Change is hard. That’s an understatement.

Change is inevitable. That’s just truth.

We want certainty, because certainty makes it easier to define ourselves, to carve out our value. To measure our work against long-standing, consistent expectations. To say that we are a success. To stay safe.

That mindset limits our ability to deal with the inevitable, however. And the consequences for ourselves and those around us can be profound.

Letting go means embracing and working to understand change in all of its subtle and powerful forms. It means choosing to move and evolve and grow.

And despite the angst of not knowing, that’s a lot better than being dragged.

Here’s your Friday moment of EduZen to think about over the weekend. Adult beverage suggested…

Phillip Schlechty:

In the digital world, print- and person-dependent learning is not the rule. And as businesses are beginning to learn and religious leaders are beginning to discover, these new technologies threaten existing boundaries and existing arrangements of power and authority in fundamental ways. Organizations that are change adept–that is organizations that can learn as well as encourage learning–will survive and thrive in this new world. Organizations that require stability, tranquility, and predictability will perish. And bureaucracies absolutely require stability, tranquility, and predictability if they are to function in optimal ways…

If the limitations of bureaucracies continue to be imposed on or accepted in schools, the only alternative available to those who desire a high-quality education will be to create a new system of education outside the range of the state and federal bureaucracies that now dominate public schools. Indeed, such a system is likely to function outside schools more generally, as most private schools are structured on the same organizational premises that guide public schools, and thus are based on assumptions that are not valid in a world where digital learning opportunities abound.

If schools both public and private cannot become more adept than they now are at absorbing and supporting disruptive technologies–and it is clear that digital technologies, properly exploited, will be disruptive in bureaucratically organized schools–then customized, commercially provided education is likely to replace both public and private schools, at least for most students. Those left behind will be the children of the poor, who will be trained in state-run bureaucracies rather than educated in outstanding schools, making even more real the social class divisions that are tearing at America’s social fabric (21).

See you Monday.

Seth Godin:

A ten-year plan is absurd.

Impossible, not particularly worth wasting time on.  

On the other hand, a ten-year commitment is precisely what’s required if you want to be sure to make an impact.

Anyone who is truly interested in changing the school experience for kids, as in really change it, as in do the “right thing” instead of the “wrong thing right“, anyone looking to do that has two primary options:

Start a school. (This is the easier route.)

Or,

Make a commitment, preferably a long term one. (Ten years might be about right.)

One of the difficulties in moving an “old (existing) school” to a “bold (really changed) school” (as I like to think of it) is that there is no recipe, no simple step by step guide that gets you from point A to point B. It’s not like undertaking a technology roll out or building a Makerspace. It would be so much easier if that was the case. You can “plan” for that.

Change of the type I and many others are talking about isn’t so much about the spaces or the stuff as it is the culture of learning that serves as the foundation for the work. One that recognizes and supports everyone in the system as learners first. One that promotes democracy and shifts agency to learners. One that fully understands and embraces the new contexts for learning that we are now dealing with. One that lives what it believes about how people learn.

You can’t really plan that path, but you can commit to it. You can commit to a vision for what you want “school” to be, and then commit to figuring it out. As a school community, you can commit to that inquiry, “What do we want to become?” and let that question guide you.

Maybe for the next ten years.

Mitch Resnick:

“Rather than trying to think how we educate all of these students, I think ‘how can we create opportunities for learning?'”

Of all the difficult, complex questions we should be asking about the school experience at this moment, this may be the most important: Should our primary focus on “educating” children, or should it be on developing them as learners?

The current stock answer is obvious, isn’t it?

“Go to school and get an education.” The Department of Education. The Ed.D. Education Week. The National Education Association.

We don’t say “Go to school and become a learner.” We don’t have a federal or state Department of Learning. There is no National Learning Association.

We’ve always valued an “education” first and foremost. We work really hard, in fact, to “deliver” one to each and every child. And it’s always been pretty clearly defined what an “education” is: x many years of English and Science and Math and the rest. Passing a test or two. The granting of a diploma. These are the things that allow us to separate those that are “educated” from those that aren’t.

And don’t miss the powerful message in that word. “Educat-ed.” As in past tense. As in done, finished. You’ve learned what you need to learn. We’ve completed our work. Bring in the next group for us to process.

Increasingly, however, an “education” is coming under scrutiny. Businesses are starting to question whether an “education” is really preparation for work. Parents are starting to question whether an “education” is worth the cost. Kids who are newly “educated” are now competing for jobs that don’t require the “education” they received. (And that last is an interesting word as well, isn’t it?)

Could it be that this moment requires a shift away from “educating” students toward, as Mitch Resnick suggests, making sure kids leave us as learners?

I think the argument is compelling, especially in a world that is rife with huge, hairy, ongoing change. If I’m a business owner, do I care if my employees are “educated” as much as I care that they can do the work and adapt to a changing workplace? If I’m a patient, do I not want a doctor who is a learner first and foremost? And, importantly, if I’m a student (or the parent of a student) shouldn’t I want the adult in the room to be a voracious learner who can “create opportunities for learning” for me and my peers?

I’m not saying that there isn’t value in knowing certain things, in having some common understanding of the world. But being “educated” in the current contexts is no longer enough, nor should it be our primary goal. If we have not dedicated ourselves to develop a capacity and a love of learning in our kids first and foremost, no amount of education will serve them well.

(Image credit: Alan Levine)

Here’s your Friday moment of EduZen to think about over the weekend…

Frank Smith’s The Book of Learning and Forgetting is one of those reads that had me nodding my head the entire way through it. In it, he outlines two theories of learning. One, the “classic” view, goes like this:

We learn from people around us with whom we identify. We can’t help learning from them, and we learn without knowing that we are learning…Just about all the important knowledge we have about our personal worlds, and the skills we have developed to navigate through these worlds, are a direct result of learning in the classic way.

Smith counters that, however, with what he calls the “official” view of learning, which he calls “preeminent, coercive, manipulative, discriminatory–and wrong.”

It is a theory that learning is work, and that anything that can be learned provided sufficient effort is expended and sufficient control enforced. The theory has gained supreme power in educational systems from kindergarten to university. It has become so pervasive  that many people can’t imagine an alternative to it.

This is the view–I call it the official theory of learning and forgetting–that is responsible for:

–compelling people to try to learn in the most inefficient way possible, with rapid forgetting guaranteed,

–persuading individuals that they won’t learn unless they make a determined effort, and that the fault is theirs if they fail,

–segregating learners at school so they can’t help each other, in the process making life as difficult as possible for teachers,

–coercing learners and teachers into ineffective programs of study designed by distant authorities who have no way of knowing or rectifying the difficulties they create,

–forcing learners and teachers to waste their time on repetitive exercises and drills that teach only that learning is frustrating and difficult,

–imposing discriminatory and discouraging ‘tests’ that ensure that individuals who most need help and encouragement get the least,

–convincing teachers, learners, and parents that the most important thing about education is scores and grades,

–making learning a trial when it should be a pleasure, and making forgetting inevitable when it should be insignificant.

What do you think?

Fred Wilson:

“We are returning to a time when anyone can be an inventor and innovator.”

On the edges of all of this forward moving innovation there is more than a scent of backwards leaning learning and doing in the world.

The Maker Movement has regenerated a sense of invention and tinkering that has roots in the long ago past.

With connected technologies we can learn as apprentices at the feet of the most knowledgeable and experienced masters in the world (provided they’re playing online.)

We can now build off each other’s ideas, “stand on the shoulders of giants” in ways that reach far beyond what was even possible even a decade a go. What will it be a decade from now?

Are our students inventors? Are they innovators? Importantly, do they see us as such?

This isn’t about getting funded on Shark Tank as much as it’s about changing the world for the better. In classrooms. With kids. Today.

Just to be clear…”anyone” means anyone.

Today, and maybe tomorrow, and probably beyond, I’ll be thinking about this snip from George Siemens:

Human history is marked by periods of explosive growth in knowledge. Alexandria, the Academy, the printing press, the scientific method, industrial revolution, knowledge classification systems, and so on. The rumoured robotics era seems to be at our doorstep. We are the last generation that will be smarter than our technology. Work will be very different in the future. The prospect of mass unemployment due to automation is real. Technology is changing faster than we can evolve individually and faster than we can re-organize socially. Our future lies not in our intelligence but in our being.  

But.  

Sometimes when I let myself get a bit optimistic, I’m encouraged by the prospect of what can become of humanity when our lives aren’t defined by work. Perhaps this generation of technology will have the interesting effect of making us more human. Perhaps the next explosion of innovation will be a return to art, culture, music. Perhaps a more compassionate, kinder, and peaceful human being will emerge. At minimum, what it means to be human in a digital age has not been set in stone.

Mercy, but these are interesting times. We are creating what it means to be human for what is unquestionably a new era of living.

No pressure, educators.