School of Thought, School of Doing

Why a school isn’t a place, it’s a people.

I’ve been giving some thought lately to the difference between school and education. The word ‘education’ – like ‘lecturing’ – feels increasingly representative of a one-sided approach to learning. To be educated, or lectured at, is to have knowledge delivered downstream…and that’s that. Semantics, maybe. But both words remind me of sitting in a classroom I didn’t want to be in, with a teacher I didn’t like droning on about something I didn’t care about. Not that this is sums up my entire educational experience but for the first 12 or so years it can feel like a prescriptive nightmare, and if you possess a shred of curiosity or creativity it’s even worse.

So university should be different right? By the time you’re no longer forced to sit in a room and learn stuff but instead are there voluntarily, then surely the dynamic changes. An open mind and an eager soul must open the floodgates to unbridled learning, shouldn’t they?

After years now of teaching and interacting with university students, many of whom transitioned directly from high school into tertiary education, it’s recently dawned on me that not everyone actually understands the point of learning. An outdated A+B=C equation is partially to blame; the notion that four years of university plus a degree must equal a job. Parental and peer pressure contribute to a frenzied segue from one type of classroom to another, without any time for reflection or self-discovery. Those attitudes — that learning is a chore and that you’re ‘supposed’ to be there — also carry over. A little bit of travel, a few adventures and a handful of mistakes go a long way in the grey space between high school and the rest of your life. But choice is a privilege, as is even having the opportunity to attend university. For some a degree is seen as an opportunity elevate themselves beyond their current situation.

Imagine for a moment though a store where a large portion of the customers who walked in weren’t entirely sure why they were there, nor if they even wanted to be. But they were willing to fork out an immense amount of cash for a likely outdated yet elusive product that had no guarantee of working, sold to them by ‘experts’ who really weren’t sure if worked either because they had no recent experience of it themselves. And damn if they didn’t sell it just hard enough to keep those customers on the hook for, well, years. There’d also be aisle upon aisle of products that had no function other than to fill time, yet were still a mandatory part of the whole transaction. This nightmarish combination of a used car dealership and IKEA — perched upon the edge of a time-distorting black hole — surely wouldn’t work for very long as a business model. But this is the current state of much of tertiary education. Not only are students not sure if they want to be there, but the curriculum isn’t always relevant and nor are the people delivering it.

I wouldn’t go as far as to call tertiary education dead…calling things ‘dead’ these days feels like little more than verbal clickbait. But as a construct the university model must come to terms with what it is and what it can offer in an age where knowledge can be acquired in so many other ways. It can still offer something in terms of facilities and funding, and a playing field to experiment and prototype. But for the people who do want to be there, who have a strong desire to learn something new and to satiate their curiosity, the experience doesn’t always live up to the expectation… nor does the final outcome.

You can absolutely learn on your own. An abundance of online masterclasses, forums, and YouTube channels will teach you how to do everything under the sun. But this is binary, and there is something to be said for spending time with like minds…and I don’t mean doing a group project. I mean experiencing actual symbiosis and synergy where equal effort is directed towards a unified outcome. I’ll leave the discussion about the slippery slope of ‘collaboration’ for another time. In truth even if a university program is lacking it’s often the camaraderie that makes the experience all the more worthwhile — working with others and elevating each other’s skills through knowledge sharing and friendly competition.

So what’s the best way to learn? How best to uncover what you you’re passionate about, and what’s the best possible way to master it? Perhaps there’s a missing step along the way, somewhere that will help you find this passion instead of keeping you bound to a course for 4 years, where by the time you come to the realisation that it isn’t for you you’ve been talked into completing your degree.

I’ve taught drawing for several years now and it’s astounding the type of fear this can strike into people’s hearts. There’s no software shortcut, Google search or smart-ass comment that can get you out of being able to draw a straight line right then and there. The only way to do it is to have spent the appropriate amount of hours, well, doing it.

Some have been traumatised by poor instruction; a lack of the correct method, rigorous foundations, and constructive criticism. As a teacher it’s my job to break down barriers to learning instead of building new ones. Sometimes it’s as simple as addressing someone’s individual struggle or cognitive block and providing a different approach. But I can’t force you to be engaged (I’ve tried, it doesn’t work). Learning works better if you’re actually interested in the subject to begin with. That shouldn’t be a massive revelation, but it’s certainly not common sense.

Learning comes from joy in repetition and reapplication, or at the very least the desire to overcome a block, point of frustration, or perceived failure and get to the next stage. This in many ways comes back to the environment and the people. If it’s fun, it flows. I know this isn’t a solution to the problems of institutional education, or how to supply able-bodied minions into the workforce, because these things are in servitude of commercial outcomes, not the pursuit of purpose.

Of the many definitions of ‘school’ you can find there is this one: a group of people sharing similar ideas or methods. The other, perhaps less well-known definition of a school is: a group of people drinking together in a bar and taking turns to buy the drinks…but let’s stay focused. The former is a pretty simple formula. It doesn’t require or rely upon institutional elitism, bricks and mortar, or a system of checks and balances. Your school can be wherever you want it to be as long as it’s with the right people, the right tools, and, I say, the right music. Learning has no peak, only a plateau of reflection as you gear up for the next climb, and all the better if you have a solid crew headed with you in the same direction.

It is a mistake to put forth effort and obtain some understanding and then stop at that. At first putting forth great effort to be sure that you have grasped the basics, then practicing so that they may come to fruition is something that will never stop for your whole lifetime. Do not rely on following the degree of understanding that you have discovered, but simply think, “This is not enough.”

-Yamamoto Tsunetomo