Heliopolitan mindmap of the cosmos
Educationalists of the mid-nineteenth century, such as Charles Kingsley, were
responsible for setting a long lasting biological agenda for school work which
stressed the importance of seeking 'wonder in every insect, sublimity in every
hedgerow, past worlds in every pebble, and boundless fertility upon the barren
shore'. This broad philosophy from an age of serendipity, and education for its
own sake, is now all but played out. Our essentially urban culture, the time,
budgetary and subject constraints of a national curriculum, the imagined dangers
of being outdoors, media hype of endangered global ecosystems, and above all,
the emphasis on molecules rather than organisms, have produced a generation of
class- bound teachers. Experts are now required to provide their school with a
nature walk, and work sheets about its commonplace plants and animals.
Paradoxically, it was the political commitments made by the majority of world
leaders at Rio di Janiero in 1992, that has pointed to the need for a revival in
nature study in the broader context of the impact of local economic development.
This is an important area of applied cultural ecology.
Two of education's important tasks are:
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to describe human diversity against the background of similarities in behaviour
and the social interdependence of all people;
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to impart an understanding that our survival, as just one among many creatures
that evolved on Earth, depends on interpersonal and group cooperation to
ensure our demands on the environment for food and shelter and other
resources are managed to keep within the limits of Earth's ecological
productivity.
To enable future educationalists to shape cross-curricular problems of social
development and decision- makers to deal with their complexity, the education
system has to change in order to build bridges between disciplines and to
reinvigorate ingrained working methods at all levels. Emphasis on the
differentiation of scientific disciplines within universities has certainly obscured
the opportunities for joint work between social and environmental scientists in
fields that go beyond their disciplinary frontiers. A real opportunity exists to co-
produce both educational activities and solutions for the future; especially in
creating, not only long-lasting behaviour change, but also a mental shift in
people's values and beliefs. Education at all levels is still committed to subject-
based teaching that was devised over a century ago to support empire building.
The need for a new education is the stated approach of the
UNESCO-Cousteau
Ecotechnie Programme.
UCEP's mission is to reduce barriers to cultural change
by providing future decision-and-policy-makers with integrated, multidisciplinary
education, training and research. Thus, it contributes to the objectives of the UN
Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD). However, no
operational examples are available.
COSMOS is a new subject which sets out a logical learning framework for
multidisciplinary education, training and research for higher education in the area
that has come to be known as 'cultural education'. The idea of cultural education
emerged at the beginning of the new millennium. It became obvious that a
change to 'holistic teaching', based on cross-curricular knowledge, is needed for
living in a world where environmental problems require whole system thinking to
integrate economic, ecological, social, cultural and technological considerations.
So far, technological fixes alone have proved to be of limited value.
For cultural education to take root there has to be fundamental changes in the
education system at all levels. For a whole systems approach to take root, there
needs to be a complete rethink about the current education system. Curricula
have to be organised and presented in new interdisciplinary formats, and teaching
has to allow students to create their own personal bodies, of knowledge by
creating route maps between concepts and systems diagrams which link
organisations, processes and outcomes.
Holistic teaching incorporates six instructional approaches. These are listed below.
The first three are traditional ways of handling face to face teacher/pupil
interaction, where knowledge is presented in pre- organised packages. The last
three are necessary for individuals to make a body of knowledge that is personal
to them in relation to their interests, as a route map for their future use of
information, and to learn how to modify knowledge that is no longer applicable to
their needs in a rapidly changing society.
1 Transmission teaching involves the student receiving and accumulating
knowledge and skills—for example, by reading a textbook or listening to a
teacher's explanation. This is appropriate when we begin to learn a particular
skill. For example, when we learn to drive a car, we study the basic rules of driving
by reading the driving handbook in preparation for a written test.
2 Transactional teaching involves the student in solving a given cognitive problem
or pursuing some form of inquiry—usually based on a set of procedures, which
may be rooted in a particular discipline, such as physics or history.
3 Transformational teaching connects the student and the set curriculum more
deeply—for example, through such strategies as cooperative learning, drama,
and role playing.
4 Transpositional teaching involves the student rearranging concepts and facts to
make a personal body of knowledge, or mindmap about their relationship to a
whole, which makes sense to them as an individual. This approach emphasises
that all knowledge systems are arbitrary arrangements of information and should
be modified when no longer applicable to the world in which we now live.
(e.g.Cosmos templates).
5 Transcriptional teaching involves the student in expressing inner feelings about
objects or events in non- material ways, through art, literature and poetry. The aim
is to demonstrate how non-material values may be inserted into debates about
cultural change.
6 Transrelational teaching involves seeing how everything affects everything else
by linking all the major interacting components to make a system. The aim is to
show how managing change through systems thinking can help visualise the
major factors that can inhibit or stimulate change. Sectorialism and specialisation
permeate social systems in general, and together with vested interests in politics,
industry and the corporate sphere, form barriers that effectively block change
towards more long-term, integrated decision-making favouring the environment
and sustainability. The other important feature of systems thinking is that it adds a
time scale to change. In this respect, it can highlight the need for cultural
education to present knowledge in relation to a longer view of social change than
that of decision- makers, aiming at short-term political benefits, who often ignore
long-term environmental, social and cultural costs. Out of date organizations,
institutions and structures, as well as science disciplines are factors that
contribute to support such decision-making based on what is known as 'silo
thinking'.
An example of a transrelational resource is a system diagram constructed from
strategic documents prepared for the Welsh Assembly Government, to engage
individuals and groups within communities in behavioural change for actions
directed towards a sustainable future. It is a cycle which begins with government
policy, to raise awareness in the Principality's socio-economic organisations
tasked with helping community development. It proceeds through direct contacts
with individuals and groups in communities, to set up drivers of personal action,
with feedback on outcomes from community action back to Government, which
completes the cycle.
