The Paradox of Education

We are in a society that values the results of education.

We are a society that believes that education is the right of every child.

We are a society that believes education can unlock the potential of every child.

The role of teachers is to help maximize the potential of every student.

Research consistently points to the in-class impact of out-of-class problems related to immigration, language acquisiton, social integration, employments, diet, abuse, and notions of "class perspectives" on the role of the home in education.

Processes are already underway to extendthe reach of educational insitutions into the spheres, often in colloboration with health, welfare, and police agencies.

The conclusions that can be reached is that the best educational results can be obtained in situations where the educational system assumes control for all aspects of a child welfare, establishing a baseline of expectations.

This raises the spectre of the return to residential schools carried out on a grand scale for the majority of families.

If phrased this way, the above mentioned scenario is not only undesirable to parents and teachers, but reprehensible.

Some educators used to make reference to "equality of opportunity" relying on interventionist educational policies that aim to redress educational deficiencies stemming from out-of-school factors; i.e. schools with large populations weakk in reading or math receive considerably more time on these subjects, often to the detriment of others like history, science, art, and physical education, since the length of a school day is finite.

It has been suggested that the end result of this will be a kind of apartheid class-based educational system where students of upper class families are taught management techniques, middle-class students learn team-work and role-playing, while the lower classes are rewarded with lessons on following orders.

This then becomes the teaching paradox: if we can not stomach to support the best methods available to achieve our desired results, then what is it we really desire from our educational system?

How Deep Is Your Love (of Bias)

This past week has been dominated with sessions, discussions, and presentations at the ADETA e-learning conference at the University of Calgary. One of the common themes that routinely crops up is the comment that "Things have changed. Technology has stood the old paradigm on it's head." Often these kinds of comments are made in regards to various social applications and so-called "Web 2.0" apps, though the most succinct one I heard was made in reference to RSS feeds via the short video, "RSS In Plain English". Basically, the Plain English video said that in "the old model" (without really explaining what the old model was), the reader went out and found information, where as in the new model, the information came to you.

This is an important distinction and not just for web apps. There is a notion that basic educational processes are in need of significant change, now that information is freely available. The "old model" of education is one based on the following precepts:

1. Information is hard to find.
2. Information is hard to understand.
3. A teacher is someone who has already found and understood the information.
4. A teacher's role is to help others understand this information.

Essentially, this a picture of informaiton scarcity. The development of boards of education serve to define and train teachers, while the emergence of sanctioned curricula introduces the interesting wrinkle that not all information is equal, nor is all of it desirable. Textbooks help to deal with the idea that the information students are required to know needs to be gathered in one place for them, that they are lacking in the skills needed to process and evaluate the information on their own.

Many people at the conference here, have suggested that this is paradigm that new tecnologies have overturned. No longer do students need to be told what to learn, or to be limited to learning solely what's in the curriculum. Sort of a no more fences approach to learning.

However, hidden even deeper behind this is the basic idea that the process of education is about information transfer. It's been stated several times during discussions, and we've even said it in a previous post here on Exploding Beakers. To suggest that education is simply about the transfer of knowledge is to still rest on the image that the student is an empty vessel or blank slate that needs to be "filled up" by the teacher or educational agency. Listening to discussions where people are excited about the implications that new technologies have for education, and they all talk about the creative abilities they offer students. But where is the call for students to create new knowledge in curricular documents? This I think is the new challenge for educational reform, and one that truly places the emphasis on students and student learning.

Schooling is a Social Function

Supposedly, Mark Twain once wrote, "Don't let school get in the way of your education," suggesting that there is a difference between "school" and "education" even though most schools and school districts would define themselves as "learning" or "educational" institutions. Perhaps though, the idea that Twain had in mind, was that an education revolved around personal interests and experiences (a la "my education"), whereas a bureaucratic institution such as a school, has always carried with it certain top-down notions (i.e., the increasingly popular and derogatory "You got schooled"). A school, typically, exposes all students to a pre-defined set of experiences and information, while an education is a unique result of the personal reaction to those experiences and information.

As spring break draws to a close and the school year gears up for its final thrust, we have been thinking a lot about the role that social networks can play in "21st Century Learning". In the course of our research, second generation terms like "Web 2.0", "School 2.0" and "Classroom 2.0" have cropped up time and time again. Here are three good links that provide some interesting points on the whole idea:

David Warlick, "I'm getting Diigo"

Working Toward Excellence, "A Glossary of Classroom 2.0 Terms"

Now Is Gone, "The Four C's of Social Engagement"


We would agree with Warlick that the future of the textbook ought to be as some sort of nexus where students could engage with each other over. However, we would extend this idea a little farther, as we personally question the need for a textbook at all. In our opinion, Warlick's key idea is that students engage around the course content, which is usually contained within the textbook. The user experience within a social network, gives emphasis on personal choice to direct, and help co-create experiences, something more in line with Mark Twain's take on schooling and education mentioned above. The article, "The Four C's of Social Engagement" describes some fairly typical ways that businesses and marketing agencies are using social networks, and the question that we find ourselves asking is, what is stopping us as educators from doing the same thing?

Dr. Sharon Friesen

A few weeks ago, Dr. Sharon Friesen from the University of Calgary, came to visit the Instructional Services staff and talk about the need for educational reform. Many of Friesen's talking points involved moving the educational system away from the assembly line model that was developed (primarily in the United States) at the turn of the last century. In this model, students are viewed as products that have particular forms of knowledge imprinted (or processed) on them. Quality control measures governing the success of the imprinting, can result in the passing or failing of students. Some of these issues we discussed in an earlier post (The Song Remains the Same), and had even begun exploring in a somewhat abortive wiki-venture, Beware The Octopus. While we enjoyed Dr. Friesen's talk, her's is just one voice in an ever-growing chorus highlighting the need for many multi-faceted changes to our school systems.

Dr. Friesen is also the co-founed of the Galileo Educational Network, an organization that has done some great work in Calgary promoting more inquiry in schools.