1981, 5th grade, integrated instruction 1st topic primatology: baboon troop dominance and submission 2nd topic: eskimos music teacher artifacts rituals seal hunting paper seal reciprocity exercise igloo construction and clan village planning integrated curriculum magnificent modular card-based learning system called "m.a.c.o.s." for Man a Course of Study I liked the off-line self-paced learning, finished every single one really an introduction to cultural anthropology --- Many years later (mid 2000s) BBQ at a teacher's house and one of the 5th grade teachers was there asked about went to harvard developed the system brought it to the school i had asked about where i could get a copy lou suggested yard sale/ebay difficult web search (overlaps MacOS) unavailable at any price considered converting it to computer learning system not on wikipedia as of 2006 --- I started reading a different bruner, Acts of Meaning (based on Amazon reviews) looking for something easy didn't like it wasn't in any way about education switched to "Toward a Theory of Instruction" doing my outline thing and came across Chapter 4 "Man: A Course of Study" odd coincidence harvard title almost, but not quite exactly the same examples overlap course of study course of study i began to realize that Bruner was what I was looking for all along no book called "MACOS curriculum" now on wikipedia perhaps as recently as 1/07 The ideas behind the curriculum laid out in the first few chapters --- Chapter 1 Patterns of growth: Instruction is the attempt to augment/hasten/support the [natural] developmental process people are not "culturally naked" so the study of development is concerned with culture * 1. growth is characterized by increased independence of response from stimulus that inspires it (self control) ** 2. growth depends on internalizing events to storage system modeled on environment ** 3. intellectual growth involves increasing capacity to project actions into the future and make use of stored info about the past 4. intellectual development depends opon relationship between tutor and learner *** 5. teaching is vastly depended on use of language 6. multi-tasking piagetian focus on childhood development chapter 2 eduction as a social invention dated examples and rhetoric conventional wisdom now makes haunting predictions about rise in technology straining mission and purpose of schools chapter 3 notes on a theory of instruction has 4 major features anticipates future learning by fosterings skills/etc. that will support it 41 has "optimal structure" for understanding simplified leads to the larger field of understanding manipulable (reusable?) progressively sequenced specifies the nature and placement of rewards and punishments stairs rather than a ramp rise from one stair to another inspired/invited/made possible by skills the absense of the precursor skills is bad sort of the end of the line, but sort of just makes it harder to learn in the future Bruner spends a lot of time describing how wrong answers are typically the student answerring the wrong question and understanding how to educate them is actually much easier when you understand how/why they answered wrong chapter 4 man: a course of study "it is the process of curriculum making that is of concern here, and not the product" structure of the course:3 recurring questions what is human about human beings how did they get that way how can they be made more so? 5 great humanizing forces tool making language social organization - baboon-eskimo progression dominance and submission reciprocity of seal disbursement seal hunting igloo making artifacts management of prolonged childhood appreciation for uniquely LONG childhood of humans developmental process urge to explain the world aka "worldview" emphasis on interrelatedness of things relates to the steps idea above goal is establishing/fostering skills that will support future learning jb hates rote learning: example of asking a kid what a noun is and hearing "person, place or thing" --- the ultimate conclusion clash with people interested in teaching values, resisting multiculturalism death of MACOS was ironically delt by culture enemies of the liberal educational multicultural thought machine conspired to crush it which i am both a product of and a critic of latent racism and economic discrimination of the two-tier public/private education system dealt MACOS the final coup-de-gras --- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878677,00.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man:_A_Course_of_Study_(MACOS) http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/9/234216/8201