Clones Can't Think Critically or Creatively

The Corpus Callosum writes about our Nation of Clones
He observes:
Foreign policy, health, environmentalism, and education seem to have dropped off the national radar. Does anyone know, for example, that a UN committee just recommended a resolution to ban human cloning?

Then he points to cuts in testing of student knowledge in Illinois: more links on his page Illinois students no longer have to take substantive writing exams or tests measuring their knowledge of fundamental principles of U.S. government and history
"the skills required for critical thinking are not a priority for this government. Nor, apparently, is knowledge of government or history. I actually did not realize that before now, NCLB does not require testing about government."

"After all, if the People know something about government and history, they might be able to criticize the government. Can't have that, can we? Let's force them to spend all their resources learning stuff that does not contribute to informed political discourse."

Good questions, good observations, directly related to Estimated Prophet's entry on critical thinking and the willingness of Americans to drink the Kool-Aid. I think our lack of critical thinking skills has been in development for quite some time and we are seeing the effects of it. Unless the basis of what is considered 'education' changes, we will continue to see this and worse, especially when coupled with religious influence such as creationism now storming our public school systems.

Jon Kabat-Zinn suggests that the cultivation of the "inner technologies" may be more useful than any external technology designed to better our lives. "By intentionally cultivating these "inner technologies,' we develop the capacity of the human mind for individual and collective creativity and wisdom and healing." Excerpt from "The Contemplative Mind in Society,"

Cultivating inner technologies is what I've been calling "Listening to ourselves", a huge element of critical thinking. Intuition is a language not necessarily comprised of words, but created by the brain and the body to help us gain insight into and understanding of our past and to help provide solutions for the future. Intuition relies on critical thinking, otherwise it can be confused with knee-jerk emotion. I have to wonder if the degradation of critical thinking skills have contributed to the loss of intuitive skills. The ease of ready-made answers and time constraints don't allow for going below the surface toward that inner voice.

Change is needed. I recently attended a creativity/breakthrough thinking class, mostly business related, though I wanted to take away insights that would help me find that elusive personal 'snap'. I don't quite have my personal snap yet but I did come away with a resource that I'm fascinated with. Robert E. Quinn and Kim Cameron, professors at U-M developed a business model called the Competing Values Model. I really don't care too much how it applies to business at the moment, but, just by the name, can you see where I'm going when I relate it to society, politics and education in the US?

Researching a bit after the class I found that Robert Quinn has written a few books. While browsing in a bookstore the other day I found Change the World How Ordinary People Can Accomplish Extraordinary Results, encompassing eight 'seed thoughts' which comprise his Advanced Change Theory (ACT).

1. An Invitation to Transformation
2. Envision the Productive Community
3. First Look Within
4. Embrace the Hypocritical Self
5. Transcend Fear
6. Embody a Vision of the Common Good
7. Disturb the System
8. Surrender to the Emergent Process
9. Entice Through Moral Power

The promotional release for the book states: "In this empowering book, Robert E. Quinn, author of the highly successful and influential Deep Change, gives readers the courage to use personal transformation to positively impact their home life, work life, and communities – to be what he refers to as “inner-directed and outer-focused.” We are all potential change agents, but most of us are trapped by the belief that we as individuals cannot make a difference.
Following his advice, each of us can access and apply the power that lies within us in ways that will change our world for the better."

To apply just a small portion of his ideas to critical thinking and education, I found an article from from ENC Online, a K-12 math and science teacher center utilizing some of his ideas.

Dreaming All That We Might Realize

Quinn expresses it this way: "Our greatest joy no matter what our role comes from creating. In that process people become aware that they are able to do things they once thought were impossible. They have empowered themselves, which in turn empowers those with whom they interact" (Sparks, 2001b, p. 50).

As you create new possibilities for your students, it is our intention that the information provided here stimulates your intellect, provides practical strategies for improvement, and nurtures your belief in the capacity of all students and staff members to learn and perform at high levels. That is our aspiration and the standard of success against which our efforts must be judged.

I also found the interview that the above article references. Change: It's a matter of life or slow death from the National Staff Development Council Journal of Staff Development, Fall 2001 I'm offering small excerpts but I urge you to read it all.

...) I am very taken by the concept of positive deviance. Deviance is generally viewed as a bad thing. But on one end of the curve, we find deviance in the form of excellence, the very behavior we want to promote. Systems don’t like either positive or negative deviance, though, and are designed to crush both. So if we take risks to be excellent, the system will push back.

Richard Pascale in Surfing the Edge of Chaos (Crown Business, 2000) describes positive deviance as it is practiced by Save the Children in poor villages in Vietnam. Rather than simply throwing resources at the problem, which will later be withdrawn, after which the situation will return to normal, Save the Children went into villages in Vietnam where many, but not all, children were starving. They engaged the villagers in studying the situation and identifying the positive deviants who were also poor but had healthy children. Then the villagers showed one another how this was done. Save the Children was amplifying positive deviance. So now when people say something can’t be done, I ask for examples of positive deviance. But people are often uncomfortable with these notions because they suggest that we all have the potential to do things that many claim are impossible.

To tie all of this together, if we are not growing, we are dying. And if we are growing and pushing the edges of the system, we will meet great resistance. And yet it is possible for us to be positive deviants, and positive deviants change the world. There are documented cases of this phenomenon in education just as there are in other fields.

...) Start a social movement

JSD:In Change the World you wrote, "In over 25 years of working on issues of organizational change, I have come to the conclusion that most important changes require the creation of a social movement. It is, in fact, more accurate to say that change is a social movement. The first step in creating a social movement is having a single actor who asks questions: What is the right thing to do? What result do I want? How do I behave in a more authentic way?"

Quinn: That’s a very important concept. People who have internalized the normal, hierarchical model believe that their job is to preserve equilibrium. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi were deviants who fostered social movements.

Superintendents and principals can only bring about transformational change if they lead a social movement. By social movement, I mean a change in culture. It always begins with a few and moves to the many. Every major organizational change requires a social movement. Show me a superintendent who has transformed her school system or a principal who has transformed his school, and I’ll show you someone who led a social movement, because they had to attract all the resistant teachers out of their shells into a new script.

The answers to the questions you just read can lead school administrators to recognize that they can no longer live with the results they are seeing and to acknowledge that they are prepared to do whatever’s necessary to create something far better. Then they learn their way forward to do whatever is necessary.

...) Creativity is joy

JSD:Moral authority certainly comes through in your writing, as does the importance of being creative. "We all want to experience ourselves as a creative force," you wrote in Change the World. "That’s when we are most influential and happy." I assume that this applies to all educators and that the creative process lies outside a formulaic process.

Competing Values...clones or creative critical thinkers? Who decides?

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