Re-vising the Fable of the House,
By Excavating the Foundation

"Mi Casa Es Su Casa"--
Putting Brains Together to Build a House We All Can Live In

In an October 2003 meeting at Rowan University, focused on "ensuring the success of under-represented groups in STEM learning environments," and sponsored by Project Kaleidoscope, Paul Grobstein told "The Fable of the House":

A Vision of Science and Science Education
in the 21st Century: Everybody Getting it Less Wrong Together or Changing the Culture of Science

Open the doors and windows
Provide assistance to people who want to come in but lack preparation
Let me people know we want them in not despite but BECAUSE of their individual differences
Teach science as it is, where people are
Allow everyone to have a role in furnishing the house

It may be time (via Writing Descartes?) to re-visit that fable and suggest that the project of renovating science (perhaps all intellectual work?) needs to involve not merely inviting everyone to re-decorate or "furnish the house," but actually to re-build it-- and that the building needs to begin with an examination (and excavation?) of its foundation:

Under the house of science lies the "cenote" of the "scientific unconscious." Can we take some time to go exploring, to see what it looks like down there? What are the underlying presumptions (and fears?) whereupon the house of science (of all intellectual inquiry?) has been built? If we examine them, might the house of science take on an altogether different shape and structure altogether? Not the elaborate Victorian structure of story upon story, in which one must demonstrate mastery in one room before assending to the next (i.e. certify competence in calculus before moving on to physics, in grammar before asking difficult questions of literary interpretation)....

...but instead a rambling Frank Lloyd Wright-ish sort of house, where all rooms stand adjacent but independent, where individual projects can be individually pursued?