Thomas Friedman today in the Times:
There’s a huge undertow of worry out in the country about how our kids are being educated and whether they’ll be able to find jobs in an increasingly flat world, where more Chinese, Indians and Russians than ever can connect, collaborate and compete with us.
One answer, he writes, is to learn how to learn.
Being really good at “learning how to learn,” as President Bill Brody of Johns Hopkins put it, will be an enormous asset in an era of rapid change and innovation, when new jobs will be phased in and old ones phased out faster than ever.
So how do we do that, teach kids to love learning? How do we nurture “fearless learners” as Alan November refers to them? I’ve been down this road a lot lately…the kids I see are not learning to learn as much as they are learning to get through. They’re gaming the system more than developing an appreciation for learning. And, they’re generally bored with the process.
Friedman suggests that students find the best teachers and take their courses whether they are interested in the subject or not. That’s fine for college, but not as easy in high school. Students have very little choice as to who their teachers will be. In fact, when we realized that our new scheduling program had a feature that allowed students to enter teacher preferences, it was one of the first things we switched off. Just not going to happen.
So what are the other answers? Where do our students show a passion for learning? Where are kids finding their own teachers? And where do WE find the best teachers? I’m going to bet that most bloggers who stick with it do so because they are fearless learners. We want to know more, push our thinking, exchange ideas. We have found teachers that inspire us and move us with their own intelligence or creativity or sense of possibility, and they teach us daily.
But how do we make that happen for our students?
The best teachers have passion for their subject. All to often today we burn the passion out of young teachers. They are the ones who get 3-4 preps and all the extra duties. They get the hard to teach students. The more experienced teachers get the single prep and the easy to teach students. We need to turn that around. Let teachers get experience without losing passion.
We also have to lead by example. Do teachers complain about taking continuing ed or do they promote it as one of the exciting things in their life?
In computer science we are seeing students seek out their peers and online support for learning because that is where they find the passion. And of course we don’t pay CS teachers who are knowledgable and passionate enough to be able to stay in the field of teaching.
Its not learning to learn, its “not forgetting how to learn” Kids naturally already know how to learn, and school helps them forget how to learn. The answer is to find ways to show everyone that learning is not something that happens in a special place, when an authorized adult tells you it is happening. Learning happens all the time, everywhere, unless you try to stop it. Kids can learn from anyone, of any age or background. They can help each other learn, and definitely can help adults to learn something themselves.
The trouble is, alot of kids think the learning in school is irrelevant. So, we have to focus on making the learning very relevant, very engaging. Is that coddling kids? (“In MY day we learned what the teacher taught us, and that was that!”) I don’t think so. Like Friedman says, we need to prepare our kids for flexible thinking, learning for a purpose…and I think, learning for pleasure. I see that’s what you mean… keeping kids’ natural interest in and joy of learning. The million dollar question is….how can we do that with all of the competing interests these days?
Susan — with the “competing interests”… Maybe we should view some of them as allies instead of enemies. The truth is that our non-digital, non-interactive presentation of material is sadly outdated. I know there is the fear that students will be missing some essential skill if we move towards a different delivery mode, but they probably said that when the pencil was introduced (or the TV, or the book, or the typewriter… pick any one).
I’ve written more at http://www.e-lcds.org/wordpress/ on a personal note.
I agree with Susan. It’s relevancy that schools are so sorely lacking not passionate teachers. And the kids haven’t forgotten how to learn. They just would rather learn about topics of interest and importance to them, and there are so many outlets for them to do this now. So they come to school and play the game and then go home and interact, collaborate and learn in a variety of ways that have nothing to do with what we offer in school. In some ways, it’s always been this way, but now we actually have the opportunity to change things somewhat, if we can clear out some space within an increasingly irrelevant education system.