Education: higher vs meta

¿ Higher Education ∞ Meta-education ? (Part #3)

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In the following discussion use is made of "meta" to encompass a degree of self-reflexive, critical insight into the learning process and the manner in which it needs to be continually rethought by the individual to enable more appropriate responses to emerging situations in a turbulent context. In this sense it is contrasted with the codified learning characteristic of "higher" education.

Reframing education: The radical argument developed here is that education now suffers through having been widely commodified as a deliverable product. This framing has necessarily engendered a pattern echoed in both conventional education and in the communication processes associated with further "education" in support of decision-making. Both may be compared with the patterns of communication in religious contexts -- in which many of the concepts and processes originated:

Comparability of "higher" communication contexts
Education	Meetings	Religion
books	(official) documents	scriptures
lessons	training sessions	seminars
talks, lectures	talks, lectures	sermons, lectures
teachers and professors	(keynote) speakers	priests, clergy,
examinations	votes, surveys	examinations
certificates, credits	certificates of attendance	certificates
class rooms	conference meeting rooms	places of worship
educational institutions	conference centres	religious institutions
curriculum, agenda	programmes, agendas	order of service

The system is in process of being enhanced by the introduction of numerous electronic facilities: laptops, screen presentations, internet access, multi-media products, videos, and the like. These are promoted as enabling the necessary breakthroughs into more effective forms of education.

Whilst the progressive introduction of technology appears to be radically modifying the engagement with information, the argument here is that this is done primarily in support of educational processes which would be familiar to society in earlier decades, centuries or even millennia. Would Aristotle be surprised by the format of a modern lecture theatre -- if invited to "give a talk" there?  Would Cicero?

Do the "eternal verities" imply that they should be presented for all eternity through the same models? Or might that be construed as a failure of imaginative innovation within the educational and meeting environments? How is it that theatre design in support of dramatic innovation is far more radically inventive than is evident in the case of meetings for education-related purposes?

Challenged meeting process -- a reflection of "higher education"? The point is appropriately emphasized by the following contrast
1979	2011
The Silver Anniversary International Meeting of the Society for General Systems Research (SGSR) (London, 1979), predecessor of ISSS, with the theme: Improving the Human Condition: Quality and Stability in Social Systems. At that event key figures in the systems approach engaged experimentally in an exercise to apply their techniques self-reflexively to enable the participants to self-organize in the light of their diverse perspectives (Metaconferencing: discovering people / viewpoint networks in conferences, 1980). This contributed to the methodology subsequently outlined in the study by Stafford Beer (Beyond Dispute: the invention of team syntegrity, 1994)	The current organization of the 55th Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), together with the International Symposium for Knowledge and Systems Sciences (Hull, 2011) with the theme: All together now - working across disciplines: people, principles and practice. The programme notes: These complex 'messy' issues require acknowledgement and commitment to the advantages of transdisciplinary research and practice while also exploring and debating the problems experienced by the people involved in this research, and the issues inherent in the development of the theory and practice of our approaches.

The current ISSS programme appropriately cites Kenneth Boulding (Skeleton of Science, 1956) regarding the need for increasingly complex methods and approaches for managing ever-increasing levels of complex systems. It also cites Julie Klein (Interdisciplinarity: history, theory, and practice, 1990) regarding the need for "a subtle restructuring of knowledge", changing "the way we think about the way we think". However it then notes that:

... after all these years, although intuitively it may be recognized that more than any single discipline is needed to address complex systems, there is still ambiguity about the principles and processes of transdisciplinary systemic working and the capabilities and skills needed to do so.

Of greater relevance to the following argument is the failure at the ISSS event itself to apply self-reflexive, self-organizing procedures, building on the efforts of Beer and his colleagues in 1979. How might educational initiatives -- understood generically -- be reframed (Enacting Transformative Integral Thinking through Playful Elegance, 2010?

Questionable implications of "higher": The assumption challenged here is that associated with the cognitive implications deriving from "higher" in the educational process -- and even from "e" in the educare of its etymological origin. As with the role of metaphor discussed above, the question is whether, effectively embedded in "higher" education, there is a particular geometric or topological framing which is inadequate to the challenges of the times and the needs of those expected to engage with them.

As stressed by Lakoff  and Johnson (1980) with respect to other terms having geometric implications, these impose a particular constraint on how education is imagined, "delivered" and "received". It is consistent with the "ladder" and "stair" metaphors through which access to greater "height" is framed -- notably challenged by feminist scholars (Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: psychological theory and women's development, 1982).

Especially interesting is the manner in which "ascent" is used with respect to increase in knowledge and insight, most notably with respect to wisdom and spiritual understanding -- and proximity to that represented by deity. The Clues to 'Ascent' and 'Escape' (2002) of traditions such as Christianity, Buddhism and Theosophy may then be explored to clarify the challenge of Navigating Alternative Conceptual Realities (2002). "Escape" is then related to escape from ignorance and from simplistic understandings of knowledge. The challenges of "noonautics" may then be compared with that of reaching "escape velocity" in astronautics (Entering Alternative Realities -- Astronautics vs Noonautics: isomorphism between launching aerospace vehicles and launching vehicles of awareness, 2002).

Unexplored potential of "meta": Whilst "higher" may indeed enable the fruitful ordering of certain insights, the question is whether -- especially through its exclusive/elitist connotations -- it effectively inhibits other patterns of connectivity. These may be vital -- if not essential -- to comprehension, remembering, and to the wider communication of meaning. It is appropriate to note that the "higher" framing is echoed in the terminology used in the descriptors of "high council", "high priest", etc -- possibly reinforcing their inadequacies. Given the emphasis placed by Aboriginal Australians on an unusual cognitive relationship with the landscape, it is questionable whether this is totally obscured by the implications of "high degree" in the title of the study by A. P. Elkin (Aboriginal Men of High Degree, 1993). The implications of "meta" in such contexts are more clearly emphasized in the compilation of Darrell A. Posey (Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity, 1999)

Of greater relevance in these times is whether what is framed as "high" enables the individual and collective response for which there would seem to be a need. Has "higher" enabled the emergence of the "new thinking" and "paradigm shifts" for which many call? (cf World Center for New Thinking; Edward de Bono, New Thinking for the New Millennium, 2000; Denise Breton and Christopher Largent, The Paradigm Conspiracy: why our social systems violate human potential and how we can change them, Hazelden, 1996)

The argument here is that education is effectively trapped in a "geometrical" straightjacket. This is not to deny the merits of the particular geometry widely favoured but rather to point to other geometrical and topological perspectives which may be preferable for some or in some circumstances. It is then this capacity to shift between such configurations which is a vital skill, inadequately enabled at present. Ironically this is partially illustrated by so-called "transformer" toys -- capable of being variously reconfigured.

The point is made here by contrasting "higher" with "meta" in relation to education -- as well as calling into question the implications of "e" in the etymological inheritance of education. In that sense "meta-education" is "about":

• the geometry of connectivity, communication and learning (discussed below)
• reframing the unidirectional sense of "higher" -- which notably reinforces the contested notion that teachers have nothing to learn from students.
• the manner in which ideas, values and insight circulate, rather than being unidirectionally "conveyed" (Potential Misuse of the Conveyor Metaphor, 2007; Enabling Moral Currency Circulation, 2010; Circulation of the Light: essential metaphor of global sustainability?, 2010)
• challenging conventional understanding of where insight "comes from", as highlighted by George Lakoff and Rafael Nunez (Where Mathematics Comes From: how the embodied mind brings mathematics into being, 2001)
• the processes of elicitation of insight and creative imagination
• insights into the cognitive processes of "flow" as developed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention, 1996)
• multiple intelligences and the variety of cognitive styles (Systems of Categories Distinguishing Cultural Biases, 1993)
• polysensorial considerations (Strategic Challenge of Polysensorial Knowledge: bringing the "elephant" into "focus", 2008)
• critical thinking

Such a check list is not to deny that such factors may feature variously in different schools of education and be understood as essential to "higher education". Use of "meta-education" offers a shift in emphasis to frame the following arguments more appropriately. In this sense "meta-education" might be understood as a fruitful complementary to "higher education" -- a complement highlighting the possibility of problematic dynamics similar to those between conventional medicine -- questionably guaranteed by qualified authority -- and its complementary forms, readily deprecated as "quackery". The paradoxical nature of this complementarity is clarified separately in the argument justifying the unusual typography of the title of this document (¡¿ Defining the objective ∞ Refining the subjective ?! Explaining reality ∞ Embodying realization, 2011).

In the spirit of this argument it might be appropriate to compare conventional forms of well-grounded education through a metaphor of ground-based animals (such as mammals) in contrast with air-based animals (such as birds). This is an appropriate prelude to the following recognition of the urgent need for the speed and range exemplified by the latter.

Problematic implication of "meta" as "better": It is widely accepted that "higher" education is better than "lower" -- notably as in the progression from "lower school" to "high school". This distinction is readily associated with "bad education" vs "good education" -- to the disadvantage of many. There is also the association of "height" with "right", namely the sense in which "higher" implies wider perspectives which must necessarily be "right" in comparison with any "lower" perspective. Acquiring a "higher education" is then understood as a means of occupying the "high ground" with the strategic advantage that implies. This is consistent with the positioning of strategic buildings, especially traditional fortresses and monasteries, on higher ground.

This comparison suggests that the "higher" the education, the greater the denial of issues "below" -- as best exemplified by both the the unchallenged rise in the level national debt and avoidance of the implications of population increase on resource overshoot.

The argument here is that there is a sense in which it is the "height" of education currently privileged which is itself a problem -- exemplified by the lack of "communication" between skyscrapers in an urban environment. The pattern of the argument for "meta" has long been developed in the opposition between "hierarchy" (emphasizing the dimension of height) and "network" (emphasizing connectivity of some form). The problematic aspects of "height" are of course echoed to a degree in the significance attached to "centrality" in a network -- now reflected in the preoccupation of individuals with the number of their "friends" (on Facebook) or of their "followers" (on Twitter).

Rather than enter into such a polarized dynamic, the argument here could use a musical metaphor to distinguish "higher" and "lower" as being on a musical scale of several octaves. The value of "higher" might indeed be challenged as corresponding to the limited capacity of certain "voices" (alto, etc) in contrast with "lower" "voices" (base, etc). It is however a "meta" framing which attributes value to both according to circumstances and through appropriate composition. Such a framing contrasts with the pathetic quality of discourse between the foci of alternative strategkes of governance (All Blacks of Davos vs All Greens of Porto Alegre: reframing global strategic discord through polyphony? 2007).

The concern with respect to "meta-education" is whether it is able to reframe such preoccupations in relation to knowledge. Rather than understanding "metacognition" as "better cognition", it is a question of how it can be recognized as a mode of cognition with a significant function. This may well enable other more conventional modes of cognition in the absence of "higher education" (or where the latter is especially restrictive and inflexible). Pejoratively, with respect to the quest for ever "higher" as emblematic of excellence in education, might it be asked whther global governance is dangerously afflicted with a fashionable predilection for intellectual equivalents of soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voices -- even to the point of creating "castrati"?

The quest for viable "meta-education" may indeed imply a degree of paradox, to the extent that it is understood as a means of understanding "less and less about more and more" -- rather than knowing "more and more about less and less" (as is characteristic of "higher education" and its necessary specialization).

"Meta" as problematic intellectual property: It is appropriate to note the degree to which both "higher" and "meta" have been unfortunately framed as intellectual property, if only by implication.

In the case of "higher education", much is of course made of the certification process associated with the institutions issuing "recognized" qualifications -- and possibly specially accredited for that purpose. The implication is then that "higher education" of any significance cannot be obtained otherwise. This is especially problematic for those in situations having no access to the "higher education" so defined. However this then precludes recognition of the quality of education that people may indeed acquire through other processes. Especially problematic is that the nature of "higher education" can then only be recognized through paper certification, with that from a "better" institution implying that the knowledge thereby acquired is "higher". Curiously there is no certification process for "maturity" or "wisdom" -- to the extent that they are even recognized from the perspective of "higher education".

In the case of "meta-education", the term has already been associated with various initiatives (and web domain names), possibly through use of "meta" as an acronym for a particular approach to education. Especially relevant is its use by Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) initiatives, as with META-NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming for Education). It is indeed the case that many of the preoccupations of NLP are well-echoed by what might be associated with an emergent understanding of "meta-education". Especially interesting in this context is the neologism "metacation" (Sid Jacobson, Meta-Cation: education about education with Neuro-Linguistic Programming, 2001).

Although all the various initiatives making such use of "meta" promote insights into aspects of what might come to be considered "meta-education". A concern is the possibility, in a competitive environment, that such associations preclude the free exploration of its potential, as previously discussed (Future Coping Strategies: beyond the constraints of proprietary metaphors, 1992). Curiously, as with "higher education", there are traces of the pattern by which "meta education" may be claimed as the "property" of some to the exclusion of others -- as is evident with college and university rankings distinguishing the relative "height" of higher education institutions and "centres of excellence" -- to the exclusion of other areas and modalities for the acquisition of  meta-insight.

It is significant that the website of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning does not as yet indicate any references to "meta-education" -- a pattern following its earlier tardy uptake of concepts of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, and despite its unique mandate in that respect.

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