You leave the parent-teacher meeting with a prescription to be administered daily: your child should develop better study habits (especially for tests), become more organized (ex. use a planner), not disturb others in class (no socializing) and be on time for class (seated and ready to work).
"It tastes bad but it’s good for you." That’s the way I remember the idea of school being sold to me as a kid.
Siddhartha Mukherjee’s TED talk got me thinking differently. He argues that we need to rethink disease and medicine. The growing resistance of antibiotics requires a rethink for a lock and key approach. He wants new mechanisms, models and metaphors. Rather than the downward approach of “have disease, take pill, kill something,” he argues for the upwards organization of the natural world, from cell to organ to environment, which is self-regulating and semi-autonomous. A growth rather than a kill model.
“Can you apply this model more globally outside medicine?” he asks.
Here’s my attempt to answer considering education.
A pill/kill model
Let’s say our education model is have ignorance, receive knowledge, target something. Whether it’s misbehavior, ignorance, laziness, disorganization, procrastination or illiteracy, with our curriculum and its clear outcomes, we want it dead. Grade 2 and can’t read? We need to cure that disease.
Now, what happens if in the attempt to kill what we don’t want, we also kill the cells of natural curiosity and creativity that we do want? What do we do when the learner’s immune response, growingly resistant, says, “Why do I have to do this?” “What do I need this for?” With our current model, our response is to seek ever more potent medicines: new curricula, new outcomes, new programs.
What happens when the cure is worse than the disease, when antibiotics are used to treat viruses like boredom, which is as treatable as the common cold? Resistance grows.
Mukherjee says only about .025% of chemical reactions in the body can be treated with a disease-pill approach. Antibiotics are not enough. In education, lock and key approach can work for discrete facts as a way to kill ignorance of those facts. As an “antidote” it still plays a role. But it’s not enough.
Today some are using learning management systems (LMS) as a kind of controlled intravenous delivery of knowledge, students hooked up to monitors, every keyboard click recorded, the content dosage varied according to the programmed feedback. Need Grade 10 Math? We have the cure even if the patient doesn’t have the illness.
The proliferation of knowledge makes a set curriculum an increasingly weak cure for a knowledge target that continuously adapts and grows in complexity.
It may be that some of the resistance of learners lies in the misdiagnosis of the “diseases” based on educators' beliefs and perceptions.
A cell/growth model
When you ask a student, “What do you want to learn?” and they respond, “I don’t know,” something is dead.
The idea of learner-centered, rather than teacher-centered education is on the right track for growth, but I’m not sure we’ve shifted the model to go along with it. We still want our pills for the perceived illnesses, but sugar-coated with something engaging and motivating.
Mukherjee says a personalized medicine begins with one’s own cells, which are self-regulating and semi-autonomous. A cell is activated to fulfill its role.
We all have learning cells. Learning itself is an instinct—one does not have to be taught to learn. Learning cells,self-regulating and semi-autonomous, develop into interests, hobbies, talents, and learners connect and grow within communities.
Like bacteria, learners adapt and mutate. The Internet environment has allowed learners the freedom to fertilize and “infect” others with their ideas creating healthy and, yes, unhealthy organisms.
Here's my growth model: activate idea, create something, share with other communities.
Like Mukherjee, I think we need to find more mechanisms, models and metaphors to think about education and the ways we go about teaching and learning.
"It tastes bad but it’s good for you." That’s the way I remember the idea of school being sold to me as a kid.
Siddhartha Mukherjee’s TED talk got me thinking differently. He argues that we need to rethink disease and medicine. The growing resistance of antibiotics requires a rethink for a lock and key approach. He wants new mechanisms, models and metaphors. Rather than the downward approach of “have disease, take pill, kill something,” he argues for the upwards organization of the natural world, from cell to organ to environment, which is self-regulating and semi-autonomous. A growth rather than a kill model.
“Can you apply this model more globally outside medicine?” he asks.
Here’s my attempt to answer considering education.
A pill/kill model
Let’s say our education model is have ignorance, receive knowledge, target something. Whether it’s misbehavior, ignorance, laziness, disorganization, procrastination or illiteracy, with our curriculum and its clear outcomes, we want it dead. Grade 2 and can’t read? We need to cure that disease.
Now, what happens if in the attempt to kill what we don’t want, we also kill the cells of natural curiosity and creativity that we do want? What do we do when the learner’s immune response, growingly resistant, says, “Why do I have to do this?” “What do I need this for?” With our current model, our response is to seek ever more potent medicines: new curricula, new outcomes, new programs.
What happens when the cure is worse than the disease, when antibiotics are used to treat viruses like boredom, which is as treatable as the common cold? Resistance grows.
Mukherjee says only about .025% of chemical reactions in the body can be treated with a disease-pill approach. Antibiotics are not enough. In education, lock and key approach can work for discrete facts as a way to kill ignorance of those facts. As an “antidote” it still plays a role. But it’s not enough.
Today some are using learning management systems (LMS) as a kind of controlled intravenous delivery of knowledge, students hooked up to monitors, every keyboard click recorded, the content dosage varied according to the programmed feedback. Need Grade 10 Math? We have the cure even if the patient doesn’t have the illness.
The proliferation of knowledge makes a set curriculum an increasingly weak cure for a knowledge target that continuously adapts and grows in complexity.
It may be that some of the resistance of learners lies in the misdiagnosis of the “diseases” based on educators' beliefs and perceptions.
A cell/growth model
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| credit: Steph Cruickshank |
When you ask a student, “What do you want to learn?” and they respond, “I don’t know,” something is dead.
The idea of learner-centered, rather than teacher-centered education is on the right track for growth, but I’m not sure we’ve shifted the model to go along with it. We still want our pills for the perceived illnesses, but sugar-coated with something engaging and motivating.
Mukherjee says a personalized medicine begins with one’s own cells, which are self-regulating and semi-autonomous. A cell is activated to fulfill its role.
We all have learning cells. Learning itself is an instinct—one does not have to be taught to learn. Learning cells,self-regulating and semi-autonomous, develop into interests, hobbies, talents, and learners connect and grow within communities.
Like bacteria, learners adapt and mutate. The Internet environment has allowed learners the freedom to fertilize and “infect” others with their ideas creating healthy and, yes, unhealthy organisms.
Here's my growth model: activate idea, create something, share with other communities.
Like Mukherjee, I think we need to find more mechanisms, models and metaphors to think about education and the ways we go about teaching and learning.
“The goal of schools is to create those conditions that make students want to learn; not have to learn but want to learn more about self, others, and the world.”
(Seymour Sarason via Will Richardson “Schools that Learn” -registration required)
Next post I'll try to continue the analogy with Siddhartha Mukherjee’s book, The Laws of Medicine.