Today I exchanged some tweets with David Peter (@dpeter) on the subject of education and learning. I think he may believe I’m a troll, but I’m serious about engaging this idea and I welcome others to chime in as well

He kicked off the exchange with this:

Thinking about some of the tweets of today, I wonder (rhetorically) If education is as easy as “talking” why are we having so many problems?

Our Replies:

nlowell: @dpeter Education is easy. Learning is hard. As long as those two aren’t related, changes in the first won’t effect the second.

dpeter: @nlowell I believe education and learning ARE related. And, change in either will produce change in the other.

nlowell: @dpeter only tangentially. what you learn fm education is a small subset of what you learn at the macro level.

nlowell: @dpeter is there middle ground? What relationship do you see?

dpeter: @nlowell If education is the product of learning, then there is a distinct relationship.

nlowell: @dpeter that’s a big if. Education is the business of selling credentials. The product of Learning is Life. Divergent Paradigms?

nlowell: @dpeter I agree w/your logic but the predicate seems flawed.

So far, he hasn’t responded but it’s entirely likely he’s gotten on with his day.

My concern is that this is more than 140 characters worth of discussion and I’d like to invite him to talk some more about this. My belief is that we’ve actually touched on one of the breakdowns – one of the points that keep blocking the kinds of progress in learning that education reformers would like to see.

An agreement as to the purpose of education is key. What is the product? What are we trying to do with education? On the surface we want to prepare people of all ages to participate in the world on their own terms and as successfully as possible. That’s sort of the ancient ideal of “to become educated.” Along the way, that ideal has been transformed into “having a credential.”

My position is that schools — as the production unit of Education — exist to sell credentials. Business is in collusion with Education by withholding economic opportunity from those who lack said credential, thereby creating a market for the product that schools create.

Note: I am not suggesting that this is in any higher sense “right” but the evidence is that this assessment is correct. Take any job that requires some level of skill or knowledge. You need to do one of two things to participate in that job. 1) Get the required credential or 2) Become you own employer and find people who will buy directly from you.

It doesn’t matter what you pick, the outcomes are predictable. Strictly speaking you don’t need to know anything, if you have the credentials, in order to get a job. You may have to demonstrate some knowledge — or at least the ability to acquire that knowledge — within some short period of time after getting the job, but without the credential, it does not matter how much you know, what experience you have, or anything else. You will not be allowed to participate because you lack the credential. In this market, knowledge — the erstwhile product of education — is worthless. Credential — the real product of education — is key.

This is new. It didn’t used to be that way. The classic ideal of getting an education meant actually learning something – studying widely, focusing on issues that were of import to the individual who wanted to participate in the society. Credentials were largely non-existent and where they did exist, they were not the be-all/end-all of participation.

In education circles, the classic view of education as higher goal is still in vogue. This dichotomy seems to me to be one of the stumbling blocks because it blinds education reformers to a reality. David Peter disagrees and I hope he’ll take the time to debate this with me here instead of in the 140 character confines of twitter.

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Recently, I’ve been struggling with the notion of education and research. What would an educational research lab LOOK like? What would it do? How would it be funded? I keep coming back to a CSI or NorBAC lab model. Yes, I know those are TV model labs, but still and all. What would it look like to have a lab that studied teaching and learning?

The problem seems to me that Education isn’t science.

Psychology, that’s a science. I’m ok with that. Microbiology, sure. No problem. Physiology, ok, sure.

But it seems to me that all our Educational “science” is lacking a bit on rigor. Yes, we have Bloom’s taxonomy, and Gagne’s nine steps, and there are theories and paradigms abounding, but is it science?

My problem is basically, the notion that science is predictive. I mean, that’s the whole point of science, isn’t it? To explain and predict? And if that’s the case then we seem to be a bit short in the Educaiton arena because the same “intervention” which works stunningly with one student completely misses the mark on another. Sure, I did something that looked like science in my dissertation research that looked at what factors contribute to how people perceive distance, but that’s hardly on the same level of rigor as … say … DNA sequencing.

Now before I get a lot of people hyperventilating, I’m not sure that not being a science isn’t a good thing. One of the difficulties is dealing with the definitions. Education is the business of providing instruction. We tend to confound the term Education with Teaching, and I’ve purposely used that fact in this post so far. What I really mean to say is “Teaching Isn’t Science.” Of course, Education isn’t science! It’s business.

So, with that cleared up, we’re still left with the question about the labs. What would the specialties be? What skills?

A statistician, certainly and for obvious reason.

An educational psychologist? I think so. Emphasis on assessment, probably.

How about a brain physiologist?

What about an instructional designer? I’m not sure on this one.

But that begs the question, doesn’t it? Not about the personnel, but should there even be a lab? Forensics labs investigate evidence from crime scenes. Bio-research labs examine a variety of established problems. Are there parallel “problems” in Teaching? Could we do basic research into the relationships between teaching and learning? And how do we get those findings into the schools?

I don’t know. I’m feeling very unsettled about this.

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At the turn of the last century, the most economical way to travel from New York to Los Angeles was by rail. Not many people did it because it took a long time and was relatively expensive. There were good reasons to make the trip, but not everybody was able to capitalize on those reasons. By the middle of the century, passenger rail was already slated for “has been” status in the US with the growth of the airline industry resulting from innovations in long distance air travel during World War II. Transcontinental air travel killed passenger rail — and ushered in a new era in business opportunity — by removing several days from the round trip. By 1975 almost three-quarters of passenger travel in the US was by air and less than 10% was by rail. Today it’s possible — altho uncomfortable — to fly from New York to LA for a business meeting and return the same day. It’s a long day, but it’s possible. More to the point, new business opportunities arose because air travel became more available and ubiquitous. Disney is a prime example. Without air travel, DisneyLand would never have been able to “go national” and attract visitors from around the country — and eventually the world. In a certain sense, the world’s business required the development of air travel once the technology became available. The pace of the world required it. At the turn of the last century, taking a week to get from New York to LA was acceptable because there was no other choice. Today, very few people can afford the luxury of taking that much time. And we’ve learned that the airplane can take us places where rail lines cannot be laid.

The parallel between the Academy and passenger rail is inescapable. The question of “Where are we going?” is less clear. When you need to get to LA, you know where you’re bound for. But what’s the destination for education? Is there one? From an economic perspective, we need credentials to apply for a job. The reality is that you don’t really need skill in the job to get it, just good credentials. Lacking credentials, you don’t even get the opportunity to fail. So, in a certain sense, the role of education is certification.

That’s a problem.

The line worker who loses his/her job at the factory can’t afford to spend four years getting a degree. Even two years of trade school is problematic. Unemployment compensation lasts a matter of weeks, not months, and financial obligations snowball quickly. A professional caught in a mid-career job shift has similar, albeit less immediate, problems. Having one degree makes it easier (altho not necessarily less expensive) to acquire another. Again, making the change from retail management to, say, computer programming can take years to achieve transition. In the meantime, those people have some serious problems. Forget going into math or science related fields unless you start young — say, 14 — and work forward. It’s as unlikely as becoming a gymnast at thirty.

But Education isn’t really about just getting credentials, is it? I mean the credential gives us the opportunity to apply for a job, but the skills to actually DO the job are also needed and we need a better way to get those skills than the current model of Education.

Just as the airlines superceded the railroads as passenger carriers, we need to find/develop the replacement for the current models of education. We’re still going the same places. We still need to learn. We need skills and knowledge. We need paths to credential so that we can actually use our skills and knowledge by passing the gatekeepers. We still need to get to the same places — credential, skill, knowledge, self-fulfillment. What we need is some kind of jet plane to replace our Educational Iron Horse and, when we find it, perhaps it will take us places we didn’t think were possible.

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Will Richardson had some interesting words about “Tough Choices or Tough Times” — the report from The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce.

“Community and Collaboration on a Scale Never Seen Before”
[I]f 2007 is going to be the watershed year that it seems to be shaping up to be, we need to do more work in traditional spaces and spend less time blogging back and forth to each other. While this is a powerfully engaging and nurturing environment, if we are going to make our voices and ideas truly heard, we need to start building a grassroots movement “out there,” one that highlights the realities of the world and successes in the classroom through channels that those decision makers (read parents, board members, etc.) are still wedded to.

Here’s the problem, Will.

The report is calling for a new system, not a patch to the old. In the same way the airlines have replaced passenger rail, this new system of education will replace what we know as school. What will it look like? How will it be implemented? I agree that “blogging among ourselves” amounts to “preaching to the choir” but how would engaging the railroads in developing the airlines have helped? If we take this commission’s report seriously and start thinking about what a new — replacement — system would look like, why would those with vested interest in maintaining the status quo be willing to engage?

The Cluetrain holds — pardon the expression — a clue as does Kat Herding and Doc’s Latest writings. If business in the Industrial Age has been about economies of scale and de-personalization, then the new economy might buyers and sellers talking to each other to create products and services specific to the need. In many ways, we’re talking about artists and artisans being the workers in this new economy. Whether your art is accounting or marketing or distribution, when we start talking about creativity and imagination, we end up with art. Think: The Secret of My Success.

Which brings us to the model for this new economy. Is it something akin to a global “open mic night” where people form ad hoc collectives to create a specific work? A kind of jazz combo? Can we build cars that way? Or airliners? Will we need to, or will we let other parts of the world deal with the cheap-labor/mass-produced commodity goods?

I don’t know. ‘M just askin’

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For the last 17 weeks I’ve been teaching in Kentucky. The commute was pretty easy … just down stairs. And the course was one of those terrifyingly exciting experiences that comes along every so often when you teach. The reason I’ve not written much here is that I wrote so much over on the Phaedrus blog! For the first 12 weeks, I wrote something every day (on average) seven days a week.

We started with my traditional greeting message Good Morning, Mr. Phelps. Over the course of the first week’s effort, the students were asked to subscribe to a listserver, start a blog, get an office in TappedIn, set up an aggregator, and establish an Instant Messenger link. Once established we started using the tools to talk about issues like Education and Distance and Learning. All things considered it was a great ride and I hope that the students really did find it to be as stimulating as they said they did.

Some of the posts that started the biggest discussions:

• On the Classroom where I discussed the purpose of the classroom and why “as good as the classroom” isn’t really good enough. Given that my students were mostly classroom teachers, this went better than I thought it might.
• Learner Centered was a response to the question, “Why are we doing all this stuff outside of Blackboard?”
• On Distance Education was the wrap up post on the week devoted to looking at definitions and parameters of distance ed.
• A recurring theme in this course was Thinking Like a Learner. One of the goals was to get the students to understand that being a student and being a learner are two separate things. I’m perhaps being arbitrary in designating students as those individuals who care about grades and learners as those who care about knowledge. As a distinction, the class rapidly got on board with it.
• It didn’t take long for us to get into trying to deal with Reconciling Teaching and Learning. We were quite careful to examine Teaching (as separate from Education) and Learning. If we, as teachers, recognize that the students’ goal is not our goal, then we can begin to deal with creating educational experiences that provide for common ground.
• It took us three weeks of foundational work before we actually got into learning about My Basic Toolbox. We worked together to deal with some of the issues of tools.
• Why Powerpoint is Evil was one of the more intriguing posts of the semester because it elicited an invitation to do a guest spot at a middle school in Texas. The students had been given a copy of my post and had some questions. It was a wonderful experience for me and I understand from the teacher-in-the-room that the students got a lot out of it, too.
• Fostering Engagement came as part of the design and development portion of the course wherein I explained how I was demonstrating engagement in the course and practicing what I preached.
• Another post that elicited outside interest was ZPD where I laid out Vygotsky’s idea of Zone of Proximal Development. While my grad students found this a fascinating idea, the 8th graders in Texas asked me to come back to talk to them about that idea as well. What a blast! Using the idea of ZPD as an example of the principle in that they didn’t know it existed before they read my post, and after learning a bit about it, they were fascinated to learn about the principle, Vygotsky, cognitive apprenticeship, and that learning is something that learners do that’s really quite independent of what teachers do.
• That topic lead naturally into the role of The Teacher where I described a model of teacher as being neither “sage” nor “guide” but rather “bridge.”
• Ironically, one of the ideas that kept cropping up was Learning, Technology, and Age. I got rather tired of hearing about how this class of mostly thirty-somethings were “too old” to assimilate the lessons of technology easily. As a card carrying member of AARP, I had some words for them.
• There were a lot more posts, but I think these are pretty much the ones that I’m happiest with.

So, that’s where I’ve been for the last four months. I’m back now,

Posted in Distance Education, Education, Online Community | 1 Comment »