The last couple of days I've been soaking in a new white paper: "Right to Learn: Identifying Precedents for Sustainable Change," a document that I think nudges the serious conversation about real changes in future learning. The paper, written by Bruce Dixon and Susan Einhorn of the Anytime, Anywhere Learning Foundation, is the result of the discussions held at the Big Ideas Global Summit in June of 2010 (which was attended by the likes of Christopher Dede, Sugata Mitra, Karen Cator, Milton Chen, Angus King and many others.)
It poses one compelling question to frame the debate about education:
Have we reached the limits of our traditional school system's capacity to deal with the diversity of learners that come into our schools today?
I'm really intrigued by the fundamental shift articulated in the paper. It's a move away from a "right to an education" and towards a "right to learn" -- a shift that is only made possible by the advent of new technologies that connect us to the resources and people who can help us learn.
To do this we need to shift our thinking from a goal that focuses on the delivery of something -- a primary education -- to a goal that is about empowering our young people to leverage their innate and natural curiosity to learn whatever and whenever they need to. The goal is about eliminating obstacles to the exercise of this right -- whether the obstacle is the structure and scheduling of the school day, the narrow divisions of subject, the arbitrary separation of learners by age, or others -- rather than supplying or rearranging resources. The shift is extremely powerful...
I agree. It's huge. And it challenges the very basic assumptions that we have about this thing we call "school."
On many levels, this is scary territory to enter. But it articulates an important choice that has been niggling at me for a while in terms of where we should be spending our time and effort at this moment of huge disruption and challenge:
We can see an emerging crisis in our schools, while, on the other hand, we see a renaissance for learning. The question then simply becomes: would a completely different perspective that builds on the latter, be a more productive focus for us than the continued, largely unproductive, public debate around the former?Instead of thinking about buildings and budgets, we think about what sort of learning might be possible. Instead of thinking about student teacher ratios and high stakes tests, we think about the impact that a child taking more responsibility for his or her learning might have on a child's life choices. It simply shifts our emphasis, and most importantly, our perspective.
As a parent and a former classroom teacher, I for one hope all of the current ideas for "reform" fail because few, if any, of them put our kids' learning lives first. Right now it's about more standardization in our classrooms, more competition between our schools, and whatever is easiest and cheapest to implement. In many ways, it's embarrassing the depth to which the conversation has sunk.
And I agree with the premise of the report: if we continue to place our energy toward "fixing the system," literally millions of kids will be under-served in the process. Instead, what if we put a laser-like focus on improving real student learning, not test scores? (And yes, the two are decidedly different.)
Let's start talking about how we can begin to deliver more personalized, relevant learning to kids right now. Let's rethink our definitions of teacher and classroom and school, in some profound, albeit, radical ways. Let's deeply consider the affordances that technologies bring to the learning equation, despite being made decidedly uncomfortable by those potentials in some big ways.
Instead of seeing the non-face-to-face learning space as one of a compromised experience, we surely need to recognize and explore without fear the new and, in many ways, more profound pedagogical opportunities the virtual space opens; opportunities that will challenge and possibly even undermine our traditional perspectives around effective teaching and learning.
The pedagogical opportunities go further than just taking "online courses" the way we currently define them, and more than just moving content online and trying to create communities around it. I don't read this as an end to physical space, but as a switch to what supports what. It's not virtual that supports physical, as we think of it now. It's where we use the physical spaces to help young learners make deeper sense of the interactions they pursue to a growing extent online. Again, that's a profound switch, but it's inevitable, I think.
There's more, much more, about learning and literacy and the like, and I urge you to read the entire paper. But I would love to hear your thoughts on those two "big" questions: Have schools as we know them reached their limits in terms of real student learning? And should we be shifting our focus away from how best to "deliver an education" to our students to, instead, building a new framework around each child's inherent "right to learn" from cradle to grave?
Follow Will Richardson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/willrich45
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Western Europe and Eastern Asia, as well as India and some other nations have rigorous education, we must catch up, if not pull ahead.
Yes, American students are well accommodated, but is this a good thing, or not?
In some ways, such as lowering stress levels and increasing self-esteem, yes.
However, we may be setting ourselves back even further by showing kids that the world will fit to your needs, when, in reality, we all must be able to meet objectives as they are set and defined.
The young human being is not born to be some cog in a system or some test score to increase globalization. The young human is born to play, explore, learn, create, invent, dream and receive love and connection from parents and support and inspiration from friends and the community. Anything less is oppressive.
One one hand. technology can enable a much richer and diverse environment for kids to explore their own interests. However, on the other hand, administrators are quickly scooping up every program, hardware imaginable to track data, standards, benchmarks, etc., all the while taking precious money away from classrooms. Mention technology to a group of teachers and find out what the word means to them, and you then understand their world, either repressive or enriching.
So, what happens to the kids moving through the system while Mr. Richardson and his ilk are praying for total failure?
It's difficult to convey both foolishness and nastiness in a single article, but this man has managed to do that in one sentence. I only wish he would've opened with it and saved me the time.
"I for one hope all of the current ideas for reform fail."
If you don't stand behind that statement, why did you write it? Students, particularly poor students and children of color are being left behind by people like you who have failed to deliver.
While you're sitting around typing out negative articles about our broken system and wishing for total failure, children are trying to go to school and learn. Frankly, what's nasty and very foolish is YOU, and people like you who hope and pray that our children fail.
Most, if not all, of the current ideas that are called "educational reform" will actually HURT the people you care about the most. But you've drank the Kool-Aid they're selling, so until you come off that sugar buzz you won't see clearly.
Take it from someone who teaches the very kids you say you stick up for. Narrowing of the curriculum to make it fit into neat little packages that can be measured on standardized tests will hurt urban kids WAY more than suburban kids.
I’m thinking - not much needs to change as far as happenings. Let’s change who’s together in a room, in the field, the art hall, the engineering hall, etc. Making that change per choice.
second:
There’s so much research on mindfulness and ownership of learning. We know better. Either by research or gut feeling, we realize our current focus is more on things that matter for only a small percentage. Nothing is for everyone yet we keep perfecting standardization. If we get 1-1 web access yet still push a curriculum, we’re missing that ownership potential.
Facilitating the curriculum inside each learner is possible. Human connection unleashes that space. We can revitalize our communities by matching up 1-1 mentors per passion. Authentic no-child-left-behind is about equity, where all learners are interdependently free.
School could be real life - literally. Imagine if a community becomes it’s own school. Existing high school buildings are meet ups and resource centers. That would lead to walking more, noticing more, doing more.
Ellen Langer suggests that focus on outcomes can encourage mindlessness.
I’d guess 75% of our energy/time/money in ed goes toward outcomes.
Mindfulness can take us to a culture of trust. We’d have no need to spend ourselves on policy. Policy seems to evidence distrust, in any case, it certainly breeds it.
Let’s facilitate spaces where true ownership perpetuates hunger, with wholehearted participants in life, no distinction of what part is school.
Oh yes, a completely different perspective building on the latter is required if we hope to make that next big leap in education. It does not matter the sophistication of the technology so much as the ability to have any and all information available to students and at levels that they can grasp but still challenge. They definitely need basics but as I remember my primers from first and second grade, it was my own interest that helped me move forward as much as my teacher's interest in me moving that helped me learn. Also, the fact that my parents, especially my mother, took time to support me in learning by reading herself and discussing what she read to others and allowing myself and my siblings to listen in on these adult conversations and eventually partake were instrumental in my self becoming a lifelong learner. Too many young people have had the light of learning badly turned down or even extinguished. They are beaten down, abused, live in fear, negated, ignored and taught that they are useless. These lessons they learn come from adults that have far more power than their teachers. Students that still have that light have the chance of being educated by themselves and their peers. Let's not forget that education at it's best is a collaborative process.
As for me, I favor traditional education for my children. Kids know how to be consumers of technology. What they don't know, is how to program and that requires a rigorous background in mathematics which will not be spoon fed to you through a cracktop or a TI-400,000,000 calculator*.
Its a shame actually, I ran out of starter logs for my fireplace. After reading "The Right to Learn" paper lauded in this article, it soiled the paper it was printed on, to the point where I can't use it for kindling.
* The 400,000,000 is a play on the annual profits of Texas Instruments calculator division. Their profit margin is roughly 40% on $1 billion of sales. Much of which comes from the taxpayer through our public schools.
Isn't it interesting that those who want to experiment with education always want to experiment on the public schools and their students. Then the experimentors send their children to private schools with their tradition-based systems.
I would be happy if they experimented with Education Methods on my child until they found the right one because whats happening now is leading them in the same direction they would be going in if that Method didn't work.
My suggestion is to split the schools into 3 'proven' (meaning has shown great potential) Education Methods until you find the one that works. Then double down on teaching the winning Education Methods to the other 2 Education Methods Groups that didn't work.
Give them extra Teachers and Saturday classes until they are at the same level as the winning Education Method. Then continue from there.
Adults and Unions need to stop focusing on themselves and put their children first.
Sometimes its better to try an unproven method than continue the absolute wrong method.
Some parents need to be taught too! Why not start with you? :)
You wrote, "Have we reached the limits of our traditional school system's capacity to deal with the diversity of learners that come into our schools today?" Yes and No! It has nothing to do with school system capacity. It has to do with all the tags and designators that are imposed upon schools by funding sources. That funding system is fundamentally broken.
How invested are any of us in mind numbing tasks that don't interest us? Why must it be accepted that education must be mind, body and spirit numbing?
How many of us can say we were less than stellar students until we found something that got us interested? Why must the building of critical thinking skills be so rigorously controlled by a system created over 100 years ago to produce "productive" workers in the Industrial Revolution?
A wonderful distillation of what might be wrong with the "mainstream" educational model is available on Youtube... a 12 min version of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson on Changing Education Paradigms. I highly recommend it.
It's certainly important to pay attention to our financial problems in education, but it only serves to prop up a failing system anymore. And it will remain a failing system no matter how much money you through at it.
I went to one of the best public high schools in the nation, and graduated in 2007. There were quite a few illiterate people in my class. But it doesn't matter to them, because the school has maintained its ranking by bumping down the difficulty of the test. Students aren't learning anything anymore.
The teachers are frustrated that they're not allow to teach. They spend more of their time sitting in silence and waiting for students to finish yet another standardized test than they do actually teaching.
Finally, students are walking away with terrible experiences. I didn't go to college for years because of the hopelessness of my high school experience.
You can only prop up such a failure of a system for so long.