Tag Archives: Education

What’s the use of school?

I was a very good student up until high school. I was pretty smart and could coast through classes with little effort and get an “A.” That is what is expected of a student isn’t it? I got an “A” so my job was complete. Did I learn everything? Well, I did in subjects that I cared about, but I didn’t really care about the grade in those classes.

Things changed when I got to college. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with my life, but since I had done so well in high school, I took a bunch of advanced classes to start off my year. Well the whole experience of college was much more exciting than advanced classes, and I was able to coast through the first round of test. I just let it ride the rest of the semester. It wasn’t until the end of the school year that I realized that I had enough knowledge of the subjects to get me through the first round of test, but not much more after that. Grades plummeted, and I was at a crisis in my life. For all of my life I had been pursuing a grade (with little effort), and was happy with that. Didn’t really have much of a life so the effort wasn’t really much of a problem. Then I was in a place where the rest of my life was more important than school, and school suffered.

It wasn’t until much latter that I got my life back on track. I found a field that I was really interested in and started working for the local PBS station. There was so much to learn, but I willingly put in the time to do the work. Not only willingly, but passionately. I picked up as much as I could from the people around me, read books, trade magazines, researched everything that I could on the web, and tinkered around with real equipment. I look back and am amazed at what I was able to learn (and am still learning everyday).

I went back to college part time while I was working at the TV station, and I did a lot better. I was taking a few classed in the field I had chosen, and I loved them. I was even able to force myself through the general electives that I was taking. It was tons of work, but I was learning a lot. Then I ran out of courses that related to TV, and I quickly lost momentum. I still have eight elective courses left, but not much desire to go back and take them.

So, why is it that I will spend sixteen hours a day working on something that I find interesting and useful, but have difficulty with the easy (boring) classes? It is because I am a needs based learner. I talked about this in my interview over in Qatar. There is so much stuff to learn and when I am faced with a new challenge, I always put in the work to learn the material. I am not one of those students that learns for the sake of learning. I need to use it for something.

That model doesn’t really fit in to today’s educational system. I read a passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I think that I would do really well in a place that can help me to learn what I want to learn with out the need for grades and degrees. I am more than happy to take industry specific seminars, online training classes and the like.

It might seem unlikely that I have worked for most of my adult life for universities (and just got a new job with one), but I do love the environment. There is something energizing about students that want to learn. Some, not many, have the same passion for the field as I do, and I love helping them learn as much as I can. I am not usually in an official teaching position, but more of a mentoring role for people who want to know. I was doing projects and was willing to work with students who wanted to learn. I think that they get a lot out of a real world experience. I know that is how I learn, and I hope that I can bring a little of that to my students.

Ken Robinson on Creativity in Education

Education is so important to us as a people. It is a shame that, most of the time, we do it so poorly. I have always felt like I wanted to do something about this, but I wasn’t sure what to do. Recently, with the birth of my first child, it has even become more important. What I teach her will have a great effect on her life and happiness. That is what makes it so very important to do it right. I am doing my research now, because even though it seems like she isn’t doing much of anything, she is learning. She is taking everything in an forming her first thoughts about the world.

One of the things that I ran across was a little presentation done for the TED conference by Ken Robinson. He talks about how the origins of the modern education system where to teach people how to become good factory workers. Creativity is smashed out of our brains at an early age. I am hoping to avoid that with Joy. I hope that she always tries new things, and is brave enough to make mistakes. It is only by making mistakes, that we can be truly creative.

Here’s the video. Give it a watch.