The Learning Centered Institution
We have a new buzz phrase for Ph.D. candidates to investigate: “the learning centered institution.” American education is nothing if not a repository for semantics, posturing and reinvention of the obvious. Any educational institution that is not learning – that is, learner centered – yet takes money from students, is a fraud. And an advanced degree is not required in order to recognize this fundamental fact.
If so many colleges and universities are only now becoming learning centered institutions, the question is: What have they been all these years?
At least since Socrates we’ve known that only two things are needed for a person to really learn, and one of those isn’t mandatory. The only thing necessary for anyone to learn anything is self-motivation. Anyone determined to learn will learn. Not even educational institutions can prevent it, although they often try. A guide, a coach, a mentor can be a huge help to a motivated learner, as Socrates was to so many, but that person is not required for learning to take place. That’s one reason why I am such a proponent of home schooling. Perhaps you’ve seen the TV commercial that shows Abraham Lincoln in full stove pipe hat regalia standing humbly in a modern office before a human resources director. That director says something like this: “Mr. Lincoln, you have no formal education? No college degree? No graduate school?” Abe shakes his head. “Well,” the human resources director chuckles, “thanks for coming in.” And Abe dejectedly shuffles away. It’s a tragedy on many levels, not the least of which is that someone self-taught is rejected without ever having the chance to prove what he knows and what he can do solely because he has not jumped through the hoops set up by what we charitably call “formal education.”
A few centuries back Galileo observed, “No one can teach anyone anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” Indeed. Yet it seems from the current literature, a movement is afoot to obscure Galileo’s observation with new educational jargon in the latest attempt to reinvent the obvious. The scene in K-12 education is littered with these fanciful and failed educational faux pas: Classrooms Without Walls, Cooperative Learning, Madeline Hunter, Strategic Planning, Curriculum Articulation, Tribes, Assertive Discipline, The Five Paragraph Essay, Simulations and my current favorite, Six Traits (Plus One) Writing. Or at least Six Traits was my favorite before the Learning Centered Institution fell from the sky.
Students who pay money for someone to help guide their learning ought to have all impediments to that learning removed. They should have all requirements removed. Taking people’s money and then telling them what they must learn is simple coercion. If what we teach really is crucial, if people really can’t survive without it, then why must we force people to do it? We don’t have to force people to eat to survive. We don’t have to force people to find shelter. And when you go to buy a car, you shouldn’t go home with the one the dealer wants to sell you. You should go home with the one you want…even if it seems silly to the expert salesman. Even when you visit a doctor, the doctor cannot require you to undergo any kind of treatment. She can cajole and argue and promote, but only you can ultimately decide. So how can educators get away with forcing people to pay for courses they don’t want? It is impossible for any educational institution to truly be student centered if the institution forces the student to pay for courses the student doesn’t wish to take. So that would be a good place for institutions to begin if they wish to be learning centered: ban all required courses. Open the doors the same way the supermarket does, the same way the car dealer does, the same way the doctor does and allow the individual to choose. And the individual will reap the consequences of those decisions. What could be more fair -- or student-centered -- than that?
Students must be treated as the consumers they are. They must be in charge yet we, the teachers, must be fully prepared and able to help and guide when we’re called on, not unlike the clerks at Best Buy.
In helping students develop their writing skills, I allow them the freedom to write in their own voices, to say what they have to say in the style they wish to say it. Sure, there are conventions of language that need to be understood and applied, but they must be kept in their places. Grammar, for example, is a tool to promote effective communication. It is not a set of immutable laws that ought to be followed for their own sake. Being freed from the constraints of often illogical grammar rules -- have you ever wondered just exactly why we’ve been taught it’s “wrong” to use a preposition to end a sentence with? – allows students to do what real writers do: They can focus more on their message and less on their mechanics.
Finally, to be a student centered (learning centered) institution, all the institution has to do is get out of the way.
Schools at the high school level should track students according to their abilities, gifts, and desires rather than assuming all students are college bound. To do otherwise is to stymie those gifts and abiities and desires so that "numbers"--often fraudulent numbers--look good for administration--and this is the shame of education in America.
Posted by: Gary B. Sanford | July 22, 2009 at 11:05 AM