More foolishness about schooliness
I was reading the newspaper this morning and I was struck by an article with the headline: Education reform could start with students written by Mitch Perlstein. I’ve thought for some time about how foolish we Americans are—how out of touch and insulated we are, how crazy our expectations, how wasteful we are of resources and human talent. And I’ve thought for some time that we’ve developed similarly foolish and wasteful ideas about learning, schooling, and education. The article prompted me to think about the student’s part in learning.
The notion that I as a teacher can be responsible for someone’s learning is absurd. Can I be responsible for another’s health, spiritual development or ethics? I think not. Kids do have a wonderful opportunity to learn, but they must crack the books, research on the internet or in the library, help one another with projects—in other words, the hard work of learning and mastering information and concepts.
This is not to say that teachers have no responsibility to practice the craft with firmness, intention, intelligence and creativity. Humor and encouragement is important as well. Yet, as a consuming society, we’ve made a commodity of learning—opining that we could “give” an education away like it was an apple. By taking the responsibility of the students (and families) away and putting responsibility on public schools and teachers, we’ve taken a fundamental element out of the learning equation. We now guarantee an education, accepting responsibility and accountability for what is not ours. What we are and should be responsible for is a place to learn that is comfortable, able adults to facilitate learning at every possible moment, and an information infrastructure to support learning.
Just as the price of the barrel of oil and the true cost of gasoline and food and transportation and medical care are jolting some pertinent questions, literally slapping us into reality, it’s time to muster the courage to choose more realistic and respectful ideas about learning.
I have a quote on my wall from Albert Einstein. It reads, “I never teacher my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” I think it is really in line with what you are saying here. I agree that the responsibility for learning lies within the individual, but we have to ensure that we provide the proper conditions in which to learn. I fear that decline in enthusiasm for school between elementary school to high school is a tell tale sign of us not providing these conditions.
I have teachers that comment all of the time that school is not supposed to be fun. I disagree with them. Learning whether at school or anywhere else is fun and we need to structure our learning institutions so that students and teachers can have fun learning together.