The Dawn of the Integral Age

Going all the way with Integral Education 2010-Jun-22 at 23:06 PDT

Just a little something I’ve been thinking about… there are two really important things under the topic of Integral Education that I want to bring up.

1. Anyone with a theory of Integral Education that does not include the fact that technology will improve to the point where we’ll have fully-immersive virtual reality experiences – indistinguishable from physical reality – isn’t  dreaming big enough.  Think “The Matrix”… that’s the level of experience we’ll be able to have in something like 30-40 years from now.  Think about the educational possibilities of something like that… and I’m not even talking about the “I just learned Kung Fu through a 10-second download” scenarios, which also might be enabled by advanced-enough technology.
2. Although that’s the future… today we face the incredibly sad fact that we take sweet, well-meaning people who really want to teach young people, and throw them into an awful system with archaic structures.  We make them suffer for pursuing their passion for teaching.  We stifle their creativity.  We set them up for failure, or usually mediocrity at best.  This has to stop, immediately.

As much as I want to see Integral thought really take over lots of different fields, like Medicine and Law… I really want to see Integral take over Education, and I want it yesterday.  I want to see the end of the first-tier food fight that we throw our kids into… between the outdated Blue and Orange structures of education, and the outdated and frequently wrong-headed Green structures of education that have mostly failed for the last few decades.  It’s time to bring a new level of awareness to our Educational system… one that combines the best of Blue structure, Orange testing and rewards, and a healthy Green sharing of multiple perspectives, and maps that according to grade levels and levels of development of the children.  A level of consciousness that uses quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types to define at a deep level the best way to educate our children and young adults.  A level of consciousness that isn’t afraid to stand up against the entrenched power of the teachers’ unions.

It’s time.  We already know, as we head into summer break, that we’re going to send our children into the same failing educational system that we sent them to last year.  This has to shift… it’s worth the effort (and President Obama’s initiatives are a good start) to make this happen as soon as possible.

It can’t come soon enough.