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School's out: the end of standardised education
Lecture given at the University of East London Research Symposium (9 February 2005)
By Kevin Carey, Director, humanITy |
Our schools are failing in four quite distinct ways; in terms of:
- Methodology. Schools perpetuate a learning, creating and performance paradigm based on solo activity in opposition to a collaborating world. The only plausible explanation for this is that, whether it is true or not, the middle classes think that this preserves their inbuilt advantage in the competitive examination system. Even if this is true, such people might be tempted by proposals which retained this advantage but made everybody better off. But, in the meantime, the Daily Mail has a veto on educational reform and the establishment has hardly started to think about how to assign credit for syndicated learning.
- Curriculum. The core of the curriculum, based on skills acquisition and retrieval of memorised or known data, is anachronistic. On the one hand, machine processing is wiping out millions of jobs which used to require basic skills (just think of buying airline tickets). On the other hand, learning how to ask a question, how to classify data and how to define a search should now be central concerns; we are undergoing a transformation from being limited by our data resources to being limited by our capacity to imagine.
- Inclusion. Our schools are failing those who need them most, the poor, the alienated and those with special needs. Data on child performance against family income is intractably miserable; the debate over exclusion is superficial; and the under-resourcing of special needs, disguised by the respectable ideology of mainstreaming, is a scandal.
- Choice. One of the major reasons why our schools are failing is that they are the last bastion against consumerism. We hear a great deal about parental choice but this is largely cosmetic; parents are forced to submit their children to a National Curriculum whose monopoly suppliers are unionised teachers who are not even a properly self-governing profession. A couple of weeks ago an appeals tribunal overruled a head teacher on an exclusion case but the teachers are refusing to teach the child; can you imagine a doctor or social worker refusing care to a needy child?
The central point, however, is this:
- Data and wisdom separated. For more than 100 years, from the enactment of the 1870 Education Act, children were prepared to submit themselves to the supposed wisdom of monopoly supplier teachers because this came bundled with the means to improve life chances; indeed, the wisdom and the data were so bundled that nobody thought seriously about separating them; they were like blue and yellow paint mixed to make green. But now a considerable number of children think they can secure the data they think they need without recourse to the Gradgrindian processes of the teaching unions; whether they are right is a question for another day but the perception is powerful. The danger here is that they then believe that they do not require wisdom or that they already have it.
- Alienation. Linked to this is the perception by another sub-class of children that the whole process has no effect whatsoever on their life chances. They are, in other words, alienated; but the response to this phenomenon is to blame the children. This is problematic because even the poorest child is growing up primarily as a consumer. Children choose their food and their clothes, their entertainment and their friends. They would be appalled if they took a defective item back to the shop to be told they were to blame for the defect.
- Learning as subversion. A final complicating factor is that the multiplicity of data resources means that to learn to read and search are no longer strictly controlled activities which confine learners to children's books, the contents of a school library and duopoly television; to learn to read and search are subversive (or I might say creative) skills.
It is against this background which I only have time to sketch in outline that I want to consider the way in which information technology will affect the way that we can organise and encourage learning.
Before I get to the educational aspect, however, let me clear up some bits of engineering. It does not matter how televisions, telephones and computers will converge; just assume that they will and let the engineers get on with it. What you need to imagine is a data processor more powerful than anything you have known which is the size of a current PDA, a quite separate portable flat screen for occasions when you can't access a public flat screen and a programmable, customisable user interface experience which might take place through a separate device or be integrated into the flat screen. Your processor may, for example, project a keyboard, numeric keypad or menu through the eye hole also being used by the processor's camera. Crucially, too, this processor will be linked by wireless so that the user can be physically located to within one metre. The data transmission capacity will be greater than the current broadband. Your processor will be able to receive what is currently thought of as internet content and what is currently thought of as broadcasting; but most linear broadcasting, except for news and sport, will have disappeared; for all practical purposes the two kinds of data supply will have merged. Finally, I simply want to say that this is not futurology; you can see all of these components around you, notably in 3G phones and the new generation of media centres.
What the technology will make possible, when the convergence is seamless and the cost falls radically, is a network, or let us say community of practice which is always on; physically traceable; cable free; multi-functional; globally resourced; and potentially collaborative.
Let me look at these six characteristics in general and then in educational terms:
- Always on. Not very long ago the idea of leaving two-way communication channels open was almost unthinkable, partly because of our attitude to time allocation, our concept of privacy and the cost of consumption; but the barriers between disparate activities, largely governed by their physical location, are breaking down so that we not only multi-task but we also task intermittently. Our ideas of privacy have greatly changed in almost every respect, from sexual orientation to what we are prepared to shout down a mobile phone in a crowded railway carriage; and the cost of consumption is falling in real terms so that to be always on will be the norm. The consequences of this are widespread. At a very personal level we will be deeply suspected if we switch off. At a more profound level, however, the ergonomics of living will be totally changed, moving from necessarily rigid planning to infinite flexibility. Timetables for human contact will almost disappear and we will be expected to grasp emerging and sometimes serendipitous opportunity instead of slavishly following a predetermined route.
- Physically traceable. Physical traceability is superficially extremely threatening but as we have found with tagging criminals, they prefer it to prison; so might we all be prepared to make traceability contracts in exchange for more physical flexibility.
- Cable free. Wireless networks will allow people to be mobile and to form clusters. Instead of the radical dichotomy between being alone and being in a group of 30 people in a dedicated building, we will be able to benefit from flexible activity without losing our socialisation. People will be able to form itinerant and evolving clusters.
- Multi-functional. Before broadband you could either work online or call a friend; with broadband you can do both together. This means that people will be able to share digital experiences and hold a discussion as they share, a combination of all watching the same television programme and simultaneously video-conferencing about it. There's got to be a better term than this but I haven't found it yet.
- Globally resourced. The implications of global data resourcing are enormous. On the positive side there will be a wide variety of points of view creating content that is current; but weighing and assessing such data will require considerable skill which we might summarise in the term Media Literacy.
- Potentially collaborative. I say 'potentially' in this heading because of my earlier remarks about the way our current culture views achievement.
So, now let's look at this from an educational standpoint. What technology can offer is an educational system which can provide:
- Flexible time. In principle the system could operate 7/24 but in practice you would expect it to run 18/24. This would alter teacher and pupil working hours and break down the distinction between class work and homework.
- Flexible place. My favourite core physical facility for such an enterprise would be a community centre for people of all ages. Most of our towns, and even villages, have separate schools, libraries and community centres all open and closed at different times. This is wasteful. A community centre would also get over some, though not all, of the ingrained class base in our system. You could construct 'virtual bussing'.
- Flexible numbers. The comprehensive school idea was to teach in ability sets but it was never possible to extend this to variable sized sets. You might be able to hold a simultaneous viewing of a history documentary for hundreds of students and then break into much smaller work and discussion groups. What matters is to adjust size to intensity of teaching.
- Simultaneous study and discussion. I will return to this in a moment as it seems to me to be the key feature of a converged system.
- Unlimited data. Outside the educational world unlimited data is almost taken for granted but inside its teachers continue to prepare their own handouts on standard subjects. In general a television documentary on Darwin will be better than a teacher handout cribbed from a book.
What are the implications of this?
- Teacher facilitation. Teachers will need to be facilitators rather than monopoly suppliers with a much greater pastoral role. Children will continue to need wisdom but this will no longer be bundled with data delivery so this will mean a whole new orientation.
- Modular study. Online learning can be combined with socialisation in smaller or larger groups. At the moment we tend to split socialisation and learning, particularly in secondary schools. Teachers feel that they have to deal with child problems but they are dealt with on a far more intense way by peers. Instead of the two being separate they can be combined.
- New key skills. These will include: learning to ask, learning to search and learning to work together. We say we value these skills but value will have to be reflected in their assessment.
- Media literacy. This will be essential. One of the most fascinating media phenomena of the 20th century was the blurring of genres. This is creatively stimulating but poses problems for assigning value to data.
- Peer assessment. This will be both possible and transparent; this links with the socialisation strand; as we value peer assessment in almost every sphere, why should we not promote it in schools?
- Credits. These can be built from solo work, collaborative work and socialisation modules. At last we really will have personal learning programmes.
The key to all these developments is the potential of blended learning, of watching or working and being able to talk to peers or teachers at the same time. The problem with e-learning up to now is that it has massively favoured those who are self motivated and these, by and large, are the students who are doing well out of the current, physically delivered education system. The advocacy for e-learning has been based on the idea that people can learn at their own speed which is true but rather a non-statement. Where learning has had to take place with on-screen and conferencing separate, making learning lonely, it just has not worked for those without motivation or for those who hit an intractable problem and have to log off and use a phone to try to describe an on-screen problem. The other aspect of this which is key is the ability to know where students are; whether they are at their own screen or at another screen, whether they are hanging round a shopping mall or checking into a community learning centre.
I propose that children should have agreed personal learning plans comprising:
- solo and collaborative study and creative modules
- socialisation modules
- project deadlines
- real-time skills assessment by teachers and peers.
Of course, if teachers and students can't agree a plan it must be imposed; but there does not seem to be any sense in proclaiming that the great virtue of e-learning is that people can learn at their own pace and then imposing a uniform pace. What we will find out is that where programme imposition is at its greatest the bias in the plan will have to be towards socialisation; for without it all other skills are radically devalued.
This is not a panacea for abolishing social exclusion and alienation but I believe it stands a much better chance than what we have now. The problem, as usual, with this kind of social change will not be the technology; it will be the power of vested interests.
By Kevin Carey, Director, humanITy
humanITy is a UK-based charity that specialises in ICT and social inclusion.
www.humanity.org.uk
March 2005
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