Tag Archive for ‘Learning’ at Students 2.0

Public School, Rural America; 12:30 pm

One by one, we file past the teacher-turned-prison-guard. As each of us passed, she engages us in a confirmation ritual. “Work?” “Check.” “Book?” “Check.” That is the last word uttered for one and a half hours. For this period, we must sit silently with heads in books and work, where our mouths are conveniently positioned to be incapable of questioning. We cannot leave—even to seek the help of a teacher. In the only time during the day when most students actually work, we are treated like convicts. We must work (not learn) in the most efficient way possible. We are widgets in the machine of school. We are unwillingly being conscripted into a hostile intervention.

Interventions also happen behind other closed doors—in the justice system:

Intervention: Programs or services that are intended to disrupt the delinquency process and prevent a youth from penetrating further into the juvenile justice system. ~Kentucky Juvenile Justice Advisory Board

For me, this represents the epitome of what it is wrong in public school education—learning is seen as a laborious activity which students must literally be locked into doing. When one intervenes in something, one alters the direction it is heading in. Therefore, the assumption when students are put into intervention is that their learning direction must be altered. This would be fine (many of my peers do need to have intervention in their life/learning direction), except the course is required. No matter the direction of your learning or how well you are doing, you are forced into a silent study period. See where I am going with this? Before I even start school, I am scheduled for an intervention in my learning. The equivalent would be signing up your baby girl for drug rehab 16 years in advance.

Step back and consider the way education is approached in the majority of classrooms: as a dreaded task. Complicated assessment patterns are devised to be carrots for students to do their work. Meanwhile, sticks of punishment are given to those who do not do their job. Forced study halls are created in order to ensure we all keep our noses in books, where our voices are conveniently stifled. Of course, this is all done under the principal that students need to be forced to learn.

Wait. There is something wrong with the picture here. Frankly, I think schools are becoming far too business-like. Many of my peers often think of school as unpaid work. Of course, professionalism is continually emphasized as the highest principle for which students must strive. Schools even use the same reward/punishment system as the workplace: good grades = good job = $$$ and failing school = unemployment ≠ $$$. I think this is the core of what is wrong with schools: all students are expected to be professional students. That is, it is expected that we will only learn if we are forced to do so either because we desire the reward (grades) or fear the punishment (failing). In fact, this is setting up students to hate learning.

That might be a dangerous accusation, but I think it is an ultimately true one. After all, students are treated as if they already do hate learning. Grades, forced study times, detentions, and graduation requirements are all safeguards built to force students into learning. My philosophy is that if you treat a problem, there will soon be a problem; this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. By treating students as if we hate and will avoid learning at all costs, we will hate and avoid learning at all costs.

Naturally, the alternative is to encourage amateur learning: learning which is done for the love of it rather than for some distant paycheck. The argument against this is that students will not learn the skills they need to be successful citizens. I vastly disagree for the simple reason that every young child wants to grow up to be a successful citizen. Nobody is born hating learning—they grow to hate it through successively being treated as if they should hate it. No child is born thinking I am bad at math—they think that after being told it many times (in different words). Think of it like this: there is only so much education which can be packed into 12 years of school. What if instead of trying to build students the perfect toolbox, schools taught students to make their own tools? If students are never taught to hate/fear learning, they will not shy away from learning opportunities. The teachers and resources are available for life-long, anytime learning; students must simply have their original love of learning preserved.

Imagine: Peter is a student in a self-directed learning environment. In the primary grades, he takes a wide mix of classes, primarily due to peer pressure and recommendations from friends/family. In these classes, he learns the basics: reading, mathematics fundamentals, grammar, and how to research. As he moves up in the grades, he narrows his focus upon writing, eventually phasing out mathematics classes. Throughout the process, no class or work is forced upon him: he is given the options and selects the choices for himself. Consequently, since learning is never treated as a hated activity, he never learns to hate learning but instead preserves the innate love of it. Down the line, Peter has written a best-selling novel and is trying to invest the money he earned. As any intelligent person would, he is trying to figure out the best option from the choices banks have presented him with. To be clear, Peter never learned about exponential equations or compound interest in school. However, because he still loves to learn he simply taps into Google and finds the resources necessary for him to evaluate the choices. Due to Peter being an amateur learner, he actively seeks out opportunities to learn, even though nobody is forcing him to.

The rational for not encouraging self directed learning is that simply packing students with as much knowledge possible (no matter the cost) is most efficient. However, the problem arises with the information that students do not get into their memory: since most of them will end up fearing/despising learning they will not add anything to it after school. Meanwhile, students who pursue learning on their own terms may well know less information on their exit from formal schooling. However, that information is not static: they are readily adding to it through additional learning. The traditional model has been to treat students like hard drives: packing them with 12 TB of knowledge before all cables are cut. I’d rather get out of school with only 1 GB of knowledge and a connection to the internet—at least then I can continually add to that store. Schools must make a choice: do they want to try to stuff as much learning as possible down students’ throats or do they want to give students a hunger for learning?

I don’t want to be a professional student; I want to be an amateur learner.

Learning is the process in which a person consciously takes their self farther away from ignorance. Ignorance is the lack of knowledge, the inability to understand something without guidance from an outside force. Ignorance can also be the willful act of not learning. As Immanuel Kant said, “Sapere Aude!” (1784 Kant). Dare to know. To take charge of one’s own learning, or the admission of ignorance and the want to change, cannot be done without courage and self-confidence.

Who are these outside forces that guide the ignorant? Those are teachers. In Modern Education, teachers take charge of our learning for 13 years, meeting our individual needs, and educating us in the subjects that have formed the basis for our world. Our teachers become some of the most important and revered authority figures in our lives, next to our parents. We learn from our teachers.

In general, learning is a popular thing. Students learn. It’s our traditional role. Books, and now the wonderful world of the Internet, serve our understanding. They satisfy our requirements. Teachers are generally eager to teach. Teachers are the guardians of knowledge.

However, learning is different from thinking. A teacher can teach and teach but they can never force a student to take the plunge into the vague pit that is critical, applied and abstract thought. A student (with the big brains that come packed onto the human label) can enter in the methodical algorithms that make it possible to pass for a very intelligent person. Yes, they may even be admired by all the right people, and regarded as a prime candidate for all the right schools in all the top places. But the real question is, do they actually think?

In the past, the leap from learning (and knowing) to thinking has been accepted as a dangerous thing. To all oppressed people, learning—accepting facts and dogmas—helped them survive, but thinking got them killed in an instant. My own fair sex learned all about what it had to do in order to live in a world lead by men. Until we started thinking, that is. The key factor in suppression of growth is knowledge without thought. The collective perception of a group of people jumping from merely learning to actually thinking is what spurs revolutions. In it’s purest form it is change.

As I mentioned before, the teachers in our lives have been pervasive authority figures. They have taught us all they could within their own human limitations. As authority figures, they have the responsibility to educate their students (give them knowledge that will help them survive beyond school), and also help them think critically, applicability, and abstractly. Being the catalyst to the thoughts of students is the most important role of a teacher, because, again, it is what changes the world.

Under what conditions can teachers retain their control, while still teaching all they can and most importantly promoting thought at every opportunity? What can lead students away from the dangerous trap of algorithms and into the belief-questioning probe of thought?

The teaching methods of “don’t ask questions, learn!” or “don’t argue, believe!” will absolutely discourage thought. But certainly complete freedom wouldn’t guide students toward thought, either. Total anarchy is never the answer, I’ve found through personal experience, because if learning is as I described (requiring guidance form an external force), then in order for students to learn, the teacher needs to draw on despotism. (A despotism that instead claims the gain of it’s charges, not its own personal gain.) No, I believe the best answer is, “Question, think, explore and dissent at your own free will, but listen (and obey)!”. A student cannot refuse the direct orders from a teacher to learn, but as a thinker s/he must question all the knowledge that s/he is accepts into his/her mind from the teacher or any other external source.

If in learning, a student applies critical thought and decides that that particular piece of information goes against their belief system and all ideas of truth, then I believe the student is still obligated to learn it. Ignorance is the willful act of not learning, and with ignorance there cannot come knowledge. This leads to the logical conclusion that without knowledge there cannot come thought, and without thought there cannot come change. The idea of a generation that does not fight to change what it sense to be wrong in the world is one that literally sends shivers down my spine.

But I won’t ever have to worry about that, because it is impossible. If we loosely use the analogy of the teachers being the powerful bourgeoisie and the students being the lead masses of proletariats, then we can see that because the bourgeoisie seek to take control over the proletariats, without providing a forum to speak through, the natural thing for the proletariats to do is join together. Once united, the now connected proletariats will now have “improved means of communication…created by Modern Industry [Modern Education]” (1848 Marx). Teachers created Modern Education, and through that, the students have united in order to voice their opinions. I don’t need to point out that Students 2.0 is a great example of what I have described.

In classic education, students’ voices were never fully heard because they were divided. Now, in neo-education, we retain the authority of the teacher, while making sure to provide opportunities for the roles of student and teacher to get lost in the greater goal of learning, and later, thinking; and second, to actually take into consideration the thoughts produced from those exercises. To teach in a neo-educational environment is to truly allow for and encourage thinking in the classroom, which means to lose the conventional boundaries of classic education. It means to obey the students’ wishes as much as enforce the teachers own. It is teachers and students learning, and thinking together, in a way acknowledges the connections and unity formed between the students and the world at large. Neo-education promotes learning both at it’s most basic, and most complex levels.

Original artwork by Lindsea

Students 2.0