Who is the learner of the future? What matters most for this learner?

[Connie Weber]

Let's say you're at a cocktail party or a picnic. You're among friends, so you feel pretty easy about chatting, you can "speak your gut" more or less without getting too fancy, without piling on the references. You're approached by someone you know who isn't much involved with education and is turning to you because he thinks you know something about what's happening with the "digital revolution." He asks in a soulful way, wanting to know your personal view and perspective of "what's going on."

"Who is the learner of the future?" he asks. "What matters most for this learner to learn?" "How will this learner learn best?"

Could you please use that as a jump-off place, and say what you'd say to that friend if you were just "telling it like it is," your take? Please feel free to discuss both the positive and negative sides of where you see things are now, and where you see things are going.

Thanks. I'm using this as a launching point for discussion of some of the questions we're exploring in Harvard's Summer Institute, The Future of Learning.

[James Croft]

This is a fascinating and very interesting discussion, people! I wonder if there's something to go along with a concern for access, which is real critical thinking around what people are gaining access to. I think there's sometimes a tendency to look at the digital revolution and be convinced that what schools and learners need is "more digital stuff". But Digital =/= good. Some digital innovations really are terrible learning tools, frankly.

I get really bothered when I hear (as I do more frequently now) that some schools are not teaching cursive script or handwriting on the assumption that it's not needed any more. So a balance of the old and new, and a level of discernment when trekking through the Digital Wild is required, I think - we don't want to feed kids poisoned fruit!

[Connie Weber]

James,

I agree with you about a balance of the old and the new. I have an entire wall of my classroom covered with real slate blackboards, and have colored chalk always available for everyone. (I don't like white boards--can't blend the colors, and the markers are too stinky!) I like teaching handwriting, and love teaching artistic calligraphy. (Oh yes, I have someone come in and teach Chinese calligraphy every year, too, just so the students get a bit of exposure and practice in that that.) Students keep journals in class, blank books. If people want to share something from their journals, they can scan and post the work on the class network.

Yes, there's a good deal of digital junk out there. I agree with your equation.

[James Croft]

I adore that you teach your students calligraphy - wish I had learnt it!

[Paddy O'Dea]

mmmm..... this is such a big, fat, broad question.......

I agree with Nathan Lowell though - it's a political issue - and I think there'll only be real learners in the future if educators and governments can work together to build education systems that can:

- help learners respond quickly to global economic changes and challenges
- respond to changes in their communities and societies
- help learners to absorb and effectively use technological advances
- help learners manage a planet that is changing at a speed that we still barely comprehend.

We need to build education systems that allow every child to enjoy growing up, to be safe and healthy enough so that can enjoy achieving what they can, a system that taps into and develops their natural talents and potential and gives each child the basic skills they need to tackle living in a world that is changing at a crazy pace. It isn't so much a question of 'GETTING knowledge' - I think it's more a question of making it possible for learners to know 'HOW to get that knowledge', or to 'learn how to learn'. And we need to find ways to make learning more personalised for young people - in fact, for every learner.

Most of all (crikey - I feel as if I've unwittingly got onto a soapbox here!) - I feel passionately that if everyone is to be given the opportunity to become an effective 'learner of the future' - children, young people, young adults, parents, grandparents, you and me - we need to keep working on finding ways to indentify and break the links between childhood poverty, disadvantage, deprivation, disabilities and poor educational attainment. We need to put our minds to cutting through and breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty that beleaguers most countries, whether they're developed or still developing. Because deprivation cripples people's ability to aspire and it cripples their ability to gain access to learning opportunties and take a full part in shaping their own futures. (Of course there are exceptions!)

Sad fact of democratic life: politicians will continue making decisions about how countries educate, about shaping the education systems we have - but, if educators front up to them and guide them, they CAN make better, more enlightened decisions based on what people really need. We, who are lucky enough to have democratically elected governments (however imperfect), need to roll up our sleeves, get out there and grab our politicians by their collars and MAKE them listen to us. After all, they are our servants, are they not?

So ... A picture of the future of learning, the learner of the future...? I guess I'll opt for the pic you put in your posting Connie.
Cheers to you all, from London

[Connie Weber]

Paddy,

Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. You have written a beautiful essay here, highlighting the importance of looking at the whole learner's life, orienting around learning to learn--and addressing issues of poverty. Wow. Such a fine summary. I love your four main goals for educational systems. Beautifully succinct, and powerful.

Hey--keep the thoughts coming, ok?

Cheers to you in London, from Michigan, USA.

[Daniel Bassill]

I don't think it is a political issue, as much as it is a moral issue, and a leadership issue. Not enough people are willing to sacrifice very much to make this vision of learning equality a reality in the US, or the world. When the moral leadership is found, the political will-power will follow.

[Connie Weber]

Hi Daniel,

Always good to hear from you.

Thinking about what you said, that it's a moral issue, a leadership issue. You are saying people need to sacrifice to make this vision of learning equality a reality...

Could you talk a bit more about that? "What makes you say that?" is what I'd say if I were in a class discussion.

One thing I've been studying is how people conceive of their communities, that is, what a person's sense of community orients around. I'm wondering about the factors that make people join together, more than in common-cause, bigger than that. It's more like joining together in common community, and the community--in its distributed intelligence--radiates out its goals. (Oh, my son would laugh at me for talking like that! He'd say, let me guess, pretty soon we'll hear about the "the emergent pedagogy," right? --that's a phrase I used at one point in my studies that he has never let me live down!)

Anyhow, Daniel, you and I might be pondering a lot of the same things. Could you explain what you mean by making sacrifices? That's the piece I need to get to understand your framework. You could define learning equality, too, that might be a good way to understand each other's visions.

Only if you want and have time. I know you're busy! Thanks for the replies.

[Daniel Bassill]

Connie, as far as "learning equality" I'd accept what Paddy wrote as a definition and goal, We need to build education systems that allow every child to enjoy growing up, to be safe and healthy enough so that can enjoy achieving what they can, a system that taps into and develops their natural talents and potential and gives each child the basic skills they need to tackle living in a world that is changing at a crazy pace. It isn't so much a question of 'GETTING knowledge' - I think it's more a question of making it possible for learners to know 'HOW to get that knowledge', or to 'learn how to learn'. And we need to find ways to make learning more personalised for young people - in fact, for every learner.

For that to become a reality, a wide range of individuals and insititutions need to be doing something every day that builds their own understanding, and involvement in actions that would lead to this result.

This means that those who don't live in poverty need to be digging deeper than 1 to 2% of income or wealth to give to organizations working in these areas. It means that you stay involved, for decades, with the same organizations, as long as they seem to have a vision that you share. I created an on-line documentation system where I document actions toward these goals. Others could use this, or could build their own accountability system.

I think it takes more than political leadership to motivate people to get involved with these issues, and stay involved, or to give time, talent and dollars, even when it might mean buying a less expensive new car, or making some other personal sacrifice.

It's easy to write about the issues of poverty. It's much different to end each day with a personal scorecard that someone uses to list what they did to make the ideas Paddy expressed a reality in more places around the world.

[Daniel Bassill]

I'd say the learner of the future is someone who has mastered concepts expressed in some of these links, and who is constantly learning new ways to learn and network and get people to help him/her solve simple of complex problems.

Furthermore, if it is 10 years from now (maybe less) i'd have an LCD name tag/computer screen on my shirt, which I could turn on and immediately point to some ideas that illustrated my point to that person.

[Mike]

Hi All.... hope this finds everyone well!

Some very large waves here in southern new jersey.... big fun and just amazing the power of nature!

I tend to agree with Daniel.... this isn't a political issue... it is a moral issue and it raises questions that people get very uncomfortable about!

Here is a little quote i have pulled out of my journal ...written by Chris Hedge.......

We live in an age of moral nihilism. We have trashed our universities, turning them into vocational factories that produce corporate drones and chase after defense-related grants and funding. The humanities, the discipline that forces us to stand back and ask the broad moral questions of meaning and purpose, that challenges the validity of structures, that trains us to be self-reflective and critical of all cultural assumptions, have withered. Our press, which should promote such intellectual and moral questioning, confuses bread and circus with news and refuses to give a voice to critics who challenge not this bonus payment or that bailout but the pernicious superstructure of the corporate state itself. We kneel before a cult of the self, elaborately constructed by the architects of our consumer society, which dismisses compassion, sacrifice for the less fortunate, and honesty. The methods used to attain what we want, we are told by reality television programs, business schools and self-help gurus, are irrelevant. Success, always defined in terms of money and power, is its own justification. The capacity for manipulation is what is most highly prized. And our moral collapse is as terrifying, and as dangerous, as our economic collapse.

We have serious work to do.... but i keep in mind that "WE" is really made up of a bunch of committed "I"s.... coming together around a shared vision of a future that is much different then are current reality.......

Only 8 percent of U.S. college graduates now receive degrees in the humanities, about 110,000 students. Between 1970 and 2001, bachelor's degrees in English declined from 7.6 percent to 4 percent, as did degrees in foreign languages (2.4 percent to 1 percent), mathematics (3 percent to 1 percent), social science and history (18.4 percent to 10 percent). Bachelor's degrees in business, which promise the accumulation of wealth, have skyrocketed. Business majors since 1970-1971 have risen from 13.6 percent of the graduation population to 21.7 percent. Business has now replaced education, which has fallen from 21 percent to 8.2 percent, as the most popular major. Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, is a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute

hmmmmmmmm....mike

[Ian Carmichael]

Thanks Mike,
A break in our intense rain events at the moment...
To bounce of the Hedges quote:
Or, rather than moral nihilism, are we reaping the rewards of epistemological nihilism and relativism - the fruit of the even handed view 'your truth is valid for you, my truth is valid for me' which slides into 'yours and my opinion are equally valid', which eventually tails into 'opinion is all, evidence is irrelevant'.
And so the need, or interest in knowledge qua knowledge is minimised, ond dollar value is the governing criterion.
And we see it in students wanting grades without work, progress without content, skill without practice: there are exceptions - many. But we see this also in teachers teaching for test results - not mastery, not understanding, not joy, not curiosity: there are exceptions - ?
But, I may be jaundiced (probably am) and incorrect. (Inncorrect would be the worry - I'm perfectly relaxed with jaundiced views!)

[Mary McFarland]

Hello to All,
A book I have recently read, The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness, by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., helps me to think about the question: what matters most for learners? While the book is aimed primarily at parents, the advice seems just as appropriate for educators. Hallowell contends that the most important aspect in any young life (maybe in any life) is connection. He claims that young children go through stages of play, that surface interests that they then practice. This can lead to a level of mastery and recognition that increases the child's connection. Thus, he argues that the cycle sets the roots to adult happiness because of the persistence, patience, interpersonal relationships, etc. that are fostered.
While reading the book I was thinking about how important these "roots" are for learners of every age--connection to the material being learned and to other learners, enough play or pleasure or motivation to capture interest, practice with the ideas and processes being learned, the attainment of some level of mastery and the recognition (personal and from others) that something of value has been accomplished. For me, the ideas help to begin to frame elements of the answer to the question: what matters most for learners?
Best wishes,
Mary