System dynamics as an organizing framework for pre-college education

Pre-college education is under attack for poorly serving the needs of society. Unless a superior concept for improving education emerges, public displeasure is apt to result in still more of what is already not working. But now, a fundamentally new and more effective appraoch to education is emerging from advances in system dynamics. System dynamics offers a framework for giving cohesion, meaning, and motivation to public school education at all levels. A second important ingredient, learner-centered learning, imports to pre-college education the challenge and excitement of a research laboratory. Together, these two innovations harness the creativity, curiosity, and energy of young people. System dynamics improves on the traditional educational sequence, in which years of learning facts precede use of those facts, by introducing synthesis at an early stage in a student’s experience. Such synthesis can be based on facts that even elementary school students have already gleaned from life. Learner-centered learning relieves teachers from having to lecture facts to resistant students. Learners take charge of their own learning as they explore, gather information, and create unity out of their educational experiences. A teacher in this new setting acts as a guide and participating learner rather than as an authoritarian source of all wisdom.