Manufactured education

In 1980, sociologist Alvin Toffler described a third wave of civilisation, the first two 'waves' of the agricultural, and the industrial civilisations would be swept aside by a greater, technological wave. Describing the disruptive and transformational impact of this technological wave, Toffler wrote:


"The emergent civilisation writes a new code of behaviour for us and carries us beyond standardisation, synchronisation and centralisation, beyond the concentration of energy, money and power. The new civilisation, as it challenges the old, will topple bureaucracies, reduce the role of the nation state, and give rise to semi-autonomous economies in a post imperialist world" (Toffler, 1980, p 24). 


This prescient view of the future of society has largely been realised. Toffler envisioned a world in which centralised power was dissipated, and where control was firmly in the hands of each individual. It is clear that technological developments have radically transformed the structure of society over the last few decades. As it accelerates further, and pervades more deeply into our world, technology will continue to disrupt our way of life. The advent of the World Wide Web has changed forever the way we communicate, share ideas, buy and sell, are entertained, and conduct our relationships. But technology has reached farther into our society still. The use of mobile telephones and social media has also promulgated democratic change and political upheaval in recent years. Social media played a vital role in Barack Obama's election success, and was instrumental in overthrowing governments in a number of countries during the Arab Spring. Technology can liberate ideas, amplify content and reach far into previously information poor regions of the world. The issues of standardisation, synchronisation and centralisation Toffler identified - the bastions of previous industrial age processes - are indeed being challenged as individuals within society carve their own niches in business, entertainment, government, the media and personalised learning. Very early on in the short history of the Internet, sites such as Napster began to erode the power structures enjoyed by the elite music industry giants. Similar events occurred in the film and photography industries. Nic Negroponte's prediction that atoms would be transformed into bits was realised when music and book sales flipped from CDs and paper based to downloads and e-books. Even the long lived postal delivery service has seen declining popularity as a result of the increased accessibility of e-mail and social networking services. 


And yet standardisation, synchonisation and centralisation stubbornly persist in a few notable enclaves. Perhaps the most notorious resistance to the technological wave comes from the state education systems. Synchronisation of behaviour was required in the industrial age. Industrial processes such as ship building, mining and manufacturing required workers to arrive at the gates together, work beside each other in teams and operate in specialised compartments to get the job done. It was little wonder that the schools tasked to train these workforces emulated these practices by requiring children to turn up to the gates at the same time, work together in rows, supervised by a teacher (representing the foreman), and be delivered curriculum subjects that were compartmentalised with little or no explicit linkage. Sound familiar? Well, this scenario will be as familiar to those who went to school in the 1950s and those who attend school today. Little has changed, even though, ironically, the world of production and manufacturing has gone through radical change and is now but a vestige of its former self. Technology may be in the schools, but little has changed in terms of the pedagogy practiced in many. The factory model of education persists, because in the mind of its proponents, it is still the most efficient, cost effective way to train the workforce of the future. And yet, according to critics such as Sir Ken Robinson, this is not the way forward. In e recent speech, Robinson intoned: 


"We still educate children by batches. We put them through the system by age group. Why do we do that? Why is there an assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is their date of manufacture?" The entire video can be viewed here.     


Michael Shaw, editor of TESPro, suggests that a new form of teaching - vertical teaching - can be an improvement on the failing state school factory model of batch processing by age. He does caution however, that extreme versions of the 'stage not age' education approach can result in "16 year olds being sent to university and infants sitting GCSEs." He doesn't elaborate on why he thinks that would be such a bad idea though. Shaw argues that schools continue to teach children in year groups simply because it is practical. Yet batch processing children by age leads to the inevitable issues of differentiation such as having to maintain ability sets within year groups. It also leads to demotivation, stress and a number of other negative outcomes. Whichever arguments we subscribe to, it is clear that children deserve to be educated according to their abilities, not according to their age. As it stands, the factory model of education little to provide for the needs of society, and it certainly fails to provide personalised learning for the children in our care.


Image by Freefoto


References


Negroponte, N. (1995) Being Digital. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Toffler, A. (1980) The Third Wave. London: Pan Books. 


Manufactured education by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Have the wheels come off?

A recent article written by Audrey Watters carries the emotive headline The Failure of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), and there has been some heated response. In the article, which is actually balanced and measured, Watters comments on recent media reports that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project inspired by Nicolas Negroponte does not increase test scores. She goes on to discuss the implications of this supposed failure with a nod toward the anti-Edtech brigade, whom we assume are saying 'told you so', and also in the context of other technology projects which have had reasonable success. On such project mentioned is Sugata Mitra's Hole in the Wall project (HITW), where computers are placed in villages and deprived areas for children to use with no evident teacher support. A comparison between the two projects is quite helpful.

When compared to Negroponte's OLPC project there are clearly some differences. Although both Negroponte and Mitra believe fervently in a 'minimally invasive education' where children are allowed to explore for themselves, OLPC is conducted largely on a 1-1 computer to child ratio. Ostensibly, this sounds sensible, and with personalised learning high on the political agenda, OLPC has been welcomed with open arms by many governments worldwide, particularly those with widespread poverty. In a real sense, OLPC has been a very real attempt at bridging the socio-economic divide. OLPC does exactly what it says on the tin - it provides one highly resilient laptop computer for each learner.

In the HITW project on the other hand, computers are almost always used by small groups of children, who together work through their exploration, negotiate their meaning and solve problems collaboratively. Perhaps this is the first important difference we need to contend with. Are children better learners when they learn on their own, or when they learn with their peers? Swiss psychologist and child development theorist Jean Piaget would have agreed with the OLPC project. The child is a solo scientist, in Piaget's terms, and this makes discovery learning a most valid approach. Learning on your own, according to Piaget was just as valid as going to school to learn communally. Russian constructivist psychologist Lev Vygotsky would have disagreed with this position, and would probably have pointed to HITW as the most effective way to learn, because in his terms, children acquire their skills through conversation, the use of language and collaborative learning - or in his terms, through the asymmetric relationships that exist within the zone of proximal development.

Notwithstanding this kind of theoretical posturing, a second point to consider is that the HITW project situates computers in communal spaces where they cannot be moved. Does this in some way also situate what is learnt, so that those gathered around it gain something extra that they would not gain from the OLPC's fairly mobile device that can be used in multiple contexts? OLPC and HITW are different, but one is not necessarily any more effective or powerful than the other.

Thirdly, and possibly most importantly, we need to consider the tests used. Are we simply to accept that the tests used by a variety of authorities to measure OLPC children's learning gain are accurate, or appropriate? Are they actually measuring what we should be measuring? As highlighted by several of the comments on the Audrey Watters blog, many are rightly sceptical. Can we (and should we) actually measure the sheer joy of discovering something new? Are we not ignoring the excitement generated by new experiences? Can we quantify how powerful this is as it generates motivation and the impetus to go on and learn more, both inside and outside of the classroom? Can we really accurately capture the many sensory experiences children enjoy when they are learning, and reduce these to a single grade or mark of overall achievement? Finally - is the measure used to gauge the contribution OLPC has made toward learning really necessary? Surely these are immeasurable, and the only reason anyone would attempt to do so, is because there is a hidden political agenda that emerges as  a measure of peformativity (i.e. school league tables). It seems a shame that much funding for innovative education projects relies on centralised government money.  One Laptop Per Child is a Herculean effort at liberating and democratising learning. It should be praised not buried.

Image by Steve Wheeler


Have the wheels come off? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.