>
>A rather sloppy and perhaps inaccurate application of my current
>multiple-scales model of social systems would suggest that while our
>individual acts can't do much to influence the society-wide scale
>formations directly, they can influence the institutional-level formations,
>within the latitude available from the constraints at the higher, more
>slowly-changing social scales. We could move to affirm Quality and
>Standards in our schools and universities at the same time we opt out of
>the Great Sorting. If we did, other institutions would tend to take over
>the Sorting, but society would change, in some unpredictable ways, and
>schools and universities would change in at least some, more predictable,
>positive ways. HOW we could opt out, or at least significantly reduce our
>institutional coupling into the Sorting, is a solvable problem of strategy.
>It requires looking at the relevant economics, politics, and ideologies
>from the individual scale (us and our colleagues, students) to the
>institutional scale (governance forms, budget dependencies) to the
>trans-institutional scale (resource inputs and trade-offs, political
>authorities). It's a classic political problem: how to mobilize resources
>from the lowest level to reorganize the intermediate level in ways that are
>permitted by the constraints from the higher level, resulting over time in
>change in all three levels. Just as this kind of social change cannot be
>accomplished by the isolated actions of individuals, so it also cannot be
>prevented by general social structures. It is similar in logic to Mike
>Cole's mesogenetic strategies, but easier insofar as it does not require
>the creation of entirely new institutional forms. It is also, contrary to
>general belief, not necessarily incremental or reformist: it can have
>radical, revolutionary, large-scale (and small-scale) consequences -- they
>just don't happen to be predictable.
>
>JAY.
>---------------------------
>JAY L. LEMKE
>PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
>CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
>JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
><http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
>---------------------------
>
>