You know first to learn or you learn first to know. Question is which one of these come first?
I say it depends on whether it is a teacher’s or a student’s viewpoint. Teacher builds on what is already known to make others learn to know what there is to learn whereas the student learns to know what the teachers already knows. It now becomes apparent to you that teacher-student bonding is the interplay between knowing and learning and vice-versa.
If this interplay is played out in a proper fashion through the educational institutions that exist to make that happen, then the bonding that is achieved is going to be a memorable one for both teacher and student. If you stop me and say that this is akin to one-on-one learning and is not possible through the existing delivery model for mass education, then the question that comes next is – has the delivery system of mass education lost sight on the knowing-learning interplay?
Initial trainer-trains-the-trainee model was based on this interplay. However, the acquisition process of this nature was ripe to explode to enable the mass education. This interplay was then refined to reach masses through many educational models that took shape as schools, colleges and universites. However, the monitoring processes that come into play to ensure that these processes behave properly to help the acquisition process grew out of propotion and may be that the teacher’s role as a teacher lost focus.
The essence of the school administration processes is to ensure that the acquisition of the knowledge happens at a set standard. However, when teachers are asked to engage in the administrative process as part of their teaching, then the rate at which the attention shifts from teaching to administration affects indirectly the rate at which the learning by the students shift from acquisition to benchmarking. In essence, if more time is spent towards the administration by the teacher, then a student spends less time in learning to acquire the same knowledge.
We know that. Hence, this brings me back to re-focus the attention once again on the question that I raised in the beginning of this blog to ask this question: If we know that, then what have we learnt from that to know what should be done now?
This is where we should be mindful of the fact that the processes we have put in place is acting like double-edged sword. Those who adhere to the processes are doing so with the good intentions of allowing the learning to flourish. However, this adherence is now causing much pain as the processes are so much tangled into the web of the education system because of the line thinking and of the domino effect that ensues because of the actions taken. Henve, even if someone knows what needs to be done, their hands are tied down as the magnitude of changes required overwhelms the efforts of initiating the changes.
If that is so, I have the answer now. Embrace COL to make that change possible. We all know that we exist in this connected world through gadgets that connect us to each another, no matter the type of gadget that we hold in our hands. That’s the essence connecting. So, re-focus on the learning to surmount the constraints inherent in the diverse education system. When that is done, all the necessary adjustments that are needed in other processes will fall into place.
For example, when the budget constraints forces the schools to drop electives that are not necessary to continue supporting the core subjects to help students to graduate, don’t lose heart and fight for those elective subjects to put back in place. Instead, form a like-minded user groups to support the teachers who can teach those subjects. This is not new! We already have many use and pay system like toll roads. Pool the money to support a teacher’s pay and write it off as a tax deduction. Schools have already has got sunk costs that have gone into buildings and utilities. This way the education to students will not fall short and only those electives that are collectively supported can then be administered by the school board. If not, you still have an option of turning those electives into on-line courses that can be stored for ever as a knowledge-base that can still overcome the limitations that a school system can impose.
How did I come up with this suggestion? Don’t be surprised that if I say that COL gave me the answer. COL supports out-of-the-box thinking, idea generation, process fine-tuning and benchmarking just to name a few. With the knowledge that you already possess, make that journey around COL to take your potential to the next level. Everyone of us is a teacher of some kind, but the identity of that role can be realized once you travel the COL. Maslow’s pyramid theory assumes ascending through many levels in the pyramid before self actualization are realization. With COL, those levels don’t matter. It rather helps you to contribute at each level of the Maslow’s pyramid.