SciHi - Bethesda Born Movements #1

Here's a bit of the spiralling future history of Sci-Hi's trajectory -lets make science fairs communally and collaboratively beautiful again as our nine-year olds could say in their 5-year diary projects -with special thanks in recent months to guides and co-mentoring in Catholic schools of Bethesda and hubs in Brazil and the world's leading philanthropists of microfinance's waves, and every woman or man of goodwill to have spoken up at Club of DC crossroads of leadership

sci-hi is a tributary of web2.1, which is a tributary of death of distance
futures writers, is a tributary of The Economist's preneurial schools (1, 2) that
healthy societies compound strong economies, never the other way round...
more at http://deathofdistance.blogspot.com and http://clubofbethesda.blogspot.com

Note how Death of Distance became a leading catchphrase in this week's State of the Union according to the 21 merry businessmen and good women at http://darwin.nap.edu/execsumm_pdf/11463.pdf - if you look at President Bush's cluster (see post below) you will see that all those leading business executives are men (do correct me if I err, the few women named have not help global CEO or presidential power -margin note: interesting how clusters of 21 are formed)

sci-hi maps clusters of 21 people who are making noisy or practical waves for
the revolution of every child needs access to learn as much science as they
can be inspired to openly space, or however you (if you are American) word the
President's mission with science schooling to be more exciting publicly than
the space race of the 60s; our transparency rule is form a cluster of 21 who
love the mission the same way, and start networking out experiments; later we
can see how to connect all the clusters harmoniously

Sci-Hi (in this case the capitals may be a core catalyst) is designed as a open source brand concerned with this invitation first propagated around the Open Space listserve- a 25 year development oout of Potomac MD that connects/netwoprks 1000 conflict resolving and community alumni in 100 countries and over 50000 practical events: that 9 to 13 year olds are inspired to lead science curricula back into every community in a way that, with a particular emphasis on girls leading the way if the boys are lagging in humanity of visioning

I declare a vested interest. My daughter turns nine on Valentine's day. Her
catholic school in the region of Bethesda is a good space for confidence in practising community but does not have a science lab. It seems time that there is an insurgence in Washington RC until the Archdiocese invents whatever is the minimum lab a virtual connecting age can share so that 9 to 13 year old girls have as much opportunity to open space science around the world as anyone else. I am quite excited that list will have another 20 people who can find a parallel mission to connect us in SciHi. I don't particularly want to lead this but I suggest people who may be interested in piloting SciHi email me at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk and once a first
list of 21 people are signed it I will mail it back to this listserve and we
can take constitutional matters of revolution from there.

There is also the opportunity to co-edit http://scihi.blogspot.com if anyone
feels that's a way they want to connect

cheers
chris macrae, a bethesdian whose tributaries as a mathematician and Club of City mapmaker of networks include projects in 30 Asian and commonwealth countries, the London village of ecosaintjames, the computer assisted national development Uk program out of Leeds, the open economics and societal entrepreneur clans of Scotland, and several generations of doctors and constitutional lawyers in India and Australia

the biggest new networks all my co-mentors aim to revolve round in 2006 are web2.1 and its sci-hi tributaries and photosynthesis of clean water/energy (1 2) including any way we can support weaning USA from its adddiction to the petroleum economy and the 5 year ethanol race so that cars can be driven as far as theior owners wisk without bankrupting or carbonising the economies and communities of America's hi-trust peoples

The watson search add on is pretty cool, and make science searching quite a WOW . My first ever gift from it was this bookmark from Unesco


News
Communication and Information Sector's daily news service


Advanced Search
UNESCO/IFIP World Computer Congress Declaration on Youth in Information Society
17-09-2002 ()
"Young people are at the forefront of technological innovation and development" declared the participants of the IFIP World Computer Congress (Montreal, Canada, 25-30 August 2002). It is important to "ensure digital inclusion of youth in the field of education, sciences, culture and communication" states the Declaration, a contribution to the World Summit on the Information Society.
The "UNESCO/IFIP World Computer Congress 2002 Youth Declaration", highlights the importance for governments to include in national ICT policies the development of ICT skills for young people. The Declaration also states that global access to information and knowledge sources of young people is a prerequisite for competent social choice, behaviour and participation and for disseminating information about issues having a practical impact on the every day life of young people. Other elements of the Youth Declaration concern access to education and the training of young people in ICT skills; improved network access at affordable cost and the design of funding schemes and programmes such as fellowships, competitions and contests, that could help improving the access of young people to ICTs especially in the developing countries. The Declaration also calls for the using ICTs to enable disabled and handicapped youth to participate more actively in society. The 17th World Computer Congress entitled "Information technology for our times. Ideas, research and application in an inclusive world" was held in Montreal, Canada from 25 to 30 August 2002. The UNESCO sponsored event concentrates on computer security and on youth and ICTs. The Congress, a joint initiative of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) and the Fédération de l’informatique du Québec (FIQ) provided an opportunity for researchers, professionals and information technology experts, educators and policy makers to share present and planned action and to discuss the state of the art in information technology.

From ACES, supporter O'Donnell

It seems to me that we need to design a process outlining future curricula of science that is transparency and permits 360 degrees of views; what I would love to see is a Deep Deomcracy approach which deliberately encurages people to state exceptional views they have rather than letting some groupthing to take over

David Orr may be on one of the edges but he has a view that I hope is included in the future of science education

extract from this context article from back in 1990!

WHAT EDUCATION MUST BE FOR
Measured against the agenda of human survival, how might we rethink education? Let me suggest six principles.

First, all education is environmental education. By what is included or excluded we teach students that they are part of or apart from the natural world. To teach economics, for example, without reference to the laws of thermodynamics or those of ecology is to teach a fundamentally important ecological lesson: that physics and ecology have nothing to do with the economy. That just happens to be dead wrong. The same is true throughout all of the curriculum.

A second principle comes from the Greek concept of paideia. The goal of education is not mastery of subject matter, but of one's person. Subject matter is simply the tool. Much as one would use a hammer and chisel to carve a block of marble, one uses ideas and knowledge to forge one's own personhood. For the most part we labor under a confusion of ends and means, thinking that the goal of education is to stuff all kinds of facts, techniques, methods, and information into the student's mind, regardless of how and with what effect it will be used. The Greeks knew better.

Third, I would like to propose that knowledge carries with it the responsibility to see that it is well used in the world. The results of a great deal of contemporary research bear resemblance to those foreshadowed by Mary Shelley: monsters of technology and its byproducts for which no one takes responsibility or is even expected to take responsibility. Whose responsibility is Love Canal? Chernobyl? Ozone depletion? The Valdez oil spill? Each of these tragedies were possible because of knowledge created for which no one was ultimately responsible. This may finally come to be seen for what I think it is: a problem of scale. Knowledge of how to do vast and risky things has far outrun our ability to use it responsibly. Some of it cannot be used responsibly, which is to say safely and to consistently good purposes.

Fourth, we cannot say that we know something until we understand the effects of this knowledge on real people and their communities. I grew up near Youngstown, Ohio, which was largely destroyed by corporate decisions to "disinvest" in the economy of the region. In this case MBAs, educated in the tools of leveraged buyouts, tax breaks, and capital mobility have done what no invading army could do: they destroyed an American city with total impunity on behalf of something called the "bottom line." But the bottom line for society includes other costs, those of unemployment, crime, higher divorce rates, alcoholism, child abuse, lost savings, and wrecked lives. In this instance what was taught in the business schools and economics departments did not include the value of good communities or the human costs of a narrow destructive economic rationality that valued efficiency and economic abstractions above people and community.

My fifth principle follows and is drawn from William Blake. It has to do with the importance of "minute particulars" and the power of examples over words. Students hear about global responsibility while being educated in institutions that often invest their financial weight in the most irresponsible things. The lessons being taught are those of hypocrisy and ultimately despair. Students learn, without anyone ever saying it, that they are helpless to overcome the frightening gap between ideals and reality. What is desperately needed are faculty and administrators who provide role models of integrity, care, thoughtfulness, and institutions that are capable of embodying ideals wholly and completely in all of their operations.

Finally, I would like to propose that the way learning occurs is as important as the content of particular courses. Process is important for learning. Courses taught as lecture courses tend to induce passivity. Indoor classes create the illusion that learning only occurs inside four walls isolated from what students call without apparent irony the "real world." Dissecting frogs in biology classes teaches lessons about nature that no one would verbally profess. Campus architecture is crystallized pedagogy that often reinforces passivity, monologue, domination, and artificiality. My point is simply that students are being taught in various and subtle ways beyond the content of courses.

AN ASSIGNMENT FOR THE CAMPUS
If education is to be measured against the standard of sustainability, what can be done? I would like to make four propsals. First, I would like to propose that you engage in a campus-wide dialogue about the way you conduct your business as educators. Does four years here make your graduates better planetary citizens or does it make them, in Wendell Berry's words, "itinerant professional vandals"? Does this college contribute to the development of a sustainable regional economy or, in the name of efficiency, to the processes of destruction?

My second suggestion is to examine resource flows on this campus: food, energy, water, materials, and waste. Faculty and students should together study the wells, mines, farms, feedlots, and forests that supply the campus as well as the dumps where you send your waste. Collectively, begin a process of finding ways to shift the buying power of this institution to support better alternatives that do less environmental damage, lower carbon dioxide emissions, reduce use of toxic substances, promote energy efficiency and the use of solar energy, help to build a sustainable regional economy, cut long-term costs, and provide an example to other institutions. The results of these studies should be woven into the curriculum as interdisplinary courses, seminars, lectures, and research. No student should graduate without understanding how to analyze resource flows and without the opportunity to participate in the creation of real solutions to real problems.

Third, reexamaine how your endowment works. Is it invested according to the Valdez principles? Is it invested in companies doing responsible things that the world needs? Can some part of it be invested locally to help leverage energy efficiency and the evolution of a sustainable economy throughout the region?

Finally, I propose that you set a goal of ecological literacy for all of your students. No student should graduate from this or any other educational institution without a basic comprehension of:

the laws of thermodynamics
the basic principles of ecology
carrying capacity
energetics
least-cost, end-use analysis
how to live well in a place
limits of technology
appropriate scale
sustainable agriculture and forestry
steady-state economics
environmental ethics
Do graduates of this college, in Aldo Leopold's words, know that "they are only cogs in an ecological mechanism such that, if they will work with that mechanism, their mental wealth and material wealth can expand indefinitely (and) if they refuse to work with it, it will ultimately grind them to dust." Leopold asked: "If education does not teach us these things, then what is education for?"