Evolving Democracy and STEAMing BIG History

"That's the problem with the Malagasy people" my biology student, Etienne, explained to me in response to hearing about the recent theft of seven new computers in our neighboring psychology department. Etienne isn't in any of my classes, but many students across our small institution are terribly upset by the loss of this scarce resource. These seven computers were to be shared by over 75 students, and now there are none.

What are the students to do? 

Our young scholars at the University of Toliara have had to deal with political turmoil in the past, yet too often their solutions have actually boomeranged and come back to negatively impact their own education. A simple example occurred about a year ago when angry students cut the new internet cable to their rural campus in protest of a variety of economic and political challenges. Clearly - we have a community need to explore the role of democracy in our educational system here.

Evolving Democracy
Our Positive Education Action-Research (PEAR) Laboratory is now facilitating a series of cross-disciplinary student leadership training sessions to develop a Student Technology Leadership Committee, the Universities first explicitly democratic student-run committee, and interestingly, a committee founded on evolutionary principles.

Our unique educational model of BIG Content + Applied Context provides a simple formula for richly integrating evolutionary sciences within the fabric of our learning environments. Let me spare you the theory, and just cut to what we are actually do on the ground.

A BIG History of the Democratic Brain
We have identified a clear problem in our educational community, the theft our common-pool computer resources. So - as scientists of the human condition, how should our students understand the context to such a problem? Is it, as my biology student suggested, "the problem of the Malagasy people"? That is - is there some essential difference between the Malagasy people and people from Universities where computers don't get stolen? That's one hypothesis that appears popular among my students, but I offer a different theory. I suggest to my students that perhaps the causal explanation for the thefts lie not in differences among people, but in differences among the organization of groups of individuals. How can we test these competing hypotheses?

Well, as scientists we always start with a literature review. Here at the PEAR Lab this means exploring a structured framework based on the Thresholds of Big History utilized in the Bill Gates sponsored Big History Project.

Students explore a BIG History of the Democratic Brain, by reviewing selected chapters of history from a Unified Human Sciences perspective. Criss-crossing among disciplines and scales of time and space, a coherent narrative begins to form around group dynamics, human decision making, and the functions and scales of democracy.

Part of this BIG History also includes the many Little Histories of the science of the BrainMind and Human Culture itself.

It is here that we drill deeper into the functioning of groups, and it is here where we start to do something I call STEAMing a BIG History. In the education world, there is a growing movement to integrate Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) into a cohesive integrated approach (Yakman 2008, 2010). We are connecting this with the innovations of BIG History and channeling both into applied service-learning projects. Let me explain.

A Recipe for STEAMed BIG History

• 1 part: deep-time historical narrative
• 1 part: concepts from evolutionary studies
• A pinch of history and philosophy of science
• A hefty dosage of art, action, and awe!
• Mix with technology and democracy training and let ferment until ripe

I met with Etienne and his student colleagues to "train-the-trainer" - in a variety of technology development areas. For these students, using computers is a whole new world, we start with the very basics of Gmail and internet searches. Yet, within about three hours he has started to develop his Biology Departments struggling website, and - we were able to examine our hypotheses about the stolen computers through experimental modeling. 

Using the actor-based modeling software, Net Logo (Wilensky 1999), we explored a social-dynamics model called "Prisoner's Dilemma N-Person Iterated model" (Wilensky 2002) . Here, the "actors" in the model walk around randomly, and when two actors meet, they play a simple game. Each actor can either "cooperate" or "defect". If both players cooperate, both will get 3 points. If one cooperates and one defects; the cooperator gets nothing and the defector gets 5 points. If both players defect, both get 1 point. Very simple rules, yet as we saw - some very complex dynamics emerge. 

By altering the behavioral strategies of the actors in our little world - Etienne and friends get to literally play with a multitude of societal scenarios:

• What if we live in a world where half the people always cooperate and half always defect? 

• What if we live in a world where reputation matters and there is monitoring and enforcement of cooperation? 

Through experimentation and discussion, we found there may exist critical thresholds of social organization within which free-riding on the group becomes the less attractive option, social environments where cooperation is king! When we overlay this with the history of Elinor Ostrom's generalized principles for group-level functioning (Wilson, Ostrom, and Cox 2013), and discuss connections to our BIG History perspective - the development of our democratic technology committee is increasingly imbued with a rich new context of community change. 

In the past, Etienne and his friends would have kept on believing that this computer theft was simply "the problem of the Malagasy people". Today, they have been given the tools to create group-level changes to prove that in fact, the Malagasy people are every bit as good as the rest of the world - we just all need environments that allow the better angels of our nature to emerge and flourish!

References

Wilensky, U. (1999). NetLogo. Evanston, IL: Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, Northwestern University. Retrieved from http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

Wilensky, U. (2002). NetLogo PD N-Person Iterated model. Evanston, IL: Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, Northwestern University. Retrieved from http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/PDN-PersonIterated

Wilson, D. S., Ostrom, E., & Cox, M. E. (2013). Generalizing the core design principles for the efficacy of groups. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 90, S21–S32. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2012.12.010

Yakman, G. (2008). STEAM education: an overview of creating a model of integrative education. Proceeding of PATT on 19th ITEEA conference. 

Yakman, G. (2010). STE@M: An Overview of an Educational Model, (June). Retrieved from http://www.steamedu.com/WhatisSTEAM.Aggie.pdf

Zen and the art of GMO Policy Making

Madagascar is an island known the world over for it's unique evolutionary pathway. A pathway fated early on from it's isolated location in the Indian ocean conspiring with it's natural geological diversity to yield an unimaginably endemic radiation of plant and animalian diversity. Yet this diversity was 'fated', as it were, by situational happenstance - not conscious intent. Then, some two-thousand years ago - waves of a species with a most curious cranium began to land on these bleeding red shores. Humanity has left it's mark on Madagascar is fascinating ways; some intentional, perhaps, some unintentional. The on-going march of domestication of plants and animals in Malagasy agricultural systems is perhaps the most beautiful and complex blending of such intentional and unintentional change. For example, the voanjobory bean is a unique culinary treasure. Selected each season by skilled Malagasy farmers; this richly nutty legume offers a world of flavor beyond the bean isle of any western supermarket. The voanjobory is just one crop of many selected in this manner by taste and performance each growing season. An intentional selection process, the rise of which has cultivated human civilization for over 10,000 years! But the world is changing quickly; the variety of crops today's farmer may select from is expanding. From farm to region, nation to the world; globalizing forces, for better or worse, have expanded the choices each farmer must select from for any given field. In addition to global trade in agricultural seeds; a faster rate of flow is occurring in the symbolic domain of information. Basic Internet infrastructure combined with robust international scientific (and media) networking, now serve as strong environmental forces of selection for the thoughts and feelings a given farmer, student, researcher, or public policy maker experiences. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are the new kids on the block in the agri-seed ecosystem; and their arrival on the world stage has been met with exactly the kind of tribalistic brow-beating one would predict from the science of our moralistic brains. 

When it comes to GMOs in Africa; Madagascar is an exquisite case study. While details on current public policy are still vague (our students are hard at work separating fact from fiction!); we do know that Madagascar has among the most strict prohibitions on this facet of biotechnology across the continent of Africa. There are currently neither production nor experimental field trials of GMOs on the island.

So what...

Is Madagascar a forward thinking paradise for organic and "sustainable" agriculture, keeping the health of it's citizens and environment on the forefront of agricultural policy? 

OR

Has Madagascar taken a knee-jerk anti-science policy position; a form a neo-colonialism brought on by anti-GMO activists from the western world (sensu Paarlberg 2009)?

Now - I could go on to offer you (and my students at the University of Toliara) an "evidence-based" review of the literature; and in doing so I could compose a (seemingly) coherent argument strongly supporting either of these conflicting positions. Indeed; from my experiences in higher education - the rule rather than the exception is for students to be educated in one tradition or the other; both under an explicit guise of "critical thinking". Obviously a "fair and balanced" approach where all perspectives are considered is the seemingly more 'honest' approach to teaching this complex content - yet it remains to be seen that a science-based pedagogy exists that can really engage students in such critical thinking.

The Agricultural IST Students at University of Toliara
The first organized University-level program to engage
the question of GMOs in Malagasy Agriculture!

One common solution is to force students into a "debate" on the issues; we tell them to use their reasoning skills to formulate a moral stance based on evidence. We then reward them for parroting the talking points of a given tribal position. This approach would be fine if  "GMOs in Madagascar" really were a black-and-white, yes-or-no question; instead this issue represents a world of gray, a world begging for nuanced civility in the discourse (Paarlberg 2009). As University of Minnesota Professor, Jonathan Foley says "We have to get it right on our first (and only) try".

What if we change the questions we are asking? What if instead of telling students to use their reasoning skills to join one tribe or another; we tell them a new story about the functioning of our moral brains, and we give them a new vantage point from which to explore the science. This is exactly the experiment we launched last month at the agricultural Institut Superior Technologique (IST) at the University of Toliara here in SW Madagascar.

If want to see a reasoned, rational debate on GMOs in Madagascar; the first place to start is with human irrationality! When the competing tribes of science evoke the rational "evidence-based" approach of their own side; they are demonstrating a profound anti-science stance regarding the human condition. Advances in evolutionary science and moral psychology over and over again tell us a different story of our moral and moralistic brains.

We are tribalistic intuitionists; most ALL of us. We believe first and reason second. Our brains are naturally social and emotional - not scientific. "Well of course most people are like that, but not me and not my friends; We use reason and critical thinking!" - you are saying to yourself. Well - with all due respect, this is improbable at best (Haidt 2012, Kurzban 2012)

So what is to be done in the classroom? Well; a new science of intentional change is emerging that opens a mountainous set of tools for the curious educator to explore. In short; if we view the full range of diversity in opinion (on say, GMOs in Madagascar) as the end result (phenotype) of proximate evolutionary processes governing behavior, emotion, and cognition - we can begin to formulate environmental changes to the classroom that select for our most core values, rather than the knee-jerk (unIntentional - with a capital I) intuitional responses that our brains are so so good at 'naturally selecting' for (Wilson 2011, Wilson et.al in press). HUH? WHA?

In simpler terms.... rather than telling students to try to pick a side; we can engage them in viewing the moral discourse (on GMOs in Madagascar) as an ecosystem, or an organism; with ebbs and flows of energy that can result in states of system health or disease. Or as Jonathan Haidt conceives for political discourse, as yin and yang, balancing forces, the wisdom of which only emerges from healthy interaction.

In an ancient wisdom context, I am talking about the Buddhist notion of Mindfulness, cultivated traditionally through meditation. Increasingly, however, this state of consciousness is being evoked through a diverse range of metaphors and exercises of the mind empirically proven by researchers in the field of Contextual Behavioral Sciences (Kashdan & Ciarrochi 2013).

Educators may be able to tap these heavily validated approaches to cultivating Mindfulness for the service of improving moral discourse at the classroom, and perhaps public policy making domain.

After studying the evidential and moralistic diversity on the impact of GMOs; my students are currently engaged in the Service-Learning component of the course. Contacting a wide range of professionals with some knowledge of, or stake in this issue, to better understand this most human ecosystem first hand. In the months to come, our top students will be selected to craft a report. NOT a report about "should Madagascar grow GMOs or not"; but rather, it is an analysis of the "health" of the moral discourse in their country. This report will be made available to our growing list of Governmental and Non-Governmental agencies critically shaping the future of Malagasy Agricultural Policy.

There literally is a zen to the art of making public policy on biotechnology, I hope you'll follow our experiences as we cultivate this art at the University of Toliara!

What are your thoughts on this approach? Please comment or e-mail me [Dustin@MythicMinds.us].... Despite my background in Organic Agriculture, the response has been clearly more strongly supportive from the "Pro-GMO" side, and decidedly more skeptical from my "Anti-GMO" friends. If you believe science is on your side of this issue, than this process can only help cultivate an evidentially informed perspective. Yet if you focus mightily on the notion that "my science is right, how dare this guy muddy the waters for these students".... then perhaps you disagree with this methodology. One thing is clear - in the science on GMOs the only rational approach for the majority of us non-experts is a rather weak stance, welcoming new evidence with a skeptical eye, and wary of overtly moralisitic simplification of the complex reality.


References:

Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Pantheon

Books. New York, NY

Kurzban, R. (2012) Why Everyone (Else) is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind. 
Princeton University Press

Paarlberg, R. (2009). Starved for Science: How biotechnology is being kept out of Africa. Harvard

University Press. Cambridge, MA

Wilson, D.S. (2011). The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a

Time. Little, Brown and Company; Hachette Book Group. New York, NY

Wilson, D.S.; Hayes, S.C.; Biglan, A.; Embry, D.D. (in press). Evolving the Future: Toward a Science of

Intentional Change. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Cambridge University Press.

Kashdan, T.B.; Ciarrochi J.V. (2013). Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Positive Psychology: The Seven

Foundations of Well-Being. The Context Press, an Imprint of New Harbinger Publications Inc. Oakland

Launching the PEAR Laboratory!

Our ENS-Educational Psychology Students exploring a
bevy of resources that tell the mythology of the mind through
four evidential epics!

Last Monday, April 8th, marked the official launch of University of Toliara's newest research group:

The Positive Education Action-Research (PEAR) Laboratory!

Our Lab is a most unique endeavor for our  humble institution. An international applied research collaboration - our aim is simple: to develop, implement, and assess the functioning of Positive Psychology within educational settings across Madagascar. We want to empirically explore - and maximize - the ways that Schools contribute to Human flourishing; and we want to start offering our findings to the global scientific community. We want to work in a way that simultaneously transcends and rigorously values scientific disciplines. We want to explore the Big History and Future of Human Flourishing in Madagascar!

The Lab, as it stands today, revolves around our EvoS-inspired, introductory core-course for Educational Psychology Students: Mythic Minds.

The course itself is the subject of intensive empirical scrutiny under the watch of our Level II Ed-Psych Students - who recently completed this very module just one month ago. Indeed- these Level II Students are tasked now tasked with implementing much of the core-course for our incoming Freshmen. This unconventional course spans everything from the ancient history of meat-eating; to the future of the Internet - and weaves within these stories a contextual thread of educational best practices for our Teachers-in-Training to ponder and model.

A Three-Fold Approach

• Curriculum & Questionnaire Development
• We are developing innovative independent curriculum; as well as translating and culturally adapting numerous empirically validated Curriculum and Psychological Questionnaires from around the world. 

• Action-Research in Classrooms & Communities
• We are beginning to test, assess, and improve these curricular and questionnaire resources

• Curation of the Mythic Minds Story Collection
• We believe that the Human brain is wired for story (Gottschall 2013, Cron 2012). We hypothesize that evidence-based story-telling and metaphor-making are skills of untold value for the educator of the future. As well - that Big History provides a new context for developing evidential epics that may in fact function as a guide to the unknowable future. In recognition of this; we are are starting to curate a multi-lingual Story Collection for the Mythic Minds curriculum. A toolbox for the artisanal construction of four such evidential epics; four densely interwoven stories from Humanities deep past that we think are indespensible for Teachers from any culture, creed, or background! This Story Collection covers the full range of course content for both Level I & Level II core-courses; and serve as a basis for constructing image-rich mythology of the human mind for Students of all ages. 

So.... what exactly are these 'magical stories' that tell us so much about our brains and ourselves?

The Story Collection

• Evolution of the Meat Tribes
• The ~320 Million Year saga that starts with the differentiation of our ancestors from the reptilian synapsids; and ends with a glimpse of moralisitic debates about Animal Rights and synthetic In-Vitro Meat products of the future.

• The Story of Sacred Truths
• The ~8 Million Year journey from primate morality to faithless toolmakers to a world dominated by a diversity of faith-based beliefs and even secular moral positions; this is the story of religion and moralizing. 

• A Big History of the Classroom
• The ~2 Million Year haul from a tool makers apprentice to the global rise of the ivory towers; this is the Big History and Future of education.

• The Hive Mind Mythology 
• The complete picture; the 13.7 Billion year Big History of everything; boiled down into a mind-boggling mythological context. This is - in fact - a Big History of Human Consciousness and the Internet; told from a most unique perspective. A perspective that predicts a future of increased hybridization between humans and information technologies; and a perspective that makes highly specific comparisons between the emergent digital culture and the social model of the Bee Hive. Presenting the contentious notion that life is - in it's essence - groups of self-organizing groups; from the most ancient molecule - to the most futuristic society. This is perhaps the core sacred belief of those who enjoy the Hive Mind Mythology; and offers virtually unlimited forays into the domains of moral and positive psychology. In class we always support dissenting or differing  cross-cultural and individual beliefs; we simply explore the evidential basis and often shocking conclusions of the Hive Mind Mythology.

During the week to come our Level I and Level II Educational Psychology Students will be hard at work; both crafting these mind-boggling tales into relevant Malagasy terminology - as well as using our questionnaires to explore the evolved morality of their own community - here in the coastal SW Malagasy city of Toliara!

I hope you'll follow - and even  join us on this epic adventure into the the mythology of minds and the future of flourishing!

References:

Cron, L (2012) Wired for Story: The Writers Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

Gottschall, J. (2013) The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

Why ask Why? The Debate over WHAT Teachers Need to Know

With the wonderful success of our recent EvoS core course experiment; Mythic Minds - a group of us at University of Toliara are now working to develop a Positive Education Action-Research Laboratory - an innovative research group focused on refining, expanding, and disseminating the best practices we all just experienced within this pilot program. It sounds exciting and uncontroversial - and in a land with numerous Human development challenges - why would we not explore educational strategies aimed at maximizing Human flourishing?

"Why Ask Why?" might be acceptable if we want our kids to chug
Bud Dry - but if we want them to be
thoughtful, healthy, and happy Human Beings -
we'd better get really good at asking - and answering
these very big questions of "Why?"

Indeed - it really isn't controversial. I even chatted with a local Baptist missionary recently about the aims of our work - and indeed - he was quite supportive. Yet - unsurprisingly - he offered that "I like this positive psychology stuff.... but I'm not clear on exactly why you are bringing all this evolution stuff into it?". To be sure, my Baptist colleague is not alone. An apparently secular University of Wisconnsin-Madison Law Professor recently commented on an article from the Evolution Institute that "once you know how people learn, the intervention at the point of teaching and learning some material eliminates any cause and effect dependency of how we got that way" . This certainly seems reasonable enough - if we know "how" to best teach Students - why do we need to understand "why" it is we got that way? Shouldn't we focus intensely on  "how" best to teach Students; and just leave the "why we should teach in this way?" questions- up to Philosophers and others who focus on cosmic contemplations of the navel? The short answer is - definitely not.

To be sure - I strive to emulate, with unending respect, a great many Education Professionals who do not venture into the deep-time mysteries of evolution to inform their practice. In the emerging "3-6-10" model of Positive Education practices we are exploring in our Laboratory; two of the three organizations we follow have no evolutionary inclinations at all! Despite their proximate focus - many Educators know they have hit the nail on the head. So why then - why in the world should we spend our precious time asking questions about "why" some educational practices are better than others?

The answer is simple and two fold; engaging our sense of awe - and [only perhaps] more importantly -being able to ask better questions!

For me; and for many of us - it is simply an amazing, awe-inspiring story; the story of how Human Educational systems came to be. From an ancient ancestral adaptive need some 1 million years ago - until the shockingly inappropriate industrial renovation of childhood social systems within the last couple of hundred years - it's a wild ride filled with mystery, magic - and an explanatory power no serious Educator would want to miss. But interest alone does not make a curricular strategy.

The (perhaps) better response to my Baptist and Secular Skeptics lies in the realm of inquiry. Yes - many have "stumbled" (albeit through intensive empirical study) upon improved - and perhaps even currently idyllic models for teaching the evolved Human Brain-Mind; but that is not a secure direction for continued success. A perspective built on a deep-time and holistic-mechanistic understanding of why we got to this state where we can begin to describe how we should teach - this perspective is the one that allows us to ask the most appropriate questions to ensure a positive developmental future for the world's growing Humans.

A more unified perspective of Human Sciences makes it clear;
Ultimate explanations - the "why" questions -  are critically interconnected
to the more immediate - proximate level explanations of "how" we
must teach Students across the board!

I can understand and empathize with those who wonder "why ask why?" - but I can certainly not agree that it's a valid, or even interesting question. If we take a truly unified perspective to the human sciences; it becomes instantly apparent that the ultimate level of explanation - the "why" questions that inform an evidential understanding of the proximate level regarding "how" we should teach - are of the utmost importance and value to shaping the future of Academia K-12; and into Higher Education as well.

Evolving Groups of Groups & Sparking an Education Innovation Revolution in the Process!

This picture may appear to be 'just a group of Students' - but it's much more!
These groups are exploring what it will take to integrate the best in evidence
towards the goal of offering all Malagasy Students - the best in education!
What evolutionary science is showing us - is how to design the most
cooperative, learning-enabled classroom groups possible!

Evolution shows us that Life is Groups of Groups.... That is - the biological cell is 'merely' -or perhaps rather - magically - a group of molecules; an organ is a group of biological cells; an organism is a group of organs- and a society is a group of organisms

Clearly to say that Life is 'merely' groups of groups - is disingenuine. The group-stuff of Life must be the most carefully cooperative group-stuff - in the Universe! A cooperation utterly contingent on the design elements found at every scale!

As our 10-day - EvoS seminar for our Secondary Education Teacher Training Program was coming to an end - we decided to turn our group's newly found deep-time eyes towards the potentially murky abyss that is Educational Design.

• How do our Classroom Groups function?
• How can we redesign Classroom Environments to support Students in the organization of effective learning groups (from the micro-level of the neuron; to the macro-level of culture)?

A group of learners - that is -  learning in ways that connect their neurons to their culture; their ancestral past to their anticipated futures!

These are the big questions and tall aims my Students have chosen to tackle. To take on a Service-Learning Project - in which they become the Educational Design engineers for the future of Madagascar!

Armed with our Unified Human Sciences (UHS) framework; and an expanding literature review of educational best practices - the next offering from EvoS@UoT is going to kick things up a notch! In this coming round - our Level II Educational Psychology Students will explore Positive Psychology - and the Human traits of optimum well-being. They will examine these traits from across the UHS spectrum (asking evolutionary questions at multiple scales of time and space) - and from this study - they will re-engineer the Mythic Minds - introductory course they just completed; and that their incoming Freshman colleagues are about to begin!

As our Students are exploring what the Regents Academy
Experiment was all about - they are experiencing a
radically new style of education;
& they are being empowered to bring these lessons to the
larger University of Toliara community!

From our studying of educational Best Practices - we are seeing that Humans have, what scientists call; an Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness - or what we can think of in lay terms as an environment to which our genetics are best able to thrive in. This may have BIG implications for education - and luckily these implications are simply re-confirming what many educators already know!

From our studying of David Sloan Wilson's work in creating the Regents Academy Experiment; we began to glimpse how converging evidence is leading educators to a growing list of best practices in the classroom.

For millions of years our ancestors learned in very different environments than those imposed by the "Factory Model" of education - as so eloquently described in the video belo, by Sir Ken Robinson. In these varying Environments of Evolutionary Adaptedness learning environments had some basic common traits:

• We learned in small groups of mixed ages and skill ranges
• Our learning was focused on practical, experiential learning, based on the needs of our communities
• Finding a personal niche - based on one's individual strengths - a niche that is beneficial to one's community; would have been a prized virtue

Our modern day Service-Learning model, indeed, offers a clear package of best practices for our Teachers-in-Training to bring back these ancestral traits into our future classrooms. We will practice what we preach - using the Service-Learning model to understand, and ultimately re-engineer our own educational system in ways that honor our ancestry and prepare us for the future!

In our EvoS-Inspired classroom we are evolving some most interesting varieties of Student Groups. These varieties are empowered with a rigorous evidential literacy, a sense of exploratory awe befitting of anyone wishing to study the miraculous web that is Unified Human Sciences - and - a call to action; a call to improve the very educational communities in which they study and work!

For More Information:

The Regents Academy Experiment at the Evolution Institute 

The KIDS Consortium for Service-Learning; far and away the best in the business for making these kinds of projects work!

The good folks over at George Lucas' Foundation EduTopia also get it! Their evidence-based Core Concepts perfectly reflect our approach - and provide yet another platform for our Students to re-conceive what education can be!

Finding Myth, Magic, and Public Policy in Evolutionary Religious Studies

The Norse tale of Auðumbla, the Sacred Cow who fed the God
Ymir, and licked Buri - the origins of Humanity -
from the Salt of the Earth.

Folks often ask me: How can I teach Evolutionary Studies in such a largely Christian Community? For that matter- a community so supposedly different in so many ways from my own cultural background?

The answer is quite simple:
With genuine Human-to-Human respect; and the unstoppable magic of combining great story and great science!

Indeed - there appears to be little or no conflict for most of my students regarding our path of study - especially under the awe-inspiring gaze of evidential deep-time!

Our developing Teacher Training Core Course postulates that we must cultivate in our Students; a humble-awe and deep transdisciplinary understanding of the mythic Human Origins stories from across all cultures, times, and belief systems. That means; the Evolutionary Story is simply among the more recent of such epic tales of Human Origins - differentiated only by it's sacred focus on convergent evidence!

With these stories - of course - come belief systems; and our students are increasingly comfortable analyzing such phenomena through the  interconnections between culture; life experience; and of course; the biology of the brain. Criss-crossing throughout temporal and organizational scales of analysis during each and every seminar day!

We discuss the difference between Factual Realism and Practical Realism when it comes to these legends of mythic proportion. The former referring to how a given story connects with the exploding convergent evidence of Human Origins. The latter referring to how a given story motivates adaptive (i.e. beneficial) behavior in the individuals and communities which cherish it. Let's see how these two concepts from Wilson (2002) help us interpret my favorite mythic narrative about the origins of Humans and our relationship to the Bovid family of non-human animals.

The Norse Mythology of Auðumbla

Those who know me - know - I am gonzo for Cows! So let me share one of Humanities great bovine-based  myths of yore - the Norse tale of Auðumbla. What is this mythic story? And - how can we talk about it's factual versus it's practical realism? 

Ymir was the God of his day - literally; living the good life, lazing around and suckling copious quantity of milk from the four streaming teats of his primeval ruminant; Auðumbla. Yet - from where did Auðumbla get her nourishment? According to a 1916 English translation:

"She licked the ice-blocks, which were salty; and the first day that she licked the blocks, there came forth from the blocks in the evening a man's hair; the second day, a man's head; the third day the whole man was there. He is named Búri." (Brodeur 1916)

How many of you now believe the Story of Auðumbla is factually real? 
Not a hand among my 26 undergrad students was raised. It seems my efforts to convert them to this ancient Scandinavian Bovine-Worship Cult had failed ;)

But why did it fail? Did Students reject the truth of this story based on a cross-cultural intuition - a moral distaste for it? Or - was it because of a reasoned response based on sound science? That's a hard question to dissect - but many of them are now certainly able to articulate that we would need a LARGE amount of convergent evidence to try to argue in favor of the factual realism of Auðumbla.

But - if this story is so clearly not factually real - WHY - why do you think these peoples would create and tell such a myth, for so many generations (possibly dating back to proto-indo-european origins)?

I'm training my students to think as skilled functionalists - that is - I want them to think about what the functional impacts of any given Human trait (including the story of Ymir and Auðumbla).  If we understand the function - we may also glean insights into the origins. 

Students were hesitant to offer a hypothesis....

If you did actually - really really believe this story; how do you think you would might feel and act towards Cows? 

AHHH.... I can see some light bulbs flashing in the faces seated before me!

"well - we would treat the zebu like our mother or sister - like family"

While our Students easily reject the factual realism of the Auðumbla mythology; we can not be so quick to reject it's practical realism. It seems apparent that such a story could have quantifiable (in theory) positive impacts on how individuals and communities cared for and treated their bovid-buddies across the generations. During this nordic-slice of Human ancestry; those with healthy, happy cows undoubtedly fared better than their neighbors who sacralized less practical beliefs. An inspiring, culturally owned story that motivated one to do the absolute best for her cattle - this would certainly be a story with enduring value!

Now - did we just cheapen the story of this Divine Bovine, Auðumbla, by bringing an evidential understanding to it? Did we just reduce a cherished piece of ancient culture to "mere evolutionary principles"? HARDLY!

Integrating the Evolutionary Origins Story;
a Practical Matter of Night & Day!

The Reverend and Philosopher, Michael Dowd famously uses the concept of Night Language and Day Language to discuss the differences and connections between Science, Religion, and Mythology-at-large.

At a recent TEDxGrandRapids Talk; Dowd eloquently explained:

"What we used to speak about only in the Night Language of Religion, we can now also speak about in the plain, factual Day Language of Science". 

The Mythology of Auðumbla offers
spine-tingling Night Language for the
Scientific Day Language  of
Human-Bovine Co-Evolution!

For Dowd - Religious Mythology and Hard Science can be two sides of the same coin - an effort to help Humanity live in, what he calls, "right relationship" with our world. What my scientist colleagues refer to as; promoting adaptive behaviors. Recognizing that, on a neurological level, our Brains can literally be said to be "wired for story" - it seems premature of strong Atheists to fanaticize religious believers for embracing the Night Language of their faiths. In-fact; I argue we should all strive to cultivate the art of night language; in appropriately strong connection to the day language of hard science.

I love the Auðumbla story precisely for the spine-tingling night language translation of the evidential day language we now can share about the co-evolution of Humans and Cows! 

Auðumbla needed nourishment - and in her search for it - she found a most amazing ice-block. An as-yet unsculpted piece of nature whose potential to emerge as Human- she  would ultimately unleash. Slowly; and with the same cosmic care we can see as a modern mother cow licks her fresh calf into the world - 

Auðumbla licked Humanity into world - even as our traces nourished her own development  - and fed the God Ymir with abundance! 

Probably no one believes in the factual story of Auðumbla today; yet every single human today should appreciate the role of Human-Animal partnerships in the agonizing, astonishing, ancestral rise of our Species. We are the descendants of those who believed and acted in the most "right relation" to their given environments.  Rather than deride the lack of reason we may now judge in our ancestor's beliefs; we can celebrate their adaptive innovation - and hope we have the heart-felt (and reason-tested??)  insights to do as well in our modern environments!

Integrating both night & day language cultivates a truly mythic understanding of evidential reality - and is an approach that pleases many of my most fiercely faithful - and most soulfully secular Students.

From Myth to Policy - Understanding the Moral Psychology Determining the Future of Education

Armed with a basic understanding of the above concepts derived from Evolutionary Religious Studies and Moral Psychology;  we were now prepared to delve into the most potentially contentious moralistic issue imaginable; 

What should Educational Policy around the teaching of 'Evolution vs. Creationism' look like for University of Toliara? What about for the Malagasy High Schools our Students will soon be Teaching and Administrating?

A sample PPT slide from my course; illustrating both the diversity
of moral positions; and the nature of disagreements and congruence
between individuals who care about the topics of Science & Religion
The Yellow Arrows denote the expected and temporary disagreements
to be found amongst believers in Convergent Evidence
The Red Arrow denotes the critical dividing line for respecting the
 nature of Convergent Evidence - and entering the domain of
Science conspiracy theory.
(From L-R; Zack Kopplin, David Sloan Wilson, Michael Dowd, Ken Ham,
Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Haidt, Connie Barlow)

We looked at US media coverage of the "debate" - and could easily see that it paints a "2-sided" image. That of a strong and impenetrable divide between Scientists and Religious Folks. Our new understanding of In-Group / Out-Group psychology helped us easily make sense of why this vast simplification may occur.

As Moral Psychologists, however - we decided to pierce the veil of the media and take a more scientific look at the full moral diversity on the issue.

We spent more than half a class (2 hours) discussing the nature of agreement and conflict around this issue. We began to understand it as  a broad and complex spectrum of diverse beliefs - rooted in our basic understanding of moral psych. We noted the prevalence and diversity of disagreements across all groups; but we also noted such diversity was not "a wash". That is - it's not that all of these differences of opinion are on equal footing. In particular we examined the sentiments of many major players relevant to our topic (see the PPT slide caption above). After examining the moral diversity of our elite sample group; we were able to notice only one hard dividing line.

By analyzing the Moral Diversity on Science Education Policy;
We can see a broad spectrum - yet when Creationists deny
convergent evidence; they do create a harder-line division 

In the context of what we know about our moral brains; I offered Students the idea that Science is a culture - a socially binding force based on the sacred (untouchable) notion of convergent evidence. Just as all cultural moral matrices have their sacred notions - convergent evidence is the untouchable ideal for Scientists.

Yet in fact; Scientists DON'T all believe the same thing - nor do we believe in unchanging truths. In the PPT slide above; we see a bevy of disagreements represented by the Yellow arrows above the Black spectrum line. These are disagreements about the nature, breadth, and depth of the evidence around relatively small claims concerning human nature and origins. 

These disagreements - which we all expect to occur - will come and go. New agreements will be made based on new evidence; new disagreements will arise based on new evidence. But - the discussion always relies solely on the powerful notion of convergent evidence. The Big Red Arrow - separating Creation Museum Operator, Ken Ham - from the rest of the sample - this represents a hard line of in-congruence. The line beyond which the concept of convergent evidence no longer holds sway. Here, beyond our red arrow, science becomes a global conspiracy to test the faith of any particular Religion's followers. 

My emphasis - to be clear - is not on "converting" Students to my explicitly held sacred belief in convergent evidence; not anymore at least, than I genuinely sought to convert them to the ancient Norse belief in the Sacred Cow Auðumbla. My point is ONLY to demarcate identifiable boundaries within the complexity of moral diversity we can see - and offer them a road-map to the moral mind from which they can make sound personal choices. Students will never be graded on their personal beliefs; as long as they demonstrate understanding of what beliefs on either side of the red line genuinely entail!

By conquering the false-dualism of "Evolution-vs.-Religious Belief" and looking instead at the real complexity of moral diversity; from a transdisciplinary and evidence-based perspective; we offer students a truly empowering education from which to craft their adoption of mythology and science in genuinely awe-inspiring - and we can hope - adaptive ways!

Atheist Fundamentalists may criticize this approach as still allowing my Students of the Human Sciences to hold on to "unscientific ideas".... To this I remind the strong Atheists that skepticism is a scientific ideal..... Atheism - even Dawkins readily concedes - purports an untenable certainty to be a good Scientific proposition. As long as Science can not Hypothesize about the existence of a God who chooses to remain beyond the vision of methodological naturalism; let us cultivate the broadest and strongest respect for the nature of convergent evidence  - and allow our newly-minted Scientists to otherwise believe as they will. 

References:

• Brodeur, Arthur Gilchrist (tr.) (1916). The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation.
• Dowd, M. (2012) Why Do We Struggle Now? TEDxGrandRapids
• Wilson, D.S. (2002) Darwin's Cathedral: The Nature of Evolution, Religion, and Society. 

The EvoS Experiment - Malagasy Style!

The First EvoS - Core Course Students at University of Toliara!
These Students are nationally selected leaders;
the future of Educational Psychology in Madagascar!

As I walked from my hotel to the CEDRATOM complex at University of Toliara; the pungent burning of freshly butchered coconut palms was an all to real reminder that recovery from Hurricane Haruna is far from over.

Indeed, day one for this pilot educational experiment - offering an EvoS Consortium based Core Course, for our Educational Studies students  - got off to a rough start...

Yet - it seems like it is heading towards a remarkable finale!

It is a course that examines the vast interconnection amongst the all of the Human  Sciences. Fostering literacy in the basic processes of science - and breaking down old-fashioned perceptions of strict barriers between any and all disciplines. It is a course I titled Mythic Minds: Connecting the Story of Our Moral Brains Across the Unified Human Sciences.

We're connecting the very newest of neuro-science to the most ancient of anthropology!
We're integrating a mythic understanding of the Universe - with an evidential understanding of the same!

These are seriously lofty ideas - and the still flooded streets, hourly electrical brown-outs, and collapsed sheet-metal shacks I witness daily enroute to campus are a constant reminder of the realities many of my students are facing.

Where several Students in my class had most all of their possessions destroyed by Haruna just days ago, my colleague; Dovick Alexis and I, figured we should plan for a slow beginning for the class.  As Students trickled in, we provided them with the Moral Foundations Questionaire; explaining that this "introduction to psychology" would be different than their other courses in that we will be actually engaging in the scientific research process as we proceed through the course. Exploring our own moral psychology - through this survey mechanism - was the entry point to understanding something we are calling a "Unified Human Sciences" approach. As all the students arrived and completed their questionnaires, I turned on our brand our new LCD Monitor (Thanks to IEET!) - combined with the second screen of my Laptop; and our trusty dry-erase whiteboard for the brown-outs - I  introduced the students to the psychological quandaries of optical illusions; a fun if standard entry to understanding the human brain.

UoT is a low resource school;
in a low resource region;
in a low resource nation
It Doesn't Matter!
EvoS Content is working here!

3 days in to the 10-day intensive seminar now, and we've covered a mind boggling amount of ground - especially considering that we're working in three different languages (English, French, and Malagasy!)

Students are beginning to get grounded in our Unified Human Sciences framework; able to see how any human trait must ultimately be described and explained from a multitude of disciplines, timescales, and levels of organization. We've also explored some of the history of Human Sciences - and noted it's a bit WEIRD. That is - most of these Human Sciences were developed by Scientists who could be classified as coming from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Developed backgrounds. What does Moral Psychology - Malagasy Style actually look like?

Today we decided we will map the moral vocabularies of the Malagasy language! We will have our Educational Psychology students take cultural ownership of the concepts we just learned by seeing how the vocabularies surrounding morality in their own communities may or may not "map" onto the transdisciplinary moral psychology of the west.

We dissected a French translation of the field's emerging standard research tool - The MFQ-30; or Moral Foundations Questionnaire originally created by Jonathan Haidt, Jesse Graham, and Brian Nosek; we talked about how a translation is much more than a "1-to-1" word conversion; we have to make these metrics culturally relevant! Quite a task for our first year Undergrads, but I am confident they're up for it. Student teams of 3 have each selected 3 items from the MFQ-30; and over the next week - they will each interview (n=15) Toliara residents (per group; total surveyed to be n>100) - from widely variable backgrounds regarding the accessibility, relevance, and associated moral Malagasy vocabularies - in the context of Haidt and colleagues theory of Moral Foundations.

Our Students work in this area will directly result in a reliable and enduring new Social Sciences research tool for the entire nation of Madagascar! A tool that Students themselves are already self-reporting - they could also use to engage their future High School students in the transdisciplinary science of moral psychology!

As part of the final class assessment - students must craft science-based arguments for or against a very specific Educational Policy position:

• That further developing the EvoS program at University of Toliara should be a significant priority across all of our Biological and Human Sciences related departments.

Preliminary evidence suggests this policy may be very supportable!

A Seed Under the Tamarind Tree

Under the leguminous shade of the campus
Tamarind tree - we sat and talked....

Under the leguminous shade of the campus Tamarind tree - we sat and talked - about the heat - yes; but also about a very bright future for technology and science education at the University of Toliara (UoT).

I was with my colleague; Dovick Alexis - and the head of our social sciences institute, the ENS, Dr. Juliette Silasi.

We had just toured the Institutes developing Information Technology Center - which is incredibly promising but severely hampered by security concerns due to a straightforward - lack of resources to invest in basic infrastructure.

Now was time to get down to business; I had two goals here - to get permission to begin developing a website for the UoT; and to advance our UoT membership level in a leading international science education network - The EvoS Consortium for Evolutionary Studies.

The website would require permission from our President; Prof. Dina Alphonse; however - the offerings from EvoS were met with an enthusiasm and logical connections I was not prepared for!

I presented Dr. Silasi with a basic transdisciplinary model of Human Sciences - and she intuitively understood what EvoS is about. Indeed - the very structure of the ENS institute Silasi has shaped over the years is ideally suited to become a campus hub for EvoS - strengthening both this social sciences institute - and developing a resource for literally ALL other natural and social sciences departments at UoT.

We agreed that, in addition to my development of Neuropsychology programming for the ENS (why I originally came aboard) - I would offer an introductory course; in the vein of David Sloan Wilson's "Evolution for Everyone" at the University of Binghamton - and now across the SUNY system. An introduction into the world of integrated bio-social sciences - it's great for the students of course; but I am also seeing how it may be transformative for the University as well!

That evening we all sat down with President Alphonse. The concept of a UoT website was welcomed as a way to advance multiple University goals (e.g. technology integration, multi-lingual integration, and global presence). As well - President Alphonse was equally warm to the premise of EvoS - and it's ability to strengthen Universities by building bridges across departments. The President welcomes our pilot EvoS course in the Faculty of Psychology - and pending success here; we may be able to offer resources across the broad range of biological and social sciences offered at this most unique University; using a basic evolutionary framework as the glue that connects all knowledge!

In the very same way that biological and social sciences are inter-linked; so were my requests for a website and an EvoS experiment.

Laza Andrainy - Member of the UoT
IT Leadership Team

Today we purchased the domain: www.UniToliara.info; and today we begin a truly massive service-learning project to bring UoT to the world stage - by creating an Internet presence worthy of our promise! Amongst coffee cups and palm trees; I sat with a motivated young student; Laza Andrainy. We had worked till 8 last night crafting text at the English Language Learning Center - and today we began Laza's training in basic web-publishing using Google sites.

We have a LOT of work ahead of us; the University is of substantial size - mapping it onto a website from scratch is daunting - never mind doing it in three languages (English, French, Malagache)!! Yet - in this hard work - I believe some magic will happen. I believe the website - and it's creation through our cross-departmental IT Leadership Team; can serve as an engine, incubator, and metric for connecting disciplines and departments throughout the University in all of the ways the EvoS model for Higher Educator fosters. More fundamentally; I believe it is a way for UoT Students to take increased ownership of both their education - and the Internet itself. As I watched Laza learn and begin to create digital, global content for the first time on our humble Acer Netbook; it was clear a seed has been planted.

Follow our project as we cultivate the growth of information technology and transdisciplinary science education in Southwestern Madagascar!

_______________________________

Thanks to the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies - African Futures Project for the donation of the laptops used to create the first University of Toliara Website!