Personal learning or universal education?

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the personalisation of education. The sticking point is that most education is publicly funded, the state has a major stake in how it's conducted, and therefore dictates what should be taught in schools. Because of lack of space, time and resources (you will always have this problem when the state intervenes) there is little latitude for personalised approaches and creativity is stifled. Every child gets the same content, and every child is tested in the same, standardised way. The result: children become disenfranchised and demotivated, teachers are exhausted and demoralised, schools are positioned unfairly in league tables, and governments measure success not through human achievement or creativity, but through cold, hard statistics. This is universal education, and if one size does not fit all ... tough.

Ivan Illich railed against this mindset way back in 1970 in his anarchical, visionary critique of the school system. In Deschooling Society, Illich called for personal learning through informal learning networks, and rejected the funnelling approach of mass, unidirectional, instructivist education systems. More recently, powerful modern day visionaries such as Stephen Heppell and Sir Ken Robinson are saying the same thing. They ask how we can sustain a factory model of education 'production', where children are 'batch processed' according to their age groups. It's obvious to any teacher or parent that children develop at different rates, and all have different talents and interests. I suppose we have Jean Piaget and his fellow 'stage theory' psychologists to thank for that kind of constrained thinking.

In their current configuration, says Robinson, most schools kill creativity. The picture above was taken in 1909. If those students could jump into a time machine and be transported a hundred years forward to 2010, what would they be amazed by? Jumbo jets, motorways? Satellites and HD television? The internet, medical science? Mobile phones and credit cards? They wouldn't recognise any of those. One thing they would almost certainly recognise though, would be the school classroom. It has been largely bypassed by the last century of progress.

Heppell points out that creativity could be encouraged and personal learning achieved through the use of handheld technologies such as mobile phones. When they use these tools, he says, children are in their element. When they walk into the classroom, they are told to switch off all devices, and in doing so, the school switches off the child too. Gaming consoles could also be used to personalise learning, engaging children in playful learning, something which Heppell strongly advocates. But ultimately, teachers have a vast array of personal learning resources at their disposal thanks to the social web. Students must choose their own personal tools - if they have tools imposed upon them there is little scope for personalisation. Some schools are already incorporating social media into their lessons and even allowing children to use mobile and handheld technologies during lessons. It's starting, but it's slow progress. If students are shown a range of tools and then allowed to choose which ones they would like to use, if they are allowed to create their own personal webs and choose their own connections, we might begin to see some very personal learning taking place in our schools.

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Personal learning or universal education? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Outrageous alternatives

What is the most outrageous alternative education scenario you could imagine? Children not attending school, but instead learning from home? Done it. Got the t-shirt. Distance education in the outback of Australia and other large area countries has been there for years, and so has home schooling in all its hues and colours. OK. What about no school at all then? Children going straight to work as soon as they are able to walk? Well, the sweat shops in the Far East can easily lay claim to that one. And of course, in Europe in the last century but one, it was prevalent for all but the very well off. It may be radical, but anyone who advocates it deserves a size 12 boot up their backside.

OK, what about children taking control of the curriculum, controlling discipline, and deciding what the teachers should teach them? Nope, completely passe. T'was done by Summerhill School and a number of other progressive, humanist schools in the 1960s in England and elsewhere. How about something a little less radical then? Teachers stepping back out of the way, so that the child takes centre stage and learning is focused on their personal development? No again - Montessori schools have been taking the approach for years. How about a more balanced curriculum then, where academic topics are equally weighted with artistic, aesthetic and social skills? Close, but no cigar - the Rudolf Steiner school movement has cornered 'head, hearts and hands' education for some time. Are we running out of alternatives? Is there any radical approach that has not been tried and tested? Are we doomed to continue with a rusty, creaking, increasingly outmoded national curriculum which every day becomes more and more irrelevant to the needs of the modern, fast changing, digitally-rich world of the information society? Are we?

Well, there is 'deschooling' of course. Deschooling in the sense that Ivan Illich proposed in the early 70s. No need to panic. It's not doing away with schools, as most people think when they hear the phrase 'deschooling'. No, it's more a philosophy premised on the assumption that universal education is simply not possible, nor is it desirable. We don't all need to know the same stuff, therefore why should we all sit together in the same room, at great public expense, for so many thousand hours of our young lives, to be forced to learn it all? Illich was also concerned that we should do away with 'funnels' - he talked about 'learning webs' that enabled every child (and indeed every adult) to learn what they personally needed to survive, thrive, care and share in the society they found themselves in. His idea of 'peer matching' was radical:

The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity. (Illich, 1971)

Hmmm. Impossible? Under the current funding regimes of mass public education, and in the present ethos of rigid curricula and control freakery of Western governments, trying to formalise something like this is difficult. But when we consider that 80 per cent of what we learn is achieved primarily outside the school gates, I am sure we might agree there are some potential loopholes to exploit. So let's see - how radical can we get with education? What if every child had their own device to connect to the world of knowledge and what if it was actually fun. What if they could search for any topic they wanted to know about and find complete resources on it in seconds, on a screen right in front of them? What if children could match their interests and knowledge needs with others who they could link with around the globe? What if children could learn from each other in this way using social networks and massively online role playing games? What if each child could create his own personal learning environment using tools that were free, scalable and open for all to use without any concerns about personal safety? What if this kind of learning was formally accreditable in such a way that employers would recognise it? What if the learning webs that Illich dreamed of were actually a reality, brought to us through easy to use personal devices, connected anytime, any place, and totally free to use?

So why aren't we doing it?

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Outrageous alternatives by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Breaking the mould

I was interested today to read the transcript of some online exchanges on the BECTA discussion list. They were between Graham Brown-Martin and others who were discussing the use of VLEs in education. The ALT-C 'VLE is Dead' Symposium got a mention, as did my reference to the work of anarchist philosopher Ivan Illich. Illich argued that schools were like funnels, an industrialised, impersonal process that created more problems than solutions. His alternative was to establish learning webs where everyone could share their expertise with their communities and learn from each other as the need arose. Informal learning, for Illich, was more situated than formal learning, and as Einstein once said: 'Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned at school'.

During my presentation in Manchester 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.

Graham Brown-Martin makes an excellent point about new technologies and learning on the BECTA discussion group. He says: "...the technologies used by young learners outside of school are often far more powerful and relevant to the outside world than that which is within it. For example an Internet enabled Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 is some 3-4 times more powerful than a typical school laptop whilst still allowing collaborative play with thousands of other global citizens. A Nintendo Wii presents a new mode of human computer interaction far more in keeping with skills needed for future telematics than a desktop PC". Graham is absolutely correct of course, but others are not so optimistic about these informal, extra-curricular learning processes.

Always an emotive subject, the BECTA discussion on the institutional VLE descended to the level of name-calling. Referring to my presentation at ALT-C and my mention of Illich was enough to brand me as a member of the 'loony fringe' by one contributor. Actually, I'm not offended by this, but I am genuinely encouraged. It's not the first time someone has tried to shoot me down. It happened during the plenary session of ICL in Austria earlier in the year too. "No-one quotes Illich anymore!" - said an angry keynote speaker when I asked him a question. It's not always a bad thing to be labelled lunatic...

The clue is in the use of the descriptor 'anarchist'. One keen observer asked me after the event to explain my statement that Illich was 'one of my favourite anarchists'. He asked 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'. Many of them were criticised for being mad, deluded, drug-crazed or drunken, but each of them in their own way broke the mould, enabled us to see the world in a new way, and 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, it is about challenging, subverting and ultimately replacing tired old structures - 'destructive creativity' if you will.

Illich has often been misunderstood. He was not saying 'destroy school'. He was saying that the ills of the current school system (read 1970, or 2010) 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.

Here is what Illich 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".

On his blog, Bill Ellis provides us with a clear 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 Illich espoused. The formation of loose networks of practice communities on the Social Web is another. Doing away with school systems that inhibit creative expression and individualism, and introducing 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 instruction. We won't be doing away with the school or university building. What we should be doing 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.

Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich

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... for tomorrow we DIY

My recent post on Edupunk 'Can Anybody Hear Me?' and my interpretation of it has provoked some debate I see. Recently, Frances Bell wrote a blog post entitled 'Learning to Love the Term Edupunk' where she raised concerns over the term and highlighted some issues over its use.

Frances posted a comment on my blog today, and I will take the opportunity here to respond to the two questions she posed:

Question 1: We have the advantage with Edupunk of being able to look at what happened to Punk - anyone done this comparison?

My answer: A retrospective would be a great idea. What happened to Punk was that firstly it energised a stagnating music industry when it was desperately needed. Punk rockers took a DIY approach by releasing their own recordings and printing their own fanzines, bypassing the established industry. Punk rock brought an edgy, controversial and ultimately innovative form of content and drive. It was anti-establishment, sure. But it brought its own structure. Eventually Punk music distilled into New Wave, and opened the door for other music genres including Ska, Heavy Reggae, and New Romantics to achieve popular status. Punk's influences can still be felt even today in the arts, and music has never quite been the same since - so it has accomplished its purpose. I propose that the same analogy will apply to the DIY Edupunk philosophy. It will, and in some cases, already is, transforming some aspects of education and challenging established practices. Open source, I would suggest, was an early example at what we now know as Edupunk - Linux and Moodle have made the corporate giants sit up and take notice. Edupunk will distill too, into less rampant forms of education, but it will do its job by challenging the established practices and subverting some of the corporate profiteering that is currently rife. Music and education - two inalienable human rights, I think.

Question 2: You say edupunk ... "brings the punk band (the teacher) closer to the audience (learner group)". If the learners are the audience, we're back where we started. Edupunk is where learners live edupunk too.

My answer: I can see why some people may have problems with the analogy of 'audience' and 'band'. We are not back where we started, and we need to acknowledge that there are distinct roles teachers and learners play. What I was really trying to get at as someone who actually played in a 'Punk' style rock band in the early 80s was that we, like many other 'new wave' rock bands broke tradition and invited the audience to join us on the stage, and in some cases, we didn't use a stage at all. We wanted to narrow the distance. We even went down into the audience to join them during our performances - remember 'body slamming'? 'Fans' contributed to our fanzine, and there was no 'them and us' syndrome, which was prevalent with much of the mainstream music industry of the period. We mashed up the roles we took, and this is patently something that is also happening when an Edupunk approach to learning is applied - with learners taking control of their own learning, creating shared spaces, forming their own groups, communities and networks to teach themselves. Although this is not exclusively Edupunk, the ethos plays a key role in its success. This approach is reminiscent of Illich's Deschooling thesis, where he called for the removal of 'funnels' which promoted transmission approaches to education in favour of 'webs' which enabled rhizomatic approaches to learning which were eminently more person-centred.

So some people have a problem with Edupunk as a term. It represents bricolage, anarchy and subversion and a challenge to the establishment. We have Jim Groom to thank for the term, I guess, but at the moment I can't think of another term that fits better or conjures up more appropriate analogies. What do you think?

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