Recently I was reading a post where a teacher was discussing how we should not be working to engage our students but empower them. Basically the argument was that engagement is a teacher centered experience while empowering students means that they will take ownership and carve their own path through a topic or course. This is also a theme of much of the 21st Century thinking in that we need to allow, even demand, students set their own learning goals and be more involved in the assessment process choosing topics, demonstrations and the content they want to focus one to build real world skills.
My issue comes when we have rooms full of adults who think that kids should learn for the love of learning and that if they are just given choice and ownership they will be highly motivated and willing and able to engage in real world problems and complex projects. The reality is school is filled with a broad spectrum of topics and content, some of which kids may be interested and much of which is really secondary to their more immediate concerns like acne, the cute girl who lives down the street, the basketball tryout after school, their driver's test, how they are getting to work after school and this is only for the kids who are not facing any number of socio-economic and/or family crisis's.
The fact is adults and kids most often want to sit back and consume information long before they want to "do" anything with it, even when they are highly interested in a topic. For example take a common adult learning topic such as a photography course. These course will be filled with highly motivated interested adults who are willing to pay for a course and usually make a fairly large investment in equipment as well. The course will be well attended and people will hang on every bit on information they receive. About two weeks into the course you will most likely be asked to put some of your knowledge into practice and you will be asked to go out on the weekend and take some pictures and present to the class. This is where things will take a turn. You will have a few people in the class who do a fantastic job and exceed all expectations, then you will have a few more who do a pretty good job and make sure that everything that was asked is completed and competent and all the requirements met, a few others will explain they have the pictures but did not get around to getting them ready to present and the rest will mumble under their breath about how they are very busy people, they had family come visit, work is crazy, their cat got sick and can you believe it they went to go take pictures but something went wrong and their camera died. Seriously people are very interested and invested in their hobbies but most, left to their own devices, actually produce very little. It is not that they are learning or don't want to learn but actually "doing" things is very difficult. Check out the number of incomplete projects that you have around your house some time.
So if highly motivated, competent adults can't follow through why do we think kids who are taking "required" courses will be able to. Learning is hard and often requires students to engage with content they are not interested in and build on skills they struggle with and are difficult to master. Of course it would be great if the students could see the bigger picture and understand that these courses are essential parts of their journey to becoming a well adjusted, literate citizen. I am sure most adults understand the importance of exercise, healthy eating habits and meaningful social relationships but lifestyles simply don't reflect this because, just like learning something new, it would take effort and require some sort of action. I would say if we had to grade most adults against a wellness standard we would see a lot of "approaching exceptions". This is not to say people, adults and children, don't gain some knowledge it just means that the jump from "thinking about things" and being interested in a topic to creating your own knowledge and the application of skills is a big own, one that often takes years. Yet we are asking students to take that leap every day and often several times a day. "Oh but what to they get out in the real world" people like to say. Well I don't think there is any other time in a persons life they are asked to focus on so many new and different concepts and then apply and demonstrate their understanding, while being monitored and judged at every step of the way.
The reality is the apprenticeship system is the best education system in the world because it has the highest level of accountability and follow through. Why do you think people join group fitness classes, sometimes we need others to kick us in the ass to keep us going. Preferably that person is an expert in the area so they know what path we should be pushed or pulled down and what pitfalls to avoid. Wow, sound kind of like the role of a teacher. I am not a passive facilitator in a students educational journey. I am a content expert, a sage on the stage, a surrogate parent, a guide on the side, a counselor, a nag, a motivational speaker, a curriculum designer, a cheerleader, I am a Teacher! Students should be able to expect all of this when they come to school.
Yes we need more choice for students, yes we need more flexibility in our curriculum, yes we need to reach out to a broader cross section of learners. However, this means having more opportunities to work with kids and a lot of the 21st Century learning agenda and student "empowerment" movement is driven by reducing costs around the number of schools and teachers the province needs to pay for. It is curriculum redesign on the cheap. If you think this is going to be the answer check in with a few people who have taken distance education courses and ask them how the experience was learning on their own with minimal direct instruction. Or better yet, ask yourself when the last time you really produced a meaningful expression of your learning and understanding around a topic just because you know it is "good for you".
