Rob Paterson has been reflecting on his reading of Getting to Maybe, and I was so taken by these ideas that I walked down to our local independent bookstore and bought a copy. I’m only a few pages into the book and I come across this paragraph:
Similarly, we organize our schools to be efficient in supplying education to large numbers and largely unresponsive to the wide range of learning styles and capacities that we know exists. Then we diagnose those who cannot learn efficiently as suffering from learning disorders and attempt to treat them, not the system.
Digression: As I write this, our son comes home from school, grabs a quick snack and goes upstairs to do his homework – a number of math exercises; the obligatory, nightly English assignment but no additional work tonight. As he leaves, I wonder how many adults appreciate bringing work home. Do schools assign homework because it will toughen students for the real world, or just to make them miserable?
On the bright side, I’m looking forward to delving into Getting to Maybe as it seems to be upbeat and positive, as described on the jacket:
Getting to Maybe applies the insights of complexity theory and harvests the experiences of a wide range of people and organizations … to lay out a brand new way of thinking about making change in communities, in business, and in the world.
In relation to the quote from Getting to Maybe, let me relate an incident that utterly floored me.
On Tuesday evening, during a group discussion session in our Learning & Teaching lecture (I’m busy with a part-time MA in Education), one of my classmates told me that his school has assessed the learning styles of the students. I’m not sure what model they’ve used, but they have organised the children into four quadrants. They have determined that children with learning style B are better suited to and more likely to succeed under exam conditions. However, the highest proportion of their students fall into quadrant C – a less academic, more practical set. So the head teacher has issued a directive to the teachers to find ways to transform all these Cs into Bs so that the school will achieve better exam results. I don’t need to spell out any more than that what is going on here, and what the head teacher’s drivers are. But do we blame him/her or the system that is behind these drivers?
Karyn, this is terrible. First of all, I too, am floored that educators could be so simplistic about learning styles. As you mention, there are different ways of looking at learning styles. Also, learning styles are not fixed to a person. Learning preferences and strategies can change between activities and are influenced by a number of variables.
I would have hoped that the educators would have instead decided to offer four teaching strategies for each grade/subject so that they would have a better chance of connecting with more learners. Instead, they create “pigeon holes” – simplistic and ignorant. Any passionate teacher would know better.
Who to blame? The system and those who unquestioningly support it. The answer – get rid of testing and you eliminate the desire for “quantifiable achievement”.
Sadly, Harold, it seems that learning styles are all the rage at the moment in secondary schools in the UK. From my classmates, who are mostly teachers, I have discovered that a variety of models have been adopted with a frightening lack of objectivity. In spite of Gardner having issued a statement to the effect that his theory of multiple intelligences was never intended to form the basis of a system of testing, one of my classmates reports that this is the system they have adopted at their school. Whether the teachers support the notion of learning styles or not, they are to classify and categorise their students and issue a report on the make-up of their groups. Unsettling. Pigeon-holing. Test-results driven. Where is the personalisation in all of this? Where the learning? Where the CHILDREN for goodness sake? As a learning professional, this bothers me. As a parent, I am incensed!
Thanks, Karyn; I too would be incensed.
Hey Harold,
Long time no “talk”. A great saying came to mind while reading this post (attributed to Albert Einstein): “Perfection of means and confusion of ends seem to characterize our age”.
The problem is not only with the education system … it has spread like a virus throughout societies, organizations … :-).
And if perfecting the means was at least partially attained, maybe then we would have some glimmer of hope. But time and time again we observe that people are really confused about the “ends”.
1. I believe in education (it’s a necessary means to address common societal needs). 2. Education and Learning are two different entities (i.e. see the various discussions on informal learning and so on). 3. Do I believe in our education system? In our jurisdiction? Not to a great extent. Why? People seem to understand “means” more than “ends”. In the oft quoted saying, they are losing sight of the “big picture” (i.e. conforming to means is more important to them than achieving ends).
And I digress (like you :-), but I don’t believe in homework (or anyways not to the level at which it is used now as a supplement to “good schooling”). I find that my kids (like most kids in “developped” environments) are subjected to too much structured behaviours … stifling creativity. I believe that creativity is influenced by various levels of “free will” exposure to various aspects of our world. So if kids are in school from their waking moments to supper time. And then have 1 to 2 hours of homework. Then to bed at 8 or 9, that doesn’t leave much for “creativity building” (to me, creativity is paramount to “problem solving” which in turn is an essential “literacy” of our age … again, my opinion).
Rod