Education or learning?

Education is different from learning. Children are programmed to learn and develop: that is the work of childhood and youth. Education institutionalises that work. We spend many hours thinking about our children’s education, but little time actually thinking about our children’s learning.

When I refer to education, I am talking about the formal processes of learning, and the systems we’ve developed to facilitate what we think children need to learn to operate in our society. But, learning is a more intuitive process. We all participate in learning, formally and informally, in our day-to-day lives. Learning supports the ongoing development from infancy to adulthood. It is crucial. This is why education is the focus of so much contentious debate.

The debates frequently operate within the narrow framework of the current education system. Instead of addressing broader systemic issues like how schools are structured and whether they fit the needs of modern students, we continue to argue over the type of history taught or which teaching style is best. Many education experts frequently debate how children should be taught to read, but spend little time asking children what they’d like to learn to read, or what stories interest them most and what those stories will teach them.

Our education systems belong to adults. And, our education system is shaped by the adult world. A world that is competitive, economically focused and achievement-driven. One parent gravely told me, “Education is a race where the highest mark wins”. But what impact does that philosophy have on learning? What does that tell children about their role in the learning process?

Instead of celebrating and experiencing the learning process, it prepares them for a world of winners and losers. And they know that if they don’t excel academically or athletically, they will likely exist in the latter category.

We regularly fail to acknowledge that children’s learning is not limited to a classroom. In fact, academic or not, all children learn many things outside the education system. The danger in limiting the learning process to the classroom is that much of children’s learning actually takes place outside the education system. And when too much emphasis is placed on success within the education system, children’s enthusiasm and confidence for learning in all facets of life can be dampened or destroyed.

Of course, the solution isn’t to try and obliterate competition. This is just another aspect of life children must learn. They do need to know how to participate and accept that they will not always be the best in everything. Our idolisation of children as perfect and successful can place too much pressure to succeed upon them, or create expectations in adulthood where the world doesn’t hand out gold stars quite as freely.

We don’t have a broad and diverse education system where all subjects have equal value, where children are encouraged to explore and uncover what they enjoy learning and where their natural skill sets lie. Instead, we reinforce the value of “hard” sciences over “soft” humanities. Maths has more value than drama and a low physics score can obtain a better result than a high home economics score. These subjects are weighted to determine the places in the final race: Year 12 results that inform university course offers. Of course, among students’ peer groups, they know there is a difference between the subjects chosen by “smart” and “dumb” kids. The blows to the ego start here.

To date, our approach to this out-of-balance equation is to head in the opposite direction, and create a classroom where everyone gets a gold star for effort. Don Edgar refers to this approach as “self-esteem … elevated to the level of dogma”.

Just as with childcare, we think we are doing the right thing by children. It isn’t necessarily so. We have based our systems on ideas of childhood and youth that don’t fit the speed and complexity of our modern world. Rather than strive for perfection or success in children, we should be fostering flexibility and adaptability. We should give them the skills to keep learning throughout life. Instead, we jump between images of childhood that can only confuse developing minds.

Our education system is based on expectations of children and young people. Each year, a new set of goals and required knowledge is placed before students. For those that have not been supported to meet these goals in previous years, it is even more challenging.

We are left with students who progress with their peers, but whose learning is stunted because they haven’t had the chance to learn everything required to progress to the next level of learning. How can you do algebra if you haven’t fully grasped multiplication yet? So rather than having their learning and development supported within the class, those students are singled out and grouped together, creating an understanding among them that they are different, or in the language of the playground, “dumb”.

If we are really committed to helping young people thrive, we can approach learning very differently. We could positively re-shape the systems governing education in ways that give children greater responsibility. Learning is so much more than what we do in the classroom. It is not just the teacher’s responsibility to teach - that too belongs to the community.

Holistic learning in a community classroom

In Castlemaine, Central Victoria, a local government primary school, driven by a group of enthusiastic parents, has quietly gone about the process of introducing a new approach to education. They attempt to make learning more holistic, and introduce children not just to science, the humanities and arts, but also to humanity. Winter’s Flat Community Class is as focused on learning in and about your community as it is about the formal curriculum.

In the Community Class, students learn to engage with issues with a range of different adults. These adults may be parents, or local business people or a recognised local figure. They dedicate their time to coming in to the class and teaching the children for a period of time. They may talk about an area of work they do, it might be a practical demonstration, or showing children a new skill like planting vegetables. The class is within the state school system and children must learn the set curriculum, but their learning environment is less structured, and there is a greater focus on giving children the skills of learning, rather than sets of specific knowledge.

The class has a vertical structure, which means it encompasses children aged from seven to 12 years. Instead of creating problems, this structure mirrors the experiences children have with other children in their communities. Older children develop skills like mentoring and supporting younger students, which gives older students more responsibility and the teacher a range of supports within her student body.

To some degree, children direct their own learning and make suggestions about what the class could explore. The process of learning is more interactive and children are participants in their own learning. They gain responsibility and empowerment. Instead of needing gold stars, they build their self-esteem through involvement rather than perceived success. They are continually building competency and capacity as they learn to gain control and understanding of their environment.

The Community Class is a dynamic model of learning that demonstrates how flexible the education system can be beyond simple changes in curriculum. Even within the bureaucracy of the state school system, models can be developed to place greater emphasis on learning in different ways: ways that bring the community into the school and allow a broader range of people, besides just children, to take responsibility for their learning.

The Community Classroom is a step towards a more holistic model of learning. It is developing systems beyond the rigid model of education, supporting children to understand and experience a range of learning techniques from many different people in their community. Most importantly, they are given more control of their learning process.

In helping to shape the experience of learning with their teachers, and sharing learning with parents and other community members, learning is being taken beyond the school gate. The example of the Community Class demonstrates learning as an informal as well as formal process. This kind of learning fosters the development of the whole person, rather than just preparing them for the world of work.

Preparation for work is still important. But many life skills, which are vital to our health and well being, are neglected in conventional education systems. And in a time when health services focus on the value of human connectedness, when depression and isolation are common and we are realising the vital nature of human networks, how do we make our children’s learning more holistic? How do we counteract emerging issues faced by our young people by rethinking the way we support their development?

In our culture, survival and success is frequently equated to having a “good job”. The definition of a “good job” usually entails a high salary, or the potential of a high salary. However, as is evident in debates over work-life balance, we are realising the need for balance to achieve quality of life. Yet young people are still subject to a demanding and ultra-competitive education system that continues to perpetuate the myth of the “good job”.

Why are the top-ranking university courses always medicine and law? Why did we recently witness a surge of interest in information technology courses? And why are entrance scores steadily rising for commerce and economics degrees? These trends indicate education and social systems that prime young people to work for the dollar, not for the love of their job.

It also indicates a lack of holistic learning in our education systems. Holistic learning is more focused on learning a range of skills to prepare us for life - not just a working life. And this learning doesn’t all take place at school.