I cam across this quote today, attributed to post-modern writer Neil Gaiman:
“I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.”
Quite a powerful statement - and quite true. There is so much that we wish we knew as we grow older. The things that really matter.
It got me thinking why our current models of education do not or can not effectively prepare us for the real meaty parts of life? Maybe not “how to love somebody” - but how about other stuff like:
Patience
Grace
Dealing with disappointment
Handling stress
Discerning what is important now - and what will always be important
Is there some way that we could help students to be better prepared for real life?
In a Sloan-C discussion email thread last month, Boria Sax wrote:
“No less than an expert on business than Peter Drucker maintained toward the end of his life that we are now in a “post-Capitalist” society that is structured by the flow of information rather than money. To the extent that this is so, it may help explain the traditional tensions between the business and academic communities. The fundamental currency of academia is information, while that of business is money, and they represent two competing forms of social order.
In a response, Dr. Frank McCluskey - Provost at the American Public University System - wrote that people do not attend universities such as Harvard for knowledge, but to “move in the right cirvles and make social and career connections that establish a certain idea of “class”. He adds:
“The internet has accelerated learning. The “gentleman” of the right class with the right credentials could get further in the world where layers of middle managers could buffer a lack of technical skill. The real question is has the internet changed the concept of “class” which is in some ways a product of credentialing.”
In 2007 the New Media Consoriitum and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative released The Horizon Report which “seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education.” I think it is safe to assume that these would also impact K-12 education as well. This report indicates that:
“The notions of collective intelligence and mass amateurization are pushing the boundaries of scholarship. Amateur scholars are weighing in on scholarly debates with reasoned if not always expert opinions, and websites like the Wikipedia have caused the very notion of what an expert is to be reconsidered. Hobbysits and enthusiasts are engagted in data collection and field studies that are making real contributions in a great many fields at the same time that they are encouraging debate on what constitues scholarly work-and who shoul be doing it.”
It occurs to me that we are at a tipping point.
If the “amateurs” are the ones who are redefining fields and making contributions to the world’s knowledge base - and if information is the new currency - that would suddenly shift the notion of who are rich to those of us outside the traditional systems and organizations. The meek begin to inherit the Earth, so to speak.
Those without credentials can be recognized for significant knolwedge and progress through self-published works that they - as an “amateur” - excel at through sheer will, desire and personal experience.
Those who did not attend the “right schools” can form important relationships through social networking.
And I think this is how it should be.
We are at the tipping point. “We” are really changing the landscape of what learning and knowledge is and can be. As a result we can all take a larger part of the knowledge-economy pie.
It’s occurred to me recently that we in the educational community regularly transform one of the most natural activities - learning - into something needlessly complex. Think about the most basic forms of teaching and learning that you can observe;
Teaching a baby to walk
Learning your first language
Lions teaching their cubs to stalk prey
Creating metals from ore and forging tools
These are just a few example of ridiculously complicated activities and skills that are taught without ever muttering the words and phrases pedagogy, web 2.0 technology, annual yearly progress, or insert your educational buzzword here. No one reports progress to any state agency through tests applied in surreal settings and no one compares one country to the next…yet babies continue to walk and talk, lions continue to eat, and we still find a way to make tools in even the most remote areas of the world.
The next time you or I embark on our next lesson writing session, or strategic planning committee, perhaps we should think about good ol’ Rube. Look for areas where you are getting in your own way - or worse - getting in the way of students. Consider what is absolutely necessary and try that plan out before you start adding on the complexities that we are accustomed to using. If you find your lesson, process, or solution involving steps where a hammer sends a golf-ball down a track to start a domino effect of CDs collapsing against each other, stop what you’re doing and think “WWRGD”: What Would Rube Goldberg Do…then do the opposite.
PS - The irony that I am posting this while I am a self-confessed instructional technology geek does not escape me.
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