Bill Braun (medprac@hlthsys.com)
Fri, 21 May 1999 08:11:57 -0500
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 08:11:57 -0500 From: Bill Braun <medprac@hlthsys.com> Subject: Re: standards, perhaps double standards?
List address to send message to everyone: ifets-discuss@LISTSERV.READADP.COM
Details of current discussion: http://ifets.gmd.de/discuss.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was particularly interested in the notion of purpose; why public and
private schools exist in the first place. They have some things in common;
both exist so students can learn stuff. They tend to diverge when they are
examined in terms of their connectedness to the larger social systems of
which they are a part.
Private schools, which "remove" the individual [the "part"] from the
physical community [the "whole"], are focused on the improvement of the
individual and not the community at large. For example, I lived in an east
side suburb of Cleveland and went to private high school on the west side.
My parents sought to "optimize the part" (me) separate from its (my)
relationship to the whole.
Public schools, which keep the individual in the physical community, build
community by responding to "the whole". In so doing, it takes into account
the interaction between all of the parts and not just the unique qualities
of the parts taken separately. Community offers advantages that cannot be
achieved by individuals.
It seems popular at the moment to think in terms of "optimizing" the
individual. It can be demonstrated however, that optimizing the parts of a
system taken separately will not result in the optimization of the system
as a whole. To the contrary, the whole will perform at lower levels than it
did before the "optimization of the parts" process was initiated, or it
will not perform at all.
Opinions of the relative merits of public and private instruction and
academic results can be debated, with sound arguments put forth by all
points of view. I raised the question of purpose in the context trying to
gain insight into the accumulation of 20 years of private instruction in a
system where public schools do not exist (and in which everyone has
received their $7K tax cut). I pick the 20 year milestone as it took me
that long to reconnect to my physical community. Not surprising since I
didn't know anyone in it. (With n=1 I'll stipulate ahead of time to the
serious flaws in the design of the study!)
Bill Braun
The Health Systems Group
- Physician Leadership Training
- Simulation Modeling for Healthcare
http://www.hlthsys.com
---------------------------------------------------------
Forum website: http://ifets.gmd.de/
Forum's contact person: kinshuk@ieee.org
Info on Join/Leave List: http://ifets.gmd.de/maillist.html
---------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Fri 21 May 1999 - 14:36:26 MET DST