Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

The Ability to be Taught

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“The one really competitive skill is the skill of being able to learn.” ~Seymour Papert

I use that quote often in my presentations, because even though Papert said that 18 years ago, the environment we now find ourselves in today makes it even more relevant. And it’s not just the skills needed to learn, but it’s the dispositions as well. I’m not saying humans aren’t learners by their very nature, but there’s no question some end up being much more voracious than others when it comes to learning more about the world around them and their place in it.

But we don’t focus on being able to learn that much in schools, do we? Instead we put most of our attention on making sure kids are able to be taught. That’s what the systems and structures and policies support. To be able to be taught, students must learn to follow rules. To be able to be taught, they must conform to certain expectations. They must be grouped in certain ways, for specific amounts of time. They must get into certain routines, all of which develop them as “students” who depend on the institution to teach them what they need to know. This is our easiest path, to dictate and organize the entire experience. 

In the process, we basically ignore the skill of being able to learn. In fact, we may damage what learning skills and dispositions kids already bring to us when they start school. But the vast majority of kids end up right where we want them, being teachable. 

The irony is we’ve known this forever. We knew it when we were students. We perpetuate it as adults, as parents, as teachers, and as policy makers. 

Read the whole Papert piece. Hard to argue.

On Teachers as Learners…

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Seymour Papert on project based learning in 1991:

Again, one of my favorite little analogies: If I wanted to become a
better carpenter, I’d go find a good carpenter, and I’ll work with this
carpenter on doing carpentry or making things. And that’s how I’ll get
to be a better carpenter. So if I want to be a better learner, I’ll go
find somebody who’s a good learner and with this person do some
learning. But this is the opposite of what we do in our schools. We
don’t allow the teacher to do any learning. We don’t allow the kids to
have the experience of learning with the teacher because that’s
incompatible with the concept of the curriculum where what is being
taught is what’s already known.

First, this is just common sense, right? If we value kids becoming learners, then we should surround them with learners to apprentice with. But being a learner requires grappling with things that aren’t “already known.” (Whenever we talk about learning in my workshops someone always defines it as gaining new knowledge.) But teachers live 95% of the time in the “already known” because that’s the whole point of curriculum delivery. We know it, and now we’ve got to get them to know it. 

Second, if kids becoming learners and teachers acting as learners isn’t what we value most in schools, we’ve got bigger problems than we think. Yet, how many put that at the forefront of their vision statements? 

Discovery “Double-Talk”

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Seymour Papert in The Children’s Machine (excerpted here.):

It is simply double talk to ask children to take charge of their own learning and at the same time order them to “discover” something that can have no role in helping them understand anything they care about or are interested in or are curious about.

This isn’t rocket science. Each one of us lives this. We learn what we have an interest in learning. The deeper our interest, the less we will let stand in our way. I’m struck by stories like that of Jack Andraka, 15 years-old, who wouldn’t let school stand in the way. (Listen carefully from 1:19 – 2:05.) 

It’s easy for a lot of people now to say “we’re moving.” Every kid has an iPad. We’re doing project-based learning. We’re flipping the classroom to make more time for problem-solving. And on.

I can’t speak for him, but I doubt Papert is impressed. Our hubris in education is still that we think we know what, when, and how every child needs to learn. While our rhetoric changes, we remain teacher / curriculum centered despite announcements that our “better” assessments, our “better” curriclum, our “better” uses of technology are transferring ownership of learning to children. 

They’re not. We’re not.

Liberate the Learners

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Seymour Papert (1998):

The presence of digital technologies is rapidly moving us into a period where learners can learn what they need to know on their own agenda rather than on the predetermined agenda of a curriculum. We will soon be able to give up the assembly line model of grade after grade, exercise after exercise.

It would be naive to believe this could happen without resistance from the education establishment—which includes several multibillion-dollar sectors of the education industry as well as huge bureaucracies with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. I grant that most people who make and apply curriculums are underpaid and motivated by the welfare of children. But this does not alter the fact that present-day schools, to which…they have to cater in order to sell their products, are relics from an earlier period of knowledge technology.

I think the emphasis now has to be on the transition. We know from where have come. The question is where we end up. At the core, it’s about how we provide the cultures and systems and supports that marry the public good of community schools with the powerful freedom to learn which we and our children in connected spaces now enjoy. (And, importantly, how we extend that freedom to those who don’t yet have access to it.) 

Next week, let’s spring forward on more than just the clock.