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Subj: Systems Thinking
Date: 98-04-20 01:09:58 EDT
From: lmstuter@icehouse.net (Lynn M Stuter)
To: Loop
Following my message yesterday about "systems thinking" I have had several requests to define it. I shall attempt to do so here.
Systems thinking grew out the writings of Alfred North Whitehead. The science of systems thinking is accredited to a man by the name of Ludwig von Bertalanffy and his associates (one of whom is Ervin Laszlo, currently working with the United Nations). The generic term for systems thinking is general systems theory. A bit on Bertalanffy before I go on. Bertalanffy came to the United States from Germany on a Rockefeller grant. He returned to German- occupied Vienna, Austria in 1938. His biology textbooks were used by Hitler. He returned to the United States following WWII.
General systems theory states, simply, that the world is a system of subsystems (also called systems) all interconnected and interdependent to form a wholistic or holistic system; that within any system is an infrastructure that is analogous across systems, irrespective of physical appearance. Stated a bit differently, but to the same effect, is the Gaia hypothesis: the world is a living breathing organisim, irreducible to its parts; that what affects one part, affects all parts; that in the name of saving space-ship Earth, we must change our society. The Gaia hypothesis adds a spiritual dimension to systems thinking.
Systems thinking sees everything as wholistic, with all parts interconnected, interdependent. In the words of Senge, 1990, (The Fifth Discipline; the Art and Practice of a Learning Organization), systems thinking "is the fifth discipline because it is the conceptual cornerstone that underlies all of the five learning disciplines of this book." This discipline is the foundation upon which the other four disciplines function: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning. Recognize the terms?
The systems thinking model, because of its wholistic nature, is cyclical--a circle or a spiral. The beginning is the end. You start at point A and your destination is point A. Thus it is that mankind can be said to be "creating the future." At point A "you" decide what "you" want the world to look like in x number of years. This is your goal or outcome. Example: the exit outcomes for the school, state, federal: what the child should know and be able to do as a result of his/her educational experience; what the child should look like. Now you align everything you do to achieve point A, the outcome. In this endeavor you align the curriculum, instruction and teaching methodologies to the outcome to ensure that it is reached; the measure of which is the assessment. I call this designing down, aligning back. It is also known as backmapping. The technical term is a syllogism: a process used by behavioral scientists to bring about planned change.
At this point, I shall digress to the philosophy behind systems thinking as it is important to understanding the semantics of systems thinking. Systems thinking sees everything as a system, analogous to all other systems irrespective of physical appearance. All things are equal, whether it be the ecosystem, or mankind--man is no better than animal or nature.
The underlying philosophy here is humanism that maintains that man is devoid of spirituality or self-determinism. It therefrom follows that man must be conditioned (the process) to his environment (the outcome or goals), whatever it is decided that environment will be (creating the future). As stated in the Humanist Manifesto II, "…we can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species. While there is much that we do not know, humans are responsible for what we are or will become.
No deity will save us; we must save ourselves." All the exit outcomes from all the school districts, states, and Goals 2000 are what man must be conditioned to to achieve the perceived environment. That perceived environment is based on "future trends" which, again, is cyclical, deciding what we want the world to look like (in the 21st Century), then back mapping. In this same vein, outcome based education is education based on outcomes--starting at the end and back mapping, ensuring the outcome. In researching "future trends" it becomes very obvious that they are based, not on fact, but on the doomsday prophesies of rabid environmental groups whose religious philosophy is very much humanistic/New Age.
Systems thinking, to repeat, sees everything as wholes. It is in this context that appear whole language; the wholistic education system incorporating all services to deal with the whole child--mentally, physically, emotionally; life-role or real-life (wholistic) education; constructivist (hands on) learning (the child reinventing the wheel); integrated curriculum deleting the lines of disciplines; thematic units addressing social or life related issues (wholistic); conflict resolution in pursuit of the collectivist (wholistic) society; peer tutoring; the child centered classroom; individual learning plans; …. Everything done is to achieve the whole, with all systems (everything done to produce the child who will look like the exit outcomes) interconnected and interdependent.
Humanism is a religion that sees everything as wholistic, the basis of collectivist thought and action; it is the foundation upon which Marx built his philosophy (Marx saw Christianity as a religion of self-alienation, something to be stamped out at all cost). Marx believed the individual mind to be part of the universal mind (the wholistic mind), the collective.
He saw the Hegelian dialectic as a process for achieving wholes, of Oneness of Mind through a process of thesis (an idea or proposition), antithesis (the opposite idea or proposition) and synthesis (the bringing together of thesis and antithesis). Synthesis then becomes the new thesis, and through a continuing process, Oneness of Mind theoretically occurs. If you look consensus up in the dictionary, you will discover that it means "solidarity of belief"; continual evolution to oneness of mind. To achieve consensus (wholism), one must give up his/her individual beliefs and conform to the group beliefs--again, oneness of mind.
Left to its own devices, however, consensus is uncontrollable. Thus, to control the process, and insure the outcome, facilitators are trained in group dyanmics (how groups function) to ensure the outcome. Again we start at point A and return to point A. In the process, all participants hold the outcome instead of just the facilitator. In the words of one participant, the job of the facilitator is to make everyone in the group think its their idea.
Because of mulitple parties being involved in consensus, it cannot be rigid except in outcome. In each instance thesis and antithesis come into play, with synthesis as the outcome whether achieved incrementally or in one cycle. Thus it is that there is no right or wrong answer, everything is relative, situational. (This is the why and wherefore, also, of no right answer in the classroom.) Everything is thesis and antithesis, ever evolving in a spiral, whether individual thought or collective thought to the next higher plain. This is, incidentally, the process of attaining "higher order thinking." This is the reason for the teacher as facilitator, the "guide on the side; not the sage on the stage."
The facilitatiave process is not one that appeals to the cognitive domain; it appeals to the affective domain--how people feel. In achieving consensus, it is not what one knows about a subject that matters, it is how one feels that is important. As so adequately demonstrated by the final evaluation on the Schools for the 21st Century in Washington state, content is "excellence in terms of the change agenda," process is the "destination," the "product," and "what learning is about;" emotionality and affectivity are the means by which content and process will be achieved. If you want to change someones belief system, you do not appeal to what they know, you appeal to what they believe, how they feel about a subject.
In a consensus circle, the facilitator sets the stage by appealing to the affective domain of the participants--emotionality is imperative. If they have learned nothing else from sex ed programs and the resulting rise in teen pregnancies, they have learned that appealing to emotionality sets the stage if the intent is for people to compromise their principles. Once the stage has been set, affective is brought into conflict with cognitive, and the individual pushed to conform to the group belief system. Once that has occurred, and individual principles have been compromised, it is very hard for the individual to reclaim his individuality. To do so requires breaking away emotionally from the new "family" and again thinking for oneself The social acceptance within the circle makes this very hard for most people to do--a facet that is counted on. What people learn about each other, intimately, within the circle "of trust" also becomes a coercive factor against anyone who might attempt to break away.
In the classroom, systems thinking plays out in the focus of the classroom. No longer is the focus knowledge. Now the focus is "real-life" or "life-role" education. Everything is set in the context of children "experiencing" real life situations. Thus it is that the focus in the classroom is social or life-related issues taught in the context of unit themes or thematic units, whether it is gender, prejudice, discrimination, the environment, homosexuality, life styles, etc. The primary focus, however, is upon environmentalism, which is why parents are finding a lot of it in the classroom. This environmentalism, is not, in most cases, based on scientifically validated facts, but rather, on the doomsday prophesies of rabid environmentalists with a self-serving agenda--an agenda that plays itself out in such events as the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and similar more recent events such as that in Japan. The fraudulent claim of global warming is a good example.
Future trends harkens back to a man by the name of Jay W Forester and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Forester was Peter Senge's mentor for 20 years according to Senge.) In 1972 Forester established a world simulation model known as World 3 for the Club of Rome (one worlders). This was a computer simulation model that, according to inputs, predicted future scenarios. A book was written over the twenty scenarios predicted by the simulation model, called "Limits to Growth" by Donnella Meadows.
None of the predictions have come true, but that's beside the point. It is the doomsday prophesies that "we must change our ways if we are to save spaceship Earth" that dominates the scene. This is also what comes across in the classroom. The purpose is to turn children into political activists for the cause. The same is true for addressing other social or life related issues. This is what Washinton SPI Bergeson meant, in her state of education speech, when she said, "Education beats out fighting crime, holding the line on taxes, creating new jobs, improving access to health care, or protecting the environment. And, by the way, when we achieve our educational goals, all of these problems will be addressed in new and better ways." In his book, "A Strategy for the Future, the Systems Approach to World Order," Laszlo predicted that a more accurate and concise model of World 3 would be forthcoming by the mid-1980's. This, or something similar, is undoubtedly where the predictions of what the world will look like in the 21st Century are coming from. The point that needs to be made here, is that in predicting the future, the future can also be created, starting at point A and return to it. In other words, whatever the "we" want it to look like. What "we" want it to look like is manifesting itself now in the classrooms across America under Goals 2000, STW and the plethora of bills building the system.
In creating the future, one of the first steps, is to analyze "where we are now" against "where we want to be". This is called a gap analysis. Undoubtedly most have heard this term. The gap analysis become the foundation of the change strategy--what "we" need to do to move people from "where they are now" to where "we want them to be"--from "here" to "there".
The facilitative process then becomes the bridge between "here" and "there" whether in the classroom or in the community. This is why facilitators are used in the whole of the process, whether in the classroom or in establishing the mission and vision statements and the exit outcomes. Once the cyclical process is put in motion, theoretically it will envelope the whole community at some point--except for holdouts like me. The success of systems thinking, however, is contigent on it encompassing everyone--all. Because not everyone can be so controlled, the necessity comes eventually, in the interests of the system, to invoke tyrannical means of achieving and maintaining compliance. This is why, in the USSR, dissidents were labeled "mentally ill" and incarcerated.
What is being achieved in America today is known as transformational Marxism, meaning that whereas it was achieved through revolution in Russia, and attempted in Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini, it is being achieved through gradualism in the United States. This is where the term transformational comes into play, especially in the third stage of OBE known as transformational outcome based education wherein social and life related issues become the primary focus of the classroom with knowledge only incorporated as it is used and applied.
Systems thinking is the method of achieving and maintaining a planned economy, in which every facet is carefully monitored and carefully controlled, including the human factor. Accountability, under systems thinking, is the gathering and analysis of statistically data to measure evolution to outcomes. Thus the establishment of huge data banks housing personally identifiable information on every man, woman, and child.
Coercion becomes a definite factor in achieving the desired outcome--whether it is determined that the parent, teacher or child is the problem. [end 2 of 3]