Qualifying Paper

As you can see, I seized the opportunity of the qualifying paper to defend, in some detail, the novel proposition that Forresterian insights and simulations could contribute wisdom to the development of innovations in educational systems. Wisdom, indeed, which could in principle never come from tools and concepts more familiar to educators. I focused on applications of DYNAMO, a computer software program with which one can simulate the operation of causal systems, formulated under Forresterian principles.

I won’t bother you with the substance of all that, unless you should conceive enough curiosity to ask. Should that happen, you’d better catch me while I’m still around: once I’m gone, I don’t know that anybody will keep these documents or even know about them.

Nearly half a century later, at the end of a hard-to-describe professional career, I still

believe what I said, wrote, and believed at the start, in 1968. I remain convinced that a great deal of expert opinion and prescription, these days, is demonstrably, dangerously wrong, for reasons that any freshman Forresterian could make clear, if anybody would listen.

I call my career indescribable. Well, not quite. One could characterize it as a series of failed attempts to get people to apply in their decision-making half a dozen insights that we owe to Jay Forrester. Or one could observe that, thank the Lord, the Anderson family never slept outdoors or missed a meal involuntarily, through several decades of interesting interludes. In this day and age, it may be presumptuous to ask much more of one’s life’s work.

Ed.D

1967-68:

Back a Page
(Qualifying Paper)

Such a Life
Contents

Harvard 66-68:
section start

Harvard 66-68:
page index