I especially liked his comment about our educational system being modeled after the fast food industry. That is so right on! Education is not linear. It is organic.
We're not building a million Model T's but, in actuality, we're producing Jettas, Corvettes, Mercedes and Cadillacs; a combination of different models and colors and features. We, as a society, have more choices picking out the exact car we want than we have designing a curriculum that's right for each of our children. What does that say about us?
I once had a teacher who told me that we will learn in spite of his teaching. Was he telling me that his teaching had no impact on my life? That teachers really don't have much meaning in our lives? He went on to say that there are a lot of mediocre teachers out there and that we'll be lucky to have a half dozen that will positively impact us. I was a silly teenager at the time so I didn't give much thought to the bombshell he had just lobbed at us.
I've had over 40 years to think about that statement. I've thought about it, not from a teenager's point of view but, rather, from an adult's perspective. Do I think he was right? Yes and No. There are so many variables when thinking about our educational system and the teachers and students that comprise it. Learning modalities have always intrigued me. How information is presented. But deeper than that is how people learn. And I don't mean sitting in a classroom kind of learning. I mean day-to-day learning. Unstructured. Organic.
It is a wondrous thing to watch kids educate themselves. Case in point.......my 12 year old grandson and 3 of his friends were enjoying watching the mockingbirds in the yard swoop down and attack the family dog. I told them she was protecting her nest and that she would go after all sorts of animals as well as humans if they get too close to her nest. This lead to a lively discussion about birds and their behaviors. I mentioned that my favorite bird video was on Starlings and how 100's at a time will flock together, racing around in the sky. It is a thing to behold. Like most 12 year olds, these boys are YouTube aficionados and immediately went to the computer and found the video below.
I would have been quite content to sit there for the entire 5+ minutes watching starlings, but I saw the boys get a bit restless so I innocently inquired as to where Otmoor was. They Googled it. Wikipedia had a short piece on it -- it's in England. Up came Google. Googling Otmoor, one comes up with a lot of birding sites. "There's no map" one of them says. I pipe in, "Maybe you should use another search term." A few were thrown out but the consensus was to use Otmoor map. Wikipedia told them that Otmoor is in Oxfordshire, UK. Google maps showed them what the surrounding area looked like. Lots of green and lots of funny names of places, like Weston-on-the-Green and Charlton-on-Otmoor. I asked them if they had ever heard the name Oxford. A resounding "no" from all of them. I went on to tell them that it was a famous college like Stanford. "Oh" is all I got back. I was losing them. I reminded my grandson that his grandfather was born in England. Coventry, England. Let's find it on the map. Someone typed in Coventry and selected Coventry, United Kingdom. I might add here that none of them had ever been outside the U.S.. Before I totally lost them, we got to see what the city of Coventry looked like, how far away it was from Oxfordshire and that Coventry was equidistant from Oxfordshire as London was from Oxfordshire.
I wanted to add just a little more to their knowledge base by asking them what "shire" meant, since there was an Oxford and an Oxfordshire but they had grown restless and ran outside to play hoops. But, hey, I should be happy that in those 15 minutes, they learned a little about birds, geography, topography, a little history and.........research! They had to try different key words and then check out multiple sources. It wasn't pure organic learning -- I manipulated some of it -- but they learned a little and hopefully realized that there was a ton of information at their fingertips.
I don't believe in pure organic learning 100% of the time. Kids need the basics and there are times that their learning needs to be guided. But when all learning is guided, children lose their curiosity, which is a strong motivator for lifelong learning. The Sudbury Valley School is the quintessential organic learning model for schools. Daniel Greenberg, one of the Founders of Sudbury, when discussing why education is failing said, "Schools today are institutions in which "learning" is taken to mean "being taught." You want people to learn? Teach them! You want them to learn more? Teach them more! And more! Work them harder. Drill them longer."
Sudbury students have an intrinsic love of learning. They tend to fare better in college in choosing their majors and motivating themselves versus other students who have always been told what to do in school; what to learn, how to learn it, when to go to the bathroom, how much time to spend on a project........
I think there is a way to make learning more organic in our schools and in order to do this, the very first thing we need to do is eliminate high stakes testing. That is the driving force in public education and it kills curiosity and creativity; not only for students but for teachers.
As a recruiter I look for people who are curious. Did they learn another language just because they wanted to? Did they travel to learn about other cultures? Did they learn to make crepes because they had some at a restaurant? And as a manager I encouraged my employees to take on challenges and follow their interests. Many of them ended up in careers that had nothing to do with their college majors! And they learned to take charge of their career paths.
Life is not linear. It's pretty messy. Education needs to prepare us for that.
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