Education for the Educable
My response to Fred Wilson at avc.com may well fall onto deaf ears but it’s worth repeating only for my sake.
Posted originally as a response to Fred Wilson’s call for ideas and feedback on blended learning, it is worth my time to store this at Medium — because sometimes the story is hidden in the words we express, and maybe we need to hear them far more than the storyteller.
I have not adapted this for Medium — but simply left it in its raw form:
There are two things that seem incredibly difficult to accomplish yet they beg to be done.
1. See the student as the primary customer of education
2. See the patient as the primary customer of health
Since the summit is about the first rather than second imperative, I think what you can address at the summit in part is why such a locus of focus keeps getting slammed at the door of institutional politics.
The way to address the student in the sea of stakeholders is to see what students are doing outside of school hours. Here the peer learning part of the blended learning model you have outlined comes to the fore. One cannot ignore the disruptive element of how students learn outside the classroom now.
This is way more than simply the distinction between teachers being digital immigrants and students being digital natives (using Marc Prensky’’s terms) — and that is because outside school hours, kids have not been institutionalized how they should be doing their homework. At the University level there have been problems where objections have been raised about group work — but for K-12 education, kids are SELF-ORGANIZING naturally.
The problem with institutionalized behaviour and the reality of blended learning is that stakeholders have institutional baggage that will get in the way of that delivery — unions get in the way, the way schools are measured for success get in the way, the way boards view curriculum gets in the way.
For the institution there is a THEM and US — rather than when one takes the focus off-school (rather than offline) that is where all the magic is. You only have to look at your own kids to know that they are doing things differently in this generation and if you truly want CUSTOMER VOICE — ask your kids!
When we ask our kids about this we can take their comments seriously because we are capturing the voice of the customer — but if we don’t see them as customers, therein lies the problem,
The key point from your blog is this difference between broadcasting and that one-to-one education (much like one-to-one marketing but delivering learning relationship not simply a customer relationship).
Where I would be wary is that we are using the language of the present education system, maybe it is a language that academics or educators or professionals in the education world are used to and it is comfortable, as it is linear.
Yet you are not addressing educators, you are addressing educational philanthropists about disruptive innovation, that is actually less disruptive to the child than the system that disrupts a child’s very love of education, as it does a teachers love for practicing their craft.
The core message for me to educational philanthropists is that the time has come for change, that this is not a time for throwing money at the education system and watch it disappear down sinkholes of arguments or positions — it is the same situation as charity, it is time for grassroots accountability — to spend in a way where it empowers kids themselves to create the very model — their educators seem to over-complicate.
LOVE is at the center of this education reform and love is not idealogy, it is an expression of who is, what is and where is — THE EDUCATOR.
You are a venture capitalist who has come from a world that has delivered on OPEN SOURCE — now that open source is the candor, the fresh minds and the thought leaders within the student body — I am talking about kids who have the brains to figure this out, who are more connected with the digital landscape than the people who teach them and who are UNFILTERED — who will give an answer that is embarrassing to policy makers.
The fundamental reason you can approach this is because it is outside-in, you are not a part of the existing problem — the way to education and blending learning is to treat it like a white piece of paper — it is time design and draw the future — the more we put our opinion into this thing, the more we are stuck with our dog in the race — let the dog go — let the kids in.
One more thing. There are a group of educators who do sit “outside-in”, I call them TEACHERS IN EXILE” — these are teachers who have left the very profession they love because their very profession has lost its way — the best measure of a blended learning initiative is how they reignite their passions and come back to education to do what they love, rather than sit on the outside — before anyone puts money into education, talk to these exiles — and if you have done the right thing — then you have given these professionals their life, capability and soul back — and this is enriching/empowerment not political/entitlement.
[Em]
