Imaginal Education 1981

THE COMPREHENSIVE DESIGN

A. SPIRAL CURRICULUM

Education is taught as a whole rather than pieces of data. The spiral curriculum be the method of teaching the entire subject by levels rather than bits of the subject. You teach a child physics by showing him how water turns to ice and steam. As an­adult he learns more sophisticated applications to the principle. The levels include awakening the students to the knowledge, giving him some kind of awareness to it, involving him in the process­and finally giving him­responsibility for it. Structure is key to the spiral curriculum. The structure includes the individual, the social and the rational pole in each level of curriculum. At each level, it is necessary to find the depth dimension of that subject for that age level. Finally, all curriculum is based on the process of learning the particular subject with content added as needed. Shot through all the curriculum is the contentless word of using this content to know your limits, possibilities and your creativity.

B. LIFE TRIANGLES

The 3 poles of the Life triangles (which were created to plan a comprehensive curriculum for womb to tomb education) are: Practical, Theoretical, Spirit (or Unsynonomous) dimensions. The practical dimension are skills you learn. The theoretical dimensions are the foundational pillars. The Spirit dimension is teaching selfhood or how to deal with the awe, the unexpected and the meaning aspects of life. These triangles give you a screen for becoming functionally educated in a society where skills, meaning, and knowledge keep changing.

C. ORGANIZATIONAL MODEL

When creating a training model over a long period it is necessary to plan more than the study session itself. These four aspects of organizing a group are helpful in giving them a training situation: the symbolic life, the study life, a period of declaration, and a missional working situation. In the symbolic life, the trainees need to have ways to talk about their work in terms of the world situation, the self creativity, the past wisdom and the future vision. The study life needs to include special items that relate them to a deeper understanding of their work. Declaration is programming in the method of publicly talking about their understanding. The missional thrust is to refer their work to its applicability to the world's situation.

D. TIMELINE

When you are ready to write or plan a curriculum the first step is to brainstorm and gestalt your categories. Once you select (say a 12 month curriculum) you create a rhythm to the year. What will be the continuous and the discontinuous elements. What will be taught in a cycle and what will get the downbeat. After selecting each unit (month) subject, brainstorm and gestalt the knowledge to be taught in each session. Create a lesson plan by writing out the rational objective, the existential aim and the drama of the lesson. Remember that each lesson needs a context, a demonstration or example of the subject, the method to apply it and a product at the end of the lesson.

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Imaginal Education 1981

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There had to be one person to said yes. Somebody had to agree to captain the ship. She had sprung a hundred leaks; she was 1oaded to the water line with crime, ignorance, poverty. The wheel was swinging with the wind. The crew refused to work and were looting the cargo. The officers were building a raft, ready to slip overboard and desert the ship. The mast was splitting, the wind was howling, the sails were beginning to rip. Every man Jack on board was about to drown and only because the only thing they thought of was their own skins and their cheap little day­to­day traffic. Was that a time, do you think, for playing with words like yes and no? Was that a time for a man to be weighing the pros and cons, wondering if he wasn't going to pay too dearly later on; if he wasn't going to lose his life, or his family, or his ship in the face of a mountain of water. You shout an order, and it one man refuses to obey, you shoot straight into the mob. Into the mob, I say. The beast as nameless as the wave that crashes down upon your deck; as nameless as the whipping wind. The thing that drops when you shoot may be someone who poured you a drink the night before; but it has no name. And you, braced at the wheel, you have no name, either. Nothing has a name ­­ except the ship, and the storm.

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