Introduction
Features of the next Learning System
The Time Switches of Change
Conclusion
Alternatives for Everybody, All the Time by Roland Meighan
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Introduction
When twenty educationalists met at the University of Nottingham, UK, for two one-day seminars late in 1997, all agreed at the outset that the climate of uncertainty due to continuous change was not going to go away. "Continuous adaptation" was here to stay. The educationalists were from a wide variety of backgrounds ranging from home-based educators to head teachers to university teachers to parents, and they had agreed to be involved in an exchange of ideas on the theme of Education in the Year 2020.
Some common ideas emerged from the discussions in small groups and also in report-back sessions about education in the year 2020. Nobody present saw mass compulsory coercive schooling as the way forward. All over the world, it has proved to be a system that is expensive, increasingly obsolete and counter-productive in producing anachronistic intellectual, social, political, emotional and economic habits. Features of the next learning system
The common ideas that emerged at the Nottingham Conference included the following:
- Learning would be undertaken in much more flexible institutions than at present. Not least among the reasons was the escalating effects of modern computer and communications technology which free us from any specific location for learning. 'Everywhere and anywhere' learning would have become a reality, and flexi-time learning commonplace.
- Open learning centers would replace present-day schools. Some saw these as being open from 8:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night and open every day of the year. Others even thought there might be 24 hour opening. Such centers would support a non-ageist provision without excluding opportunities for some age or gender-based activity. Thus early childhood centers with a focus on young children and their families, would be available. The general model would be that of the public library, not the custodial model of our present schools.
- The central concern of such open learning centers would be learning not teaching, although some formal teaching would be available on request. Such centers would help create a culture of learning which would include everyone and build learner-confidence and self-esteem.
- The role of the teacher would change to that of learning coach, learning consultant, or learning 'travel agent'. The teacher as access-agent to scarce information is already obsolete and the logic of this would have become irresistible. Present teacher training was, therefore, largely a preparation for obsolescence.
- Interactive learning systems such as CD-ROM programmes, opportunities for purposive conversation, self-programming groups and tele-conferencing would have replaced a great deal of classroom teaching. The danger of excessive individualisation would be offset by opportunities to learn in democratic groups and develop 'team-player' co-operative skills.
- Life-long learning expectations would place a premium on the development of computer skills in adults. Voice-driven computers would have become generally important here as well as for some specific needs such as dyslexic adults and children.
- Courses to develop experts would still be needed, but the Open University model would have dislodged the obsolete 'three-year course for young adults' model of current universities. This is based on a preceding, and also obsolete, 'Grand National Race' concept of schooling. Young people are required to fall at each hurdle, losing self-esteem in the process, and often being turned-off learning, so that 'winners' can be identified.
- Financing would have become much more diversified. Some funding out of taxation would be used to support particular requirements for experts, or particular innovative social concerns such as parenting skills, democratic skills, personal health skills, and even 'green' living if environmental survival, (the 'doomsday' scenario,) continues to grow as an issue. Industry would support activities particular to the needs of commerce. Individuals and families would provide some finance. Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS) or Time Dollar schemes would provide another element for paying for personal learning exchanges. There would also be some voluntary learning exchange elements. The net result would be better results for less money than at present. (Home-based educators have already shown that their route to a university place can cost half as much as a conventional school route.) The current technology of swipe cards can incorporate all the above elements of finance, and record and monitor it.
- Democratic control and democratic value-systems would have replaced present authoritarian control and value-systems. The Open Learning Centers would be run by elected representatives of the partners in learning - learners (parents and children), staff (paid and voluntary), and other interested parties such as local industry and local community. Real choice according to the needs of learners would be a key feature of the next learning system. This freedom would be subject to the democratic values of human rights and responsibilities.
- One group's summary was that
The home-based educators present proposed that their practice already involved many of the above features so that they were something of a test bed for the success of these approaches.
- 'time-lock' learning ideas such as key stages would have disappeared in favor of the flexible, irregular patterns of personal learning plans,
- "school" would have given way to flexible learning arrangements,
- 'prescribed curriculum' would have given way to a catalogue curriculum with learner-driven elements, state-targeted elements, and industry targeted elements,
- the precedence of a 'content' of shallow subject-based learning would have given way to the precedence of the deep learning of a questions-based, problem-solving approach.
- The fear of diversity based on an expectation of disorder would have given way to an awareness that all solutions are temporary in a constantly changing environment. Thus adaptability, creativity, flexibility and re-learning are key skills.
- The multiple purposes of education would have been recognized in contrast to the one right way tendencies of present times e.g. education for 'saving' the country's economy.
- The movement away from nationalistic concern to European and global ones would have led to the replacement of the calls for learning competitive attitudes and replaced them with calls for co-operative behavior.
- A new language would have developed to define the next learning system e.g. Open Learning Centers, not schools, the Catalogue Curriculum International, not the National Curriculum, Personal Learning Plans, not teaching schemes and key stages.
The time switches of change
There are a number of influences at work in modern society which are operating as the time switches of change. They include the following: 1. The arrival of the information-rich society
When mass schooling was established, people lived in an information-poor environment. Assembling large numbers of children together in one place called a school, with teachers who had been exposed to the scarce information made a kind of sense. Since then, radio, television, the explosion of specialist magazines, computers, videos and the like, have all provided the means of making most of the products of the knowledge explosion readily available to anyone who wants it. This is just one of the reasons why home-based education is so successful and why its practitioners outperform schools with relative ease. 2. We now know much more about how the brain actually works
New technologies allow us to watch a living brain at work. As a result, most of the assumptions of behavioral and cognitive psychology are in question. As John Abbott explains in Education 2000 News, June 1996, "Studies in neurology challenge the common metaphor that the brain is like a linear computer, waiting to be programmed ... the metaphors of choice are increasingly biological - that is , the brain as a flexible, self-adjusting organism that grows and reshapes itself in response to challenge, with elements that wither away through lack of use." 3. We now know of at least seven types of intelligence
Howard Gardner in his book The Unschooled Mind (1994) reports his work on multiple intelligences. Seven types of intelligence (analytical, pattern, musical, physical, practical, intra-personal, and inter-personal) are identifiable. Only the first is given serious attention in most schools. Yet, we now know that so-called 'ordinary' people are capable of feats of intellectual or creative activity in rich, challenging, non-threatening, co-operative learning environments and the narrow competitive tests currently in use to achieve 'the raising of standards', just prevent this from happening. 4. We now know of thirty different learning styles in humans
It follows that any uniform approach is intellectual death to some, and often most, of the learners, and is therefore suspect. These learning differences fall into three broad categories, cognitive, affective and physiological. Some learners have a style which is typically deductive in contrast to those whose style is usually inductive. Others learn best from material which is predominantly visual as against others who respond best to auditory experiences. There are contrasts between impulsive learners and reflective learners. Some learn better with background noise, others in conditions of quiet, and so on ... 5. It is now clear that in a complex modern society, all three behavior patterns or forms of discipline - authoritarian, autonomous and democratic - are needed
Effectively educated people need the flexibility to turn to each of the three major forms of behavior and discipline, (as analyzed in A Sociology of Educating in 1971 by Roland Meighan), as, and when, it is appropriate. So, we need to be autonomous when driving a car and take responsibility for any outcomes, behave in an aircraft according to the rules of that authoritarian situation, and if we go on to help crew a boat, behave co-operatively in a team. People schooled in only one form of behaviour are handicapped in the modern world: as I indicated in Flexischooling (1988), rigid forms of schooling produce rigid people, flexible forms are needed to produce flexible people. Rigid university experiences build on this foundation. As John Abbott points out in Education 2000 News, June 1996,"... we continue to get graduates who think narrowly, are teacher-dependent, and have too little ability to tackle challenges or embrace change. The situation makes us wonder whether the traditional classroom is right for the task - the need may be less for "reform" than for fundamental redesign of the system." 6. Adaptability has priority in a rapidly changing society
There is now widespread recognition that with rapidly changing technologies, economies and life-styles, there is a chronic need for adaptability and flexibility in learning and in behaviour. A system based on uniformity is, therefore, counter-productive. 7. The recognition of the need for life-long learning
The idea that essential learning is best concentrated between the ages of five and sixteen, and for some up to twenty-one, has increasingly given way to the necessity for life-long learning. 8. Democratic schooling has become an international concern
After the demise of State Communism in the former USSR and Eastern Europe, new governments look to schools in the USA, the UK and elsewhere hoping to find democratic models of schooling in operation. They find to their surprise, the familiar model of authoritarian schools, which are not just non-democratic, but anti-democratic - perhaps less in a few countries such as Denmark than elsewhere. A key feature of democracy is the principle that those who are affected by a decision have the right to take part in the decision-making. This is expressed in slogans such as 'No taxation without representation!' If we apply this to schools, we get, 'No learning and therefore no curriculum without the learners having a say in the decision-making'. In the authoritarian approach to schooling, however, there is a chronic fear of trusting students and sharing power with them, , and a general fear of opting for the discipline of democracy. 9. Home-based educators are trailblazers
In the U.K. and the U.S.A. and in various other countries an unusual, quiet revolution has been taking place in the form of educating children at home. At the same time as the fierce debates about mainstream education have been taking place concerning a National Curriculum, Testing, 'Back to the Basics' etc., some families have just quietly been getting on with a 'Do It Yourself' approach to education. In the U.S.A. over a million families are now "homeschoolers." In the U.K. over 10,000 families are estimated to be operating home-based education.
This phenomenon is more accurately described as home-based education because the majority of families use the home as a springboard into a range of community-based activities and investigations rather than try to copy the 'day prison' model operated by the majority of schools. People find this quite hard to grasp, and this is shown in the asking of questions about whether such children become socially inept. After a little thought, it is clear that learning activities out and about in the community give children more social contacts, and more varied encounters, as well as reducing the peer-dependency feature of adolescent experience, than the restricted social life on offer in the majority of schools.
People often try to generate generalizations and stereotypes about families educating the home-based way. The only ones that the evidence supports are
- that they display considerable diversity in motive, methods and aims,
- that they are remarkably successful in achieving their chosen aims.
Schools often take up the posture that if home-based education is to be tolerable, the families should learn how to do it from the 'professionals'. The evidence is different and demonstrates that schools often have more to learn from the flexibility of practise of many families, than vice versa.
Home-based educators are not the only trailblazers. Those developing All Year Round Community Learning Centers, Charter Learning Centers, Community Arts Projects, Learning Clubs and Co-operatives and other non-coercive learning opportunities are also blazing a trail. 10 Communications Information Technology is a catalyst for change
We are all fated to live all our lives in ignorance of most of what is around us because the world of knowledge is now so vast and it is changing all the time. Without the research skills and some personal confidence derived from practising them, we cannot even make sense of what is necessary to our immediate well-being, and are forced to rely fatalistically on 'experts' who often fail to agree amongst themselves. Computers, the Internet, CD-ROMS and new developments in the pipeline that link mobile telephone to talking databases, give us the tools to be constant and effective researchers for ourselves. Conclusion
In summary, the new synthesis means a new learning system with more flexible patterns. The new situation demands alternatives for everybody all the time. People trying to persist with the domination of the inflexible authoritarian approach of mass schooling are consigning our children to the obsolescence of the rigid mind-set.
The future of learning is exciting but we will need to scrap or recycle most of the current system to build one that is more humane, flexible, personalized, democratic and educational. One person's learning career is likely to be very varied with spells of home-based education - sometimes full-time, sometimes part-time - short experiences of residential learning centers, local and international periods of learning, regular use of All Year Round/All Age Learning Centers, periods in small Charter Learning Centers, or any combination of these and other 'learning sites' in society. The aim is to make learning just too good to miss out on, rather than something needing compulsion and coercion.
Roland Meighan is founder of the not-for-profit Educational Heretics Press which exists "to question the dogmas of schooling in particular and education in general." Details are on http://edheretics.gn.apc.org/.
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© Copyright 2000. Roland Meighan - All Rights Reserved.
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