I ended my last blog post with a quote from Werner Herzog's A Guide for the Perplexed. And now looking back at it, I feel that my conclusion sounds cliched; after all, it's not the first time that we have read that education along with a solid health system can be the silver bullet to end all the suffering in the world. But we need to delve deeper
In A Guide to the Perplexed, Herzog uses filmmaking as a pretext, to share candid anecdotes about his life and talk about how important it is to remain through to oneself. Herzog refers to civilization "as a thin layer of ice resting upon a deep ocean of darkness and chaos" and that's where I had made the connection with education. Indeed, education can thicken that ice, but let's make no mistake: education ain't schooling. Herzog, a proud self-taught filmmaker, had this to say about education, making a clear distinction between the 2:
"Everything we're forced to learn at school we quickly forget, but the things we set out to learn ourselves- to quench a thirst- are never forgotten, and inevitably become an important part of our existence."
Last week, I trekked the W circuit on the Chilean side of Patagonia. There isn't a corner in that vast piece of wilderness that isn't breathtaking. Yet, looking back at the experience, it wasn't easy at all; trekking uphill carrying a 13-kilo backpack was actually quite humbling for a city boy like me so used to living in comfort. But I didn't flinch, I carried on. No matter how beat my body was, something deep down kept me going.
I wasn't always this keen on trekking. I remember how back when I lived in Germany, my ex girlfriend had invited me to spend Christmas vacation hiking with her family in Rügen, an island north of Berlin. Unfortunately for her, all I did was whinge. At the time, I simply couldn't understand how people got a kick from walking so much and resented the whole experience.
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| Photo by Sean Marie Sweeney |
The fact is that back then, I didn't understand the purpose behind hiking, and quite frankly I felt it had been imposed on me. In such conditions, you could have taken me to paradise, but I would have resisted it with all my might. It took time for me to appreciate the beauty of being out in the wilderness, but that transition happened slowly and organically.
As a student I wasn't any different; I was a Maltese George Costanza, committed to my "work avoidance programme" and it seems I'm not the only one. Students might not be as eloquent as Werner Herzog in explaining to their teachers and parents why the system doesn't work for them. In fact, many of them will make it just fine. Some will even thrive through schooling. Yet we must ask ourselves, is this the best we can do?
In the last years, we've used some buzz words like differentiation, inquiry and student empowerment, and it has allowed us to enhance learning, but not to redefine it. These are all taught in a contrived setup and students see it from miles away. I would give students KWL charts for them to fill out, yet in the end those ideas and questions would not really matter because I would have already designed that unit.
Real inquiry can only happen if we let students design their own learning experience. Inquiry is all about being able to figure out what it is that you don't know that you'll need to know in order to achieve an objective that you've set. This is darn hard, so we teachers do it for the kids; we assume that students are too young to do it, but in doing so, we are stifling the very essence of higher-level learning and providing "the one size fits all" experience instead, assuming that everybody is at the same stage in the curriculum.
If, as from a tender age, we can get students in the mindset to have a thirst for knowledge, and show them how pursue it by planning their own learning experiences, we 'd be allowing them to become metacognitive learning machines. In this new context, differentiation and student empowerment would take a whole new meaning because they'd be falling into place.
If you think this is too far-fetched you might want to check out Free to Learn by Peter Gray. There are schools out there such as Sudbury Valley which have been using this model for ages. Students there are in the driver's seat. Driving is certainly harder than simply tagging along in the passenger's seat, but you are more likely to remember and most importantly understand the route.
As for my Innovation Academy cohort, this semester the students will be getting in groups to plan their class projects. This is totally new and daunting for me, but I know it's going to benefit their growth. They will be the ones identifying what relevant skills and concepts need to be learned explicitly. I'll be there to support them and so will their parents; the students will be pitching the projects to them and getting their expert feedback. We refer to schools as learning communities; it's time we start putting it into practice by having parents play a more central role in their children's learning.
I chose this profession because of my deep belief that the world doesn't necessarily have to be resting on thin ice. A better world is one where individuals grow up understanding who they are and how they can bring value to the world. But for this to happen they must first learn how to identify what they thirst for and know how to quench it.
