Below
is a composite
of student efforts to organize their "models of reality," or "master
mental filing systems." Helping students raise some version
of it
into consciousness, then examine, elaborate, and make increasingly
sophisticated use of it in describing, analyzing and imagining
alternatives to real-world experience, should be the primary purpose of
a general education. As can be seen, the model encompasses all experience, erasing the artificial boundaries between school subjects, and between such subjects and ordinary experience. It also identifies presently neglected fields of study. Most importantly, it makes all knowledge part of a single, systemically integrated conceptual framework the coherence of which makes it far more accessible in memory and therefore useful. Standards and measures of accountability should deal not with school subjects in isolation, but with the student's ability to apply her or his model to ordinary, real-world experience. |