In the context of education reform, parents, citizens,
taxpayers continually hear the term "systems approach" or
"systems thinking." What
is it? What does it mean? Where did it come from? What part will it play in the
restructuring of America?
Systems Thinking
Systems thinking
grew out of the writings of Alfred North Whitehead. The science of systems thinking is credited
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 word about Bertalanffy before continuing. 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 World War II.
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 (the same) across
systems, irrespective of physical appearance.
Stated a bit differently, but to the
same effect, is the Gaia hypothesis which states the world is
a living, breathing organism, irreducible to its parts; that what affects one
part, affects all parts; that in the name of saving spaceship Earth, we must
change our society. The Gaia
hypothesis adds a spiritual (metaphysical) dimension to
systems thinking.
Systems thinking
sees everything as wholistic, with all parts interconnected,
interdependent. In
the words of Senge (1990), 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. 
Many
who have been through the team building process of consensus will
recognize the terms. The systems
thinking model, because of its wholistic approach, is cyclical —
sometimes shown as a circle, sometimes as a spiral. The beginning is the end. You start at point A and your
destination is point A. The journey
between point A and point A is the "process". At point A the change agents decide what
they want the world to look like in x number of years. This is the goal, destination, 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 or her educational experience;
what the child should look like.
The next step is to align everything to
achieve point A, the outcome. In
this endeavor, the curriculum, instruction and teaching methodologies are
aligned to the outcome to ensure that the outcome is reached; the measure of
which is the assessment.
This process is known by many names, among them backmapping. The technical term is a syllogism:
a process used by behavioral scientists to bring about planned change.
Thus it is that mankind can be said to
be creating the future.
It is imperative, at this point, to
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 a tree.
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 created future. That created future is based on future
trends which, again, is cyclical, deciding what "we" (the change
agents) want the world to look like (in the 21st Century), then backmapping. In
this same vein, outcome-based education is education based on outcomes —
starting at the end and backmapping to ensure the
outcome. In researching future
trends, it becomes very obvious that they are not based on fact, but rather 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 structured disciplines; thematic units addressing
social or life-related issues (wholistic); conflict resolution in
pursuit of the collectivist (wholistic) society; peer tutoring to
promote the group (collectivist) mentality; the child centered classroom;
individual learning plans (IEP's) … Everything that is 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 to achieve the whole.
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 (evolution to higher levels),
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 or her individual beliefs
and conform to the group beliefs — again to achieve the whole.
Left to its own devices, however,
consensus is uncontrollable. Thus,
to control the process, and insure the outcome, facilitators are trained in group
dynamics (how individuals brought together in a group interact) to ensure
the outcome. Again, we start at
point A and return to point A. In
the process, the greater number of participants are
brought to hold the predetermined 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 it's their idea
(Resource Document, Schools for the 21st Century, Final Report,
January 1995).
Because of multiple 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. From the synthesis of thesis and
antithesis comes compromise. 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 facilitative 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 of 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; and emotionality
and affectivity are the means by which content and process will
be achieved. If you want to change
someone's belief system, you do not appeal to what they know, you appeal to
what they believe, how they feel about a subject or issue. In a consensus circle, the facilitator
sets the stage by appealing to the affective domain of the participants —
emotionality is imperative. If the
advocates of education reform have learned nothing else from sex education
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 is pushed to conform to a group belief system — mine,
yours and ours. 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 very much 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, … 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 research, 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 the more recent
earth summit held in Japan. The
fear tactics perpetuated in the name of global warming is a good example.
Future trends harken back to a man by the name of Jay W Forrester and
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
(Forrester was Peter Senge's
mentor for 20 years according to Senge, 1990). In 1972, Forrester established a world
simulation model known as World 3 for the Club of Rome (this group has a
propensity toward world government).
This was a computer simulation model that, according to inputs,
predicted future scenarios. A book,
The Limits to Growth by Donnella
Meadows, was written over the twenty scenarios predicted by the simulation
model. 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 where turning children into social and political activists for the
cause is paramount. This is what
Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson
meant, in her 1997 state of education address, 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 in
place 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 returning to it. In others words, whatever the
"we" want it to look like.
What "we" want it to look like is manifesting itself now in
the classrooms across American 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 becomes 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 or in the country. 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 those who refuse to participate, referred to by proponents as critics
of change, naysayers, the glass
half-empty crowd, and enemies of education. The success of systems thinking,
however, is contingent on it encompassing everyone — all. Because not everyone can be so easily
controlled, the necessity comes eventually, in the interests of the system, to
invoke tyrannical means of achieving and maintaining compliance to the system. This is why, in the USSR, dissidents
were labeled "mentally ill" and incarcerated "until they came to
their senses." See The Fallacy of Systems Thinking.
Systems thinking is the method of achieving and maintaining the planned economy, in
which every facet is carefully monitored and carefully controlled, including
the human factor. It is a system
that does not tolerate deviance from the accepted norm. It is a system that is very much into
producing robots that all act and think alike.
Accountability, under systems thinking,
is the gathering and analysis of statistical data to measure evolution to
outcomes, to insure compliance with the system. Thus the establishment
of huge data banks housing personally identifiable information on every man,
woman and child. Available
to the proponents of systems thinking is the element that was missing in early
models (Planning Programming Budgeting Systems, mastery learning) —
computer technology. In the
gathering, storage and analysis of statistical data and personally identifiable
information on every man, woman and child in this nation, coercion becomes a
definite factor in achieving the desired outcome — whether it is
determined that the parent, teacher or child is the problem.
In his book, The Fifth
Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning
Organization, Senge acknowledges that the
vision for the writing of this book was born in the fall of 1987 during his
morning meditation. As a book
outlining the components of the high performance work organization, the
road to continuous quality improvement, the total quality environment,
and as a book referenced heavily in books written advocating education reform,
this revelation in the introduction gives us a sense of the spiritual aspect of
systems thinking. Senge defines this aspect further in defining personal
mastery — one of the five disciplines of the learning organization,
acknowledging that it is rooted in both Eastern and Western spiritual
traditions as well as secular traditions — three components of New Age
religious practice. He also states
that personal mastery is imperative to developing and sustaining shared vision
within an organization.
Eastern spiritual traditions incorporate
mystic practices involving altered states of consciousness, known to
parents as guided fantasy/guided visualization, sometimes as centering
or relaxation exercises or techniques. In Senge's
words, these practices are key to "working
effectively with the subconscious".
Senge also points out, in The Fifth Discipline, that an
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruling forbids companies from requiring
that employees participate in training seminars that they believe violate their
religious beliefs, and Christians do believe that these practices are a form of
self-divination that is forbidden by the Bible. But Senge
claims that this snafu in the workplace can be circumvented. He claims that anyone committed to the
learning organization is also committed to truth. In other words, if the Christian
refuses to participate in these religious practices, the Christian denies truth
and is a roadblock to achieving the learning organization.
There is another way to circumvent this
roadblock, as outlined in The Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn
Ferguson …
You can only have a
new society, the visionaries have said, if you change
the education of the younger generation. … Of the Aquarian Conspirators
surveyed, more were involved in education than in any other single category of
work. (p 280)
Teachers are being taught the
techniques of guided fantasy/guided visualization by people such as Jack
Canfield of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Canfield is a New Age author and
promoter of confluent education. In
an article published in New Age magazine in 1978, Canfield instructs
…
If you're teaching
in a public school, don't call it meditation, call it
"centering." Every school
wants children to be relaxed, attentive, and creative, and that's what they
will get.
In a sidebar to this article, it is
acknowledged that …
Many of the new
methods and approaches we have written about in this article are beginning to
be adopted by more and more teachers in pilot programs.
More and more parents are becoming
aware of the use of the techniques of guided fantasy/guided visualization in
the classroom. Both of these
techniques place the child in an altered state of consciousness —
a key component of yoga or meditation.
In this state, children are VERY open to suggestion which is why this
state is used in most accelerated learning programs that can be connected to
George Lozanov, the Bulgarian (communist) professor.
Besides the religious aspect of guided
fantasy/guided visualization, parents need to know that these practices can have
a very adverse affect on a child in a couple different ways. First, children placed in an altered
state of consciousness are often taken to meet a spirit guide, guide,
or wise old person. In The
Beautiful Side of Evil and Like Lambs to the Slaughter, Johanna
Michaelsen exposes these spirit guides as demonic
spirits. If anyone is the least bit
dubious about where this can end, these books are recommended reading. This is also one of the reasons why
parents are seeing Native American studies being brought into the schools as
the Native American spirituality (religion) incorporates altered states of
consciousness in pursuit of spirit guides — the hawk, the eagle, the
coyote, the bear, etc. Just as
marijuana is an introduction to harder drugs, introducing children to guided
fantasy/guided visualization invariably leads to broader experimentation. It is dangerous, as Johanna Michaelsen divulges in her books, and often leads to
satanic, occult worship — earth worship (GAIA), spirit guides, mandalas, etc. These
practices in schools are, however, being touted as an avenue to the inner
wisdom, creativity, and self esteem we hear so much about these days. Anyone who wants to get an eyeful of
where it goes, just pick up The Light Shall Set You Free,
co-authored by Dr Shirley McCune (currently an employee under the direction of
the Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction and a friend of Terry
Bergeson) and read it.
The second problem is that the practice
of placing children in altered states of consciousness should ONLY be done by
licensed clinicians and then ONLY under certain conditions. This medical procedure should NEVER be
used in a group setting such as a classroom where the use of it by teachers is
nothing short of medical malpractice.
That aside, more and more lawsuits are being filed by parents whose
children have been put in these hypnotic states, resulting in problems
returning to consciousness, flashbacks at any time (like psychedelic drugs
cause), and blackouts. Teachers are
being taught how to use these techniques, they are not being told the whole
story behind the use of these techniques or what can happen if they do use
them.
Guided fantasy/guided visualization is New
Age, and their use in the classroom exposes children early to New Age practices
in pursuit of the learning organization, the high performance work
organization, the total quality environment. It is being done in schools without the
knowledge or informed consent of parents which violates their rights as well as
the child’s. It also violates
the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, forbidding the establishment of a
state religion.
Referenced Resources:
Ferguson, Marilyn; The
Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in Our Time;
New York: G. P. Putnam Sons; 1980.
Lazslo, Ervin; A Strategy
for the Future: The Systems Approach to World Order; New York: George Braziller; 1974.
McCune, Shirley and Dr Norma Milanovich; The
Light Shall Set You Free; Albuquerque: Athena Publishing; 1996.
Meadows, Donnella
et al.; The Limits to Growth;
New York: New American Library; 1972.
Michaelsen, Johanna; The
Beautiful Side of Evil; Eugene: Harvest House Publishers; 1982.
Michaelsen, Johanna; Like Lambs to the Slaughter: Your Child and the
Occult; Eugene: Harvest House Publishers; 1989.
Senge, Peter; The Fifth
Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization; New
York: Currency Doubleday; 1990.
©September
1998; Lynn M Stuter
Websites Regarding Systems Theory:
International Federation for Systems Research
International Society of Systems Sciences
International Systems
Institute
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