What Would Work for Education in America?
Wesch, M (1981) thesis seems be the failure to educate all because teachers have cast a single mold for education and expects everybody to fit into it: whether at the elementary, secondary, college and university level. Students hardly find significance in learning As such teachers, in the opinion of the writer, are the ‘hindrance to learning.’
Quoting Postman and Weingartner(1971), the author seemed to have found a solution to the anti teaching: that the learning environment(‘medlium) is more important to learning itself, and stresses management of the environment rather than ‘simply conveying information.’ He finally posits Simulation as a means of recreating the real world learning environment most conducive to learning.
Much as I agree with him for need of significance in learning and the need to use diverse methods and instructional techniques to reach them yet I know that technologies and methods do not impart knowledge or create significance. Simulation is effective in conveying information in practice but there is no simulation that can equate an actual experience itself. not just experience but, the insight into life and understanding that come from reflection. For example no amount of simulation or re creating a famine experience of children dying of malnutrition can compensate for one day of hunger and a hopelessness that food may not even come at all. Or the simulation about a war situation where an unexpected ambush with grenades lead to death.this can be simulated to no end but it will never be a match fro the actual experience in Iraq or Aghfanistan.
The problem of meaning and significance in education should be understood in two phases from my readings of Perkins, D. and Blythe, T. (2009) (TfU). The first phase has to do with acquiring information or knowledge, whether from books or experiences or from a teacher. The first phase is where most teachings have been focused. It does seem to me that this phase is affected by age and maturation, according to Jean Piaget. Kids in the kindergarten and elementary schools do not have sufficient reflective abilities( conservation) as Piaget would call it as their maturational age may be different from their biological age. However TfU calls for that extra work that helps learners create understanding and the consequent significance for them. This second phase is contingent on reflection on the experiences acquired or knowledge ingested from books and role models. And my submission is that it takes learners of certain maturational abilities to reflect on knowledge and experiences in other for such learners to profit from learning. And what is true of an individual by extrapolation is also true of a society.
Of great importance to attain understanding and significance will be deploying the knowledge one has acquired in the classes taken so for. Admitting the theories of Gardner, H (2009), Multiple Intelligences as a way of using various means to reach our diverse learners as well as Jensen, E (2008) Brain Based learning it is now possible to reach many students who will otherwise be labeled as ‘not cut for learning.’
PLE holds a great potential for the future of education according to Educause. However I consider the maturational level of learners as a key component for its success as applicable among college and university students or talented one in the high school levels.
Educause (2009)http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7049.pdf
Gardner, H (1999) Intelligence Reframed:Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century,
Basic Books, New York
Perkins,D and Blythe, T (2009) Usable Knowledge:What is Teaching for Understanding, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Jensen, E (2008)Brain Based Learning: A New Approach to Learning, Sage Company ,Thousand Oaks, CA
Wesch, M (1981) Anti Teaching: Confronting the Crises of Significance http:// www.scribd.com/doc/6358393/AntiTeaching-Confronting-the-Crisis-of- Significance
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