Education or learning

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I’ll let you in on a bit of my past. School for me was, well not for me, right from the start. School and I simply did not get along. It is not that I didn’t have interests that were covered in school curriculum. Something about the classroom experience and the delivery of information really didn’t suit me. I guess I had some difficulties settling in to the routine and understanding what was happening and what was being taught.

This is the story of how I came to learn about education and became educated about learning. Most important, it is about how I came to learn how to learn. If that sounds strange to you. Keep reading. You might be interested in why learning is more important to me than education.

As I scraped through the grades, made to repeat a grade when we moved from the U.S. to Canada, I began to live for the weekends. In later grades, I needed to forget the week and find some way to enjoy the weekend. I hated Sunday night and Monday mornings. Parties and drinking became weekend norms. By grade twelve, with just passing grades, I vowed to never set foot in an academic environment again.

Today, I still struggle with plenty of life, yet, I have managed to avoid alcohol for over 30 years and have earned an M.Ed. among other certificates and diplomas. How did this happen? What do I know now that has made the difference?

Let’s pick up the trail after grade twelve and race through a few years. After working in a dairy, I decided to go to college to learn about printing. I didn’t consider this academic and thus not breaking my vow, even when I studied some journalism. The number of educators who have strongly influenced me during my life have been few. One was an associate music teacher in high school. Yes, there were a few positive experiences. This teacher asked me if I would like to do an entertainment review for the local newspaper. My response, ‘But I’m barely squeaking through in English.” His, “You know what you like and don’t like, so just write what you think.” So began a small career as a part-time entertainment reviewer that lead me to take some journalism so I could get more free press passes to shows.

After working in the printing industry for a few years, I managed to get my hands on a Mac Plus computer to teach myself the new prepress method then known as desktop publishing. Soon, I found myself doing some training. One other piece of the puzzle developed when I was contracted by an educational institution to help develop a new distance education project using an online groupware product I was a representative for. I ended up writing the first course and delivering it to the group of instructors who developed the courses and programs at the institution. I had little understanding of what I was doing. I remember the project manager saying “To ensure your long-term participation in this project, you might what to get some training in developing training courses.” We traded some work for the Instructional Skills workshop, part of the Provincial Instructor Diploma.

During that workshop, the reality of the world of education and learning began to be revealed to me. Wait, was this academic, could I actually learn something and enjoy it? Even more surprising, this shy guy actually ended up standing in front of people to teach a short lesson. I enrolled in another course and got to really grapple with my own learning. It was a tough slog. I had to find my learning legs. I had to apply the little I had already learned about learning to my own learning. Finally, I learned a few things about how to learn, how I learn.

In the following years, I completed the Provincial Instructor Diploma, the Advanced Diploma in Adult Education, a Leadership Coaching Certificate and an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction. Perhaps one day I’ll continue my story about learning. For now, let me talk a bit about education and learning.

What comes to the forefront of your mind when you think of school, education, or learning? What is the difference? What do they look like to you?

Would it surprise you if I stated that education, to me is a production machine? It is an attempt to bring about the result of learning to the masses of society and to indoctrinate them into the norms of society; to make citizens who can function within the framework of society, meet the employment needs of corporations and to behave in an acceptable manner. That may sound like a strong accusation of a major societal institution, yet, this is what school is about.

The institution of education is so massive that it actually has a number of difficulties. When you think of school you probably think of a classroom of tables and chairs and the teacher at the front of the room teaching. The sage on the stage as we came to call it. Educators now know so much more about how people learn than when I went to school. With this research, one might think that the school experience would be quite different. Perhaps it is, slightly, but in truth the machine keeps churning as usual. Even with the ability to deal with the students who struggle or have other differences or challenges, the system can’t help in ways that could make a huge difference.

In the past, less was known about what the problems really were, or how to provide assistance. Those who did not fit in, might be labelled as troublesome or lazy. Today, research has revealed much about how people learn, yet, notions such as mainstreaming all students or financial cutbacks have limited improvements to education. In addition, the educational machine is very slow to change and seems to be entrapped by the expectations of what school and education should look like—people expect it should look the way it looked when they went to school. Teachers teach the way they were taught.

Here’s the point. So much more is known about how we learn. From varying the delivery of instruction and teaching to meet learning styles to brain research, the educational experience should be so different from what it is. In addition, we now know that creative, innovative thinking needs to be developed in learners to meet the complex needs of society today. Employers are constantly changing what they are looking for in potential employees.

Since education seems inadequate, at least to me, I tend to focus on learning. Now, you should understand why education to me is a formal ridged, inflexible processing machine. What I seek are creative learning solutions. I’ll probably write more about creative learning solutions. Perhaps a series. Watch for it.

Getting work done

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My daughter, who is away at university, texted me from her iPhone to my old iPhone. Her majors are in English and Creative Writing, so she has plenty of reading and writing to do. Today, she announced that she was in a coffee shop with her boyfriend and was “getting work done.” It flies in the face of what I was told and grew up doing, is against the research into how people can best learn. I know, because I studied education, training and learning to the level of a Masters of Education. Yet, this is how young people ‘get work done.’ The more they have going on, the better, or so it seems.

A few months ago, I caught an interview with a few young folk and they were asked how they do their homework and studies. The interviewer began with asking how many do only their homework. No hands went up. Next, they were asked if they do two things at once. Still no hands. He continued with three and I think I saw someone hesitantly put their hand part way up. I think most claimed they did about five things at once, including their studies.

So, the interviewer decided to find out if this is common and if there is any proof that this sort of practice resulted in lower grades in school. Sure enough, they managed to find a researcher who stated that the research is showing that grades are not impacted when students do more than one thing at a time when studying.

I have a couple of concerns. I am still not convinced, nevertheless, even if it should prove out over time, what does this say about where society is heading? Certainly, there are messages, such as advertizing, that are designed and meant to be consumed in an instant. We can see how much faster advertizing is presented compared with a decade or two ago. Particularly, advertizing aimed at young people. And the culture, for example the music of young people, is presented rapidly. It is almost as if, it is not the message itself that is important, it is the overall impression it leaves that matters.

My conclusion then is that the message must be superficial, since there is no time to really take-in the entire message. It is there and gone before one can even think about it. Therein lies a huge problem. Learning and understanding and finally wisdom come from critical thinking. It’s not just taking the time to think about and think through information, but, to also think about what you think about it and to critically examine the information, the message, what is behind the message and how it affects you the consumer of the information.

Let me put forward that intelligence and wisdom do not come from the quantity of information, but, from the quality and depth of thought that arises from it. Yes, there are very ‘smart’ people these days, doing amazing things. Yet, is seems as if we as humans, know so much about many things, and understand so little, particularly, who we are.

What if we, humankind, are on the verge of a massive paradigm shift that takes us away from a deep connection through critical thought and dialog with the information we create. Perhaps, our brain might catch up one day, or more likely, since we rely more each day on technology, that we may develop computers that might sift and organize our information into capsules that synthesize what we need to know. A machine that tells us what we need to know. It sounds sinister in some ways. What if we simply invent ourselves into a lifestyle that has all our needs met through various technologies and we simply have to enjoy life. This is the myth I grew up with, as western societies passed the mid-point of the twentieth century.

It was a myth in that, as the twentieth century was entering its final couple of decades, we seemed to be working harder to pay for the technologies that we had come to rely on and we found we were generating more information daily than we could ever consume. It has turned out that we can only pick small snippets here and there. Perhaps, it is these small pickings are what will make us individuals, or who we are. Like careening down a track on a super fast train, we try to look out of all the windows to see the scenery. In a matter of minutes, we pass through a section of countryside and claim that we have seen the country, yet, we have only seen snippets along a track that, in no way, passes through the entire country. Who is to say we have or have not seen enough?

I have been practicing. This has been written while watching TV. As a movie plays on the TV, I write and look up every now and then and I listen as I go. Well, I do manage, as you can read, to get something written, however, I don’t feel that I am really thinking deeply as I construct each sentence. My writing, may be shallow compared to what I might write if I were in a quiet room and focusing.

People claim that they can multitask and still do each task well. I am not convinced, but as I said, I am trying. I’m not up to doing five things at once and I don’t even think I will get there or want to. I have managed, though, to get this done.

What do you think? Do you multitask? How do you get work done?