Teaching Roles and Time Use Patterns

This post provides a chance to "sit back" and consider a broad based view of skills potential. How to think about time use which connects with different goals and aspirations? In particular, I wish to highlight the teaching role as multifaceted - something not always reflected in teaching positions. Fortunately there's a basic way to consider different teaching environments, from a concept I've only touched on once or twice since starting the blog.

While the concept has intrigued me for the better part of a decade, it felt too "philosophical" for normal blogging circumstance. Recently I've noted some change in perspective as well, about the last two components for five economic groups of activities. Here's the discipline pattern.

maintenance - building - creating - understanding - healing

How are these time use patterns utilized? The pyramid base (of economic time use) is formed from the left. Individuals move forward to the next pattern (a shift to the right) for added perspective, and then "fall" back to previous patterns of time use, to apply the gain in insight.

For instance: before anything (concept or physical reality) can be maintained, it needs to either be built, or otherwise recognized if it already "exists". Of course, maintenance activity also applies for anything from the most instinctive function, to the most complex of technology. Unfortunately, some aspects of maintenance get overlooked for the importance they hold as a societal base. In these instances, teaching roles may not provide for maintenance activities to the degree they are actually needed.

Even though formal education tends to discount physical and technical aspects of maintenance, a fair amount of formal education is actually a pure form of social and cultural maintenance. Much of teaching moved into this role in the twentieth century - indeed to an excessive degree. How, then, do formal educational settings play into the other disciplines?

It depends on the setting, and what individuals seek to accomplish in that setting. Likewise, creativity may be involved in the formation of new product, where education of a more free form nature may occur. If so, both building and creating come into play. In a similar manner, cutting edge research extends beyond the building discipline as well. Once a given product is ready for market, maintenance (and further building) of the product may occur for a short time or possibly centuries, given cultural attitudes and existing paths for competition.

Teaching roles could generate further building capacity for human potential. One reason educators can't substantially contribute more to product formation, is that aggregate time potential has yet to be considered for service product in local coordinated settings. This mindset is an unfortunate holdover from the twentieth century, when social norms assumed that opportunities to be hired were more important than opportunities to interact directly with other individuals and resource sets. Prior to that mindset, teaching roles were able to directly contribute to building elements, for they often provided means for time use capacity in resource settings.

Understanding occurs when diverse patterns are recognized for the connections they hold to one another. Fortunately this role is more widely provided than it may seem at first glance. In particular, the digital realm makes it possible for people from all walks of life to contribute to life perspectives. Many of the most vivid - and often informal - teaching examples tend to come from this area. Examples in new understandings remain an ongoing part of economic formation.

Alas, the healing role is not so simple. Indeed, societies seem to need healing the most in the times they would just as soon not allow it to happen. How is healing different, i.e. a "step up" from understanding? Healing requires reconciliation of different areas of thought which sometimes attempt to cancel one another out, instead of seeking points of connection.

Only consider the monetary policy quandary, in which lessons learned from Great Depression days have been downplayed or even discarded. While it is not clear why this has happened, I have my suspicions that money needs to remain connected to basic forms of economic activity which individuals perform. Too many remain convinced that individual participation is not necessary in economic life. Supposed "efficiencies" in this regard are stealing brain cells from plenty of individuals who really, really should know better. It was said that in a hyperinflation environment, money "dies". When money and economic formation are arbitrarily held back, one could say that money "cries".

How to provide teaching roles, in moments when too many basic principles are unexpectedly thrown out the window? When disparate parts cannot be made whole in any given system, there are many aspects of life which are consequently put on hold. Fortunately, the highest levels of healing aren't always needed, when systems remain capable of working with the resources at hand for the benefit of all. But healing is definitely needed now, before understanding returns and teachers can once again resume their multifaceted roles.