When change happens as quickly as it is now happening, there are few experts – just a few people running to keep up. Most of what I learned in university it not relevant to what I do today…and I’ve stopped taking courses a long time ago. Instead, learning has shifted to being a do-it-yourself operation, looking for answers when you need them, “learning by wandering”, being a nomad in a continuous search, a feral learner, and other metaphors of relative freedom from the confines of a classroom. The downside is that you have to know where to look, and what to look for, in order to succeed. The upside is often innovation and exhilaration. What is making it all easier is that knowledge is becoming more open, once exotic technologies are becoming inexpensive and can be easily ordered.
How exciting! I've just discovered a Facebook page called "Fans of Feral Learning". The initial post references Jan Visser's 2006 blog posting on feral learning, which in turn references my earlier blog ... so there you have a perfect example of social media nurturing and disseminating innovation and social change.
There are two underlying philosophies that come into conflict in our education system.
One of them is the Disneyland philosophy - that a good heart is what matters: if you mean well, and wish hard enough on your lucky star, your dreams will come true. The good guys will always win, even against impossible odds. It's not what you do, but how hard you try that counts.
The other is the Yoda philosophy captured in the quote at the top of this post: A pure heart may be a prerequisite, but it is not enough. It's not about how hard you think the task is, whether or not you have to extend yourself to achieve it, or how many reasons you can find for it being an unreasonable expectation: it's whether or not you achieve the result that matters.
We in the education sector have not yet managed to reconcile these perspectives - and we need to.
This underlying dispute is very evident in today's education headlines - with some saying "We try really hard to make your kids try really hard - so you should be satisfied with that," and others saying "How hard you think you're trying is not the point. Whether you understand and meet my child's needs is the point."
Our education system requires both: to keep trying, and to look past "try" to "do".
As a parent, I don't care if "85% of our students do well." I want to know that my child is getting the professional attention and support he needs to get to achieve at the level he needs to in order to have the best possible quality of life he can. Yes, I care that if you are teaching him, your heart is pure and that you really care about him as a person and that you will not stop trying. But that in itself is not enough. It is no consolation to me if every other child in the class - or the school - is validated, challenged, and experiences success, if mine doesn't.
Where my child's education and future is concerned, I'm with Yoda: "Try" not. Do... or do not. There is no "try".
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