A few months ago I was invited to make a presentation to the Kettering Foundation staff in Dayton, Ohio. The Foundation asks and tries to answer the question, "What does it take to make democracy work as it should?"

Here, as concisely as I'm able to state it, is an answer:

Q: What does it take to make democracy work as it should?

A: A population that understands itself and its situation in the deepest possible sense.

Q: What particular knowledge is most important?

A: Knowledge of the underlying, largely unexamined assumptions that shape decision-making, public policy, and societal actions.

Q: How is this knowledge best acquired, expanded, and transmitted?

A: By dialog within a system of universal public education.

Q: What is the optimum conceptual organizer of that dialog?

A: Systems theory.

Q: What presently blocks acceptance of systems theory as the major organizer of knowledge?

A: The assumption that the traditional academic disciplines adequately organize knowledge.

Q: Why is systems theory a better organizer of knowledge than the academic disciplines?

A: Because it neglects no aspect of reality, and more accurately models the systemic nature of the real world in general and of societies (the makers of sense and meaning) in particular.

Q: What is the path of least resistance to academia's acceptance of systems theory as the major organizer of knowledge?

A: Convincing educators that systems theory subsumes the disciplines, thereby expanding, enhancing, relating, and integrating them.

Q: Does this mean the academic disciplines play a secondary role?

A: No, just a different role. Disciplines are essential, and many more options should be offered, but no particular specialized study should be required of all learners. The great range of individual differences should be acknowledged, treated as an invaluable societal resource, and studies chosen that capitalize on the individual learner's abilities and interests.

Q: What is the best stage of life for introducing the young to a holistic, systemic perspective of reality, to their society's assumptions about it, and to the origins, manifestations, and implications of those assumptions?

A: No later than adolescence—before they are programmed by the present curriculum to arbitrarily fragment knowledge.

Q: Can a course of study be devised to introduce the young to a holistic, systemically integrated perspective on reality in general and on their own society in particular?

A: Yes. The simplest approach to the use of systems theory as the main organizer of knowledge is the one the young learn and use long before they begin formal schooling. The approach needs merely to be lifted into consciousness and deliberate use made of it.

Q: Will such a course of study enhance democratic institutions?

A: Yes, to the extent that democracy is a product of an understanding of humanness and the human condition. But because it provides learners with a "master" system for organizing understanding of complex reality, it also significantly improves performance in traditional studies.

A first draft of a course of study designed to use systems theory as an alternative to the "core" curriculum as the organizer of general education is available, free, at:

http://home.cfl.rr.com/marion/2008/10/investigating-systems-course-of-study.html.

Convinced that a first draft will inevitably be rough, and believing that broad dialog is critically important to its acceptance and improvement, provision has been made for convenient user dialog.

Published December 1, 2008