Mid-May Post_On Education and Dismay;The Death of Thinking in the Learning Process

Excuse me...?!  Dismay entered my universe yesterday morning when I read the following headline: 'Slumdog Millionaire' Professor, Sugata Mitra, Fixing Education By Bringing iPads Into Exams. Ok, he seems like a nice guy because he wants to buy iPads for disadvantaged Indian kids. Ok again, because he is a Professor of Educational Technology in the UK who has bothered to have the staggering insight that some subjects prioritized in education are no longer entirely relevant to the work-a-day world—this is certainly no “hang on, Dorothy; Kansas is going by-by” moment. Also not terribly insightful that, when you give kids new stuff, like iPads, they figure out how to make it work—then they break it. It’s one of those limited attention span things that parents and teachers learn about…  

            My dismay comes from the idea that this Professor of Educational Technology clearly seems to believe that education is a skills-based process—a kid first learns how to do a thing, then either gets about doing it, or moves on to the next skill. What, though, if Education is not really just about Learning or skills Acquisition?

            Analogy Time: It’s like I tell my wife – Language is not about Words. Words are tools, just like lego building blocks; nothing more. The real challenge with Language is using the tools in such a way that you create Ideas, and, hopefully, even Ideas that are beautiful and moving, so that you can inspire and move People. Because, says the philosopher-husband to dutifully attentive wife (DAW), Language is about People.

            Likewise, Education is not about Learning, although Learning is indeed an integral part of the process. If my DAW fails to learn her French verb tables, then that language simply will not happen for her, and her personal relationships with those autochtones qui se servent de cette langue will tend to remain rather basic. So it is with our youth in the educational  process – if they do not learn to manipulate, and hopefully master, the tools our/their society values, then Education will not happen for them. But Learning is still not the Goal of Education.

            The Goal of Education is to use the building blocks of learning to create a THINKING HUMAN. Thinking is not a skills-based kind of thing one automatically "has" or "does" at the end of the Learning process. Thinking is when you actively 1) gather together all your building blocks of Learning; 2) shuffle them around together until they make some kind of meaningful Picture that helps you to make some sense of what is going on around you; and then you 3) decide how to act for the best in the situation the world has just handed you.

            Technology, pace our Professor of Educational Technology, is just another one of the many transient skills for students to learn, manipulate, and master on their path toward being educated citizens. But the goal at the end of the path is neither learning the specific skill, nor the Education in and of itself. Rather, the end product of learning and education is a Thinking, Reasoning Human. Thus, again, the importance of the Liberal Arts model in education, where the young mind is asked to learn the myriad and diverse building blocks of the world, then invited to reassemble those blocks into an understandable, workable, and beautiful vision of the World That Can Be.
            Krugman’s latest article: How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled, is an excellent illustration of one such Thinking Citizen.
            A former student (thank you, Shyam), provides a further example of a Thinking Citizen--the philosopher Dennett, who suggests seven fine tools for good thinking.