In this presentation we suggest how they can do the former and avoid the latter. It aims to help these persons acquire a common set of skills, language, concepts, perceptions, ways of knowing, purposes, and ultimately, shared values. Note that these distinctions are content free. And conversely, many complex professional preparation courses, in business, engineering, information technologies, education, law, medicine, can be used in the service of education, and occasionally are. Or we can aim for more broad outcomes, to strengthen more generic competencies, to expand horizons, to challenge values, to encounter new persons and new experiences.
Development occurs through cycles of differentiation and integration.
Thus education is essentially the amplification of these two basic developmental processes. Increased differentiation occurs when one comes to see the interacting parts of something formerly seen as unitary, when one distinguishes among concepts formerly seen as similar, when actions are more finely responsive to purposes or to outside conditions, when interests become more varied, tastes more diverse, reactions more subtle. In short, as we become more open, complex, human beings. But increasing differentiation must be accompanied by increasing integration, and this is the other major task of education. Relationships among parts must be perceived or constructed so more complex wholes result.