Towards A Parliament of Geeks
By John Taylor; 2009 Feb 18, 12 Mulk, 165 BE
"Whoso walketh uprightly shall be saved." (Proverbs 28:18, Comenius's favourite proverb)
There are strong arguments for having education as the inspiration for a world reform program. A great educational reformer, John Dewey, pointed out some of the many reasons that this would be better than the solely punitive, legally oriented way of running things that we are used to.
"I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. All reforms which rest simply upon the law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile.... But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move.... Education thus conceived marks the most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience." (My Pedagogic Creed, 1897)
We are studying here the first known comprehensive educational reform program for the whole planet, put forward by the great educator John Amos Comenius some three hundred and forty years ago. This he called Universal Reform (Panorthosia). It explores the possibility of a permanent peace based on universal participation. I am finding that it is very close to the "universal gathering of mankind" that Baha'u'llah sanctioned in the Tablets to the Kings. In fact the Comenian Panorthosia and the Baha'i principles are complementary, each supplementing the other. The highly organized, detailed and educationally-oriented plan of Comenius meshes beautifully with the discursive, future-oriented principles that Abdu'l-Baha derived from the Writings of the Bab and Baha'u'llah.
Comenius observed that our basic nature is dominated by a desire to learn. The goal of everything human, be it animal or divine, seems to be to learn constantly. And the goal of proper learning should surely be to become as good and happy as possible. It often happens, though, that graduates with decades of training under their belt remain both bad and miserable. When that happens we would all be better off without all that bother and expense.
"I maintain that we have multiplied schools and studies and selfish scheming for advancement, but we have not yet added to the true joys of life." (Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 22, para 1, p. 38)
The perfect example of this has been in the headlines for the past several months. The events leading up to the crash and burn of the financial industry were caused by the cream of a highly competitive American educational system being lured into the banking and financial services industry by inflated salaries and other incentives, such as stock options. Their furiously cutthroat activity led only to a bubble, followed by the swift evaporation of almost unimaginably massive amounts of funds. It turned out that this entire sector was based not on goodness and happiness but on what Comenius calls "selfish scheming for advancement."
Comenius was not vague about what a good, happy product of the educational system would be like. In our last essay, we saw that Comenius proposed that educational reform of individuals should aim at each graduate becoming,
"(1) a good man, exalted above all the animal kingdom, (2) a good scholar, understanding the reasons for as many things as possible; (3) a good Physician and Doctor, well-informed about the ways of preserving your life and health according to the will of God; (4) a good Philosopher, capable of proper self-control in all respects; (5) a good Economist, skilled in the ways and means of obtaining the necessities of life and using and enjoying them correctly. (6) a good Politician, expert in wise human intercourse, and (7) a good Christian, wholly dedicated to God and walking uprightly in His sight." (Para 14, p. 25)
Imagine universities requiring every student to so orient their lives that when they graduate they are on the right track in all seven of these areas of expertise. Would such graduates have plunged themselves into a financial bubble? Not if they knew what it is to be a good economist, "skilled in ... the necessities of life" and aware of how to both use and enjoy them. How can you both use and enjoy eight million dollars a year, the amount that one self-sacrificing Canadian banking CEO just reduced his salary to? How can you consider yourself a "good man" to consider such excess a "sacrifice" as others starve?
The great thing that makes me enthusiastic about this Comenian reform program is that nobody but the most jaundiced sceptic could take it as a sinister conspiracy or misconstrue its motives. What harm is there in a planetary educational initiative? "They are plotting to teach me more than I know?" What kind of protest is that? Who could take it seriously, even in a two year old? Yet even that objection Comenius anticipated and took very seriously. He held it to be the great challenge of educators to make schooling as pleasant and fun as possible.
When I read Comenius's ideas for that, I often think of the huge computer and video gaming industries that have grown in the past two decades to be much larger than the book, movie and entertainment industries combined. What would happen if educators designed popular, standard video games for accomplishing their goals? What if they licensed the characters in these games to movies and other entertainment enterprises, so that schools would have an independent source of income? What if these games were designed to teach the skills of each of the seven "professions" that Comenius says everybody needs? What if they incorporated into it training for a "world citizen" license that we could maintain, cradle to grave? What if by playing games and passing tests designed to maintain basic expertise in each of these seven areas, we were given the new rights of a world citizen?
What new rights am I talking about?
How about the right to live wherever you want? Freedom of movement is considered to be a fundamental democratic right, but today this right ends at every national border. Because we do not have this right, our thinking and education end at the border too. The result? Environmental disaster, for one thing. Nature and climate do not respect national borders, so why should we? To stand up for world federation is to uphold a right we forget we should have, the basic right to live and travel where we please.
And, while we are at it, why not incorporate "standing votes" and polling into the game playing, world citizen licensing process? What harm is there in anything so basic to personal and civic education, so basic to democracy, as polling and voting?
John Taylor
email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
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