After reading several chapters in Will Richardson’s book I cannot help but think that the final nail is soon to be put in the coffin of institutional education. A hundred and fifty or so years ago there were no set perimeters regarding the education of youth in America. Every community educated their children as they desired, which usually involved a one room school house that taught the basics before the children accepted an agarian life. Then the industrial age came and education became a systematic endeavor in which children entered a regimented program and responded to bells and other stimuli that prepared them for a life of usefulness in the industrial complex. Today, we desperately cling to this mode of education while our children are slowly forcing a more enlightened and Socratic form of learning on the system.
While we seek to implement doctrine and procedures from a time forgotten the student’s we force these doctrine’s on do the bare minimal to pass our classes but tend to get their information, and as a result their actual education, from outside of the classroom. They live in a netherworld of electronic information known as the Web. A place where information flows at the speed of light and mere humans are tasting what it may be like to have omniscient powers. Every question answered at a whim. However, is this a positive; after all, is not the teachers role that of a gatekeeper.
Not necessarily, a teacher should be more of a guide in the image of a Socrates. The questions are presented, the unused brain tissue is tickled, and the student seeks. This is the era of education we are entering. We no longer need programmable individuals to fill a position in the anthill for the benefit of all ants, we need thinkers and creators. The web gives us the perfect tool to create these adults.
As Richardson writes in his book blogs and wikis provide ample opportunity to develop this critical thinking. After all, a student simply making a journal entry that a teacher may or may not read will probably give the minimal effort; but a student making an entry that their peers, parents and strangers may not only read but respond to is sure to think more critically and thoughtfully. This is even more true when the student deals with a response or correction. However, as Richardson points out, the major concern for the above educational tools is the trustworthiness of the information.
It is incredible that such vast amounts of human knowledge are at the finger tips of all humanity, but one need only flip between several news stations to see that this information is sometimes filtered and delivered quite differently. Much of what a student will have access to may be mere opinion or conjecture, some may be completely erroneous. So the question must be asked, are we creating a more educated populace whose knowledge is siphoned from the wisdom of the world or are we creating a more ignorant populace simply relaying international gossip as knowledge?
I think this is the most significant role of the modern teacher seeking to implement these tools in today’s classroom and the core issue when deciding how to utilize them and what role the teacher will have in guiding the student’s quest for knowledge.
