Interesting People mailing list archives
a view on education from Ken Wilson (Nobel in Physics). [ Ken is largely credited
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 1994 09:32:10 -0400
Posted-Date: Sun, 18 Sep 1994 10:56:58 -0400 Date: Sun, 18 Sep 1994 10:29:05 -0400 From: Ken Wilson <kgw () pacific mps ohio-state edu> To: farber () central cis upenn EDU Subject: Re: Hi Ken, whats up I have spent the last four years engaged full time in education reform, as a co-PI on Ohio's SSI project: SSI stands for "Statewide Systemic Initiative in mathematics and science education". I have a book being published Nov 21 on my analysis of education's problems. It is called Redesigning Education. Bennett Daviss is the co-author, and Henry Holt the publisher. I have become a sociologist: this transformation was necessary so that I could make sense of the problems blocking education reform, which are mainly sociological in character. My education reform initiative includes bringing teachers onto the Internet. The State has a network serving all schools, but unfortunately its staff is mostly used to Decnet rather than Unix and TCP-IP, so the quality of service is poor. We tried to get NSF support through their recent networking solicitation, which was supposed to help SSI projects like ours; unfortunately, our proposal was rejected. My understanding is that all proposals from other SSI initiatives were rejected too. [I sent Ken a copy of Ericom Editorial and asked him for more of his ideas. djf] Posted-Date: Mon, 19 Sep 1994 17:07:19 -0400 Date: Mon, 19 Sep 1994 17:07:12 -0400 From: Ken Wilson <kgw () pacific mps ohio-state edu> To: farber () central cis upenn edu Subject: Re: Hi Ken, whats up Thanks for your paper on networking. As to my becoming a sociologist, I found out that education in the U. S. is unable to change - at either the K-12 or higher education levels - to meet the needs of today. Instead, education is fifty years out of date and becoming more obsolete every day. There are many barriers to change, all well documented in the sociological literature on education reform. But what it comes down to is that there are innumerable non-communicating cultures in education - from physics teachers to principals to third grade teachers to parents to school board members to members of Congress. Noone has been able to produce a vision of a modernized system of education that meets the needs of all these cultures simultaneously. Hence everyone pushes their own special interest instead, creating a hopeless gridlock.I have now formulated a vision that responds to the problems of all these different constituencies, but is so revolutionary that I would have to teach it in sustained courses of instruction: it cannot be disseminated in a short "vision statement". If education does start to change and modernize, it will become the dominant source of social change in the 21st century. Gigabit networking will be a process in the background by comparison, no matter how spectacular its consequences as seen by technologists. At least, this is my conclusion. My book Redesigning Education will start to introduce the changes that would come with improved education. I need to write many more.
Current thread:
- a view on education from Ken Wilson (Nobel in Physics). [ Ken is largely credited David Farber (Sep 26)