Students 2.0

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.

1. Original artwork by Lindsea