I just lost a post where I tried to explain how learning is a natural state of being baked into our DNA and that teaching is actually training in disguise.
I argued that most of the solutions we propose as teachers within the system are iatrogenic, self-inflicted problems which require half-baked, dumbed-down teacherly solutions.
I asserted that learning is not a solution because learning is not a problem. Teaching and schooling are the problem.
I asked the question, “What kind of assumptions can we make about a system that does not believe that learning is a natural expression of our core natures?” Put another way, if we have to make people learn, what does that imply about our learning selves?
I said all this much better in the lost post. I am sorry this is all that is left.
It is hard to work within such a divided house. Lincoln asserted that such a house cannot stand. So the question remains unanswered, “Have we enslaved our better natures?” This only begs the question inspired by Florence Reece, the wife of Sam Reece, a union organizer for the United Mine Workers in Harlan County, Kentucky, “Which side are you on?” Play the song below and ask yourself.
And the question for me? Which runs deeper, my courage or my fear?
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As always, tough questions. Important questions.
Is it learning that is innate or is it curiosity, and therefore, the role of a teacher is to tap into that curiosity to expand the learning? I think we all need folks who can share little corners of the world that we didn’t quite know where there. Show us the dust balls of obscurity and say, check this out. The “teacher” may not be the classroom teacher. It might be your parent. It might be the librarian at the public library. It might be your friend. And maybe, if it all works out, the one learning pulls up a dust ball and says to the teacher, what about this …. and so it goes. That’s where curiosity is center to it all. It opens up possibilities.
I’m rambling but it seemed like a dust-ball-filled ramble in the corner of the blog here …
Kevin
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“learning is not a problem” – The fact that learning is (in some sense) natural does not mean it cannot become problematic in various ways. We are teachers. Our neighbours’ child is undergoing a mimetic adaptation to the automobile. He spends hours a day on his bike pretending to be an automobile, such is the profound attraction of a car culture on his DNA. Problematic, no? A reason for a faintly teacherly intervention, no? To leave personal learning in cases like this to take its own sweet course would not be to liberate the individual but allow free rein to a questionable culture and the equally questionable industry manufacturing that culture – forces that have practically negated the very idea of the individual.