So far in reflecting on the Purpose of Education, meeting the challenge that Mike Wesch set us, we have had some stimulatingly personal views from Lou, Stephen and Cristina. But Ewan gave us a Scottish perspective taking in the policy horizon, highlighting the collaborative nature of their Curriculum for Excellence.
Pat Kane elaborated on this collaborative quality in Scottish education at the Really Free School on Friday and situated it in a deeper tradition he called the Democratic Intellect. He challenged the audience, most of whom were sharp, newly radicalised students, to describe how they saw the relationship between Citizenship and Education. Unsurprisingly, to me, no one gave him an answer; why?
This is because in England we are subjects, not citizens. We are educated for servility and obedience; happily accepting this soma-based life-style choice that we are given. In England we have so perfected this art, of following leaders and believing what we are told, that we created a national consensual hallucination, at the time I called it the National Curriculum Society, and sleep-walked into the Credit Crunch; and we still deny that it happened, because education hasn’t equipped us to think otherwise.
Because of my multiple failures within the education I developed sufficient resilience to achieve just enough success to become a teacher. However I felt I should use the smarts I had gained to help students understand the system for themselves, not punish them with it. Having taught Politics to rich kids in the USA and then Computing to poor kids in Lewisham I concluded that the only difference between them was that the poor kids expected to fail. I decided that I should focus on motivating them to believe in themselves rather than burying them with curriculum facts.
Not unlike Mitra’s work on Granny Clouds, which reflects Luckin’s work on More Able Partners in an Ecology of Resources, I found techniques to support their learning, freeing them up to think. In fact I used to say I taught thinking. A key element of this is interest-driven learning, finding what excites learners and helping them follow it, creating social inclusion in the process. Whereas a curriculum-driven high-stakes assessment education creates social exclusion and a populace brutalised by ‘personal’ failure, or high on the narrower ignorance of exam success.
Keri asked us for our vision of the good society, having worked as an education professional for 30 years, and with technology for 15 years I value the participative affordances that new media and social networks offer. This enables collaborative, discursive learning, the kind of learning that creates a healthy, open and participative society. So to answer Pat Kane’s question, you get the citizens that you educate for. Personally I don’t want the socially excluding, emotionally-damaging recreation of hierarchy that an Oxbridge PPE automatically legislates for. I want to educate for participation.
As we say in the Learner-Generated Contexts Research Group that means a coincidence of motivations leading to agile configurations; find your natural collaborators and do things differently.
Exactly 500 words
Thanks Fred, some important questions (and some stellar) links in there. I was especially taken with your link between our status as ‘subjects’ in the UK and our attitudes towards education. Definitely one to explore further…
Thanks Doug, I think that what is important about the purpose/ed project is the notion that we should make our own educational policy, so I wanted to surface about why we don’t and why we can’t (yet). Nigel Ecclesfield & I discussed a participative policy process at CAL ’07 (Policy 2.0) and have developed the Policy Forest Tool to capture this. Blog post on Policy Forest on Architecture of Participation and a Cloudworks on Policy for Sustaining Innovation.
Nice post Fred – love (and agree with) the emphasis on learning to think.
David, I found, like Sugata Mitra, if you work with (and challenge) learners to work stuff out for themselves then they will. You might not agree with them but then they know *why* they think that way and you can have deeper discussions. In the Agile Learning Paper Tony Hall & I said that at the conversational School of Everything Unplugged the process can be described like this; We sit down and agree with each other, then go away and disagree with each other. In ‘school’ you dont have the option of walking away and then, on reflection, disagreeing because that is how you fail exams…
http://alchemi.co.uk/archives/tea/tony_hall_on_teaching_by.html
Phew, expecting to fail. Having just finished my version of this challenge – essentially about designing out-failure – I feel somewhat relieved to have worked it through. I can’t agree more – participation is everything, and sadly down here in the colonies, not everyone is getting that opportunity either.
Dean is your blog post live or forthcoming?
The shocking thing in the UK is the inability to recognize how damaging education is, which of course is a sterngth politically. However Leon Feinstein, and now The Spirit Level, have recently shown that inequality in education and society has gotten worse over the last 25 years.
I agree wholeheartedly with your focus on developing motivation and resilience – I would go further to say that it is important to teach students how to respond to failure, so that they can say, instead of ‘despite’; “because of my multiple failures, I developed resilience.”
When you talk about participation, do you think there is a minimum standard for what it looks like – a kind of bottom line: “we’re all part of this society so we agree to participate this much with it”??? It seems to me that David Cameron suggested such a thing about citizenship at the weekend: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994 although I’m not sure if he wants to achieve the same participative outcomes.
Hi Steve, I have edited your suggestion in, thanks. I always say we have a despite-of not a because-of education system, so an easy change
In terms of designing in participation, that is what we have ‘designed’ for using the PAH Continuum. Check this presentation and click on the links at the end;
http://www.slideshare.net/fredgarnett/the-craft-of-teaching-2011
I think you build in participation by supporting collaboration and enabling outcomes that support that, group work with peer-to-peer assessments could be one, and so on.
Loved this post Fred… it chimes with many of my thoughts and with my own personal experience. I do remember suddenly realising when I was about 17 (in 1978) that I had not been taught, or even encouraged, to think. Despite this’ I managed to drag myself through the education system. My borthers never got there – and never chose to think…
They don’t sit agonising or questioning things even now so they are in their way happy ‘subjects’.
Here’s to more education for particpation…
Thanks Lou! I was lucky in that I went to 11 schools and realised that there was a game I had to play and it was about fitting in, never about learning. Of course once you set up a meta-narrative about fitting in you are thinking about learning. My story HELP! on 9 after 909 is about this. The Learner-Generated Contexts Group, which is full of Ph.Ds, found that we had all failed several times at education, and then worked out our own ways through. I’ve always been keen on understanding inclusion, social inclusion and digital inclusion, and their differences, so loved your post too
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When I signed up for this project, via a recommendation from my dear friend @janet_frg, I wasn’t fully aware that I would be reading such clarity of conviction. Your post totally resonates and inspires and I find myself waving the collaborative flag high in the air, thank you, it will be a hard act to follow!
Only this evening on Twitter I was expressing my pain listening to my nine year old daughter sobbing at the insurmountable levels of homework that distract her from the simple joys in life like having friends and enjoying their company.
“It’s upsetting to see the amount of homework my daughter (9) gets daily, there’s often no time for play #sad #education #fail”
As a result of this tweet, Roger Schank, who I’d met last week at Learning Technologies, stepped up to the plate and sent me two links which I’d like to share.
http://www.thecaseagainsthomework.com/
http://essentialemmes.blogspot.com/2010/02/genius-on-education-roger-schank.html
The words you highlight in bold are so important in the context of education and worthy of reposting: reflecting, collaborative, consensual, resilience, motivating, inclusion, exclusion, participative, natural.
Thanks again.
All this resilience, and in just 500 words too
Thank you for your kind words, and relevant thoughts. Two responses come to mind.
1) When I developed my approach to teaching that I called ‘brokering’ and worked with my (unmotivated) learners a very interesting thing happened. At first I had to work *harder* to get them to take charge of their learning by following their interests (the brokering involved translating what motivated them into ‘valid’ learning outcomes). However as the subject assessments, at the end of the course, got nearer my job got *easier* because my learners *knew* what they were doing. In the customary high-stakes assessment learning gets •harder* as you near assessments because success is defined so narrowly. It is a monoculture rather than an ecology of learning, and only certain characters can cope with that. The rest have to be bullied or bribed.
2) I believe everyone wants to learn, but in a variety of ways. You just have to design learning with multiple pathways through to enable each person to find their own interests and their own reasons for learning,
Once again, thanks – your words of wisdom based on a diverse experience on the front line (s) manifests itself to me as fog clearing across a cold Bavarian winters’ lake… poetic, yes, profound, for sure!
1) Brokering a deal with students is a lovely way for them to see that it is in fact their responsibility to become learnt. The Education establishment and those who serve within it, have the responsibility to create a ‘playground’ full of multiple opportunities that resonate for the many different learners, not, as currently exists, a single tracked version. Imagine a playground with only a swing. Yawn!
2) We’re on the same page, no shadow of a doubt. My analogy of a playground is better described by Steve who first left the comment on Clark Quinn’s post some time ago. Since then I’ve adopted it, and use it to help corporations understand that the environment, and it’s design, is paramount to the facilitation of learning, once they achieve this environment with sufficient autonomy and trust they should get out of the way and let people learn… we learn so well, all by ourselves and should we get lost or need help, raising a hand should be enough to attract multiple streams of support from both peers and those with more acquired knowledge / wisdom.
Clark’s post including Steve’s comment…
http://blog.learnlets.com/?p=1462
An excellent post and my response of yesterday, inspired by a link sent to me by Roger Schank…
http://essentialemmes.blogspot.com/2010/02/genius-on-education-roger-schank.html
Thanks for taking the time to add more ammunition to my quest, I feel refreshed to have met you.
I think there is a better understanding of the value of play in learning too.
My colleague Nigel Ecclesfield and myself also think that better pedagogy, even a mix of Pedagogy, Andragogy and Heutagogy (in the PAH Continuum) isnt enough, you need adaptive institutions that allow organisational structures to adapt to fresh learning processes.
We call this an organisational Architecture of Participation, and blog on it here;
http://architectureofparticipation.wordpress.com/
Thank you… joyfully wading into the cold water
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Great post Fred, I think your contrasting teaching experiences in the US and here in the UK highlight two distinct challenges that face educators today.
Challenge one is faced by educators teaching in communities where ‘expected failure’ has become the norm and thus turned a community (particularly the young) against education. They don’t see being smart and learning as ‘cool’. To them learning reeks of potential failure and so they ridicule it, diminishing its value (in their eyes).
Challenge two is faced by educators in far more affluent areas where young people have greater opportunities and value their time in school, not necessarily for the learning experiences but for the grades that they wish to achieve in order to take the next steps towards their ‘expected future success’.
Educators who find themselves facing one of these challenges have an equally difficult path to tread.
Educators facing challenge one have the inarguably difficult task on motivating young people who see little or no value in education – reinforced not only by their peers but by parents, by their neighbourhood, by the lack of opportunities within their community. They have to find ways to show them that they can be successful and to raise their expectations.
Educators facing challenge two on the other hand have to fight apathy from some while helping many others to understand that failure is a valid and valuable learning experience. This is difficult because it is not just the students who see failure as a bad thing, it is the parents, other teachers and the government who have fostered a society that judges success based on grades and financial worth.
To put this into an equation: Better grades + Better University = Financial Success.
With this mindset firmly entrenched it is exceptionally difficult to convince some youngsters that they can learn as much from failing as they can from succeeding. The conceptual logic for many is beyond them.
And these two challenges are not separate sides of a coin. In fact they are indelibly intertwined. The parents of challenge two children place them in direct opposition to the children of challenge one, and vice versa. Children who believe that failure is unacceptable tend to look down on those who fail and this show little empathy towards poorer people for example (I am massively generalising here) and in turn children who see success as unachievable sneer and mock those people who in society seem to be successful (all be it financially).
So, where am I going with this? I think that education has to be about opening doors for people of all walks of life. It has to transcend culture, religion, wealth, race, age and so on. But to do that society has to change. The biggest challenge facing education and the one that will have the hugest impact on helping to decide what the purpose of education is, is whether or not the richest and the poorest in society can stop seeing each other as different and find common ground. Perhaps the common ground should be education, perhaps schools are the place for this common ground to be forged, perhaps schools need to be opened up and put right at the centre of each and every community.
I have been following with interest the furor over the potential closure of many public libraries. Some have suggested that a potential solution would be for the local school library to be used by the public as well. Some thought this sounded great other were horrified by the idea convinced that it would put children at risk. Have we gone mad? Are young people not around adults all of the time when they leave school at 3:30? Do we really believe that every single adult who walks into a school is a child molester or pedophile? I think that the idea of making the school library the public library is a stunning idea. I think we should go further and rebrand our schools as ‘Centres of learning’ where anyone of any age can come and take classes, use the library, gain access to IT equipment. Why should a child of 14 not sit next to an adult of 44 and learn French. I am sure when the 14 year old turns around to the 44 year old and asks why they are here, the answer will be as valuable learning experience as any – particularly as that answer would likely be: “because I wished that I had learned it when I was in school.”
Think of the potential value of young people sharing their resources with their elders; their parents and their grandparents. They can teach each other. I think as a society we have forgotten what a community is. I think we have forgotten to value all types of learning putting education solely on the hands of the government and schools. Education belongs to the community – to the people – it is for everyone.
Brilliant observations James, and you identify the dichotomy for education well in your two challenges. HAving worked in educational policy for Becta and the DfES/DCSF and can add that policy makers love challenge two and legislate for more of that. As long as indicators show better results nothing will change as it looks like policy makers are designing better educational outcomes.
It is why, as you say, Better Grades have become associated with Financial Success (which is why I say we are still in denial about the credit crunch, we would have to change the Education system as well as the financial system). “Financial Success” is is the social capital argument for education, which Nigel Ecclesfield and I have been arguing *against* on the Architecture of Participation blog, and in our Policy Forest work.
http://architectureofparticipation.wordpress.com/
We argue that educators have to take charge of the success indicators and propose policy solutions that derive from their understanding of learning, which works for all. We need new organisational structures as well as new purposes for education.
We call them ‘adaptive instituions working across collaborative networks’ you call it ‘opening doors’ Absolutely!
Thanks for taking the time to respond with so much depth and thought.
Having recently spent some time in N Spain, where it is rare for anyone other than the teacher to be in the classroom, I am very aware how well we bring the community into the school in England, or at least that was my experience in the far SW of Cornwall over the last 20 or so years. Most people have some expertise in something be it story telling, being Coxwain of a lifeboat, jamming on the guitar, cooking, grooming a dog, painting etc. Bringing all that into school offers a rich experience and bonds children into local community and to ‘the world out there’. We could go way further, ‘Centres for learning’ opens the doors wider and is a good concept as described, a 14 year old learning next to a 44 year old is a fine scenario. Earlier this evening on my daily life blog I posted an extract from a scrap of my teenage diary. In it a teenage me challenges Pascal’s wager, ponders some choices and sets out to measure life by how much laughter and joy he creates. The education system we have is largely concerned with enabling learning and measuring what has been learned. Assessment for learning may be an aspiration but learning for assessment is often more the reality. Institutions are under pressure to show they can achieve good results, reputations hinge on having a successful football team, good academic results, a great orchestra, doing well in the league tables etc. There is merit in much of it but when the 52yr old me sits next to and listens to the 15yr old me he thinks there is something more. We need not only to bring the 14 year old and the 44 year old together to learn, we need them to laugh together as well, to smile at small things and share the pain and the joy of being. There needs to be time and space for the things that can not be measured, the big little things like laughter and friendship that help people be with people, that help people survive with a smile and have the strength to persevere in the face of adversity when times are hard.
Agree that the education system is concerned with measurement, and free, and inter-generational, conversations about learning should lead to more laughter and deeper learning
Thanks!
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[...] school districts in their fights over history and evolution. Contentment, building good character, participation, creating a Better Life, cultivation of wisdom. (to carve out a few) are deeply steeped in cultural [...]
“I should focus on motivating them to believe in themselves rather than burying them with curriculum facts.”
Oh for pity’s sake!
Perhaps if they had more teachers who were bothered about their intellects rather than their feelings, then they wouldn’t lack belief in themsleves in the first place.
If you had read my stuff instead of reacting without using your intellect, which you seem to prize so highly, you would both see the context in which I made my statement about motivation, and also that I argue in the rest of this blog, for more creative modes of teaching and learning which would raise deeper understanding in all students not just the privileged majority. I don’t mention feelings, that is a prejudice you add to this debate, sadly. I mention motivation and argue, from my own practice of getting around 3000 kids to go to Uni who hadn’t been bothered, that if you find the way to motivate each student they will find their own purpose in education and drive their own success; and study deeper than the curriculum facts they are expected to memorise (you missed that point)
I’m sorry that you find my sensitivity to learning needs so enraging. I notice from your own blog that the main use of your ‘intellect’ is to sneer at others, not unlike David Starkey it seems. I had many destructive teachers like that and know we can do better. Have a look at Craft of Teaching 2011 if you are interested in learning rather than sneering.
“I don’t mention feelings, that is a prejudice you add to this debate, sadly.”
Oh for pity’s sake.
In what parallel universe is “motivating them to believe in themselves” not a reference to feelings?
I see you continue to sneer and not to discuss, which makes me wonder why you are here. I mentioned motivation, which refers to a drive to achieve goals, and you referred to feelings, plural. The point of referring to feelings is to imply that I am to liberal to have any rigour.
I never said I wasn’t bothered about learners intellect. And I never found teaching a battle ground. Hard work, yes, but rewarding.
Your objection to my interpretation of what you said is that “feelings” is plural?
You are now sounding desperate. If you didn’t mean what you said then fair enough, but don’t have a go at me for pointing out what was objectionable about it.
Motivation, a drive to meet goals which students learn to set themselves, is what I advocate in the article and in practice.
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Motivation, a drive to meet goals which students learn to set themselves, is what I advocate in the article and in practice.