The problem doesn't even reside in the teacher. The question is, who is
actually defining the task? In most cases it isn't the teacher but the
administrator. The administrator is defining it in terms of some other
criterion, usually what will cause the students to get higher grades on
standardized educational tests, and thus get the administrator a
promotion, or at least keep him/her from getting fired. And why a
standardized test in the first place?
As a society and as researchers we live and die by our metaphors, and
unfortunately the underlying metaphor and source of values for American
thought has been the machine and the production line. "Our most
important product is people." It is instructive to try to talk with
those experimental psychologists who believe that ultimately we can model
all human thought on a computer, if we just have enough RAM. (But don't
ask about poetry, or friendship.) This tendency to tie everything to a
machine metaphor is so pervasive at all levels in the US that I'm not
sure how we can go about getting around it. There is an overwhelming
tendency to define everything either in terms of the metaphor itself or
as a deviation from it, and escaping into a new system is very hard for
most Americans.
Eugene, what do you see as being the "source metaphor" for Russian
society? Maybe the "collectif?" Or something else?
Rachel
>
>I agree with Don that the notion of eficiency does not work well for
>alive
>open system. For machines, maximazing on (or few) parameters works
>well but
>for organisms, the efficient organism is dead organism. Alive systems
>should produce waste. Waste for one -- food for another. In class,
>students can be off-task from teachers point of view but on-task, from
>students' point of view. Their tasks can be different. What do you
>think?
>
>Eugene
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Don Cunningham [mailto:cunningh@indiana.edu]
>> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 1998 1:14 PM
>> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
>> Subject: efficiency as a value
>>
>>
>> The incantation I hear most often from instructional designers
>> is that instruction must be "efficient and effective", as if
>> one implied the other. The presumed virtue of systematically
>> designed (and presumably teacher proof) instruction is that
>> it meets its objectives efficiently. There was even a term
>> popular in my graduate school days: lean programming as when
>> programmed instruction included only material demonstrably
>> related to the instructional goals.
>>
>> Yes, I think this is a value, it assumes a certain industrial,
>> transmission view of instruction. In my own teaching i do a lot
>> of things that I consider inefficient: problem centered class
>> sessions - I could cover a lot more material by being didactic.
>> Email conferencing - gad, that's a never ending task that I
>> consider worthwhile considering the instructional values I espouse,
>> but efficient? I too allow revisions and regrading. That's a
>> lot of work that I don't really need to be doing.
>>
>> I want my auto mechanic to be efficient. I'm not sure instruction
>> should always be efficient. Some things are hard work!
>>
>> djc
>>
>> Don Cunningham
>> School of Education
>> Indiana University
>> Bloomington, IN 47405
>>
>> Phone: 812-856-8540
>> Email: cunningh who-is-at indiana.edu
>> Homepage: http://php.indiana.edu/~cunningh
>>
>
>