You know, whenever you're planning something
big, it could be a work project, mapping out
a course, even just setting up a key meeting.
Where do you start? Almost always, it's with
the goal, right? You figure out the objective,
what you want to achieve, and only then do you
start designing the system to get there. It feels
completely intuitive. And this isn't just habit.
It's really, really embedded in how we think
today, especially in places like public education,
curriculum planning, strategic stuff. It all
starts by defining the goals first, then you
build the road to reach them. necessary, foundational
even. But today we're doing a deep dive into
some sources that suggest this whole goals first
idea. It's not some timeless truth. It's actually
a pretty recent invention and worse when you
try to apply it to really complex human things
like learning. Well, experts are saying it creates
an artificial framework, one that might actually
fail us. So our mission today is to dig into
where this goals based planning really came from,
why it took over so completely and crucially
understand the argument for why it kind of falls.
apart when dealing with complex messy real -world
systems. Yeah, and it's hard to overstate how
much this dominates, particularly in education.
Gosh, decades now, setting clear, measurable
objectives. That's just been job one for teachers,
for administrators. It's so widespread, so accepted.
It almost doesn't feel like a method anymore.
It feels like, you know, just how things are.
Like, think about curriculum standards now in
the 21st century. They've basically become the
source for all these goals and objectives in
educational planning. But even though this objective's
first thing feels like it's always been there,
like some kind of fundamental best practice.
Its history is actually much shorter than you'd
probably guess. We're talking about a big mindset
shift that really only kicked off in the late
20th century. OK, so if it didn't bubble up from
centuries of teaching wisdom, where did this
focus on objectives come from? Let's trace that
back. Well, the sources we looked at trace this
standards -driven objectives -first planning,
not to education, surprisingly, but to things
like strategic logistics. defense policy. We're
really talking about that period moving out of
the big industrial age into the kind of planning
needed after World War II. Big complex operations.
Right. And the name that keeps coming up in the
research here is Charles Hitch. He was writing
for the Rand Corporation back in 1960. So not
thinking about classrooms necessarily. He's thinking
about how to best use resources in massive government
and military projects. Optimization. Exactly.
That's the key context. Hitch's work was all
about accountability, maximizing output in these
really complex, high -stakes environments, managing
huge budgets, big infrastructure projects. In
that world, you absolutely need measurable goals.
You have to justify spending, prove you're being
efficient. And that push for rigor led to his
really famous insight. It was cited later by
Riddle and Weber, where Hitch basically said,
we need to scrutinize the goal itself. His words
were something like, we must learn to look at
our objectives as critically and as professionally
as we look at our models and other inputs. Whoa.
OK, wait. That's actually kind of different.
He wasn't just saying, set a goal and go. He
was saying, treat the goal itself like it's part
of the data. Don't just assume it's the right
goal. Question it. Analyze it. Precisely. Before
Hitch. Planning often just kind of started with,
well, tradition, maybe, or just what resources
you happen to have. But Hish flipped it. Planning
started looking at the destination first. And
then everything else was judged by how efficiently
it got you there. And this idea just took off.
Oh, absolutely. Spread like wildfires, a good
way to put it. By the end of the 60s, you see
major professional organizations, finance, business,
public policy. They all adopted this model. So
the question's fundamentally changed. It became,
what's the measurable outcome we want, and how?
Fast and cheap, can we get it? Yep. And success
was purely about hitting that target, hitting
that metric. Did the output match the goal? And
look, it was a revolution for the kinds of problems
they were focused on then. Streamlining production
lines, making distribution networks faster, that
sort of thing. If your goal is, let's say, reductionist,
meaning you can break the problem down into smaller
parts and optimize each one, then yeah, goals
-based planning works incredibly well. Okay,
but here's where the story shifts in the sources,
right? Because we hit a ceiling. As things got
more complex, technology, human systems all tangled
up, just making the parts more efficient didn't
always lead to a better overall result. Sometimes,
optimizing One Piece even made the whole system
worse for the humans involved. Exactly. It's
like the difference between making a factory
pump out more widgets, which is pretty linear,
and trying to solve city traffic. Right. You
can make one highway lane super efficient, but
that might just create bigger jams elsewhere.
It doesn't solve the system problem. Precisely.
We hit this wall where the old reductionists
approached the idea that you understand the whole,
just by understanding all the little pieces,
it just stopped working for these newer, more
interconnected problems. We'd maxed out the efficiency
gains on the parts, but the big picture problems
weren't getting solved. So to really get our
heads around why that old model fails, we need
to bring in systems thinking. And that leads
us to Lars Skitner, a sweeter scholar, his book
from 2005, General Systems Theory. Mm -hmm Skeetaner
saw this happening. He observed that we were
facing a whole new class of problems in the modern
world that are just Fundamentally irreducible.
You can't break them down and solve them piece
by piece effectively And he listed some big ones
where efficiency and reductionism just don't
cut it anymore environmental degradation for
one the huge complexities around artificial intelligence
and technologies of war. Wow. OK, so if these
massive global issues are irreducible, then applying
that old goals first planning model to them seems,
well, doomed from the start. What did Skitner
say was the reason? What makes them so resistant
to just setting a target and optimizing? It boils
down to something he called systemic circularity.
Which is basically the opposite of that nice
neat linear cause -and -effect chain that goals
based planning kind of assumes Skinner explained
it like this The interactions of systems variables
are so interlinked to each other that cause and
effect is a kind of circular logic He said one
separate variable does can be both cause and
effect circular logic Okay, help me visualize
that if cause and effect are all mixed up. How
does that mess up planning? Okay, think about
climate change. That's a perfect example of the
circularity. Let's say your goal is linear Reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. So you decide to switch
power plants to renewables. Simple goal, right?
But maybe building all those renewables drives
up demand for certain minerals, causing mining
issues or economic instability in some regions.
That instability might make countries less willing
to sign on to global climate agreements, which
then slows down the overall effort to reduce
emissions. Ah, okay. So trying to fence the cause,
emissions, creates a new effect. instability,
which then feeds back and makes the original
cause harder to tackle. It's like a feedback
loop from hell. That's it, exactly. You can't
just isolate one variable and tweak it because
it's connected to everything else. And measuring
success by hitting one objective becomes kind
of meaningless if hitting it triggers three new
problems you didn't foresee. It sounds incredibly
frustrating for planners. You can't optimize
what you can't isolate. That's the whole point
Skatner was making. He concluded that for these
complex interconnected systems trying to understand
the whole thing by breaking it down into parts
Looking at the constituents. It's just quote
no longer valid Reductionism for these kinds
of challenges is basically dead. Okay, so let's
track this hitch back in 1960, makes goals central
for efficiency, for accountability in big industrial
style systems. Fast forward a few decades, and
Skeetaner shows that same approach actually becomes
counterproductive when you apply it to modern
complex problems full of these circular feedback
loops. Right, and that leads us to a really...
Maybe uncomfortable question for anyone listening,
especially if you're involved in education if
that 1960s efficiency model breaks down when
facing complexity in engineering environmental
policy even AI How smart is it to keep forcing
that exact same model onto what might be the
most complex system of all? human learning. Yeah,
that's the connection we have to make now. We
started out saying goals first feels natural
for curriculum design, but these systems theories
seem to challenge that assumption head -on right
in the classroom. The sources we read are pretty
blunt about it. They argue that goals -based
planning forces an artificial framework on teaching.
A framework that's explicitly unsupported by
emerging understanding of the natural phenomenon
of human learning. It's like we're trying to
impose a structure built for something predictable
and linear, like managing inventory in a warehouse,
onto a process, learning that's fundamentally
unpredictable, dynamic, constantly changing.
Think about it. A student walks in one day having
learned something new overnight from YouTube.
The whole system just shifted. The tech they
use changes. The variables change instantly.
And I think there's another layer here that makes
education maybe even more complex than the environmental
or AI example Skytner used. It's the social aspect,
isn't it? Absolutely critical. Education isn't
just a natural process like, say, biology unfolding.
It's also profoundly social. And the sources
call it a social construction. What does that
mean practically for planning if learning is
socially constructed? It means the setting, the
people involved, they aren't neutral. They're
active variables constantly reshaping what success
even means. while the process is happening. A
classroom isn't just a box you pour information
into, it's a dynamic community. Students have
their own goals, their cultural backgrounds influence
things, their emotional states are huge inputs,
all actively shaping the outcome. So if your
goal is totally fixed from the start, like say
everyone must hit this specific score on this
specific test, you might end up having to ignore
or even suppress all that rich messy social reality
just to make the numbers look right. That social
dimension just ramps up the complexity way beyond
beyond what even Hitch was dealing with. And
the sources conclude it fundamentally requires,
well, different planning procedures, procedures
that can handle emergence, circularity, the social
reality, not just optimizing for industrial style
efficiency. Wow. Okay, so we've really covered
some ground. We started with that feeling that
goals have to come first in planning. We traced
it back to Charles Hitch at Rand in the 60s,
needing efficiency for massive logistical systems.
Then we saw how that very model starts to fail
when you hit irreducible complexity, which systems
thinkers like Lars Skeitner pointed out. Problems
where everything affects everything else. And
the core takeaway for you, listening, is that
education seems to be exactly that kind of complex,
interconnected, socially constructed system.
The sources strongly suggest that applying planning
methods designed for industrial efficiency fundamentally
misses the mark on what teaching and learning
actually involve. Which leaves us with a pretty
provocative thought to chew on. If starting by
defining the outcome is itself flawed, if it
forces this artificial structure and ignores
the messy human social reality of learning, then
what are we missing? What knowledge, what sparks
of insight, what amazing applications might we
be shutting down completely because we're only
looking for what fits into our predefined objectives?
What would planning even look like if it didn't
start with the goal but maybe with the complexity
itself?