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EDUCATION | Noah Brier

Bring on the Education Revolution!

Now that we know thinking is all about connections, isn't it time we started teaching it?

September 23, 2005 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 6 COMMENTS

I've always said that the most important thing I learned in college was how to think better. I attended a fairly free program that allowed me to follow my own interests throughout my four years, not tied down by any majors or requirements. What that did was allow me to evolve and connect my own thoughts. In fact, I can basically chart back, semester-by-semester, how I arrived where I am today. (For those interested it goes something like this: urban studies to educational reform, educational reform to Black studies, Black studies to hip-hop culture, hip-hop culture to postmodernism, postmodernism to digital culture.) When I finally arrived at digital culture everything made sense. It was the thing that finally connected everything together. That webbed network that we all play with was the perfect way to illustrate how the world connected together.

The problem is that most people don't have this experience. Most people aren't given the freedom to follow their own path. Especially in pre-college education, so much of school is about teaching subject matter than learning often becomes the forgotten stepchild, left to watch from the corner. In the past, the reason for this was that there was simply no other way for students to learn the things the need to know. Things about math, government, etc. But that's changing. That 10th grade history book is tiny when compared with the vast universe of knowledge on the web that's available to students around the world. This should cause a major shift in the way both students learn and teachers teach. Educator Will Richardson explains:

I mean, at some point, we're going to have to let go of the idea that we are the most knowledgable content experts available to our students. We used to be, when really all our students had access to was the textbook and the teacher's brain. But today, we're not. Not by a long stretch. And we don't need to be. What we need to be is connectors who can teach our kids how to connect to information and to sources, how to use that information effectively, and how to manage and build upon the learning that comes with it.

It's all about the connections, but before the web showed us just what connections looked like this was hard to understand. The web has fundamentally shifted the way we understand how we think and, in turn, should shift the way and what we learn. Konrad Glogowski at the blog of proximal development, in response to Will Richardson, explains this change quite well:

Learning is no longer an internal, solitary activity happening inside an individual learner - it is also a process of creating knowledge. This connection would not exist without the nodes created by Will Richardson and George Siemens. It would not exist without a personal network of nodes that I created with my Bloglines subscriptions. It cannot exist unless it is reified in this very entry where it becomes another node in an ever-growing network. My learning is therefore dependent on my ability to perceive some sort of connection or pattern in the available chaos. “The value of ‘pattern recognition,’� to quote George Siemens again, “and connecting our own ’small worlds of knowledge’ are apparent in the exponential impact provided to our personal learning.�

When I read the line, "My learning is therefore dependent on my ability to perceive some sort of connection or pattern in the available chaos," it rung especially true. That is what learning and thinking is all about to me. Those aha moments in life come from realizing a connection between two seemingly disparate entities. It's how problems are solved. It's how scientific breakthroughs happen. Yet instead of encouraging students to think about the connections between the information, we just teach them the information. We force feed history dates and the periodic table, but we don't encourage them to try to find the connections.

That's what always drove me nuts about tests. A multiple choice test is looking for very little other than basic learning. People who can memorize well do great on tests for that reason. It's not asking people to think. Ask a student to write an essay and all of a sudden they've got to develop thoughts and communicate ideas. It encourages more interaction with the information and opens up the chance for connections to happen. But even that's not enough.

Today's teachers must begin to encourage students to make connections. To think about connections. To realize the importance of connections. Whereas teachers of yesterday were DJs, serving up one piece of information after another, today's need to be producers, giving students all the tools and assistance they need to create their own remixes. Guide them through the process. Encourage interaction.

The question becomes is the average teacher/administrator even cognizant of this shift? It gives me hope to read someone like Will Richardson, but I can't help but worry. It's time for a revolution.

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COMMENTS

1Jarrett

Some teachers do recognize this shift, but not for the reasons you would like. I know down here in PA, teachers are trying to get their students to make connections because that is how they will be tested on the PSSA test (the state test in PA used to measure improvement for No Child Left Behind).

September 25, 2005

2Noah Brier

What kind of connections are they trying to get them to make?

September 26, 2005

3barbara

Ahhh, connections .... I first read this post upon returning from a conference on the importance of mentoring new and aspiring principals. Among the many good reasons for mentoring is so the 'knowledge of the elders' is not lost when they retire -- which they will, in droves, in the next decade. Since I was so focused on the mentoring thing, my reaction to your essay was steeped in this sense of memory and tradition, and all I could think of was: Education is already about a century behind the times, how on earth are we going to make this happen? I completely missed the irony;as useful as mentoring is in preparing new principals for the enormous demands of the job as it currently exists, it perpetutates many archaic practices.

I re-read the post today, after having spent yesterday afternoon in a room full of inner city teachers and administrators who were in the first month of an advisor/advisee program. For twenty-two minutes a day, every teacher, guidance counselor and administrator in the building spends 22 minutes with a small group of students with the soul objective of developing trust relationships -- making personal connections with students. The long range goal is for every student to have an adult they trust to turn to in times of need -- a highly laudable purpose, especially in a poor, urban community.

This is a school with the desire to change and even some resources to facilitate the change. But what struck me in yesterday's meeting was the frank discussion of how hard it is for teachers to connect to students without curriculum. The people in the room were those who engineered the program -- those most receptive to change. Yet even they were saying how difficult it had been to walk into the room without a plan. i.e., with nothing to do but talk. This is difficult for all involved (teachers and students) just relating to one another simply as people -- a human connection.

In other words, this is revolutionary stuff indeed. In fact, after less than a month, the principal of this school actually said that this little, 22-minute-a -day program, may be the most important thing they ever do. Now think about that in the context of your statement: "Whereas teachers of yesterday were DJs, serving up one piece of information after another, today's need to be producers, giving students all the tools and assistance they need to create their own remixes. Guide them through the process. Encourage interaction."

Educational leaders claim to have embraced the concept of 'lifelong learning,' but sadly, it rarely seems to extend beyond what they already know. That's why this idea of simply talking to students is so difficult; it takes teachers out from behind the protection of their disciplines and forces them to relinquish control. And in all fairness, we still need to perpetuate schools, if for no other reason than we need somewhere for the children to go while their parents are at work.

So what we are really talking about here is the redefinition of the teacher/student relationship. Undoing that truly ancient paradigm is huge; the revolution may need to be nuclear. Otherwise, as I said in a previous comment to another of your posts on education, I think we're looking at 25 to 30 years ... and I don't think we can afford to wait that long.


September 27, 2005

4Bob Lavin

I have to disagree with your premise that teachers need to become "connectors...giving students all the tools and assistance they need to create their own remixes".
The sad reality of American public education is that your average, education major/graduate/teacher is ill-equipped to handle even this basic function. To be a guide, one must have walked that path before but your average teacher has already scored lower than average on tests, reads less than their students and often has "control issues" with adolescents.
To allow them to shirk their responsibilites even more than they do now by becoming facillitators of knowledge rather than the intellectual giants they should be is more than a disservice to our children, it borders on criminal neglect.
When will everyone get wise to the teachers and their unions? They are the problem, the stumbling blocks to education reform. They work less and are paid more per hour than architects and engineers yet they keep telling us that they need even more money or they can't teach. What's wrong with this picture?

September 28, 2005

5Jarrett

I don't know how to react to the last posting. Obviously this person knows absolutely nothing about what it takes to be a teacher. His statement is full of myths, half truths, and flat out lies. Paid more per hour? Does this person realize that even though the school day may end at 3 teachers are at home writing lesson plans and grading papers until all hours of the night. They may have summers off from teaching but they spend the time taking graduate classes, going to workshops, or revamping their lessons. I could go on but I have papers to grade.

September 28, 2005

6BremCrapabe


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October 25, 2007