“If you’re not here, you can’t learn!”The teachers in the room loved it.
So, what's wrong with that?
What's wrong with that is that the real question is not if we’re learning, or where we're learning, it’s what we’re learning.
Would we accept a doctor telling us that if we aren’t in hospital we can’t heal, or a lawyer telling us that if we don’t have a defence attorney we’re not safe? I don’t think so.
[Thought: Perhaps everybody who works in education (or wants to) should be handcuffed to a 14-year-old for a fortnight or so to remind them what we're really there for, how hard and complicated life is, and how much our kids need us to help them find the things that will make their lives feel like a gift not a penance...]
Learning is what children do.
They can't help it. They sure as heck don't need us to tell them how to do it. Babies and young children are natural learners, natural scientists. They spend their lives conducting experiments - testing the world around them in order to understand it. Everybody’s first five years are shaped by a series of "scientific" experiments - an ongoing series of situations where you interact with the world around you in a purposeful way in order to refine or expand your understanding of it…Taste… Observation… Manipulation... Interaction…. An ongoing and vitally important process of trial and error. It may lack the level of verbal sophistication you would use now, but it's a robust scientific process none the less.
New Zealand's ECE curriculum by the way is a marvellous document - well worth a look as a model of how a genuinely student-centred curriculum can be created that works at a national level. Our school sector is moving towards a similar model, with the "revised" New Zealand Curriculum. There's a separate and parallel document for Māori medium education (Māori are New Zealand's first people).
If you want to understand learning - watch a kid
Back in Playcentre, my working definition of a scientist was "someone who finds out the answers to questions"… Now, doesn't that sound suspiciously like a definition of learning? [And I do mean “me learning”, not “you trying to teach me” which is something different]
So it's no wonder that children love science. It has been their constant companion since before they could talk.
And then they go to school, and we tell them that they can’t learn unless we let them...
So, let me ask you again - what's WRONG with this picture?
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I don't know how it is where you are, but here in the US high-stakes testing is where the government has taken education. It is no longer in the hands of educators. We are told to produce high scores on these tests, since the politicians think that will raise our children's ability to achieve as citizens when in reality they have stripped the education system of what it means to think and learn. Don't blame the teachers, blame the administration!
ReplyDeleteIt is differnt her in New Zealand. We don't have high-stakes testing, and what's more the government and the sector have madeit very clear that high-stakes testing will is not acceptable across-the board.
ReplyDeleteBut that's not what this post was about, really. It's to do with the perception that too many of us have lost sight of the fact that learning doesn't 'belong' to us as the educators, it belongs to the learners. And that's not just about the administration, it's about all of us.
Good Post! I agree with you. This can go on further to post secondary. I know that in Canada, many people just go university or college, and come out a few years later with a degree qualifying them as an educated individual.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if we really want scholars, we should be letting people discover things and instead of treating first year university students as cash cows, we should treat them like scholars.
I couldn't agree more. I found undergraduate study a great disappointment. It wasn't until I got to postgrad that I seemed to be treated as someone who might have a valid point of view.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of educating someone as helping them to learn seems to be quite alien to the university ethos of selecting staff for research & publication rather than teaching or mentoring capability. To that extent Universities are not set up as learning forums, at all but as "knowledge shops" where you get what you're given & be grateful.
There is a move towards requiring university staff to have some basic understanding of how to facilitate other people's learning as well as their own curriculum knowledge, but that seems to be making slow progress. Universities - at least at undergrad level - are often therefore what I would consider training institutions rather than genuine learning environments. You decide on a career path, select a qualification to match, and they'll shovel the appropriate curriculum at you.
If you can hold your breath to postgrad, that's when the fun starts IMHO.