Reconstituting the Curriculum

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Reconstituting the Curriculum

By

M. R. Islam, Gary M. Zatzman, and Jaan Islam

Copyright © 2014 by Scrivener Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Co-published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Hoboken, New Jersey, and Scrivener Publishing LLC, Salem, Massachusetts.Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Printed in the United States of America

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M. Rafi q Islam would like to dedicate the book to his wife, Meltem Islam, whose love of children has turned her into the most natural teacher he has

come to know personally.

Gary Zatzman would like to dedicate this book to all the three dozen researchers who participated in the groundbreaking work unfolded by the Energy-Environment-Communications (EEC) Research Group between

2003 and 2008 and published in some 100 refereed articles and more than a dozen books and research monographs.

Jaan Islam would like to dedicate this book to Allah, the Creator of everything and His fi nal messenger, Prophet Muhammad, who epitomized

the principle of teaching by example.

vii

Contents

Foreword xiiiAcknowledgments xvPreface xvii

1 Introduction 11.1 Widespread malaise — a Summary 11.2 Thought as Material 81.3 Renewal of Thought-Material Resources and the

Nature-Science Approach 91.3.1 Education as Thought-Material processing 10

2 Curriculum — The Place Where Tangible Content Wrestles Intangible Process 192.1 Introduction 192.2 What is ‘Human Thought Material’? 212.3 Why This Starting Point? 222.4 HTM from the Nature-Science Standpoint 24

2.4.1 “Acts of Finding Out” as the basic Quanta of HTM 25

2.4.2 Individual & Social character of “Acts of Finding Out” 25

2.4.3 The Milgram Program and HTM 282.4.4 Post-9/11 Assaults on HTM 302.4.5 Collective forms of HTM 36

viii Contents

2.4.6 Determining and Distinguishing Individual and Collective Aspects of HTM: The Role of Delinearized History 40

2.4.7 Destination of HTM 442.5 Commodifi cation of HTM 462.6 HTM vs Commodifi cation 47

2.6.1 The Education System’s Demands for Reform of Mechanism vs HTM’s Need for Renewal of Organism 48

2.6.2 “Negating the Negation”: Eurocentrism as a Knowledge-Negating Criterion 50

2.6.3 “Education” as a Universal Process Conditioned by the Needs of Particular Social Formations 53

2.6.4 Emergence of Curriculum — Root/Pathway Analysis 54

2.7 Skills Development versus Learning from Acts of “Finding Out” 572.7.1 Introduction 572.7.2 Technology Development 592.7.3 Science of Contemporary Technological

Development 602.8 Current Practices in Education 65

2.8.1 Computerizing the “Proof” of Plagiarism: A Cautionary Tale 65

2.9 The Need for the Science of Intangibles as the Basis for Education 69

2.10 The Tangible-Intangible Nexus 702.11 The Encounter between European and Islamic

Outlooks — a Delinearized History 742.11.1 The Contributions of Greek philosophy

and Other Cultural achievements to Islamic scholarship 75

2.11.2 What is New in this Proposed Curriculum 802.12 Final Words About Education and Training 85

3 Intention: Its Individual and Social Purposes 873.1 Introduction 873.2 Human Thought Material: A “Root + Pathway”

Analysis 88

Contents ix

3.3 Fœtal Learning 883.4 Aspects of Pre-School Learning and Early

Development of Individuals’ own Thought-Material 90

3.5 Intention: Origins 913.5.1 Intention: Anti-Nature direction of

Current Modes of Development 933.5.2 Intention: Introducing the Aphenomenal

Model & its Mythological Emulation of Nature 97

3.5.3 The Science of Intention 1013.6 Nature for Sale? 102

3.6.1 Nature for Sale: Energy Compromised 1033.6.2 Nature for Sale: Air Compromised 1043.6.3 Nature for Sale: Water Compromised 1043.6.4 Nature for Sale: Food Compromised 1053.6.5 Nature for Sale: Effi ciency Compromised 105

3.7 Conclusions 107

4 Fundamental Changes in Curriculum Development 1094.1 Introduction 1094.2 Struggle for Educational Reform: Internal and

External Factors 1114.3 Muslim-Christian Confl ict: A Delinearized

Short History 1124.4 Why did the Scientifi c Revolution Break Out

in Europe and Not the Islamic World? 1164.5 Education and Civilization: a Delinearized History 117

4.5.1 Ibn Khaldun 1174.6 Education and Civilization: the Delinearized

Future Prospect of a Reconstituted Curriculum 123

5 Sustainability and Change in Curriculum Development: The HSSA Syndrome and Other Maladies 1255.1. Truth is Knowledge, Knowledge is Peace,

So … What’s the Problem? 1255.2 What is Sustainability? 1265.3 What Happens When a Process is Not Sustainable 1275.4 Theories Proven Wrong? How About ‘Laws’? 131

x Contents

5.5 Could this be Averted, and if so, How? 1365.6 Theory, Empirical Outlook and Disinformation

in the Social Sciences 141

6 The Nature-Science Criterion 1516.1 Introduction — Can Modern Science Distinguish

Truth From Falsehood? 1516.1.1 Focus on tangibles — Disinforming

individuals’ capacity to act on conscience and blocks access to pathways on which knowledge of truth could be increased 152

6.1.2 Focus on tangibles — “New Science” vs Science of Intangibles 154

6.1.3 Focus on tangibles — The Myth of “Abrahamic Consensus” 157

6.2 Tangible-Intangible Nexus & the criterion of Truth vs Falsehood 159

6.3 Negative Impacts of the Science of Tangibles 1636.3.1 Tangible Knowledge-in-General vs

Intangible Knowledge-for-us 1686.3.2 Implications of the Nature Science Criterion

for the Gathering and Dissemination of Knowledge 169

6.3.3 Science of Matter and Energy as Reconstructed from Natural Technologies Incorporated Among Earliest Foundations of Human Civilization 170

6.3.4 Science of Matter and Energy vs the Eurocentric Knowledge Trail 171

6.3.5 The Eurocentric Knowledge Trail & the Characterization of the Science of Matter and Energy — A Delinearized History 174

6.3.6 Mass and Energy Management in the Middle East — the Delinearized History 183

Contents xi

7 The HSS®A® Phenomenon 1917.1 Introduction 1917.2 The HSS®A® (Honey � Sugar � Saccharin® �

Aspartame®) Pathway 1937.2.1 HSS®A® Pathway in Education 1987.2.2 HSS®A® Pathway in Education: a Brave

New World of Training Courses for Everything as the Ultimate Commodifi cation of Knowledge 200

8 Concluding Remarks & Observations 2078.1 Introduction 207

The Appendices 209Appendix 1a 211Appendix 2a 325Appendix 3a 411

References and Bibliography 463

Index 505

xiii

Foreword

In the modern age, we have learned Image is everything. Image, however is not the truth. It is no wonder that we are also familiar with the slogan: Truth hurts. If knowl-edge is the familiarity of the truth, seeking knowledge is perhaps the most dangerous pre-occupation. This is only matched by the pre-occupation of creating a curriculum that is based on Knowledge or the pursuit of it. In fact, the pre-occupation of promot-ing pursuit of truth, even when that truth could very well speak of destabilizing a sys-tem that gave rise to the onset of revolution is so dangerous, requires unprecedented courage to write about this idea. The book promises a paradigm shift, it’s a such buzzword that if I didn’t know or admired the courage of the lead author for over a quarter of a century, I would have discarded the notion of paradigm shift in educa-tion as a ploy to draw attention. I do know the lead author as the most-published petroleum engineer in the world and as the mastermind of many breakthrough ideas in topics ranging from petroleum engineering to clinical research, from engineering education to political science and economics. I also know him as possibly the most fearless advocate of freedom of speech and the defender of the weak and vulnerable. It doesn’t come to me as a surprise that he has the courage to confront and expose all shortcomings of modern education system and to tout the principle of equating Knowledge with the pursuit of Truth and relate it to the only motive of education. This concept is incredibly simple, yet the outcome is so revealing that few ventured into writing about it. Only in the Information Age that assured us transparency that we can tolerate and, in fact, cherish such a book as a treasure.

If pursuit of truth is a dangerous preposition, touting it as a means of creat-ing revolution in anything, not to mention in Education, is an absurd concept. In fact, history tells us most people do not consider revolution as anything other than ‘trouble’ until the trouble is over and revolutionaries have prevailed. If the ‘trouble’ succumbs to the Establishment, the revolutionary concept is quickly dis-carded. Such reaction to revolutionary ideas is easily understood through the fear of failure. People who lack self-confi dence often fi nd themselves having an axe to grind and fi nd all the reasons to support the Establishment. It is also a well-known fact that no Establishment ever supported revolution or revolutionaries. In this, the Establishment of the education system is no exception and indeed is the most unlikely place to create revolutionaries. Unfortunately for the Establishment, no quantum change – change worthy of a mention in a positive context has ever taken place without a revolution. The modern age hasn’t seen a revolution for

xiv Foreword

sometime. It is about time such revolution take place in the most unlikely site – the educational arena.

Few have the aptitude of seeing education and revolution in the same breadth. Education has been touted as a means to promote status quo. How can that be open to create a revolution? It is true, if the original intent of education was ever promoted (or even tolerated), there would be no need for revolution. As this book points out, we have somehow moved away (or we were never there) from the fun-damental principles of education. When did we ever glorify the person who enters a University to learn and exits to serve? How often we honor a professor who calls himself a partner in learning (along with students)? How often we see the grade point average of a student refl ective of his/her knowledge?

This book talks about revolutionizing the education system. Because this is done through Knowledge-based curriculum, with any self respect and notion of human dignity, we have to call this revolution safe and indeed essential for the future. Knowledge being the truth about everything, it signs toward infi nitude. Only human being with unwavering passion for the pursuit of truth can approach this infi nitude. Any short-term or worldly motive can only hurl a person toward negative infi nity. This is the essence of the message delivered in this book.

What is not talked about is how this approach will revolutionize the society. Even though examples from energy, environment, and communication (which vir-tually cover all aspects of human lives) are given throughout the book, the same approach can be used for revolutionizing any curriculum. This indeed is a very tantalizing proposition and the impact of this education system on the society can-not be over-emphasized. Either the author has a plan to write future books on the impact or he wants the readership to develop their own research topics on the sub-ject, but I can hardly wait to see the impact if a university indeed used the curricu-lum. It will be the onset of a revolution that is bound to sweep the academic world.

This book will certainly offend many – perhaps the vast majority of those who benefi t from status quo. The author questions every single popular slogan, even the ‘progressive’ one that has been in the works from virtually all sectors. He calls ‘sustainability’ a distraction, ‘economic development’ a ploy, ‘learning-based edu-cation’ a mere training scheme, ‘know how’ a euphemism for selling status quo, and the list goes on. It is not easy to swallow this pill. After all, any revolution is a nuisance at best, unless successful. Revolution in education is no exception. We cannot expect the author to promote the virtue of self learning, learning without expensive tools, overbearing overburdens, and the pomp of classical learning and be supported by the establishment.

For those who have found the Information Age breaking all promises of Infi nite Justice, and for those who feel perturbed by the omens of Infi nite Injustice in all areas of life, this book brings hope for the future and shows the way to reverse the trend of infi nite injustice and form a society based on Justice, Peace, and Equality. For those who benefi t from the status quo, this book comes with a warning – the policy based on self-interest and short-term focus never pays and indeed can bring down the most fortifi ed infrastructure beneath the rubble of history. This book could not have come at a more appropriate time.

G.V. ChilingarianProfessor, University of Southern California

President, Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, USA Branch

xv

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the unintended role that so many teachers by negative example have played throughout our lives in helping expose unexamined First Assumptions. Each author has a number of such teachers that they can cite. However, for the purpose of this book, it would suffi ce to say that such teach-ers should be acknowledged because their negative examples rep-resent the most important database for human thought material. They also teach the valuable lesson that both good and evil serve unique roles in fulfi lling the purpose of the universal order.

It would be a remiss if the authors didn’t acknowledge the role of other teachers as well as similarly remarkable individuals that helped sharpen arguments in favor of knowledge-based education and against robotic training, often misconstrued as ‘education’. These individuals are real assets and their well-intended contribu-tions must be celebrated.

• Hardial Bains• Prof. Amit Chakma• Prof. G.V. Chilingar• Prof. R.E. Collins• Les Ferley• Prof. Farouq Ali• Dr. Sk. Saad Dabbous• Dr. D. W. L. Earle• Dr Andrew Garrod• Ali Islam• Prof. M. Aminul Islam• Prof. M. Anwarul Islam• Prof. M. Monirul Islam• Anthony Kennett

xvi Acknowledgments

• M. Moniruzzaman Khan• Prof. Axel Meisen• M. Ali Hassan Mughal• Dr. Shabbir Mustafi z• Prof. K. Nandakumar• David Prior• M. Rahmatullah• Dr. Sadeq Magboub• Dr. Mohammed Muntasser• Dr. J. Speight• Dr. Sara Thomas• Prof. C.L. Tien• Dr. Hans Vaziri• Prof. T.F. Yen

xvii

Preface

Do we want whole-people or half-people in society of the present and future? The “modern age” discovered division of labour as a device for harnessing to the pur-pose of rapidly accumulating wealth. But this has been done with a ruthlessness and thoroughness that utterly overwhelmed humanity. We have today arrived at the Information Age. Even the most intimate products of the human brain are routinely converted into so-called intellectual, i.e., private, property. This is evidence of the existence and operation of an economic machine that thrives on cannibalizing the so-called valuable parts of people -- their labour time, their skill at this or that, their creativity -- while leaving the rest of the carcass behind to rot.

At the same time, meanwhile, massive social problems have accumulated and festered on global scale. Whatever worked to alleviate these problems (we can-not speak yet of “solutions”) in the past no longer works on a local scale. The old cannibalistic methods of mustering only the “valuable” bits of the human person have guaranteed failure and almost ensure that the problems will overwhelm us.

As for the material preconditions necessary to tackle problems on global scale, we actually lack for nothing: we basically know how to overcome ignorance, illit-eracy, disease and so on and so forth. The problem is at the level of 1) intention and 2) conscience.

People in general do not harbor particularly evil intentions towards their fel-low humans. To get them to condone or not resist the infl iction of evil, the British discovered, the Nazis industrialized and the U.S. today has further modernized the techniques for the corrupting of conscience. The corrupting of conscience is something that is not easy to do on an individual, person-to-person basis, but ter-rifyingly easy to accomplish on a mass scale (through mobilizing mass media to purvey disinformation, etc.).

One important starting-point for reversing this trend and undoing the damage is to stop the corrupting process in its tracks. The educational system has become a vehicle of such strategic importance in all societies for accommodating people to accepting the globalized status-quo. The reconstitution of the whole human per-son is what can and must be addressed through the new curriculum that invokes paradigm shift in the education system.

Some present “education” as a transmission, or uptake, of skills that lead to employment. Others view it as a “state of being”, protected by an academic

xviii Preface

priesthood for whom an aspirant must fi rst prove himself/herself “worthy” before being permitted to continue through the gates towards ever more refi ned stages of “excellence”. This book, however, rejects both positions and delivers the message instead of researching and investigating matters in order to arrive at the truth. Truth is that which is transparent, refl ecting no image back and there-fore unavailable for twisting or corruption through subsequent acts of “interpre-tation”. Education is thus redefi ned as that which takes place as the result of the individual’s personal participation in acts of fi nding-out. This fi nally disposes of the straitjacket created by the obsolescent and sterile debate over whether educa-tion is a matter of “skills” or of “excellence” and grace.

Consider what happens when it comes to the training of engineers and the repositioning of how problems with energy supply, environmental risks and the opening and maintenance of channels for the most direct and least-mediated communication between technical experts, administrative offi cials and different sections of the public over how to implement solutions and which problems to prioritize. Clearly: insisting today on such a revolution in education could not be more relevant.

“Ah, Enron!”, the reader might rush to guess. But actually, the best example that one can cite comes from a common phenomenon — a system-protecting power grid shutdown —unleashed on an uncommonly unprecedented scale. In August 2003, 10 million residents of the Canadian province of Ontario and a further 40 million in the American states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire were caught and left largely on their own to cope without electricity, in the biggest power blackout in either country’s history. The fact that the stock exchanges of Toronto and New York were reopening before many people have even made it back to their homes and families and lives is being hailed as proof of the resiliency of a system that is broken. The disconnect between the authorities and the public in these conditions was never clearer than the moment when New York mayor Michael Bloomberg addressed his fellow citizens and the world concerning the measures being taken to reach out and keep the public tuned in to develop-ments and measures undertaken for their safety and welfare. As corporatizer of one of the most advanced computerized fi nancial reporting systems in the world (Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Financial Services), the New York mayor is a real-life dot-com millionaire. “The city”, he said with the greatest tone of reassurance in his voice, “is posting updates on its website...” And just how were any of his fellow-citizens supposed to get there? Even authorities as savvy about high technology and its possibilities as the current mayor of New York City still don’t get it! This incident is not about the inconveniencing of millions of individuals. It is about society being caught unprepared --- actually: utterly stripped and devoid of any reserves or redundant capacities to deal with --- the known and predictable consequences which were latent from the outset in the choices taken years before as to how to implement crucial technological changes in “modernizing” the largest-scale power grids of the North American continent according to the gospel of “deregulation”.

This book takes apart the current education system that is indeed based on doctrinal philosophy. Even though a secular status had been claimed for it, the

Preface xix

European Renaissance did not remove any of the paradoxes that were rife and left over from the Middle Ages. If one sets apart the hypothesis that modern public education and its New (all tangibles all the time) With Science’s core based on sec-ular logic, it becomes clear that the modern education system is full of paradoxes and contradictions precisely because it includes the same process that doctrinal philosophy used. Because of inherent fl aws of our education system, it is impos-sible for our system to make the necessary paradigm shift that requires change in both source and process of scientifi c cognition. This book suggests a very clear general outline of the curriculum transformations needed to get out of the present rut. These curriculum suggestions all rest on essential fundamental principles and groundwork for advancing a truly secular, non-dogmatic curriculum in any fi eld or level of study, be it short- or medium training programs or more fully-rounded professional formation/preparation, and in any venue from classroom to online, and at any level from elementary to PhD.

M Rafi qul IslamGary M Zatzman

Jaan Islam

1

1.1 Widespread malaise — a Summary

Current education and its institutional order seem to be in a mess everywhere. There’s no point beating about the bush. Education represents nothing but training, and that in a system that promotes maintenance of the status quo and induces a thinking pattern that can be characterized as ‘anti-Knowledge.’

So, why yet another book on the theme of “why our education system must change”? The authors reside in Canada, where a general North American educa-tional processing system reproduces all the same problems seen on larger scale in the United States.

The U.S. population is 10 times that of Canada’s. Discussion and debate is accordingly louder, its addiction to the status-quo accordingly more acute, and the desperation to be found at the extremities of the discussion spectrum of discussion accordingly more crazed.

For some time in the U.S., some faction or other has been popping up here and there predicting imminent doom and disaster looming as a result of some actual reform of the education system, or some proposed reform or some resistance to any reform. Is there anything different this time? Where’s the fi re?

Public education has been a major part of social discussion in the United States since the 1840s. Ferment of this kind, however seemingly alarming, has become normal ever since. Today, no less than before, this discourse still includes a wide number and range of predictions about the education system’s imminent crash or decline. Widely divergent recipes are touted, each promising to reform, salvage,

1Introduction

2 Reconstituting the Curriculum

or somehow fundamentally transform the system. Few if any of these promised scenarios, meanwhile, have subsequently lived up to their advance notices.

Over the decades, a number of unstated assumptions have become built into the discourse surrounding education reform. Probably the single most widely accepted assumption concerns the social purpose(s) of education. Until very recently, there have been few newcomers to, or citizens and residents of, the United States who were in any doubt about the major role the education system was expected to fulfi ll. It was expected to prepare the next generation for taking up all the responsibilities of citizenship in a democratic republic, from contributing to society and one’s family’s development in some position of employment to voting.

Within all the social, political and economic structures and discourses of U.S. society, a number of deep fractures have opened up during the last decade, espe-cially since “9-11.” The extent, depth and intensity of these fractures frequently exceed even the existing and long-established divides of race and class. The emergence and further development of these fault-lines challenge a previously-assumed broad consensus about the existence and historic mission of the United States as a democratic republic.

The revolution in information technologies of the last several decades and its impacts in the education system are on many peoples’ lips. Far less remarked, how-ever, have been the accumulating impacts of such developments on the present and future of the educational process, which are increasingly profound. Daily, meanwhile, it is these impacts that can be seen transforming the actual discussion about the needs of educational reform. These are the processes forming the backdrop to the kinds of “change” in the education system that the present book proposes to address.

The argument for the kind of change this book has in mind now proceeds to prepare the reader with an examination of the usual evidences of reality, focusing on some of the more concerning negative trends.

Performance indices:

• international comparison of math scores1 for elementary and middle school students within the United States;

• dropout rates from Grades 9 thru 12 in U.S. schools2; • changes in graduation rates for science and engineering3;

Dissatisfaction and disenchantment with the performance of and future prospects for the public education system have become widespread throughout the United States and other countries of the Americas and Europe. Crushingly high rates of unemployment and underemployment confront university graduates, further

1 The data discussed here are reported in (Gonzales, 2008), available online via Google Scholar at http: //eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp _nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED503625&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED503625 <examine ED503625.pdf>2 The data discussed here are reported in (Laird et al., 2007), available online from Google Scholar <examine Dropouts_2007059.pdf>3 The data discussed here are reported in (Lowell & Salzman, 2007), available online via Google Scholar at http ://www.urban.org/publications/411562.html <examine 411562_Salzman_Science.pdf>

Introduction 3

fuelling this malaise.4 Public soul-searching about the value of formal education seems to intensify by the month, by the week, by the day and even by the hour.

Notice, however, the sorts of things about which the most detailed statistics are collected and analyzed: they are all about outcomes. Whatever may actually have happened personally, subjectively, to or for the individuals undergoing processing by the educational system is secondary to the point of invisibility. The criteria of interest are those that can be measured and ranked. The fact remains, however, that such a seemingly rational and quantitative approach tells us little or nothing about how individuals combine what they take away with them from the experi-ence of the educational process into the rest of their lives. Absent this human fac-tor, the education system reduces to some mere training regime. It seems patently obvious to the authors, and to many of our colleagues, friends, relatives and other associates, that reordering or reforming any aspect of the educational process without any serious handle on this supremely important qualitative dimension we call the “human factor” is a fool’s errand, inherently wasteful of scarce and highly-valued public resources.

The main upshot of such an intensely narrow focus on readily quantifi -able outcomes and comparisons has inevitably favored, and strengthened, certain ideological agendas over others. Thus, there are those who think that, since everything that is truly valued in this society carries a price-tag and some privately-based level of ownership of the productive apparatus, mean-ingful educational reform conditioned by these criteria could best be accom-plished by re-casting the educational process as a commercial service operation. Government support for those necessary parts that as yet cannot be rendered a source of private profi t is accepted, but any other kind of government support is considered an undesirable intrusion. As might be expected in a society that places the greatest faith in private-sector solutions to major social problems, the “charter-school movement” in the United States has taken off over the last cou-ple of decades as one of the preferred alternatives to publicly-maintained K-12 schools. Today, this has reached the point that a number of public school districts in the U.S. have launched charter schools of their own, with special federal fund-ing, as something of a controlled experiment in providing private school options alongside public ones.5

Back in the second paragraph of this Introduction, we mentioned the fact that ferment around the perceived or most cherished purposes of public instruction is nothing new in U.S. education. Starting less than 20 years before the Civil War, a broad discourse emerged — centred in Boston, which was already the schol-arly and educational centre of the American republic — concerning the appropri-ate roles to be fulfi lled by public education in a country that been created both as a negation of continental European traditions of feudalism, monarchy, an Established Church, etc. from the Old World and as a bastion of “Anglo-Saxon liberty” in the New World. Although the U.S. by no means invented the theory

4 See for example the April 2012 survey article by Hope Yen of The Associated Press entitled “1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed” [available online at http://news.yahoo.com/1-2-graduates-jobless-underemployed-140300522.html] 5 In a number of U.S. states — Arizona and Nevada being the most recent — separate school boards for charter schools have been set up under state supervision.

4 Reconstituting the Curriculum

or practice of systems of public education, its people and communities at various levels were historically open to a wide range of experimentation.

Among the more prominent names associated with this trend were Horace Mann and Noah Webster. This openness itself evolved out of the general acceptance of an important connection that would need to be maintained between the responsibility on the one hand to participate in public forms of democratic decision-making and the ability on the other hand to discharge such responsibility in meaningful ways. Teachers, parents and politicians shared an abiding faith on this point, namely: that all the outstanding problems could and would be addressed and eventually resolved in favor of increased democratic participation. Even in the teeth of the most blatant forms of class and racial discrimination that would blight the delivery of public edu-cational services across most of the southern United States until the 1960s, and that also hampered educational opportunities in many of the impoverished inner cities of the largest conurbations of the north-central and northeastern United States for much of the 20th century, this point of consensus remained intact.

Over the last two decades following the end of the Cold War, however, it has been precisely this longstanding appearance of consensus that has come increas-ingly into question. Alongside the maintenance of a wide range of choices of pri-vate education facilities for the sons and daughters of the upper middle classes and topmost elites of the United States, entire swaths of the mass public educa-tion system itself are increasingly privatized and maintained according to the “shehadeh,”or central unquestionable central pillar of faith, of post-Cold War America, which is that there is no God but Monopoly and Maximum is its Profi t.

Amidst the widespread sense of unease among Americans over a widely-per-ceived acceleration in the decay of the quality and content of public education and other educational and training opportunities, meanwhile, it turns out that there has been little or no consensus about the best starting-point for overcoming these burdens.

The authors have been moved to produce this book as a contribution to the search for that best starting-point. We see that big business and high fi nance pos-sess countless tentacles that can, and do, reach into many areas of the education system, ranging from the “Channel One” phenomenon6 to building “relations” with a prominent local football team or coach(es) from schools within the public

6 Channel One was founded in 1989 as a news channel geared to high school students, albeit larded with corporate advertising like any conventional television news program. Begun as a pilot program in four high schools before its national rollout in 1990, it was founded by Christopher Whittle, a business executive based in Knoxville, Tennessee. Primedia purchased Channel One for approximately $250 million from Whittle in 1994. By 1997, Primedia had re-classifi ed its Education Segment, which included Channel One Network, as a “discontin-ued operation.” In July, 2007, NBC News announced that it would be partnering with Alloy Media and Marketing (which had purchased Channel One from Primedia) under an arrange-ment in which NBC would work with Channel One News to produce original content for Channel One’s in-school broadcasts, thereby providing Channel One with access to global newsgathering resources. In 2012, it was reported by Press-TV that Channel One had gar-nered greater advertising revenue than the entire amount amassed by the National Football League from corporate sponsors of regular autumn football season fi xtures (“Monday Night Football”) and the Super Bowl combined. Although the deliberate cultivation of another upcoming generation of passive consumers completely hooked from an early age on cor-porate messaging deeply shocked liberal sensitivities and public opinion in many segments of U.S. society, and although quite a few media outlets over the years have reported on this, nothing and no one has yet intervened actually to stop the practice. Indeed the main result of liberal outrage going to court against these practices has resulted in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution being affi rmed as applying to “commercial speech.”

Introduction 5

system. Could these arrangements and resistance to their negative consequences lie at the core of present day-struggles over the form and content of curriculum renewal? Could action around these issues, and about the best practices for facili-tating curriculum reform on an ongoing basis, bring about lasting impact?

In sum, regarding this bottom-line matter of outcomes, the results produced by so-called “modern” systems of education suffer from three major short-comings. They are:

• disconnection between research and academic curriculum; • compartmentalization of different disciplines; and • lack of conscious and conscientious experience.

The disconnection between research and academic curriculum often translates into a reluctance of teachers to upgrade their notes or their knowledge base. A teacher does not consider acquiring knowledge as an integral part of teaching. For students, the lack of research is refl ected by their longing for spoon feeding of information. Teachers/professors teach what they learned many years ago and not what they are learning now. They constantly engage in asking the same question over and over, in name of homework, tests, midterms, or fi nal exams.

In this, the concept of asking real questions or even guiding open-ended ques-tions to has become a forbidden practice among teachers. While asking questions to learn something new remains the most natural reason for asking any question, teachers are engaged in ‘testing’ rather than examining or asking questions while maintaining the term ‘question’. Few teachers even think of asking questions that they do not know answers to.

One of the most deeply entrenched misconceptions stems from the “old school” approach, which prohibited questioning the Establishment. If research starts with asking questions, teachers today are least likely to be any part of research. Their training and work experience leaves them with little or no faculty or aptitude to formulate questions that would lead to new knowledge. Students, on the other hand expect no original research or even individual investigative studies as part of the curriculum. At a later stage, this translates into rejecting the notion of fi nd-ing new solutions for themselves, instead settling for technology transfer, turn-key projects, and fi lling out template forms.

Such compartmentalization stems from the isolationist approach promoted since the dawn of the modern age. Until today, many teachers/professors create intellectual silos around themselves and do not feel they have anything to receive from colleagues, from the industry, from other disciplines or even from different age groups. They are there to ‘preach’, ‘indoctrinate’, ‘teach’, but never to learn for themselves. This modus operandi itself encourages tunnel vision among stu-dents that remain unprepared to live in a society that demands interdisciplinary interactions.

The ultimate result is failure among teachers and students alike to see the big picture. Graduates are treated by the employer as robots, merely conducting repet-itive tasks without any knowledge of what the bigger picture is. In today’s world, there is hardly anyone who can see the big picture and one does not have to look beyond the headlines to realize how helpless the situation is. This has reached the stage where three Nobel Laureates — the Dalai Lama, Shirin Ebadi, and Desmond Tutu — have expressed grave concern for the ‘unintellectuals’ and declared that morality or the presence of empathy is divorced from intellect. They concluded

6 Reconstituting the Curriculum

that intellectual consistency may confl ict with moral conviction and hence one should sacrifi ce the intellectual consistency rather than re-evaluate the moral conviction!7

What has just been described summarizes much if not most of what employers and parents and society-in-general see on the surface much

It has long been implicitly assumed that the over-riding ultimate of education or learning or skills development is for individuals or their employers to make money. While such obsession with tangibles is not in itself new, the monopoliza-tion of this dogma as the only ‘civilized’ is. Numerous examples could be cited, but here we consider just this example, from Nobel-Prize-winning work. In 2008, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to three scientists credited with the discovery of the so-called green fl uorescent protein (GFP). While discovering something that occurs naturally is a lofty goal, New Science does not allow the use of this knowledge for anything other than making money, without regard to long-term impact or the validity of the assumptions behind the application. It turns out that this Nobel Prize-winning technology is being put to work by implanting these proteins in other animals, humans included. Two immediate applications are: 1) the monitoring of brain cells of Alzheimer‘s patients; 2) use as a signal to moni-tor others (including crops infected with disease or infested with disease-carrying pests. Both are money-making ventures, but more importantly: these ventures are based on scientifi cally false premises. For instance, the fi rst application assumes that the implantation (or mutation) of these ‘foreign’ proteins will not alter the natural course of brain cells (affected by Alzheimer’s or not). So, what will be mon-itored is not what would have taken place. Rather what what will be monitored is whatever is going to happen after the implant is in place. These two pathways are not and cannot be identical. More in-depth research (something not allowed to grow out of New Science) would show this line of application is similar to the use of a CT scan (at least 50 times more damaging than an X-ray) for detecting cancer, whereas the CT-scanning process itself is prone to causing cancer (Brenner and Hall, 2007).8 The problem here is not insuffi cient knowledge, as in the proverb about “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. The problem is the actual motives of those with a plan intended for using such discoveries allegedly for “the benefi t of mankind”.

In the fall of 2007, as the time for Nobel Prize awards approached, another controversy broke. Dr. James Watson, the European-American who won the 1962 Nobel Prize for his role in discovering the double-helix structure of DNA, created the most widely publicized fi restorm in the middle of the Nobel Prize awards month (October 2007). He declared that he personally was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says ‘not really.’” Here we see the clash between a fi rst premise on the one hand and a conclusion

7 They announced this conclusion in Canada, of all places. Following the logic of this state-ment, Adolf Hitler would represent the acme of The Intelligent Man whereas murdered Palestinian children would rank ‘unintelligent’ — a conclusion that seems to have escaped everyone’s skepticism.8 The CT-scan study was fi nanced by tobacco companies – the worst perpetrators of cancer in the modern age. The 1979 Nobel Prize was awarded to Hounsfi eld and Cormack for CT scan technology, only for this Nobel Prize-winning technology to be found responsible almost thirty years later for causing many of the cancers that it purports to detect.

Introduction 7

based on a different premise on the other. “Their intelligence is the same as ours” stems from the unstated premise that “all humans are created equal,” a basic tenet of the “nature is perfect” mantra. “All testing” to which Watson refers, on the other hand, is based on the premise that the theory of molecular genetics/DNA (which is linked with an essentially eugenic outlook) is true. The entire controversy, how-ever, ended up revolving entirely around “whether” Dr. Watson is a racist, which he could then reject by hiding behind the claim of being interested solely in the “science”. No one seemed interested in addressing the root cause of this response, namely, an unshakeable conviction shared by Watson and his opponents that New Science represents incontrovertible truth. This faith has the same fervor as those who once thought and disallowed any other theory regarding the earth being fl at.

Consider the apparently magical symmetry of the shapes perpetrated as the “double-helix” structure of DNA. These representations of the “founding blocks” of genes are aphenomenal. That is to say: they are not consistent with the more detailed descriptions of the different bonding strengths of different amino-acid pairings in the actual molecule. Much as atoms were considered to be the building-block of all matter (which was incidentally also rendered with an aphenomenal structure — one that could not exist in nature), these “perfectly” shaped struc-tures are being promoted as building-blocks of a living body. It is only a matter of time before we fi nd out just how distant the reality is from these renderings. The renderings themselves, meanwhile, are aphenomenal, meaning they do not exist in nature. This is a simple logic that the scientifi c world, obsessed with tangibles, seems not to understand.

Only a week before the Watson controversy unraveled, Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies received Nobel Prizes in Medicine for their discovery of “principles for introducing specifi c gene modifi cations in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells.” What is the fi rst premise of this discovery? According to Prof. Stephen O’Rahilly of Cambridge University, “the development of gene targeting technology in the mouse has had a profound infl uence on medi-cal research…Thanks to this technology we have a much better understanding of the function of specifi c genes in pathways in the whole organism and a greater ability to predict whether drugs acting on those pathways are likely to have ben-efi cial effects in disease.” (BBC 2007) Not even a breath of a challenge was reported as to why only “benefi cial effects” should be anticipated from the introduction of “drugs acting on those pathways.” When did intervention in nature, meaning: at this level of very real and even profound ignorance about actual pathways, ever yield any benefi cial result?

Lack of hands-on experience is possibly the biggest problem that the private sector faces today. For instance, the petroleum industry practically has to spend as much money in training young graduates as the money spent in four years of higher education. The current education system relies on an overly structured, suffocating form of imposed knowledge, in which students cannot possibly feel their intrinsic qualifi cations are being enhanced. How to make sure students learn rather than memorize, in the true spirit of education (from the Latin word for “bringing forth”, or “leading out”), is a central preoccupation of this book. There is another aspect to be considered as well. Knowledge can only be accessed through thinking – a tool that is available to all. So, there is no need for any University or a training program to be limited by physical structures or geographical locations. In the same token, there is no need for expensive laboratory facilities, fancy software

8 Reconstituting the Curriculum

packages, and other black box-like gadgets that usually promote reproductive thinking. Contrary to what Henry Ford once promoted as his belief, thinking is inherent to human beings (homo sapiens literally means ‘thinking man’). There is Chinese proverb, “I read and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I under-stand”. Doing is the key to understanding. The most natural thing for a homo sapi-ens to ‘do’ is thinking.

In this book, a new methodology is proposed for eliminating these and other consequential problems affl icting the current approaches to and systems of edu-cational preparation of the next generation. A new curriculum approach is pro-posed in which the role of a teacher shifts to that of students’ partner in learning, rather than an authority fi gure or learning police disguised as “coach,” “teacher” or “facilitator”. The involvement of students aims to ensure that the maximum cre-ativity is used and that the acquisition of new knowledge remains an indigenous process.

This latter point is essential. “Technology transfer”, “knowledge transfer”, “training of trainers” may at fi rst blush appear politically “correct”. In the global economy as currently confi gured, meanwhile, transfers of this kind also repeat-edly compromise quality, human dignity, and economic freedom. By reforming the educational system, any nation can give rise to human resources capable of leading the world. The approach presented in this book, an approach has become both necessary and possible, addresses every discipline at any level.

The cutting edge of such a program would seem to lie with reconceptualizing the content of K-12 curricula. In the upcoming chapter, we begin tackling the fun-damental issues of curriculum from a standpoint not usually found or adopted within the framework of discussions about educational reform.

1.2 Thought as Material

Setting its sights on the educational process, this book necessarily considers that process taken in its most general aspects, and in specifi c detail as actually found across various social formations.

This approach necessarily takes into account what various individuals think or have thought about what the educational process should be. However, it does not take any of those views as its own starting-point. The starting point of this particular book is rather the raw-material content on which the educational process oper-ates — thoughts, ideas, information both collected today as well as compiled in the past by others.

The very idea of thoughts as material, and of education as a process of shaping or refi ning that material, breaks radically and fundamentally with the approach of every other book, journal or presentation that the authors have encountered in their own careers as writers, teachers and researchers. All the claims made for every education process currently in use today — “distance” or person-to-per-son, in cyberspace or physical space — repose ultimate success or effectiveness in acceptance by the individual student or teacher of the AUTHORITY guiding the particular process.

At fi rst blush, since the delivery of educational services is always a “work in progress,” such an approach seems reasonable at least as one kind of measure