Why+System+Dynamics?

All systems, everywhere have levels and flows. These are the only two concepts needed to understand why systems work the way they do (Forrester, 1996).

We were taught in school to accumulate knowledge and skills in order to get a job. We define learning as the accumulation of knowledge. We test every child at every grade level to measure their accumulated knowledge. We teach people how to do things so they have a skill in order to get a job.

Public education teaches people what is important to know. Students learn skills so that they know how to do things. Students are tested on what they know and the skills for how to use what they know. System Dynamics (SD) enables us to understand why systems work they way they do.

Public education involves a way of thinking, learning and communicating that focuses on the past up to the present. Science, math, reading and writing are all focused on knowledge (what) and skills (how) that have been codified into a curriculum. In public education students learn about the past up to the present.

Life is moving fast. We need a way to think, learn and communicate about the future. The current public school system does not meet that need.

Sustainability education and environmental literacy are focused on students learning more and more about how to do more things. By conforming to the way the current public education system focuses on what and how, we are asking students to accumulate more and more knowledge about the recent past. We are asking students to accumulate more and more skills about how things were done in the recent past.

System dynamics is a tool to think, learn and communicate about the future. (Richmond 2010)

 With SD, learning is about why systems work they way they do. What is needed to model a system is accumulated just in time to use in a model. The knowledge needed about how the parts of a system are related is accumulated just in time to use them in a model. The understanding needed about why feedback loops in systems tell a story is accumulated just in time to use them in a model.

SD enables us to understand why systems work they way they do. Politicians and decision makers need to know why systems work the way they do so that they can craft policies that are successful in the future. Policy makers need informed citizens who know why systems work they way they do.

Why do policymakers choose policies that fail? A policy response is rational for decision makers who fail to account for the feedback structure of a system. Only by considering the full feedback structure is the ineffectiveness of a policy revealed. By learning why feedback affects system behavior, small system dynamics models have a crucial role to play in policy making. (Ghaffarzadegan, 2012)

Policy makers fall prey to the “Pull my finger” joke. They develop a policy that responds to correlations, trends and events believing that they understand the cause like when the finger pull and the sound are close together in space and time. The irony of public policy making is that, without understanding system feedback, what happened in the past will be made worse by a policy response.

Without SD, public education is teaching students to look to the past to make decisions about the future. The public school system is walking backwards into the future.

The public school system is the primary obstacle to students using SD. The entrenched paradigms are the foundation for education institutions that teach what and how from K12 through university doctorate programs. Educators and students are evaluated based on what they know and how to use what they know. SD enables us to understand why systems work they way they do.

System dynamics is a tool to think, learn and communicate in a new way so that educators engage student’s mental models. When mental models rely on “Pull my finger” thinking a person is not going to understand feedback. To use SD requires a new way of thinking: Think about levels and flows connected in feedback loops within a closed boundary.

To use SD requires a new definition of learning: Learning is improving the quality of our mental models.(Richmond 2010) The current public school system does not attempt to improve the quality of student’s mental models.

To use SD requires a new way of communicating: Communicate about why your model works using feedback loops. This is where qualitative tools like causal loop diagrams and behavior-over-time graphs are used and useful.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Jay Forrester is the founder of System Dynamics. He has said for many years that with the right guidance “students must create their own models and learn from trial and error.” In this way dynamic modeling is learning by doing. “I believe that immersion in such active learning can change mental models.” (Forrester 2009)

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Why System Dynamics? System Dynamics enables us to understand why systems work they way they do in order to prepare for the future.

Bibliography
 * 1) Forrester, Jay W. "System Dynamics and K-12 Teachers." Creative Learning Exchange. 30 May 1996. Web. 11 Feb. 2012. []
 * 2) Ghaffarzadegan, Navid, John Lyneis, and George P. Richardson. "Why and How Small System Dynamics Models Can Help Policymakers: A Review of Two Public Policy Models." System Dynamics Society. Web. 10 Feb. 2012. []
 * 3) Richmond, Barry. "Introduction: The Thinking in Systems Thinking- Eight Critical Skills." Ed. Joy Richmond. Tracing Connections: Voices of Systems Thinkers. Lebanon, NH: ISEE Systems, 2010. 3-21. Print.
 * 4) Forrester, Jay W. "Learning through System Dynamics as Preparation for the 21st Century." Creative Learning Exchange. 2009. Web. 11 Feb. 2012. []