What is weighing down learning?

by Harold Jarche

Harold dug up a post I wrote two years ago and highlighted the baggage the current school system is.

However, I would like to take issue with his use of "learning" in his post title.

"Education system" is NOT the same as "learning". In today's education system, our children are learning, albeit not necessarily during "school hours" and not the kind of skills we (here "we" means adults or society) like them to learn. Learning IS an innate ability of human. It is not whether a child has learnt or not. The problem is about "what, when, where and how".

I have left out "who and why" in the above. "Who" is obvious. We are talking about the children - oops, everyone actually because we need life-long learning.

I don't want to ponder "why" we need to learn. It has been covered by too many people and I have no expertise in it. I would rather apply "why" to each of the "what, when and where". Why *we* want learners to learn "what", at "when" and "where"?

When and only when the above questions have answers, education system would be able to address "how" to achieve under the economic and social constraints.

Unfortunately, we do not start from a blank state. There is an existing education system. Can it evolve to the ideal state? Or it is necessary to have a revolution in order to achieve that state?

Again, I have more questions than answers!

[cross posted to Random Walk in Learning]