Can Schools Really Be About Learning?

Schools are about instruction, not learning.  They are in the business of instructing others and not about learning themselves, let alone maximizing their students' ability to learn. I know this is a radical and threatening idea, but, when all is said and done; when the diploma is in hand; when the student is facing life choices; when they go forth into adulthood; what ability matters more--being good at being instructed or being good at learning?

We all live in a time of excessive information.  It's everywhere all the time, about anything we want to know.  It is at the tip of our fingers whenever we want it.  But are we taught how to navigate the oceans of information as a function of our own learning?  Are we taught how to follow our individual interests, our knowledge wants, and our chosen fields of expertise?  Are we encouraged to learn in our natural way? Are we encouraged to venture outside the walls of normalcy and conformity to chase our own curiosities with conviction?  

For the most part, the answer is no.  Why is that?

In today's corporate meeting rooms, the focus has become about developing the learner because that is how the employee becomes the best contributor.  Develop the learner and greater learning will be the result.  Entire organizations have changed (learned) to become "learner-centric" and to create invasive "learning culture" changes to the way everything is done.  

In schools, the goal is to improve instruction.  Improve the teachers, the testing, the conformity, the expected standards, and the mandated curriculum.  Increase homework. Find technology solutions that support the way instruction is done.  Hire teachers from colleges that agree with our instructional methods. All of which perpetuates the same way of teaching that has always been done.

Schools do not ask "what if?" questions.  They do not seek to make changes that would increase each student's individual learning abilities. Why?  Because they are all products of the same system and culture--maximize instruction. 

Go to a parent meeting and the school does not ask what parents want to learn about.  Instead, they do what they always do. They instruct. Go to a teacher meeting and you won't see much discussion around what is working in different classrooms.  But you will see a lot of instruction.  Go to a school board meeting and suggest a new way of doing things. You won't see any chin-rubbing pondering with follow-up questions to explore the idea.  But you will see explanations (instruction) as to why it can't be done.

Throughout the halls of almost every school in America, we see amazing powers of instruction, but we don't see the practices of learner-centric thinking. (In special ed classrooms we see it, but that's where it stops.)  

If you ask them why they don't embrace learner-centric methodologies they will look at you funny and then instruct you.  Why?  Because that's what they do.  You won't see them asking, "How would that be possible?" You won't get an invitation to explain about advancements in education technology, gamification, asynchronous discussions with Ai tracking, micro-learning techniques, and pull-learning metrics that allow every student to discover their individual learning paths.  You won't see them ask about meta-cognitive choosing of new learning practices to create lifelong learning desires and empowerment.

Schools as a culture, system, business, hierarchy, and governmental agency are not very good at learning and actually, they are not very interested in it.  It's not what they are about.  These institutions are the epitome, homeland, and kiln of the instructor-centric culture.  In order to change and compete on a global basis of producing able-minded learners, they will need to change in huge ways.  Yet, they are against that.  They are not interested in changing who and how they are. Which begs the question, "Can schools learn?"

Instead of narrowing our methodologies into more and more refined forms of instruction, why aren't we expanding our reach into farther and farther discoveries?  Why aren't we chasing new ways of learner-centric practices at the speed of light, or, at least, be willing to try?

Learning is a chaotic, dog-chasing-scents type of thing.  It isn't a structured, stoic, staid, and safe process.  It's dangerous.  It changes everything.  One bit of learning changes us into something we never were before.  Yet, our school systems have completely lost their nimbleness, their inventiveness, their thirst for danger.  How can a system and culture rooted in a DNA of instruction, certainty, and tradition, not only value and respect the craziness of perpetual "I don't know" moments, but even embrace and chase the wanton Mardi Gras euphoria of exceptional learning?  

The path of salvation for our education system, our schools, our students, and the future of the human race is one of pioneering.  It is one of disregarding the barriers of our chosen ignorance and finding the courage to pierce the boundaries of what's acceptable.  Like a small society encased within the walls of a fortress, reliant on those walls to keep dangers out, we have grown increasingly afraid of what lies outside those walls.  Where is our curiosity?  Where is our daring?  How do our tomorrows have any chance of taking us somewhere new and different?

Within the rank and file of our nation's educators, there are, undoubtedly, many who see and believe in the compelling draw of innovation, change, and the dangers of learning about what is possible.  Are you one of the wild ones starving for a peek over the horizon's edge?  Are you one of the ones who wants to hitch this monstrosity up to your locomotive and blaze a trail over the mountains and through the seas, pulling it somehow forward to who-knows-where just so it can awaken and realize its own promise of adventure?  Are you one of the ones who believe it is possible to embark on adventures of new and evocative exploration?

Or are you one of the ones who want to instruct others on why we can't do that?

What say you?