Read even a small amount of economics, and you might start to believe that human beings have things pretty much worked out. At its heart, economics views us as rational beings that make consistent, logical decisions on how to live. Quite in opposition to this, psychology sees humans as considerably less competent. Spend a little time studying cognition, and you will see that examples of fallacious thinking abound. In The Art of Thinking Clearly, Rolf Dobelli exposes and catalogues 99 varieties of bias, fallacy and general failure in human thinking and decision making. This book offers us what we really need: a chance to introspect honestly, and reassess the way we think of ourselves. Perhaps our self-assigned pedestal is just a little too sizeable?

Ultimately, and this is a side note, I am given to trusting psychologists over economists, E.F Schumacher excepted. The simple reason for this is that economics (at least practiced by governments and corporations) is predicated on the absurd axiom that it is possible and desirable to obtain unlimited growth in a finite environment.

As educators, we work within long-standing traditions of belief, structure and human interaction, most of which we happily take for granted. These frameworks work well enough for younger students, on the surface at least, where there are certain foundations that we wish to build. As kids get older, however, they quickly start to backfire. For most educators, educational doctrine is so deeply rooted that the soil we till is essentially bound, preventing better thinking from penetrating and gaining hold. Even those espousing “21st century learning” generally don’t scratch through the top soil of educational assumption.

Given the right circumstances, which are vanishingly rare in schools, we might start to see through some of the smoke and mirrors, and see the harm that schools are doing. And not just in some extreme variations of industrial schooling (sorry Hong Kong), but in its very makeup. Perhaps we were lucky enough to have worked in other fields before we became educators. Perhaps our principal encouraged us to read Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society, opening the door to “heretical” thinking. Perhaps we had one or two amazing teachers, who threw chairs, climbed on tables and shook us out of student complacency. Just maybe we work in a wonderful, small school, filled with amazing people, that is ripe for change. Perhaps, we don’t have to teach to a test, rank students or in other ways steal their dreams and humanity.

I count myself very lucky indeed to be in this exact position, at the rare confluence of a set of circumstances often beyond my control. The result? I have finally, fleetingly seen beyond what might be called The Educator’s Delusion. And I’d like to pin it down whilst I have the chance, because there is a risk I might never have it this fully in my sights again. Presenting at 21CLHK9 this weekend, and engaging in conversations with many other educators, has brought things into rather clear focus.

At its heart, what we share, and what is so dangerous, is a terribly misguided belief that that it is possible, in any meaningful way, to assess real human learning. There. That’s it.

“Grading is fatefully flawed as a system – we cant measure learning the way we intend to” @rossdotparker #21CLHK

— Jenelle Kresak (@kresak2j) March 11, 2017

Oh sure, we can write an exam that most people will fail, because it is based on isolated and arcane knowledge that is divorced from most people’s every day lives. And yes, we can carefully structure a curriculum to pump the required knowledge into students. And if we must, we can examine them before what they have learned has leaked away. And then we can check the box…our job is done.

In our wake, however, we leave a destructive scene filled with anxious husks of young humanity, living lives of disembodied learning, preparing for a working world that no longer meaningful exists (and it’s not getting any better). We produce a population of competitive grade seekers, ranked against each other, immersed in themselves and incapable of genuine living. At my worst, this is exactly who I am, a product of the system I now find myself trying not to perpetuate.

Under the guise of rigour the “best” educators follow best practice (what we might call backward design, as per Richards, Jack C., 2013): lay out a range of learning outcomes, plan experiences and content that meet the outcomes, teach through these plans, assess learning, give feedback. And repeat.

At each stage within the cycle, and across cycles, standards are met, boxes are checked and everyone is happy.

If, however, you return to students a few weeks after the final summative assessment of any particular chunk of learning, you’ll discover something deeply unsettling but mostly overlooked. Something we all know, but which we rarely let our minds dwell upon. Our students ultimately remember very little of what we teach them. Sometimes they can’t even recall the topic, let alone the details we carefully, cleverly built in.

And this is what we do, day in, day out, year after year. It is the educator’s delusion, that we can fill an inherently leaky vessel with disembodied information and expect it to be retained and stay fresh.

@rossdotparker Consider what model you use as an educator and in life: Just In Time learning vs Just In Case learning #21CLHK pic.twitter.com/qYGuu0GuRz

— Robert Appino (@rappin01) March 11, 2017

For me, in my professional practice, I’ve decided to finally call time on this one. The delusion is dead, its grip loosened. I no longer give grades, I don’t insist on a set pattern of learning and I won’t require mastery of a corpus of deadening knowledge. That’s not to say I’ve given up on teaching or learning: in fact I am more excited than ever about both.

What it does mean is that I am finding more interesting, enlivening, deeper, slower and more fun ways for students to learn. It means I am seeking to promote, not dampen, student agency and action. It means I am giving up direct control over learning, and focusing more more on setting the scene. Free Learning has offered the first steps in this, but there is much more to be done.

My question then, for anyone serious about teaching and learning, is this: have you seen through the educator’s delusion?

Credit: bucket image by Jon Pallbo from Wikimedia Commons, under Public Domain

I am not facially hirsute, and so shaving has never been something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. My bathroom cupboard has housed the same Gillette Mach 3 razor for the last 15 years, and with the cartridges being extremely pricey, I’ve long lived with an uncomfortable, blunt shave. As I’ve aged, and have had to start shaving more regularly, I’ve started to question if there is not a better way to do this. Is it possible to get a cheaper, better shave?

Initially, Sweeny Todd in mind, I thought about switching to a cut throat (or straight) razor. Closer cut, lower cost…a lot more focus required. I sat on this idea for a while, before remembering an older friend who used a “safety razor”, which I never fully understood. A little reading confirmed that this kind of razor, known as a double-edged safety razor in full, might do the trick. Dating, so Gizmodo tells me, from the late 19th century, this invention is what made Gillette the leader in shaving. Like most products, it was, in fact, an improvement on a less economical solution invented by Jean-Jacques Perret. In time, Gillette would move on to pioneer the disposable cartridge razor that most men use today, although they do still manufacture and sell traditional double-edged blades.

Sitting on this information for quite some time, I perhaps would never have gotten around to changing an old habit. Fortunately, taking a hint from an off hand comment, my wife gifted me a safety razor shaving kit for Christmas. Although not cheap (in terms of cost and level of quality), the initial outlay for a nice set is, in retrospect, well worth it. Shaving in this style offers a slower, more thoutghtful experience, with a closer shave, at a far lower cost (per blade). If you are not careful, it is possible to rip yourself up, but with a little care and attention to detail (and a YouTube video for good measure), you can produce a great result. In terms of sustainability, something with less plastic that is easier to construct and smaller to ship seems like it should be a win.

But to be honest, I don’t really care too much about the shave per se (amazing though it might be): what really gets me is what this teaches us about the nature of technology, and our relationship to it. As a civilisation, we almost universally believe in the myth of progress: new technology must be better than old. And whilst the cost, for example, of computers, keeps plummeting, alongside gains in quality, this is not the case across all industries and products. In this case, I think we’ve been collectively had: it really does appear here that an older, simpler technology, available at lower cost, offers a better result. And I’m pretty sure, if we are willing to look hard enough at our fancy cars, disposable clothes and ready meals, we might find other areas in like in which the same is true. Perhaps, after all, those hipsters are onto something here…

Image credit: Vintage Gillette Ball End Tech Safety Razor image by Joe Haupt on Wikipedia Commons, under Creative Commons BY-SA

This post originally appeared as a Teacher Insight at ICHK.

For those of us who received our formal education in the last millennium, we will most likely recall learning that was highly structured and prescribed. Lessons appeared orderly, with everyone moving through the same material at the same pace, regardless of interest, prior experience or ability. The focus was very much on the individual being able to mimic the knowledge, language and skills of the teacher.

As a teacher, it has been my experience that this kind of learning produces fairly predictable results: a reasonable base of knowledge, with consistency between learners, but very little in the way of creativity, passion and excitement.  Such learning, it seems, is easy to deliver and test, but carries little meaning in the real world, and bores most students most of the time.

Over the past six years we have moved our ICT program steadily further and further from the traditions described above. With each iteration of our course we have observed our learners in their work, actively sought their feedback, and reflected on our practice. The result has been a constant renewal of our offerings, with successful learning experiences kept, and the rest discarded and replaced.

At some point during this journey I came, I believe, to see the exact point at which traditional schooling typically falls down: motivation. Put simply, students who are not motivated to learn, or who are motivated by extrinsic factors, such as fear or future earnings, are generally not active, independent learners. They will do enough to push away the negative emotions associated with learning, but may never experience learning simply for the love of becoming a better person, or mastering something previously out of their reach. They develop a brittle, fixed mindset, and are prone to anxiety. They become isolated, focusing on their own development and considering schooling to be an individual pursuit, rather than a team sport.

This “revelation” should not come as a surprise: after all, how could we expect anyone to become great at, and take pleasure from, something they do not enjoy? For good reason we find it hard to imagine the uninspired concert pianist, the bored surgeon or the unwilling pilot. Unfortunately, many of us are so invested, from our own experiences of school, in the idea that school means struggling against adversity, that we may never pause to consider alternatives. Worse still, we might ascribe to struggle some mythical traits such as “building character” or “tough love”, making unhappiness a daily reality for our children.

Today at ICHK, ICT learning looks very different from the status quo described above. In Years 7-9, we now see Secondary students spending 60% of their learning time deciding what to learn, how long to learn it for and who to learn it with. After building a foundation through a series of units that seek to inspire the romantic thinker (Epic Wallpaper, Tools For Learning, Programming 101), students are set loose on a Free Learning journey that helps them to find joy in learning. Instead of grades we offer rich comments, instead of fixed outcomes we focus on learning what we need to succeed in the task at hand, and instead of teacher dependence we seek independence and problem solving.

This alternative vision of education can seem chaotic, unpredictable and messy, but through careful design it is in fact structured, rigorous, meaningful and engaging. Students find new ways to learn, and learn to collaborate around interests, not friendship groups. They go deeper, invest more of themselves and find new interests. They plan ahead, and execute their plans to get where they want to go. They are pushed to not just skim the surface, but to dig deep and succeed where they might not expect to.

This truly is learning, not schooling. This is setting students free to explore a wonderful world of knowledge, with an experienced guide, rather than tethering them to a fixed set of ideas and dooming them to follow a few well worn intellectual tracks.

As with any change, those of us entrenched in the old ways can find such changes alarming, disorienting and confusing. Where the young leap in, the more experienced among us hold back. And yet, undeniably, the world is changing, and the skills of yesterday are not going to cut it in the world of tomorrow. We need a generation of thinkers who love learning, can work together, will embrace uncertainty, and wish to forge new paths.

And what of us, the old guard? Well, it is, as they say, never too late. We can, with care, unschool ourselves. If you are game to try, come and join us for some ICT Free Learning at ICHK.

I was first introduced to the book Make Space by John Burns at Shekou International School, where its lessons had been applied to make their campus more inclined to spark and kindle innovation. For those not familiar with it, Make Space brings together lessons learned at Stanford’s d.school on the relationship between physical space, collaboration and creativity. The results on show at SIS were striking, and went far beyond my own efforts to create a teaching space that was less “classroom” and more “workspace”.

A year of germinating and working on other things, and I have finally spent some time browsing the book. Adding this to my previous thinking, experimenting and reading on the subject, I would love to design and build a studio workspace into a school. Such a studio would belong to no particular department, but would be bookable for use by anyone looking to break out of class, and set the scene for more creative, collaborative, flexible work. It might include some of the following features:

• Relatively bare walls, unfinished concrete floor and lots of nature light. The ability for walls to be drawn on, repainted and hacked in other ways.
• A range of seating including sofas, bean bags, foam cubes (which can become walls, building blocks, simulations), high stools.
• A range of tables at different heights and surfaces for standing, sitting and leaning at, including d.school’s Periodic Tables and Flip Tables.
• Movable whiteboards (such as Z-Racks from Make Space), which can be used for sketching and partitioning ad hoc spaces. Dry erase surfaces on walls.
• Having everything on wheels, so that sofas, desks, and boards can be moved and re-purposed at any time.
• Moveable projectors for setting up ad hoc display areas.
• Some distinct micro-environments around the edges, including a hot desk area and a cozy area.
• Hacking and making tools and materials (such as Make Do) for rapid prototyping and construction.

Such a space would hopefully shift the school focus away from the teacher, and towards student-centered learning and creativity: not something you want all the time, but definitely a model to build students and teachers up to.