Always Learning
February 6, 2008
I'm finding Obama's habit of referring to Clinton's campaign as a bridge back to the 20th Century extremely grating and more than a little ageist. I think there are plenty of boomers -- including Ms. Clinton -- who are more than capable of understanding the future and the need to change. This is only tangentially related to my post, but that's also relevant ... and it feels damn good to get it off my chest!
I haven't posted here in months, for a number of reasons, including the predictable lack of time and distraction of other projects, but also because I am becoming more and more convinced that the public school system in this country is irretrievably broken, as may well be the case for the university system as well.
This is not a new thought for me, nor is it particularly revolutionary among a certain breed of education bloggers. For example, check out this presentation on the meaning of virtual learning by Stephen Downes. I think it provides an extraordinary glimpse of the way we need to think about learning. I used to call it tangential learning ... back-in-the-day, I would just wander around the internet, following links as the whim struck me. I vividly remember 'discovering' chaos theory that way, and ultimately, incorporated it in my thesis on applying organizational change theory to school reform ... biu as usual, I digress.
As a quote my son Noah recently sent me explained, non-linear relationships really are the norm, the only reason we use linear models in schools and textbooks is because they're easier to explain! The source of this insight is Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.
That's so sad ... and getting exponentially sadder as the internet grows and provides viable alternatives. I'm not saying that kids don't need to learn basic literacy and mathematic skills, just that there are better ways to accomplish that, as well as better ways to engage kids in higher order thinking, than most conventional teaching institutions are using.
A great example of this is my daughter Leah's experience at GWU, where she's a communication major. You'd think that the field of communication would embrace the internet for the extraordinary access to new modes of interaction it provides, but as Leah has often complained, being a communication major a GW means you have to pretend the internet doesn't exist. Her communication courses, almost without exception, have focused on the aspects of communication and theories in place prior to the late 20th Century. Now, part of this is political. The communication department in GW's school of arts and sciences competes with GW's school of media and public affairs. Apparently, because the internet is considered a communications medium, it belongs to them and there can't be any overlap. However, it has seriously limited the opportunity for real life application of Leah's communication skills, particularly in a business context. It's certainly valid to have a foundation in theory, non-verbal, interpersonal, etc., but if you hope to parlay your education into a job in marketing or public relations -- a pretty common goal for comm. students -- not understanding the ways the internet has changed the nature of interpersonal communication is a HUGE disadvantage.
Fortunately for Leah, she's had a few invaluable internships which have given her insight into the role the internet plays in the music industry, in media relations and in public relations. Even more fortunately, she has Noah as a model and finally, in her senior year, a professor, Christine Keisinger, who actually listened when Leah said 'I need to understand this.' So Leah has started her own blog, www.whyyoublog.com, which is also the foundation of her senior thesis. It's her way of immersing herself in something she believes in and wants to know.
As those of you who know me may well imagine, I am VERY proud of her for finding a way, even in an extremely traditional and often rigid educational environment, for sticking to her guns and finding a way to create her own learning experience. And I want to add that I'm very grateful that she found a professor who has enthusiastically facilitated that.
If you are a blogger, please take a minute to offer her your thoughts on why you blog. If you're not, but interested in why this mattered so much to her, take a few minutes to read the prospectus she posted on her site. I think she did a hell of a job of explaining what blogging is and why it's important to understand it.
It's just amazing how much I learn from my kids!
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