Counting the cost

When we talk about the future of learning, we talk about the future of society. Most will agree that good education contributes significantly toward the wellbeing and prosperity of society. Without a trained, educated work force, nation states are not in a position to compete within the global economy. You only have to look at any emerging nation of the world where there is poor or partial compulsory education provision to see exactly how its economy is faring. Moreover, the higher the number of people unemployed, the more drain there will be on the economic and social resources of the state. This is the main reason why successive governments load their deck so heavily in favour of improved educational provision. It is politically expedient and it is also socially and economically desirable to seek to improve the state funded education provision. And it is why most changes imposed by governments don't actually work. This is because the governments of the world often remain blinded by economic considerations, and fail to see the true value of good education. Our leaders know the price of education, but have no idea about its true value.

Education is not just about preparing children for a world of work, and it is more than an organised attempt to secure the economic future of the nation. Education is far more valuable than that. How can we ignore the simple joy of learning? How can we measure the cultural value of learning about art, music, science, faith - the world around us? What price can we place on leading young people to maturity of thought, where they become discerning and critically aware individuals, able to decide for themselves what is right or wrong in the world? How do we place a price tag on enabling children to channel their fertile imaginations into precious, creative, transformative outcomes?

The answer is, we can't ... and we shouldn't. When the world falls apart around us, what we will be left with - is what we have learnt. And while the good people of Christchurch, New Zealand, are struggling to come to terms with their tragic losses, resulting from yesterday's devastating earthquake, what will they be doing? They will be surviving, escaping, organising, caring, sharing, coping, communicating, collaborating, rebuilding, reflecting and reappraising, and drawing on many other valuable skills they have learnt. Skills that go way beyond the mere acquisition of facts and knowledge. They will be drawing upon their emotional and intellectual resources which do not result solely from immersion in a 'curriculum', but rather through their exposure to the values and mores of their community.

As the news of the Christchurch earthquake broke yesterday, many people drew on their social media communication skills to connect with each other, providing vital information and sharing news, in a virtual community that spanned the globe. They achieved this without the help of the broadcast media, who were once again hours behind in reporting from the scene. We received reports from citizen journalists, people caught up in the drama of the moment, using their mobile phones to send out their pleas for help, and their remarkable but disturbing pictures and videos of the scenes they were witnessing before them. Such actions cannot be taught. There is no curriculum that can be developed to give us an appreciation of what we should do in a disaster or a crisis, no way to teach how we can communicate human tragedy as it unfolds. We learn by doing and we learn by being exposed to these experiences. And as we learn, others learn with us and from us. As a community, we somehow survive and ultimately, thrive. Lifelong learning is what education is made of. It was never about knowing what, always about knowing how. Let us never confuse schooling with education. If we do, what will be our future?

Dedicated to the memory of those lost in the Christchurch earthquake of 22 February, 2011.

Donate to the Red Cross NZ Earthquake victims fund

Image source by Martin Luff


Counting the cost by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Lunatic fringe?

Ivan Illich once argued that schools were like funnels, a transmission system - an industrialised, impersonal process that created more problems than solutions. His alternative to funnels was to establish 'learning webs' where students could share their expertise within their communities and learn from each other as the need arose, and as their interests drove them. For Illich, informal learning was more appropriately situated than formal learning, and therefore more relevant for lifelong learning. The work of Paulo Freire holds a particular significance to this discourse - he argued that dialogue was more powerful than curriculum, because it is the essence of informal learning, driven by interests rather than the expediences of the state. Einstein was an echo of these sentiments. He once said: 'Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learnt at school'.

During a presentation in Manchester two years ago, I happened to mention that Illich's 1970s notion of deschooling society could now be achieved through new web based tools, but that we were in danger of turning the Web back into a funnel if we persisted with wholesale implementation of institutional VLEs that constrained rather than liberated learning. He is one of my favourite anarchists, I said.

In an online discussion group later, someone suggested that my mention of Illich was enough to brand me as a member of the 'lunatic fringe'. I smiled, because I wasn't offended by this, but genuinely encouraged. A similar thing happened to me during the plenary session of the ICL conference in Austria. I asked a question of one of the keynote speakers, and cited Illich's deschooling position. He lost his cool and declared "No-one quotes Illich anymore!" It's not always a bad thing to be labelled a lunatic. It often means that people just don't fully understand what has been said. It's the same when someone is labelled an anarchist. It is often used as a perjorative description, without a clear understanding of what it actually means.

The Sex Pistols sang 'I am an anarchist', but I'm not convinced they were really aware of the true connotations of their lyrics. One of the conference delegates at my Manchester presentation asked me to explain my statement that Illich was 'one of my favourite anarchists'. He asked me to say what 'other anarchists' I admired. I responded with a list of people including: Jesus Christ, Mozart, Picasso, Van Gogh, Stockhausen, Einstein, The Beatles and Dylan Thomas. A surprising list perhaps? Few of these, if asked, would have classified themselves as anarchists in the sense that they wished to 'destroy the world'. They didn't of course. Most of them were criticised for being mad, deluded, drug-crazed or drunken, but each of them in their own way broke out from the mould, enabling us to see the world in a new way. They created new concepts that made us rethink our representations of reality. To me, that is what true anarchism is. Not being satisfied with the present, anarchy is about challenging, subverting, removing and ultimately replacing the tired, creaking old structures - a kind of 'destructive creativity' perhaps. It may not all be about smashing the system. It may be about repurposing it - just take a closer look at Illich's ideas:

Here is what Illich (pictured left) actually said: �A�major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning is the result of teaching. Teaching, it is true, may contribute to certain kinds of learning under certain circumstances. But most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only insofar as school, in a few rich countries, has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives".

Illich was not saying 'destroy school'. He was saying that the ills of the current state funded school system (read 1971, or 2011 - it makes no difference) far outweigh the good. School is creating far more societal problems than it is solving, he believed. His notion of 'learning webs' reflects his concern that we become more community focused and able to respond to changes, whilst his critique of 'funnels' shows his concern for the bland, homogenous and often irrelevant curricula of his own time and the impersonal, behaviouristic manner in which it was delivered.

On his blog, Bill Ellis provides us with useful insight into the motivation behind Illich's thesis: "Deschooling Society was more about society than about schools. Society needed deschooling because it was a mime of the school system that it engendered and that engendered it. In our current society individuals are expected to work in dull and stultifying jobs for future rewards. This they are trained to do in schools. They go to school so that they can get a job to work for future rewards".

We are seeing some green shoots. Creative curricula and personalised learning environments are the start of the deschooling process Illich called for. The formation of loose networks of practice and virtual communities, professional learning networks (PLNs) and 'user groups' on the Social Web is another. Retiring school systems that inhibit creative expression and individualism, and introducing new forms of assessment that support learning rather than measure it are also the start of the deschooling process. Using appropriate digital media that connect people into expert webs and enable them to negotiate meaning that is relevant to their own specific contexts is infinitely better than direct instruction. I can't see us demolishing the school or university building. What we should see happening though, is building the essence of all that is good from the school and university into each personal learning space, wherever that may be, and whatever form it might take. You can read more about the Deschooling Society ideas of Ivan Illich.

Images: Moon source. Illich source.

Lunatic fringe? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The future of learning

The Future of Learning

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

What is the future of education? With the upsurge in ownership of smart mobile devices such as iPhones, Androids and Blackberries, the rapid social penetration of touchscreen computers such as iPads, and an increase in the purchase of Kindles and other e-reader devices, the future of learning is definitely smart mobile. 80 per cent or so of the learning that most of us engage in is of an informal nature. Informal learning is becoming an increasingly enriched experience with personal tools, and there is improved connectivity too, ensuring that anyone who has a mobile smart device is more likely to be able to connect to the Internet quickly and seamlessly. Social networking sites and online media sharing sites are also enjoying exponential increases in membership, leading to the supposition that this generation is a profoundly connected generation. Students will use Facebook when they want to, and their institutional managed learning environment when they have to.

It is clear that education will not share the same future as the state funded school, because education and school are not synonymous. It doesn't end at school either. Those who pursue formal learning to the level of further and higher education will experience a growing gulf between the capabilities of the technology they arrive with in their hands, and technology that is provided in the classroom. They are different tools, for different purposes. The Blackberry or iPhone will be used to connect to informal learning and friends, for fun, entertainment and social purposes. The institutional system will be used for connecting to formal learning, and activities that are more formalised and by their nature, less entertaining and engaging. The personal technologies will be sleek, attractive, must-have, rapid action and intuitive devices, while the institutional systems will be rule-bound, clunky, opaque and bland. It follows that many students will prefer to access learning resources, their tutors and peers through their own personal technologies. We will thus witness a gradual decline in on-campus learning, with an increasing number of blended programmes made available to meet the demand of an increasingly mobile student population. Because students will increasingly rely on smart mobile tools for learning, FE and HE institutions may agree special arrangements with telecommunications companies to offset the call cost for students, as a trade off to the money the save by reducing their on-campus operations.

The blended learning courses of the future will be those that combine formal and informal learning features. Formal learning will be undertaken mainly for the purpose of gaining accreditation, informal learning will be engaged with for the remainder of the waking hours. Unless we can harness the power, excitement and richness of the informal personalised learning experience and translate it into formalised settings, we will continue to see a widening rift between school and education. The slideshow above - a part of the keynote speech I gave at LearnTEC in Karlsruhe, Germany, earlier this month - illustrates these and other thoughts about what we might see in the future of learning.


The future of learning by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.