On Learning Letter #2
Transformational learning is dependent on finding the magic.
Dear fellow wanderer across the transformational learning landscape,
I seem to be surrounded by talk about AI. From the hoard of late-middle-aged men in designer jeans and blazers at the airport clutching their beer and marvelling at what Chat GPT can tell them, to my on line feed buzzing with doom and gloom hysterics, to teachers I work with wondering about how and whether to make use of it, it’s certainly doing its best to grab my attention.
I have very little to say. Beyond a couple of fiddles with Chat GPT, and listening to a couple of perspectives on podcasts, I’ve no experience of it. All I’ve picked up is this general tenor of wonderment mixed with fear. And I guess, when I think about it, it’s the reaction of wonderment that has me worried.
Yes, it’s kinda impressive how AI can stitch things together. Can we call that intelligence though? Suppose we have a kid do the same sort of thing people are asking Chat GPT to do - aside from the speed, would we really be impressed with what they turn in, which after all is just a hashing together of what is already known?
If this counts as intelligence, well … it’s a very constrained definition of it. And it’s not exactly the kind of intelligence I’d wish to represent the peak of my kids’ intellectual powers. Is this wonderment perhaps more about a marvelling at ‘our’ cleverness in what ‘we’ve’ created? There’s the real danger - in being swept away by an enthusiastic illusion of intelligence that does nothing more than reflect back at us a bland, predictable derivative of who we were. (Perhaps that’s why those designer jeans men were so enamoured of it?)
And don’t get me started on those damn Apple ski goggles.
I think it’s time we started believing in people and what they can bring a bit more, and stopped falling for the false idols of enhancement, efficiency and productivity.
We have a shot at transformational learning when …
… we look for where the magic is.
When I wrote, in this Daily Short Thought, that
“it's essential to lift our conception of a good education up off the floor of cleverness and into the clouds of awareness, interrelatedness and foresight.”
I was thinking of how proud I was when I heard about the Viking raid.
Here is a clue, I thought when I heard about it, that these teachers I’d been working with were starting to get it. The kids in this Year 5-6 class weren’t satisfied with their inquiry projects being all about research and some construction of armour. The ‘stuff’ they’d done needed some life injected into it. And so an idea was proposed by the kids and the teacher ran with it.
Those poor, unsuspecting occupants of Room 13 didn’t know what hit them.
Some people dismiss this kind of thing as fun. The learning, they think, is in the work done - the slideshows, and maybe in the armour when they’re thinking holistically. But kids can fool us when we think about learning this way. And they do it by giving us what we expect.
I’ve learned that often what we expect is lower than what they’re capable of. Why?
I think it’s because the pressure to get through content, to hit deadlines, the continual presence of assessment and the need to make/show progress, all combine to cast an inhibitory shadow that makes it more sensible to opt for the safety of what’s probable.
Unfortunately, what’s probable are the things we can lay out that we know, from experience, will get result X. And this tends to be the stuff we can control - Read this, learn that, show us how well you learned it: slideshows, armour, done. Next!
Perhaps that’s why nothing really changes year-on-year.
But that’s not all that’s possible, is it.
I bet, if the learning is even a little bit interesting, the kids in your room are becoming curious about something, their attention drawn deeper and deeper, and in doing so they’re starting to see connections as facts and ideas start to interweave. I bet, if you’re lucky, that as this process grows so does their imagination as they start to envisage where the learning can take them as they make something of it.
It’s magic, really.
But, if we’re content to stop at the slideshows and the armour, the magic show never gets past rehearsal. Eventually the kid loses touch with the light this dispositional magic brings. On the surface things might seem fine as we get reflected back at us what we expected, but inside, where it really counts …
Bring on the magic show I say. Let the things only people can bring - attention and curiosity and imagination - wow us. When we say ok to Viking raids we’re not only letting kids have fun, we’re creating space for the magic show of learning to take centre stage.
Do that enough and you’ll end up with kids who see no end of possibilities.
Did you know …
Smartphones are harmful for kids, and you don’t have to accept them having one. But it’s easier if people around you say no too, which is what this town in Ireland did.
Pluto says
“Off leash is where I find out what’s possible in this world. Woof!!!”
Yes , belief is a powerful state. I enjoyed this. This piece made me think about your reflections on the role of beauty in education /life also.