Chalk and Talk v Digitization of Education

Sir Ken Robinson author, speaker, educationalist (and all round funny guy) says that our current system of education, which was founded around the time of the industrial revolution is killing our creativity. We are in the midst of a digital revolution and yet, he argues we are operating within a traditional system of academia that measures intelligence with tunnel vision. “We are educated out of creativity,” he says. Robinson would argue that in education today there is a need for more of an aesthetic experience, a learning environment where all the senses are stimulated.

According to Gardner and his theory of multiple intelligences, we have seven main types of intelligence; visual-spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic and logical-mathematical. I suspect we have many more than seven, we just don’t realise it. Have you ever thought about how you learn? I have realised over the past few months that I am aurally inclined and remember what I hear rather than what I see. When I was in secondary school (many moons ago), I wasn’t actually aware of how I learned and we were of the ‘chalk and talk’ generation where one size supposedly fit all. Not so.

Robinson discusses the rise of ADHD and ADD as an epidemic and believes that an education system lagging behind technology is one of the key-contributors. While he acknowledges that this epidemic in schools is a challenging one, he says that medicating children with Ritalin only serves to dull their senses further. But then others would argue that technology is to blame and that because everything is instant and immediate via touchscreen, children have a harder time focusing and concentrating on one thing at a time.

Award-winning ballerina and choreographer Dame Gillian Lynne found formal traditional education difficult. Her teachers complained that she had poor concentration, was unable to sit still and thought she had a learning disability.

Gillian was only eight years old, but her future was already at risk. Her schoolwork was a disaster, at least as far as her teachers were concerned. She turned in assignments late, her handwriting was terrible, and she tested poorly. Not only that, she was a disruption to the entire class, one minute fidgeting noisily, the next staring out the window, forcing the teacher to stop the class to pull Gillian’s attention back, and the next doing something to disturb the other children around her.                                                                                                                 –

                               – excerpt from The Element by Ken Robinson

Well, of course she couldn’t sit still. She clearly had a high bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence that wasn’t harnessed or nurtured in a traditional educational setting. Dame Gillian Lynne became a professional ballerina at the Royal School of Dance on a scholarship and went on to choreograph iconic musicals such as Cats and Phantom of the Opera.

I have to admit, I am with Ken Robinson on this one. Education is trying to adapt but it is still chasing the tail of technology and needs to focus on an holistic approach that nurtures and credits all our various intelligences. I don’t think that machines will ever completely replace educators but I foresee an era where they will take on more of a curator or facilitator role, whereby they will filter through a lot of the rubbish online and share the really good resources with students.

All in all we’re just another Hole in the Wall

On reflection on Marc Prensky’s digital natives vs digital immigrants debate, I wondered what education would look like if teachers somehow morphed into technology or were eventually replaced by machines.

If our digitally native child’s school day consisted of sitting alone at his or her computer, what would be not only the educational implications but the social, behavioural and psychological impact? It is an eerie scenario in my view, though others may argue that it is the way forward. Science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke once said,

“A teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be”

Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University and winner of the 2013 TED prize is best known for his experiment The Hole In the Wall:Kids can teach themselves. He carried out experiments across India between 1999 and early 2000’s, in both isolated rural areas and urban slums by embedding computers into a hole in the wall.

 

Ultimately he says in his findings that kids can teach themselves but ‘only in groups’. Having looked at his results in relation to what children actually learned, the majority of the content consisted of gaming and entertainment.There is nothing wrong with that given the age profile of the children. There is a sharp distiction to be made, however between using technology in an educational context where the sole purpose is to learn and using it in a recreational context, where the side effect happens to be mastering skills like losing, patience, waiting your turn etc. I think it is more accurate to say that ‘kids can teach one another’ rather than teaching ‘themselves’

I volunteered in Kolkata in 1998 and again in 2008, teaching and caring for street children and orphans in care homes. These children are hungry much of the time not only for food but for knowledge and they soak it up like a sponge. It didn’t surprise me when Sugata Mitra found that 300 children became computer literate in three months with one computer.

Street kids, Kolkata 2008

Kids I taught at the orphanage, Kolkata 2008

Children, no matter where they are in the world will never flourish if learning alone with a machine as their teacher. Human interaction is how children learn to connect with others, learn social skills and develop an emotional quotient. An EQ is something that I feel is not only neglected but overlooked completely in a technology driven culture that focuses on IQ as a measure of intelligence. We can only develop emotions like empathy, trust, honesty and kindness  by interacting with others.

Perhaps i am just a fuddy duddy old digital immigrant….on that note, check out Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd below