Unlocking Education, setting learning free

Image Credit: Ashley R Good, CC licence

Many educational debates are framed very tightly, focusing on minutiae such as curricula, testing, schools, buildings or technology. Although they can be very valuable, such debates often lock themselves into a specific place, an email list, or only reaching a restricted audience. Whilst such topics are very important, they are fragmented; there is a bigger picture of education and learning. Therefore it was good news when Doug and Andy kick-started Purpose/ed as a national, now global conversation, extending across a range of channels. Although there have been Great Debates on education in the past Purpose/Ed is a ground up initiative.

So, for my Purpose/Ed contribution I will argue that the purpose of education is to unlock our world so that we can all have an active and meaningful role in shaping it. Education should help us unlock the wealth of knowledge, ideas and experiences that are often shut away, sometimes deliberately, where access is only permitted to those who have been granted the key by passing tests.  

OK then; how do we go about it?  The old cliché of unlocking and opening minds seems to be good place to start.  I would define an unlocked mind as belonging to someone who can see value in all members of society, who is willing to challenge fixed ideas.

This doesn't require, special tools or technology, just a commitment to help people improve their lives, a common sense of purpose to advance the common interest of humans, in a real world context, such as this example in Afghanistan where books have been the key. I agree  with the article's hypothesises that it may actually be easier to open minds where a predominant culture, and/or economic circumstance mitigate against this, and I think we can see this happening around us.

In our Western culture I see school and institutional learning as restrictive, their cultural rituals automatically deny us access to alternative opportunities for learning, locking us into a pedagogical treadmill of knowledge and facts,  but without a meaningful context to apply them. Ewan rightly asks "Do we want people to learn at all?"

Although, normally, classrooms are not physically locked, it is very difficult to escape their hold and influence. Timetables and subjects lock us in to a rigid paradigm of stop-start learning.  A real alternative is to unlock the the doors and create a welcoming space where communities (children, parents and experts), can learn together and benefit from face to face contact.

Knowledge, competencies and skills can be acquired individually; any place, any time, using current technologies and tools, including those that provide formative feedback. Sadly many of these are locked down in schools, especially our social networks. One only needs to look at Granny Cloud and Facebook to see their value as social glue.

Finally in order to unlock our world we need to have open access to our culture by opening our archives which offer a counterpoint to the official histories, and our academic research in order to let all participate in, and benefit from our collective wisdom.

 

These are just a few personal starters for unlocking education, I hope the comments may point to many more.

Comments

[Doug Belshaw]

Thanks for the contribution, Theo! Like the way you've abstracted away from the use of technology and looked at opening minds from a cultural perspective. Good stuff. :-)

[Theokk]

Thanks Doug, I think a change in our culture and how we measure the value of learning is fundamental to changing our view and practice of education. Technology has a significant role to play, but that is another post

[Kevin McLaughlin]

The school system, as it is now, is locked down unfortunately but there are a bold, brave and adventurous few who are releasing themselves from these bolts and letting the learning be free in their schools. There is a wealth of learning opportunities that school can access, not just online but face to face learning too.
Unlocking learning in a primary school can be seen in the early years, in Foundation where an approach to learning allows for exploration, discussion, trial and error and no time limits placed on how long it takes to learn. What a place to be and how I think every school should be no matter what age the students are.
Great post Theo.

[Theokk]

I agree Kevin. I have seen lots of innovative schools and teachers which convince that there is the will and desire, many communicate their ideas in blogs,on Twitter and through Teachmeets, which all help a move towards a more open educational culture. Hopefully the geographically and professionally diverse participants to Purpose/Ed will amplify this enough to open the closed.

[Stuart Lock]

This contribution reminds me of the debate that liberal educators like RS Peters and Michael Oakeshott won (for a time) in the 60s against "Progressive Education". I am a big fan of progressivism and Dewey, but at the start of my Masters in Philosophy of Education at the Institute, I had a long argument with Paul Standish about this, and was won over somewhat.

Broadly, R.S. Peters complained that progressivism (child-centredness) was too much concerned with the manner, insufficiently with the matter of education. He was not wholly opposed to progressivism but saw its understandable concern over the child as becoming a kind of ideology (not his word), displacing proper attention to what it is we are trying to pass on or initiate people into. It's worth emphasising that the debate here is easily misunderstood. A quick understanding of progressivism would presume that the alternative was a matter of filling empty vessels with facts. This was manifestly not what Peters was arguing for, nor what advocates of similar approaches have argued for through the centuries. What is needed, they say, is acceptance that a critical part of human life is the cultural inheritance. This is not a Prince Charles type inheritance but rather an acceptance that subjects like physics or history come to us through centuries of human thought, collected, developed, passed on in libraries and periodicals and books and monasteries and coffee bars in a kind of conversation - what Michael Oakeshott called the conversation of mankind. You won't become initiated into this conversation if you simply learn by discovery in a direct experience of the environment (which is what the progressives sometimes seemed to be arguing for).

ie You can put me in a chemistry lab and leave me free to do as I like, but I'm not really free because I don't have a clue what I'm doing. I need to be initiated into the conversation about Chemistry to be free in that lab, so to speak.

I took Theo's contribution as a kind of 21st century version of that.

[Theokk]

Thanks Stuart, I agree. I don't think I was saying "me in a chemistry lab and leave me free to do as I like," well I hope not! Perhaps I didn't make best use of my 500 word allowance.

What I am saying is if we open the "libraries and periodicals and books and monasteries and coffee bar" and make them available, using technology as required, to their teachers, in schools and in homes to scaffold and students them construct their knowledge - rather than be happy to accept the first thing they come across as fact.

I think this conversation can take place more efficiently by redefining the spaces and models and channels for learning, not learning in a void. Anything but!

[Stuart Lock]

No, I wasn't saying you said that at all - I was rephrasing why opening our culture and introducing people to the conversation makes them free.

[Cheap Essays]

This is really awesome post. I have no words for it. Thanks for sharing.

[Elliptical reviews]

No offense, but if there's a facebook like button, it'll be much easier for me to share.

[לחץ כאן]

I will dispute that the objective of training is to open our community so that we can all have an effective and significant part in creating it. Education should help us open the success of understanding, thoughts and goes through that are often turn away.