Are students unique?  Is each and every human being different?  Do we excel and delight in different things or are we each the same?  Are we so similar that it’s just a matter of making all education the same?  Should education instruct everyone as if we are the same; rather than adjusting for unique variations?

Despite the variations in humanity, we continue to educate as if students are the same.  We somehow expect that a standardized system will produce a standardize outcome, despite a unstandardized entry and exit of the student population within the system itself.  Knowing that the student population is unique, what should be done to adjust an education system so that it can meet individual needs?

The first issue is that we think of education in the “system” or “systems” mentality.  As long as education is treated as a system, that produces something–product–we can not move outside to think of education being a word encompassing learning.  Yet, even when we do this, the objection that learning progresses through stages can also be raised.

Learning occurs in relationships, through a mentorship type of process.  Learning, in its most “vulgar” sense is organic and evolutionary.  It grows through processes of progress based on knowledge displayed and this knowledge is transmitted through in-action learning.  In-action learning is learning which is birthed through doing and memorization/repetition, and not only primarily through one or the other.  As the content of learning is systemized, standardized, codified, the organic nature of mentoring–which makes the content being learned meaningful–is lost and whatever makes the content “worth” learning in the student’s mind is also diminished.

As content is codified into systems, those doing that then group together in associations to supposedly share best practices.  Simultaneously, since there is “known” content, those looking at nation building, view the value of the content as a necessary ingredient to producing citizens, workers, loyal subjects, etc., in their respective nation.  In essence, the very idea of “freedom” is lost, because the “need” for this governmental citizenship trumps any desired need for free, unhindered, learning among the inhabitants.

Meanwhile, the entire goal of the American experiment is freedom.  Freedom defined in the sense of inhabitants that are independent “from the arbitrary will of another.” (1)  In this mindset, the mindset Hayek, the mindset of the founders of our nation, a mindset grounded in traditional liberal thinking (i.e. contemporary conservatism), it would mean that control of learning is for those instructing and those being instructed.  And any systemization or codification of the content of the learning is not for control by the “arbitrary will of another” (i.e. government); rather control is for the free individuals participating in the process.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Education, Futures, Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.