I've spent years thinking about education--my own, my colleague's, my student's. I'm currently outlining a book on the subject, not because I have all the answers; rather, I am compelled to wrestle with the meaning of education, and why it is too often, ironically, so very distinct from learning. Two and a half decades on in this, my chosen profession, I have sat more times than I can count across a table, facing parents concerned that the education of today looks progressively less like the education they received, or more importantly, the education they recognize. This is, after all, a legitimate and rational concern for adults charged with the careful and successful upbringing of their children. It's a little like being in a game and having all the rules you've come to know changed.
Traditionally, education was (is) teacher-centric. Their ideas, choices, structures, and biases, informed and shaped all learning opportunities in classrooms. Textbooks have their outsized role; as distant boards of education and consumer profiles and patterns guide textbook development. In both cases, it was and is assumed that the acquisition of knowledge content is of greatest import, followed closely by how successfully a student can parrot back this knowledge. If you were educated in the last number of decades, you are familiar with worksheets, multiple-choice tests, and fill in the blank activities. These have their place, I suppose, for very particular tasks, but they are often applied against the whole of education because they are convenient. Convenience as act, in grading, in reporting, in digesting, for teachers, parents, and yes, administrators, leads to reams of data that easily track the lowest order of learning. Before long, the easily trackable becomes THE object of inquiry, and higher order learning is made victim--collateral damage. Consider this my mea culpa.
Creativity is arguably the defining characteristic of our species. After all, other animals think, problem solve, emote at some level. Other animals can grasp with opposable digits, walk upright, communicate and socialize in sophisticated ways. We, however, dream in color, of things that have yet to be imagined or realized. We express ourselves through art and literature and poetry and dance and voice and instrument as an end unto itself. We explore outward and inward, summit a ridge just because, head out to sea and space just because our curiosity so demands. Traditional classrooms kill creativity. They marginalize alternative forms of thinking or behavior. They over-emphasize disciplinary distinction instead of the compatibility and mutualism of disciplinary frameworks. The clock and the calendar become the arbiter, and expediency the goal.
In the past few years, we have opened an alternative conversation. It looks different, admittedly so. We are working to put students at the center of their learning. We are working to put values at the center of our discourse. We want creativity to reign between the bells. We're not trying to think outside of the box--we're challenging the idea that the box has any real importance in our learning journey. Yes, we will still teach content. Yes, we will still practice our multiplication tables. Homework will look different. It may be harder for you, the adults, to get your head around, to assist your child at times, but that doesn't make it bad, just new to you. And the end goal, higher order thinking, the capacity to think deeply and disruptively and ethically, with complexity, will more than justify our decision.
See you around campus.