What Learning Looks Like

You have this

Or you have this.

The former is how I envision learning.  It's cluttered, messy, disorganized, and beautiful.  As far as I have experienced it, that is true learning.  When I encounter a new idea, let's say Steven Johnson discussing where good ideas come from and how they usually tend to occur when someone has a hunch and then that person meets another person - usually from a different field or area - who also has a hunch.  When those things collide, good ideas result.  Now that new idea has been bouncing around my head for a few days now.  It just collided with another podcast I watched featuring Thomas Friedman talking about how the world is flat and how vital it is to have a liberal arts education.  For if you study one area - say English - and then another area that is totally different - say medicine - that is when true innovation occurs.  Take an idea from the world of literature or rhetoric and apply the framework from the world of medicine, say how infectious disease spread or how vaccinations work, and you have something new.  But the learning and growing that is occurring in my brain is sloppy.  I've now applied this to my life and world.  I've thought of examples that have turned out to be dead ends or false leads.  I've tried to apply these ideas to other books I've read (Plato's "The Republic" or Swift's "A Modest Proposal" or John Merrow's "Below C Level" and I've just been left with littered ideas).  Then I struck upon a perfect match for Johnson's and Friedman's ideas: Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point" which I read last year.

Now those connections of ideas (some call it learning) are messy and not organized or usually planned.  It is indicative of what James Burke calls "The Knowledge Web."  By that he means ideas are linked in innumerable ways.  It is our job to navigate the web and see the connections or discover new ones (such as how the Russians launching Sputnik resulted in not only the internet but also in the vitality of cell phones).  That is learning.  I think of that when I see the former picture, which is of Einstein's desk.

The latter, unfortunately, is often what passes (thanks to NCLB) as learning.  Hopefully, the tests will improve beyond cheap, simple bubble tests that measure very little worth measuring.  This latter picture is indicative of the tradition - top-down style of learning where the teacher bestows knowledge upon the learner and then the learner regurgitates it by filling in the correct bubble.  I'm reminded of Linda Darling-Hammond's wonderful quote -"If we taught babies to talk as most skills are taught in school, they would memorize lists of sounds in a predetermined order and practice them alone in a closet." Unfortunately, the latter type of learning is emphasized more in our schools.  I hope it won't always be though.


Here is an interesting post from the RRVWP that focuses on standards for college readiness.  It talks of key habits of mind that will enable them to develop 21st century skills to succeed in college.  Go ahead and look at them - 



habits of mind essential for success in college writing:

• Curiosity – the desire to know more about the world.
• Openness – the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world.
• Engagement – a sense of investment and involvement in learning.
• Creativity – the ability to use novel approaches for generating, investigating, and representing ideas.
• Persistence – the ability to sustain interest in and attention to short- and long-term projects.
• Responsibility – the ability to take ownership of one’s actions and understand the consequences of those actions for oneself and others.
• Flexibility – the ability to adapt to situations, expectations, or demands.
• Metacognition – the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes used to structure knowledge.

Tell me how the cheap bubble tests we take now measure ANY of those skills.  

I think of it this way by calling for  21st century skills, but teaching test taking skills and rote memorization of rudimentary skills and information - it is like trying to cure HIV with the scientific methods of the Spanish Inquisition.