Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:3217] Re: Rigid Class Rules
From: Barry Kort (bkort@musenet.org)
Date: Thu 18 Apr 2002 - 13:38:51 MEST
From: Barry Kort <bkort@musenet.org> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:3217] Re: Rigid Class Rules Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 07:38:51 -0400 (EDT)
Hi Brent,
> One of the best practices is having instructors who can effectively
> help their students become more independent learners. Now, the key
> is to promote student growth with challenging work but avoid
> overwhelming them. It is difficult for some teachers to truly honor
> the experience and knowledge of their students. Unfortunately, some
> instructors create rigid class rules and regulations in their
> assignments that actually restrict student development. The
> student-centered paradigm must be supported by instructors who are
> willing to give their students the freedom to take risks.
For 150 years, public educucation has had a major goal of inculcating
children into a rule-based culture -- learn the rules and learn to
follow them.
Most people, even in today's age of science and technology, still
believe in the importance of rules.
But rule-based systems -- even the best of them -- have serious
systemic flaws. The most serious flaw with rule-based systems is that
they don't rise to any interesting level of intelligence. That's
because rule-based logic -- even when it it executed perfectly -- is too
weak to support insightful model-based reasoning, diagnostic reasoning,
and creative problem-solving.
All the breakthroughs in our culture rely on model-based reasoning.
This is especially true of science, technology, engineering,
mathematics, medicine, and storycraft. Children respond to
opportunities to develop their skills at model-based reasoning.
That's why immersive simulations and storycraft are such attractive
tools for 21st Century education.
It's only been about 100 years since mathematicians like Poincare
began to discover the shortcomings of rule-based logic. See, for
example, this version of Poincare's contribution:
http://www.musenet.org/utnebury/Poincare.html
The belief in the primacy of rule-based methods may be a widely held
belief, but it's a tragically flawed belief. When a culture hangs onto
an outmoded belief without careful reflection, it finds itself plunged
into an unexpected drama. And unexpected dramas typically include
climactic belief-shattering events.
Our culture is now entering the age of drama, the function of which is
to reveal the errors in our popularly held beliefs.
Barry Kort, Ph.D.
Visiting Scientist
Affective Computing
MIT Media Lab
---------------------------------------------------------
List address to send message to everyone:
ifets-discussion@catfish.valdosta.edu
Details of current discussion: http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss.html
Forum website: http://ifets.ieee.org/
Forum's contact person: kinshuk@massey.ac.nz
Info on Join/Leave List: http://ifets.ieee.org/maillist.html
---------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Thu 18 Apr 2002 - 23:15:57 MEST