For evolutionists, this statement is matter of fact and intuitively understood as true and valuable - not so, however, for really the majority population in the US or anywhere. This pervading expansive, and expanding scope of evolution is truly one of the key stories of our time in both the natural and human sciences. Yet - for so many, evolution is a purely gene-centric, origins story-limited, list of academic content for students to either memorize or reject. Advocacy in evolution education should instead focus and organize around this central pervasive feature of the science - because victory without this emphasis is hardly something I would even regard as victory at all. Let me explain with an example developing in my lab...

 

When I moved to Madagascar to teach University and High School students evolutionary studies and social psychology, I was cautiously aware of the criticisms I might receive. Not from religious conservatives mind you, but from secular-liberals concerned purely with utilitarian impacts of my programming. Basic human welfare here in Toliara is in a preciously fragile state. So who I am, a white guy from Philly, to come and waste these peoples precious time talking about evolution and brains, when many of them simply need rice, beans, and a good job? Wouldn't my plane ticket expenses alone be better spent going to Ox-Fam or Heifer International? More critically - What about the local Malagasy culture? If I "bring science", am I not just another source of "cultural colonization" (yes, I have been accused of all such things!)? 

 

Our PEAR Lab's soon to be released curriculum: Finding FIHAVANANA should help address those critics, and in the process - and despite the vastly different context - offer lessons and hope for all those unfortunate folks in Missouri ;)

Unique to the island cultures within Madagascar is a conception of Fihavanana (FEE-Hah-fah-nah-nah), which is quite difficult to translate to English, but my current understanding can be summarized as a prosocial attitude, and literally a feeling of family or kinship connection to those beyond your family. 

 

In modern evolutionary studies we call this kinship independent cooperation (Okada & Bingham 2008) - our uniquely human ability to develop close and strategic cooperation on scales greater than any known organism. Well.... almost! The concept of kinship independent cooperation is purely descriptive, it simply describes what has occurred over the deep-time history of humans. Fihavanana, on the other hand is both descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive in that it seems to include an explicit connection to the established common origins of humanity. Normative, or presscriptive - in that the maintenance of fihavanana in a community requires specific and coordinated behaviors - the concept prescribes behaviors in some sense.

 

In my attempts to work with local university and high school students to understand this fascinating bit of local culture, I've found it helpful to use a computer program called NetLogo. In technical terms - it is an agent based modelling software. In regular fun talk - it turns learning hard science into the playing of fun video games! 

 

Keeping the background brief... the Malagasy notion of fihavanana is prescriptive, but how

Previous attempts at NetLogo education were less accessible - the cultural context in Finding FIHAVANANA combined with  anti-corruption service-learning just might work!

prescriptive is it exactly? A common folk-expression here linked to fihavanana roughly translates as "It's better to lose the money than to lose the social cohesion & group solidarity". Within this nugget of Malagasy culture - the behavioral economist in me sees a classic evolutionary puzzle! [Note: I am not a behavioral economist, but by studying from a evolutionary studies perspective, I am fairly well versed across biological and social science disciplines and able to make connections to real world humans and their environments]

 

Groups that have high social cohesion often do better, in terms of quality of life and growth, than groups with low social cohesion. Yet - if corruption drains the resources of even a highly socially cohesive group, it will potentially fare worse than a group with less cohesion but more attention to resource allocation. Corruption looms large in Madagascar generally, but even more so in this southern region of Toliara specifically (Franck 2005). This is a classic if complex case of the tragedy of the commons. Herein lies a beautiful opportunity for authentic innovation within the Malagasy education system!

 

The PEAR Lab's model of evolution as content and context provides a rather straight-forward approach to catalyzing on this opportunity. First, I have to teach students what social scientists know about the evolution of cooperative groups, and the suppression of free-riding greed (and they know quite a lot!). This is where my new video game comes in! In Finding FIHAVANANA I have re-worked the computer code (a very little bit!) from Uri Wilenski's (2002) classic Prisoner's Dilemma N-Iterated model, based on the behavioral economics game of the same name. First, I made the interface more accessible for my students. For many in Toliara, experiencing this program maybe their first introduction to a computer, the program is now also tri-lingual. But I also made it more culturally relevant. By richly placing evolutionary game theoretic models such as Prisoner's Dilemma and Tragedy of the Commons within the cultural conception of fihavanana -  a genuine opportunity for applied cross-cultural learning for everyone (myself most especially included!) presents itself.

 

In our game, students can test how three behavioral strategies interact and create emergent system dynamics. Blind cooperation, reciprocal cooperation, and blind cheating. Students are able to manipulate the "world" within the NetLogo software as a game, and create worlds where cheaters win, and then use experimental design to understand and construct a new world where strategic cooperation is the most naturally rewarding strategy. They learn the rules of the game, then they learn how they can change those rules.

 

When we combine this mathematical understanding of social dynamics with a Big History perspective on corruption and cooperation in groups, our student groups can then begin to understand how to generalize the principles of effective groups, and from there, develop real-world civic engagement against corruption in their own communities. As a simple example; a classic evolutionary lesson in the prevention of corruption is that we must lessen the cost of coordinated punishment of power-based abuse among the least powerful in the group. This principle has been true since our earliest ancestors began to throw stones, and it is just as true today. My loose network of K-16 students is on the verge of a tipping point in advancing a strategic anti-corruption action plan, and we can proceed in this civic engagement within a richly integrated scientific framework that imbues civic engagement with a potential for awe and understanding that less integrated strategies fail to even strive for. 

 

The Finding FIHAVANANA  model is no where near ideal - and while that is primary lesson in the science of modelling, it also points to the awesome opportunities ahead! [NetLogo model makers please contact me if this sounds interesting!]

 

 

My point is simply this: evolution doesn't just pervade the biological sciences, it now pervades and connects all of human sciences - and if we are training our K-12 students in any other way we are doing as disservice to the entire educational and community enterprise. Harvard's Joshua Greene (among many others) aptly shows how every human political issue is connected to these evolutionary models of cooperation either between individuals and their groups, or between groups of human groups. Our work at the PEAR Lab is showing (albeit not yet in rigorous quantitative terms) that not only can this be taught to High School students (anywhere and everywhere) - it really, really should be! 

 

We must heed Greene's plea to advance a "meta-morality" - a morality about morality that allows us to focus on "common currency". Evolutionists and Creationists in Missouri can't see eye to eye on educational policy - that's clear. The religious and secular beliefs here in Toliara, Madagascar as well, run in all directions. But here we have fihavanana - a local meta-morality to see beyond selfishness and across groupishness, a common currency: a currency of community!

 

Humanity the world over loves the communities that we live in and among. The evolutionary fables of cooperation, such as the tragedy of the commons, offer fascinating new directions for students K-16 to build a better tomorrow by working across boundaries today. Missouri might not have a corruption problem, but they do have a an educational policy problem rooted in human tribalism. Evolutionary studies of human sciences in the anthropological, historical, neurobiological, economic, social, psychological, and primatological disciplines all strongly converge on a wonderfully rich understanding of this tribalism in ways that can be conveyed to students through existing curriculum such as The Big History Project, as well through needed supplementary materials such as we are developing here at the PEAR Lab. 

 

Who would doubt that our new STEAM-friendly NetLogo "game", Finding FIHAVANANA, coupled with adapted resources from The Big History Project, meet or exceed the letter and intent of stringent new US education standards such as NextGen Science Standards and the controversial Common Core Standards? 

 

Who would doubt that connecting this highly generalizable model of social dynamics to active civic engagement is where education is rightly heading? None of that should be controversial, but, we need much more...

 

I end with an invitation to students, educators, educational policy makers, and academics of all secular stripes, faiths, and political leanings. Let's advance the global discourse on science and civic education in a significant way:

Dustin Eirdosh is the Research Director of the Positive Education Action-Research (PEAR) Laboratory in cooperation with the University of Toliara, Atsimo Andrefana, Madagascar.