Reading Turning Learning Right Side Up*, and two other recent articles, The Old Revolution and Apply Business Practices to Education, has helped me reflect on the idea of education and learning just a little more. I think the actual difference is between wanting to and having to. There just seems to be something about the idea of having to that upsets people. I know I would rather want to than have to.
Giving Students More Choice
Looking at the Sudbury Valley School, while students have to attend the school at least 5 hours per day, they then get to choose what they want to participate in throughout the day. In the US, we have to attend school for 12 years of our lives. For the rest of our lives, we can do what we want to.
Why do we have this 12 years have to period? Why can we redesign it as Ackoff and Greenberg recommend, reflecting a more want to environment?
Learning Through Workplace Problems
While I want to earn a doctorate and want to continue going to school, graduate school has reflected the have to environment I remember from secondary school. Why can’t they redesign it to incorporate the suggestions that Ackoff and Greenberg recommend? Why can it not reflect more the want to learning environment I experience in work?
At work, I have problems I need to solve. If the problems are non-routine, I then enter a learning episode to discover a solution. To discover this solution, I typically interact with human and non-human resources. I either talk with colleagues or do searches on the Internet. The test is whether I can solve my problem and move forward.
At work, I discuss the upcoming year with my boss, and together we develop a work and learning plan. Why can’t higher education be similar? Why can’t students participate in deciding the curriculum, choosing the instructors, determining the teaching methods, and setting the assessment criteria?
It is interesting. One day, students do not seem to be capable of organizing learning, and on the next after a stroke of a pen and confirmation of a degree, they are suddenly in charge of developing instruction for students. When does osmosis take place?
Rethinking Learners’ Role in Education
As I listen to discussions about education from secondary to higher education, it would seem that people could not survive without it. Yet most Americans have not gone to college, and are surviving at different degrees of the continuum of education. There are people who have dropped out of secondary school and have survived.
Since education as we know it has been a relatively recent experiment of about 150 years, could we improve it by changing it from a have-to environment to a want-to environment? Instead of dictating what and when learners must learn, let’s create an environment where learners have more input. I believe people will learn when they want to and they need to. Let’s create opportunities, not the mandate.
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