"We cannot improve or restructure a horse and buggy into a spacecraft regardless of how much money and effort we put into it."
Béla Heinrich Bánáthy was a Hungarian-American linguist, and Professor at San Jose State University and UC Berkeley. He is known as founder of the White Stag Leadership Development Program, established the International Systems Institute in 1982, and was co-founder of the General Evolutionary Research Group in 1984.
"When learning is in focus, arrangements are made in the environment of the learner that communicate the learning task, and learning resources are made available to learners so that they can explore and master learning tasks."
"Participation is empowering and design is empowered by it."
"Systems theory pursues the scientific exploration and understanding of systems that exist in the various realms of experience, in order to arrive at a general theory of systems: an organized expressing of sets of interrelated concepts and principles that apply to all systems."
"The learner is the key entity and occupies the nucleus of the systems complex of education."
"The vision and the core values inspire the creation of the image, but the core ideas are the "stuff" of which the image is made. The core ideas that designers generated in the course of using the framework will have to be arranged in sets that enhance the creation of the image and the design of the system."
"Talcott Parsons, the "incurable theorist" in his own words,... brought together, in a systematic and generalized form, the main outlines of a conceptual scheme of social action and systems (e.g. 1951). His frame of reference focused on the description of the system of institutionalized roles, motivational process, economic exchange, political power and other Issues that according to his view should be included in a general sociological theory."