself an integrated entity part of a vast integrated system. Rather than fragmenting this entity and this world into disciplines, integrative education has no separation. The disciplines of old are compartmentalized into subjects by use of textbooks, seat work and lectures in the most autogamous of ways – a teacher having the idea and forcing it on the learner. Integrative education, instead, immerses the student in a learning environment which shows the true complexity of the world through problem solving (Shoemaker 56). Shoemaker designed a curriculum based on completely different goals than simply memorizing, understanding and applying facts. This curriculum was based on two components: 1) learning conceptual knowledge and strategic processes and 2) determining whether conceptual knowledge and strategic practices have been learned (Shoemaker 56). The conceptual knowledge component was framed by “several concepts within conceptual themes like communities, systems, change, power, interactions, form or structure, relationships, and identities” (Shoemaker 56).

Then, to develop strategic processes, instructors used a problem based learning strategy allowing the students to develop “conceptual understanding by constructing personally meaningful yet plausible answers to the key questions” (Shoemaker 56). Students and instructors participate in the evaluation process of success. In each problem based project, the student undergoes a four part process: 1) plan ahead, 2) make a first attempt at implementing the plan, 3) evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the plan and 4) share the solutions with others (Shoemaker 57). In this practical model of integrative education, we see that the disciplines themselves are never mentioned. School subjects are abandoned in favor of problems, processes and solutions. If we combine this methodology with Palmer and Zajonc’s premises, we find that integrative education has nothing to do with the subject matter itself – it is student centered. This means, that the education provided is intended on helping a student personally grow. For Palmer and Zajonc the problems and framework presented to students should help them focus on: developing values, cultivating humanism, nurture compassion, foster altruism, and promote personhood in the community. Integrative education allows for the exploration of humanity’s most intimate aspirations through a serious, academic process (Palmer 70 – 75). This seems to compliment Shoemaker’s curriculum which is framed by relationships, systems, communities, interactions and the like. Integrative education is like Poincaré’s work – theories and ideas which are simultaneously philosophical, abstract, mathematical, realistic, logical, artistic, and imaginative. Poincaré’s work was so rich and so integrative, that when it was dissected by Einstein and Picasso it led to incredible advancements. Just think what the work could have produced if it had never been dissected in the first place? Some argue that the split of subjects allows for expertise and specialization. Without this specialization, advancements would never come about, or if they were to come about, they would do so at a crawling pace. The speed and progress which we enjoy today would have taken centuries to develop without specialization. This may or may not be true. But I like to think of the splitting of subject matter as a step in the process. Einstein and Picasso split Poincaré’s work up, and today we are seeing it re-unified under integrative system approaches. Descriptions of the universe borrow from a variety of worldviews and ideas demonstrating interconnectedness. So instead of arguing that specialization is necessary, I would argue it was necessary.

We are where we are because of 20th century specialization. But now we have a unique moment to reintroduce symbiosis. We can start fresh. We can build an educational model that does not need subjects, just questions and framing, big pictures and themes. Then students can pull from the different disciplines and create innovative, cross-pollinated solutions. I am not saying we should erase all the work done by our predecessors. Instead, let’s start anew, with new goals and new structures. And when students need information they can rely on our predecessor’s resources, but use these resources in a new normal education.

references

1. Rimer, Sara. "Study: Many College Students Not Learning to Think Critically." The Hechinger Report January 18 (2011). Print. Teachers College, Columbia University

2. Pink, Daniel H. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead, 2006. Print.

3. Peat, F. David. From Certainty to Uncertainty: the Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry, 2002. Print.

4. “Grow up? Not so fast,” By Lev Grossman. Time, January 16, 2005.

5. Robbins, Alexandra, and Abby Wilner. Quarterlife Crisis: the Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2001. Print.

6. Palmer, Parker J., Arthur Zajonc, and Megan Scribner. The Heart of Higher Education: a Call to Renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Print.

7. Shoemaker, Jean Eklund, and Larry Lewin. "Curriculum and Assessment: Two Sides of the Same Coin." The Changing Curriculum Number 8 50.May 1993 (1993): 55-57. Print.

8. Fiero, Gloria K. Landmarks in Humanities. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. Print.

9. Tufte, Edward. "PowerPoint Is Evil; Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely." Wired Sept. 2003. Print. Issue 11.09

10. Reynolds, Garr. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Pub., 2008. Print.

11. Reynolds, Garr. "Storytelling Lessons from Bill Cosby." Rev. of Keynote Speeches and Comedic Career. Web log post. Presentation Zen. Garr Reynolds, 28 June 2011. Web. 30 June 2011.

Physics and Painting

Integration is vital to servicing the needs of the educational continuum. Integrative education is symbiosis, and every theorist explored in these white papers touches on symbiosis. For Pink, symbiosis is symphony; for Csikszentmihalyi, this is what he calls the balance of dualities; and what Bohr calls complementarity. Edwards uses a form of symbiosis to create new ideas from saturation. And I incorporate integrative learning and symbiosis within the allogamous model. But no matter what it is called this synthesizing concept is integral to creativity, critical thinking and problem solving – the highest levels of learning – the top tiers of Bloom’s Taxonomy pyramid. To reach these top peaks we need to follow Csikszentmihalyi and Edwards in the discipline of multifaceted creativity. Bohr and the new physics demonstrated that our world is multidimensional – a mixture of opposites and contradictions which form an exciting, mysterious whole. But more so than that, as Peat argues: “The ways we represent the world, in everything from language to art and science, deeply influence the ways we structure our world and understand ourselves.

During the twentieth century many of these means of representation underwent a change from certainty to uncertainty, and today our world is more tentative and open to doubt and uncertainty. This lack of fixed strategies means that there are more ways to explore the world…” (Peat 97 – 98). There are two things I want to take away from what Peat claims above: 1) that the representations of the world create the world – perception is reality, and 2) that connectedness and holism offer richer, more comprehensive representations. A certain, stable world no longer exists. So in this uncertain, in-flux world, we need models which adapt and stay continuous. We understand through models. It is how we convey an idea to a person – we use a model. The idea itself cannot transfer from one mind to the other, rather we need to create some sort of representation – be it visual, verbal, kinesthetic or audio – but this representation stands in place of the idea. If we use a model only from science, or only from art, then we are limiting ourselves. We are limiting ourselves to a 20th century, compartmentalized, mechanized representation. Bohr shows us that this will not work. Newton and Descartes did not have the whole picture, and not everything can be measured like a clockwork. This alone is a fantastic argument for integrative studies. But not only is the world ready for a new normal in representations and models, so too, is the next generation of students.

They crave a far more comprehensive, meaningful, narrative which explains the inner and outer worlds. Peat says, “scientific studies tell us that the ability to see the world involves integration of a variety of different strategies operating between the eye and the brain” (Peat 93). If it is natural for the human and the natural world to be integrated, why do we spend so much time de-integrating? Palmer and Zajonc make a similar argument: the different disciplines only capture a fragmented image of the whole picture. When art, science, the humanities, business, education and communications separate themselves from one another: these different camps narrow in on a paradigmic vantage point. With such a zoomed in perspective, the greater, composite is lost. It is like looking at Georges-Pierre Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. From a distance it appears ethereal – full of impossible whimsy and depth. But as you close in on sections of the painting, you start to lose the mystery. If you get right up on the image, so close that your nose nearly touches the canvas, you find that the image is composed of millions of colored daubs. It is not unlike a digital image broken up into millions and millions of pixels. Certainly examining the image up close allows you to understand how it was created – it gives you a better sense of the time and meticulous effort by Seurat. Furthermore, close examination also glimpses Seurat’s theories about optical mixing and color juxtaposition. But does this knowledge, alone, allow you to really understand and appreciate the image? Or does this knowledge only have meaning under the context of the whole, beautiful painting? This is the issue education systems face today.

Autogamously, we narrow in on the individual colored daubs. We study these daubs, instruct others about the daubs and explain the process with precise objectivity. But we rarely examine the whole picture. We rarely see the allogamous beauty created by the interchange of color, light, shape and form. It requires a great step backwards, and then a complete change in perspective. “Monet’s wish to return to direct visual experience, Cezanne’s doubt as to what his sensations were telling him, and Cubism’s attempt to integrate different possible viewpoints in time should coincide with a general change of Western consciousness whereby… doubt, relativism, and lack of certainty entered in many different ways” (Peat 109). These artists were all trying to express the unnerving unbalance being explored by the transition from certainty to uncertainty. Unraveling thousands of years of philosophy, mathematics and natural science is such a difficult task, that it takes a lot of time to come to grips with its implications. How long? Well in Western culture, approximately a century.

At the advent of 1900, the perspectives in science and art were drastically changing. It is during this time that Einstein and Picasso both have their “miracle” periods – here Einstein publishes his work on the photoelectric effect and relativity, while Picasso begins breaking down the naturalism in art pushing it towards abstraction and conceptualism. But it wasn’t until the 21st century that this unraveling of reality was truly embraced. Both 20th century new physics and 20th century new art can be traced to the work of Henri Poncairé, who was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, and a philosopher of science, before the end of the 19th century. Poncairé’s work focused primarily on the precursor to chaos theory (commonly described by the “butterfly effect”) and algebraic topology (illustrated by the Möbius strip, the torus and the trefoil knot). Because of Poncairé’s forward-thinking work, he is often considered a polymath (a genius in many fields). After Poncairé’s death, the French mathematician, Esprit Jouffret, popularized Poincaré’s descriptions of the fourth dimension in his Elementary Treatise on the Geometry of Four Dimensions, published in 1903. These ideas directly inspired Pablo Picasso’s Cubism and Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Both Picasso and Einstein studied Poncairé’s theories which lead to the breakdown of convention in the fields of art and physics.

Most abstract art can trace its origins to Cubism and our most groundbreaking, world-bending scientific notions can be traced to Einstein’s work. In many ways we can say that Poncairé is the godfather of the 20th century, as many of the cultural and worldview shifts in this era can be traced to the effect of Picasso and Einstein. I am obviously truncated history and looking at it through a specific lens, but I am doing so to demonstrate a point. The 20th century was noted for its segregation of ideas. But this was not always the case – in fact, Poncairé explored notions of reality through a far more holistic approach, albeit described primarily mathematically and philosophically. But then, his work was dissected and divided. Picasso took Poncairé and went in one direction and Einstein went in the other. One man explores these ideas visually and symbolically, while the other does so scientifically and mathematically. Both Picasso and Einstein have their great breakthroughs before 1910 and became worldwide celebrities for their work, yet neither man encounters the other. The two men are so segregated from one another in 20th century paradigms, that their connection to Poncairé has only been recently exposed. In a way, this almost seems like a reverse-allogamy. The ideas began at a source and cross-pollinated – mathematics crossing into art and science, respectively. But then the seed idea was divided and tracked within separate disciplines. Here the ideas were cultivated in an autogamous model, keeping the artistic or scientific version of the idea separated. This version of the idea propagated, multiplied and reproduced within the narrow parameters of the separate fields.

Most importantly, this scenario explains how cross-pollination leads to innovation through creative solutions. The inspiration comes from saturation, as Edwards claims. Surrounding oneself with varied resources and pulling, mixing, combining, blending these resources in new ways leads to some remarkable outcomes – in this case, Einstein’s and Picasso’s miracle periods. So art and science share a common inspiration, but does that mean they are one in the same discipline? Peat concludes that these serendipitous moments arise from “actual change[s] in human consciousness involving, for example, a change in the way we “see” the world” occurring “at a certain point, when the “time is right” and “something was in the air” (Peat 110). “Rather than the one influencing the other directly each was picking up and manifesting the seeds of change” (Peat 110). Peat questions why “so many remarkable parallels exist” between various fields of study and offers an explanation for zeitgeist: “Maybe these manifestations in art, science, literature and other fields should be more properly called “synchronicities” – borrowing a term from Carl Jung (Peat 110).

Peat cites various examples of these moments which seem to be coincidental but share some “unrelated cause”: 1) Dutch painters begin exploring the properties of light as it enters a room while Newton breaks a beam of light down in a prism, 2) Georges-Pierre Seurat develops pointillism in painting, breaking down images into “dots of color” just as Max Planck reveals light consists of individual quantas, and 3) Picasso’s Cubism and Einstein’s theory of relativity begin reforming the way time and space are represented (Peat 109 – 110). We find ourselves here once more – waiting to seed the new normal in education.

references

1. Rimer, Sara. "Study: Many College Students Not Learning to Think Critically." The Hechinger Report January 18 (2011). Print. Teachers College, Columbia University

2. Pink, Daniel H. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead, 2006. Print.

3. Peat, F. David. From Certainty to Uncertainty: the Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry, 2002. Print.

4. “Grow up? Not so fast,” By Lev Grossman. Time, January 16, 2005.

5. Robbins, Alexandra, and Abby Wilner. Quarterlife Crisis: the Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2001. Print.

6. Palmer, Parker J., Arthur Zajonc, and Megan Scribner. The Heart of Higher Education: a Call to Renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Print.

7. Shoemaker, Jean Eklund, and Larry Lewin. "Curriculum and Assessment: Two Sides of the Same Coin." The Changing Curriculum Number 8 50.May 1993 (1993): 55-57. Print.

8. Fiero, Gloria K. Landmarks in Humanities. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. Print.

9. Tufte, Edward. "PowerPoint Is Evil; Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely." Wired Sept. 2003. Print. Issue 11.09

10. Reynolds, Garr. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Pub., 2008. Print.

11. Reynolds, Garr. "Storytelling Lessons from Bill Cosby." Rev. of Keynote Speeches and Comedic Career. Web log post. Presentation Zen. Garr Reynolds, 28 June 2011. Web. 30 June 2011.

Reflections

Where I find fault with Palmer and Zajonc, is that they do not go far enough! They identify these key concerns – these vital issues faced by their students – and instead of outlining real solutions, they spend much of their discussion in philosophicals, ontologicals, and hypotheticals. I should state, that the authors in fact do this on purpose – fearing a prescribed solution would only exasperate the problems of a “soulless university” – but I disagree. Palmer and Zajonc recommend an integrative approach to education. I must say, I agree with integrative, interdisciplinary models, however, I find that many of them are lacking in real gusto. Palmer and Zajonc do a fantastic job of outlining the purpose and objectives of integrative education, as well as demonstrating how such models target holistic learning. I just wish they went a little deeper and pushed a little further. Granted, they were specifically aimed at social change within the university setting. In turn, I would like to apply this model into the entire spectrum of the educational system. Idealistic as this might sound, it is not a pipedream. After all, the educational system has been revamped multiple times throughout American history; not to mention our competitors in Europe and Asia have made full commitments to educational reform. In order to address the marketplace described by Pink, and the skills needed for that marketplace, we can no longer neglect meaning and purpose.

This is not the meaning and purpose of education, but the meaning and purpose of the student and the student’s life. When we focus narrowly on that goal, then education has a meaning and purpose of its own – a higher calling. “Most conventional methods of instruction are too weak and fragmented to affect a significant shift in perspective, epistemology, or moral level of the type envisioned” by Palmer and Zajonc (Palmer, 105). A true, institutional transformation calls for “seeing and living the answers” (Palmer, 105). Like Peat, Palmer and Zajonc admonish the antiquated, 20th century worldviews based on Newton and Descartes, and instead call for Einstein and Bohr “whose science is not of matter and mechanism, but of relationships and dynamic processes” (Palmer, 11). This language is crucial – relationships and dynamics. The thesis of their work is that higher education needs to focus on the soulful, dynamic aspects of humanity. They call for the education of the whole human – the humanness in the human, not unlike Grace Lee Boggs. Education needs to serve this dynamic, relational new purpose; coaching students in developing a personal meaning for their lives. “We are now called to develop a view of education that simultaneously values the self-consciousness of the new science, literary criticism, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology without extremism while also affirming the possibility of a way to truth, meaning and purpose” (Palmer, 63 – 64). The needs of 21st century students are more holistic and more mysterious. The contemporary student is left empty when taught in 20th century pedagogies. Based on Pink’s estimation of the needs of the 21st century we know that education should stress: aesthetics and design, narratives, symbiosis, empathy and emotion, play, and meaning. If we look at this list, we can see that this is really what Robbins and Wilner discovered when exploring the identity crisis of the twixter.

The twentysomethings struggled with emotional stability and life goals. Pink’s six senses address this. Narratives surface not just in the way we explain history or the way we describe ideas, but also in personal narratives – how we describe ourselves and what we identify as who we are. Sharing these narratives involves empathy and the acceptance of a subjective, in-flux world. The way we cope with change, involves our ability to be allogamous and innovative. Play, design, and aesthetics are all integral to Edwards’ creative discipline as well Csikszentmihalyi’s sense of flow. So we can see; Pink’s six senses are not just ways of categorizing new parts of the new century. These are fundamental principles which are guiding not just our market, but the market’s work force, products and services. This is the reality of the 21st century. And as such, it is negligent to ignore the changes taking place. Where Palmer and Zajonc call for a change in higher education to service Pink’s criteria; I claim this can be applied to all levels of education. We have to stop thinking of college as being an additional or possible step in the student’s development. The twixter needs college just as the adolescent needed secondary education.

When Hall first identified adolescence, huge cultural changes reflected the needs of this new developmental stage. Much of secondary education is built directly around the needs of the adolescent. It is time we adjust the institution of education once more, this time to accommodate the needs of the twixter. The twixter’s needs are wrapped up in much of what Pink, Robbins, Wilner, Palmer and Zajonc have already outlined for us: the emotional, aesthetic, meaningful aspects of building life experiences. But we also must realize that education is a continuum, not a spectrum. The lines between primary, secondary and higher education should be benchmarks not walls. What influences one tier of education should trickle down to the lower tiers and should rise up to the top tiers.

references

1. Rimer, Sara. "Study: Many College Students Not Learning to Think Critically." The Hechinger Report January 18 (2011). Print. Teachers College, Columbia University

2. Pink, Daniel H. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead, 2006. Print.

3. Peat, F. David. From Certainty to Uncertainty: the Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry, 2002. Print.

4. “Grow up? Not so fast,” By Lev Grossman. Time, January 16, 2005.

5. Robbins, Alexandra, and Abby Wilner. Quarterlife Crisis: the Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2001. Print.

6. Palmer, Parker J., Arthur Zajonc, and Megan Scribner. The Heart of Higher Education: a Call to Renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Print.

7. Shoemaker, Jean Eklund, and Larry Lewin. "Curriculum and Assessment: Two Sides of the Same Coin." The Changing Curriculum Number 8 50.May 1993 (1993): 55-57. Print.

8. Fiero, Gloria K. Landmarks in Humanities. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. Print.

9. Tufte, Edward. "PowerPoint Is Evil; Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely." Wired Sept. 2003. Print. Issue 11.09

10. Reynolds, Garr. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Pub., 2008. Print.

11. Reynolds, Garr. "Storytelling Lessons from Bill Cosby." Rev. of Keynote Speeches and Comedic Career. Web log post. Presentation Zen. Garr Reynolds, 28 June 2011. Web. 30 June 2011.

The Heart of Education

The quest to find oneself has become an identity crisis faced by recent twentysomething college graduates (Robbins, 9). These twixters “find that the easiest way to attempt to pinpoint their identity… is to define who they are by what they do… but because so many recent graduates are dissatisfied with their first couple of jobs after college, the idea that their jobs make up a large part of who they are can leave them feeling dejected” (Robbins, 11).

Many of these twixters, quickly realize that they do not want to be defined by their job, but inescapably look to their jobs to provide them with some sense of purpose. Twixters are continually plagued by questions such as: Who am I, how do I fit in? Where am I going in life? As they explore their adulthood or pre-adulthood world, they desperately try to establish their own identity. However, many of them are finding that they face identity confusion. Nearly one hundred years ago, this identity-role obstacle was thought to be faced by adolescents. Today, we are seeing this same obstacle being faced nearly a decade later in development. This only lends more credence to the premise, that children are maturing more slowly. This does not mean that children are more immature than their counterparts generations prior. This simply means that as the world is in flux, it is difficult for children, teens and twixters to acclimate. There is a bizarre complementarity between comfort and insecurity, typified by today’s society. “College means comfort – and when [twentysomethings] graduate, the stability and security developed in school seems to drop out from under [them]” (Robbins, 104).

As technology and affluence offers more comfort, it, ironically, also gives a false sense of security. According to Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner in their work, Quarterlife Crisis: the Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties, twentysomethings feel a sense of security within their insecurities. As they realize the comfort of college will disappear after graduation, these twentysomethings bond with one another over this shared, common experience. Each of them has the same needs and as such, they continue to support one another and spend more and more time together. These surrogate family groups offer support and security, that cannot be found in their families. There is a sense that the twentysomething must go it alone, because the generations beforehand went through these rites of passages at an earlier age (Robbins, 99). They are isolated sociologically. In many ways, by delaying the pressure to mature or to “grow up,” society has done a great disservice to these twixters. Society expects the twixter to grow up, but not completely. There is another sense of complementarity here – the twixter should mature, but doesn’t quite have too. This is the same as Bohr’s A is A, but sometimes not A. This leaves the twixter at an impasse, and often the twixter is ill-equipped because of institutional structures that that twixter is a product of. “Twentysomethings frequently have the unshakable belief that this is the time during which they have to nail down the meaning in their lives, which explains why they often experience a nagging feeling that somehow they need to make their lives more fulfilling” (Robbins, 9).

The question becomes: is this the role of education? Should education be supporting students to find this meaning? If we agree with Daniel H. Pink that meaning, purpose, narrative and empathy are the crucial assets of the contemporary marketplace, then education must play some role. Robbins and Wilner argue that “higher education [has] hardly prepared [the twentysomethings] for the decisions they will have to make and the ways in which they will have to learn to support themselves” (Robbins, 8).

Robbins and Wilner’s issue with higher education is echoed by Parker J. Palmer, Arthur Zajonc, and Megan Scribner in their work: The Heart of Higher Education: a Call to Renewal. Like Robbins and Wilner’s book, The Heart of Higher Education: a Call to Renewal relies on personal anecdotes, conversations and personal experiences to dig deep into this need for meaning. Palmer and Zajonc boldly claim that not only does education need to provide support for the nurturing and development of personal meaning in the student’s life, but the way in which to accomplish this is by scrapping the convention and instituting integrative education. Robbins and Wilner quote one of their case studies, who says, “I proved to myself that what really matters most for my happiness is to follow my heart, no matter how crazy it sounds, and trust everything will work out” (Robbins, 152). Palmer and Zajonc express a sense of duty to help students, like the one interviewed by Robbins and Wilner, along this journey of self-identity. Throughout their work, Palmer and Zajonc criticize higher education for its neglect of soulfulness – the most important task of a university is to engage students in actively discussing and exploring the purpose and meaning of their lives (Palmer, 122). Palmer and Zajonc found that over two-thirds of students hoped that their undergraduate education would offer them a chance to develop a sense of “what life is for” – personal values, self-understanding, and reasons for the way the world works (Palmer, 116).

These tasks are completely disregarded, ignored, or worse, avoided. In The Heart of Higher Education: a Call to Renewal, three reasons are identified for this shortcoming, drastically impacting twixter-students: 1) a mechanistic view of reality rooted in outdated and irrelevant systems, 2) arbitrary delineations between knowledge classes and biased notions of content, and 3) an economic model of ethics based on cost-effectiveness (Palmer, 31 – 33).

references

1. Rimer, Sara. "Study: Many College Students Not Learning to Think Critically." The Hechinger Report January 18 (2011). Print. Teachers College, Columbia University

2. Pink, Daniel H. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead, 2006. Print.

3. Peat, F. David. From Certainty to Uncertainty: the Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry, 2002. Print.

4. “Grow up? Not so fast,” By Lev Grossman. Time, January 16, 2005.

5. Robbins, Alexandra, and Abby Wilner. Quarterlife Crisis: the Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2001. Print.

6. Palmer, Parker J., Arthur Zajonc, and Megan Scribner. The Heart of Higher Education: a Call to Renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Print.

7. Shoemaker, Jean Eklund, and Larry Lewin. "Curriculum and Assessment: Two Sides of the Same Coin." The Changing Curriculum Number 8 50.May 1993 (1993): 55-57. Print.

8. Fiero, Gloria K. Landmarks in Humanities. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. Print.

9. Tufte, Edward. "PowerPoint Is Evil; Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely." Wired Sept. 2003. Print. Issue 11.09

10. Reynolds, Garr. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Pub., 2008. Print.

11. Reynolds, Garr. "Storytelling Lessons from Bill Cosby." Rev. of Keynote Speeches and Comedic Career. Web log post. Presentation Zen. Garr Reynolds, 28 June 2011. Web. 30 June 2011.

The Twixter

In 2005 Lev Grossman had the cover story in the January issue of Time Magazine. The article was entitled: Grow Up? Not So Fast - Meet the Twixters. They're not Kids Anymore, but They're not Adults Either. Why a new breed of young people won't – or can't? – settle down. The article identifies a new demographic, between the ages of 19 through 30-somethings, who are unable to grow up. For whatever reasons, this demographic is full of people who cannot leave their parents homes, find stable work and make the transition from adolescence to adulthood. This demographic seems to be unable to embrace autonomy and are reluctant, if not, resistant to independence. I venture to guess this might have something to do with the new needs of the new culture. As Pink argues, we are becoming an empathetic society which needs narratives and meaning.

I think what Grossman is identifying, is this shift in culture. Most of the twixters, as identified by Grossman, are plagued by a set of major issues preventing them from growing up: 1) they are financially dependent still on their parents or families, 2) they are unable to make career decisions because they seek a calling instead of a vocation, 3) they seek a soul-mate instead of a partner, and 4) they continue to experiment with various life-paths until they find the one they are supposed to be on (Grossman). This is because the students who sought meaning in their schooling, but did not find any, are now seeking the same meaning in their jobs, and again, are still not finding any. Because fundamental answers about purpose and meaning were not addressed in their education, they are unable to establish this meaning for themselves. Some argue, the twixters should just be content with a job and a paycheck. But like it or not, that is not that makeup of this generation. Again, this points to Pink’s new issues of the new age. The problem of 21st century education isn’t failing test scores, it’s how do we help students find meaning. This is what they are craving. Establishing meaning and narrative, as well as empathy, are key commodities in the 21st century. The twixter needs to establish meaning – there must be a purpose for him/her being here.

And until the twixter finds this meaning, s/he will remain unstable in work and in society. “Ten years ago, we might have called them Generation X, or slackers, but those labels don't quite fit anymore. This isn't just a trend, a temporary fad or a generational hiccup. This is a much larger phenomenon, of a different kind and a different order,” Grossman comments on the growing number of twixters in American culture (Grossman). According to Grossman’s research, sociologists are quick to point out that these twixters aren’t just lazy or unwilling to enter adulthood – this is a unique moment when the psychological makeup of our society is changing. We should remind ourselves that this has happened before – so although these moments are exceptional and infrequent, they do happen. Throughout history humanity has had to reflect on itself and identify new rites of passage. We saw this take place with the development of the term and stage: adolescence. The adolescent had not always been. The turn-of-the-century psychologist, Stanley Hall, is often credited with identifying the stage of adolescence. In 1904 he wrote a treatise on the developmental stage between child and adult entitled Adolescence. Prior to this, there was no such idea as a “teenager” or “young-adult”, rather, a child became an adult. By identifying this stage of adolescence Hall drastically shaped the way we view human development. In essence, the adolescent stage was invented only 100 years ago, and from its development we see a variety of social changes still affecting our society today. For instance, child labor laws were a direct result of Hall’s work, as well as mandated secondary education for all adolescents. We also saw changes in marriage practices and a new acceptance of dependency on parents. Had the adolescent period not been determined, children would have continued to be part of the workforce, continued to married young and remained grossly uneducated. There is an interesting paradox which comes from psychological or sociological stages as compared to biological development. Biologically, our species is ready to reproduce at anywhere from 10 – 13 years old. In the 1800’s a woman could expect to have, on average, approximately 5 – 6 children. In the 1900’s this number decreased to approximately 4 children. Today, the average number of offspring for American families is anywhere between 2 – 1 children.

Even though, biologically we are able to have children earlier – making the transition from childhood to adulthood quite quickly – in the past 220 years we continue to see a societal pressure that encourages the slowing of this development down. Psychologically, women are better prepared to have children in their twenties. And now, sociologically we are finding women are putting off their first child to about 29 years of age. Biologically this is not necessary, yet psychologically and sociologically we are seeing greater and greater delays from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Is it absurd then that we are inventing a new subgroup? One hundred years ago the new subgroup determined had been the stage of adolescent. Now at the beginning of this new century there is yet another developmental group, the twixter. And this twixter leaves high school unsure of who s/he is. This twixter spends the next four to six years trying to find him/herself, typically with no concrete result. What does this mean for education? Well as we insert this fourth stage of development, our expectations must change. We must realize that each stage before adulthood will progress differently and at a slower rate. It takes longer to reach adulthood, so the expectation of the adolescent today is no longer the same as the expectation of the adolescent yesteryear.

Paradoxically we are also faced with the fact that these pre-adults are all biologically mature enough to engage in “adult behaviors” yet psychologically and sociologically not prepared. Until we face the issue of the twixter population, education will continue to fail. The twixter has new, unprecedented educational needs in order to prepare for adulthood. There is a trickle-down effect. These new needs require different foundations. This means education for the adolescent and for the child must also be restructured innovatively.

references

1. Rimer, Sara. "Study: Many College Students Not Learning to Think Critically." The Hechinger Report January 18 (2011). Print. Teachers College, Columbia University

2. Pink, Daniel H. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead, 2006. Print.

3. Peat, F. David. From Certainty to Uncertainty: the Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry, 2002. Print.

4. “Grow up? Not so fast,” By Lev Grossman. Time, January 16, 2005.

5. Robbins, Alexandra, and Abby Wilner. Quarterlife Crisis: the Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2001. Print.

6. Palmer, Parker J., Arthur Zajonc, and Megan Scribner. The Heart of Higher Education: a Call to Renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Print.

7. Shoemaker, Jean Eklund, and Larry Lewin. "Curriculum and Assessment: Two Sides of the Same Coin." The Changing Curriculum Number 8 50.May 1993 (1993): 55-57. Print.

8. Fiero, Gloria K. Landmarks in Humanities. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. Print.

9. Tufte, Edward. "PowerPoint Is Evil; Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely." Wired Sept. 2003. Print. Issue 11.09

10. Reynolds, Garr. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Pub., 2008. Print.

11. Reynolds, Garr. "Storytelling Lessons from Bill Cosby." Rev. of Keynote Speeches and Comedic Career. Web log post. Presentation Zen. Garr Reynolds, 28 June 2011. Web. 30 June 2011.