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| Geetha Shankar at the Learning Tree! |
The yawning gap between teaching and learning
has to be bridged, writes Geetha Shankar
A couple of months ago, I received an email
from a person who was recently laid off from his job. He in his early thirties
and was a participant in one of my training programmes conducted for a company.
I didn’t have direct work experience with him, and it was only a classroom
passing for a day. I called him over for
coffee and spent a couple of hours with him.
This is a pretty common occurrence–I get these types of distress calls regularly.
The new dynamics of digital, education, work,
family culture is transforming not only
the way we communicate, learn, work, live but how we think, feel, see, hear,
talk and change. We cannot afford to be
naïve and experience knee jerks to witness the job market changing. The word “Job” is a misnomer now. Because “jobs are going to be replaced d by
tasks or contracts” Philip Brown in his
book Global Auction talks how companies are slashing costs by reducing or
closing full time jobs into tasks through auctions and the lowest bid gets it.
“The youth need to get their portfolio careers and bid for contracts than apply
for jobs. Because that is where the future is.”
As days go by, I wonder and realise how
progressively the youth are transforming how they communicate, share and learn
from each other. In a nutshell they are going open. Going open is a social
Revolution according to David Price, because it represents a fundamental
challenge to the established order of things and something that cannot be
ignored. It disrupts everything and things are not going to be the same again.
In this Renaissance, the Youth stand as winners
and losers as well. Winners because they
are connected and are motivated by the easy access to ideas and information and
are better connected than ever. Barriers in learning have been dismantled and their
capacity to learn has spiraled.
And the Youth stand as losers too in this
game. The exaggerated prediction of the knowledge economy that its value will
flow in abundance, has probably turned out to be a blind faith. We have a
market flooded by unemployed graduates and learning has not led to earning nor
up-gradation of any skills. There is a
dearth of commodity jobs and innovation jobs.
Where did we go wrong? I vividly remember the endless lessons in my
school and colleges, where I was taking notes so rapidly, as my teacher wrote
on the black board or said something (before it was rubbed off or vanished from
my memory). I believed that writing down will assist my memory. It did of
course to get good grades in my exams. I mock at myself when I read Mark Twain:
“College is a place, where a professor’s
lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture notes without passing
through the brains of either”.
If we wonder sometimes why we don’t remember
what we learnt in schools and colleges, it could be because of many factors
like distraction and lack of passion etc. Learning is ultimately an act of
self-determination.
Please consider these points:
Ø Teachers can only help learners to see the relevance which drives self-motivation and how learning can make a difference in one’s life. But cannot motivate learners to learn.
Ø Engagement has to precede learning - Learners have to be in the flow to learn without being unaware of the time. Otherwise learning becomes superficial, without depth
Ø Survey shows that informal learning is more favored than formal. L L& D professionals like me would agree on the 70: 20: 10 principle. 70%gained through experience in job, 20%through coaching/ mentoring, 10% through formal structured course / syllabus
Ø Indulging in Repeated application of Knowledge is more efficient than Recalling information.
Ø Capacity to learn is also affected by our mind sets. If we conclude that our intelligence is limited because of our brains rather than effort, our capacity to learn also comes down.
As parents, educators and professionals of the
21st Century, let us start looking within ourselves and stop looking
around. We can join together to make
schools, colleges and universities an engaging place for the Youth. We can
prepare youths for life beyond formal education.
Heng Swee Keat speaks about the hats to be
worn by Educators-. They are the Hats of
an Ethical Educator, Hats of a Competent Professional, Hats of a Collaborative
Learner, Hats of a Transformational Leader, and the Hats of a Community Builder
through Service learning.
It’s time for us to rethink radically as to
how we learn, innovate at work, and reshape our education system and do what is
essential in supporting the youth to enjoy vocationally focused education and
lifelong learning in response to the societal shifts. (The author is Director-PRCI and Chairperson- YCC)
