The Science of Learning; my interest has shifted towards how do people learn and it is such a fun field to look into. From what i have read so far on learning sciences, most of the articles have their main focuses on creating such a "perfect" and conducive learning environment by listing out typical and common problems, hence blowing their brains out to think the best solutions to encounter these problems.
But rarely the authors highlighted on the very root of numerous problems within learning environment. I have my special focus on one norm question among learners; "Do we have to learn this?". Collin mentioned in his article that much of what is learned in school is never used because it is often the wrong knowledge for modern world. The keywords here are "modern world" and "wrong knowledge". Lets put aside about crappy education systems, and have our thoughts on the objective of learning. In the past, people learn something because they want to learn it with pure interest and be good at it. Thus learning occurs naturally where learners can accept, understand and transfer the knowledge they are interested in efficiently. Authenticity it is.
Meanwhile, in our very own "modern world", we have our learning goals set up wrongly. I still remember when i was 7 years old, we were asked to fill a blue form of personal details where it had ambition section with 3 columns. Realistically, 3 columns are meant for 3 different ambitions. So i wrote doctor, prime minister and architect and these careers had my best interest at that very moment. We submitted the blue form and never heard about it until then. My point here is no correlation between what learners want to learn and specific goals that was set up in the very beginning of education. I could have chose one career when i was 7 years old, for example my best interest is medical profession. My learning areas should then cover those appropriate and crucial knowledge for medical profession. This is where the term "wrong knowledge" comes into play. Student nowadays are forced by education system to learn everything to anything that so-called "eligible" policy makers think it is important. Define important.
A few parties might point out that the costs of learning only those fields that are related to the profession we have our best interest in will outweigh the benefits in terms of basic knowledge like reading, measuring etc, kill that. I would say that basic knowledge learning is one whole different story. If we would to compromise basic knowledge learning and the field we have our interests in, this would lead to generalisation of learning objective. If that is the case, what is schools and formal education system for they ask?
But rarely the authors highlighted on the very root of numerous problems within learning environment. I have my special focus on one norm question among learners; "Do we have to learn this?". Collin mentioned in his article that much of what is learned in school is never used because it is often the wrong knowledge for modern world. The keywords here are "modern world" and "wrong knowledge". Lets put aside about crappy education systems, and have our thoughts on the objective of learning. In the past, people learn something because they want to learn it with pure interest and be good at it. Thus learning occurs naturally where learners can accept, understand and transfer the knowledge they are interested in efficiently. Authenticity it is.
Meanwhile, in our very own "modern world", we have our learning goals set up wrongly. I still remember when i was 7 years old, we were asked to fill a blue form of personal details where it had ambition section with 3 columns. Realistically, 3 columns are meant for 3 different ambitions. So i wrote doctor, prime minister and architect and these careers had my best interest at that very moment. We submitted the blue form and never heard about it until then. My point here is no correlation between what learners want to learn and specific goals that was set up in the very beginning of education. I could have chose one career when i was 7 years old, for example my best interest is medical profession. My learning areas should then cover those appropriate and crucial knowledge for medical profession. This is where the term "wrong knowledge" comes into play. Student nowadays are forced by education system to learn everything to anything that so-called "eligible" policy makers think it is important. Define important.
A few parties might point out that the costs of learning only those fields that are related to the profession we have our best interest in will outweigh the benefits in terms of basic knowledge like reading, measuring etc, kill that. I would say that basic knowledge learning is one whole different story. If we would to compromise basic knowledge learning and the field we have our interests in, this would lead to generalisation of learning objective. If that is the case, what is schools and formal education system for they ask?
