"The crises of our time,
it becomes increasingly clear, are the necessary impetus for the
revolution now under way. And once we understand nature's transformative
powers, we see that it is our powerful ally, not a force to feared our
subdued. Our pathology is our opportunity."
page 25
ASSUMPTIONS
OF THE...
|
OLD
PARADIGM OF EDUCATION
|
NEW
PARADIGM OF EDUCATION
|
|
Emphasis
on content, acquiring a body of "right"
information, once and for all.
|
Emphasis
on learning how to learn... pay attention to the right things, be open to
and evaluate new concepts, have access to information....
|
|
Hierarchical
and authoritarian structure.
|
Egalitarian.
Candor and dissent permitted.
|
|
...emphasis
on the "appropriate ages for certain activities"
|
Flexibility
and integration of age groupings.
|
|
Priority
on performance.
|
Priority
on self-image as the generator of performance.
|
|
Emphasis
on external world. Inner experience often considered inappropriate in
school setting.
|
Inner
experience seen as context for learning. Use of imagery, storytelling,
dream journals, "centering" exercises, and exploration of
feelings encouraged.
|
|
Emphasis
on analytical, linear... thinking.
|
Augments
left-brain rationality with holistic, nonlinear, and intuitive
strategies.
|
"...the Aquarian Conspiracy is a different kind of
revolution, with different revolutionaries. It looks to the turnabout in the
consciousness of a critical number of individuals, enough to bring about a renewal
of society...." page 26
The Paradigm Shift. New perspectives give birth
to new historic ages. Humankind has had many dramatic revolutions of understanding
--great leaps sudden liberation from old limit. We discovered the uses of fire and the
wheel, language and writing.... Each of these discoveries is properly described as a
"paradigm shift," a term introduced by Thomas Kuhn, a science historian and
philosopher, in his landmark 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. Kuhn's ideas are enormously helpful, not only because they help us
understand how a new perspective remerges but also how and why such new views are
invariably resisted for a time." 26
A paradigm is a framework of thought (from the Greek
paradigm, "pattern")... a scheme for understanding and explaining certain aspects of
reality.... A paradigm shift is a distinctly new way of thinking about old
problems..... 26
Given the superior power and scope of the new idea,
we might expect it to prevail rather quickly, but that almost never happens. The
problem is that you can't embrace the new paradigm unless you let go of the old. You
can't be half, hearted making the change bit by bit. "Like the gestalt switch,"
Kuhn said, "it must occur all at once." The new paradigm is not "figured out" but
suddenly seen. 27
Real progress in understanding nature is rarely
incremental. All important advances are sudden intuitions, new principles, a new
way of seeing." 28
By naming a sharply recognizable phenomenon, Kuhn
made us conscious of the ways of revolution and resistance. Now that we are beginning
to understand the dynamics of revolutionary insights, we can learn to foster our own
healthy change and we can cooperate to ease the collective change of mind without
waiting for the fever of crisis. We can do this by asking questions in a new way -
by challenging our old assumptions. These assumptions are the air we breather, our
familiar furniture. They are part of the culture. We are all but blind to them, yet
they must give way.... 28
"For the first time in history, humankind has come
upon the control panel of change -- an understanding of how transformation occurs. We
are living in the change of change, the time in which we can intentionally align
ourselves with nature for rapid remaking of ourselves and our collapsing
institutions." 29
"Human nature is neither good nor bad but open to
continuous transformation and transcendence. It has only to discover itself." 29
Recall the model of the paradigm shift introduced by
Thomas Kuhn: Every important new idea in science sounds strange at first. As
the physicist Niels Bohr put it, great innovations inevitably appear muddled,
confusing, and incomplete... 151
A political paradigm shift might be said to occur
when the new values are assimilated by the dominant society. These values then become
social dogma to members of a new generation, who marvel that anyone could ever have
believed otherwise." 197
"If we are to
break out of this pattern, if we are to be liberated from our personal and collective
history, we must learn to identify it--to see the ways of discovery and innovation, to
overcome our discomfort with and resistance to the new, and to recognize the rewards
of cooperating with change.
"Thomas Kuhn was by no means the first to point out this pattern. 197
"The intense
intellectual and spiritual sharing of the Aquarian conspiracy, the joint expeditions
into new territory, the pooling of the wealth, create the kind of mutual inspiration
John Gowan described. The almost sexual interplay of ideas, yin and yang, old and new,
East and West, results in a kind of collective synthesis: a creative community,
hospitable to risk and imagination.
"Long before Thomas Kuhn observed that new ideas may have to wait for a new
generation's acceptance, folk wisdom made this bitter sweet point. A Hebrew proverb
warns, "Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in
another time." 320
Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian
Conspiracy (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1980), page
289-290.
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