“Methods of instruction in education systems around the world tend to create the impression that “knowledge” consists of a series of propositions whose nature and content are definitely fixed and can be ascertained from the relevant text-books.” – Sir William Ivor Jennings
While most of the countries are battling the second and third waves of Covid-19 some have started to plan mainly for post-pandemic future of their healthcare and education systems.
The shortcomings and weaknesses of healthcare systems of developed countries even, were exposed with all the details so that fixing them will not be difficult if the respective governments choose to do so.
Education systems all over the world had to switch over to “distance” mode almost overnight. Since there is no way of knowing when the pandemic will end most of the countries decided to continue school and university education online even if they didn’t have the infrastructure or the expertise to do that.
The rationale behind such decisions mainly was the consideration of the time not being in school as a waste. That kind of thinking assumes that one cannot learn or improve one’s knowledge if one is not enrolled in a school or a university.
That would then go against the concept of “life-long learning” unless one decides to stay in school throughout one’s life. Online education systems, of course, will be able to keep the “education machine ”running that will produce certificate holders at different levels which has become essential in the production process of human capital needed to run the economy, without any disruption.
People have experienced a lot of problems even in developed countries where an average middle class household has no difficulty in providing a laptop or a smart phone for each child in the household and paying for the internet services and son.
Countries such as Sri Lanka have students who would have to walk a few kilometres or even climb a tree to get to an area where the phone signal is strong enough to login to the lessons.
But it will be the same examination they would have to face as any other student taking that same course. Even in universities we have students who have been mentally traumatised since they couldn’t get their answer scripts uploaded in time and there are no inbuilt support systems to address such mental issues and after effects. The issue of plagiarism during examinations and assignments is also present. There are all types of software for monitoring or supervising examinations too, but they can create even more problems as the administrators of the Dartmouth College, an Ivy League university in the USA, found out recently.
It was Sir Ivor Jennings, the first Vice Chancellor of the current university system of Sri Lanka, who said: “learning does not cease when one “graduates”. In fact, the very name implies that he has merely taken a step.
There are, as again the name implies, “degrees” of learning. Undergraduates have not even taken the first step; “bachelors” are young men and women who have taken the first step but are still serving an apprenticeship;
“Masters” have learned enough to instruct others, but still are really not learned like “Doctors”; and doctors are still members of the university engaged in the pursuit of knowledge.”
Degree
He said that a very learned one may never satisfy any of the formal requirements needed to obtain a degree, stressing the fact that some of the most learned teachers have never had a degree and some of the “Doctors” are not particularly learned.
Degrees in the technical sense are not that important, though they are helpful in providing an incentive to students and a rough classification for prospective employers. Since Sri Lanka is celebrating the centenary of the establishment of the Ceylon University College this year, it seems even more appropriate for Sri Lankans to perhaps look back at the vision Sir Ivor Jennings had for our education system.
He has said that: “the “education” which consists in receiving propositions doled out by instructors, learning them more or less accurately, and representing them with a sufficient degree of approximation to satisfy the examiners is a depressing and not very useful occupation.
Learning in the true sense, seeking to understand the meaning and the sources of ideas, is a stimulating mental exercise.”
Learner’s mental state and motivation as well as external and intrinsic reinforcements, all have a significant impact on the process. Even if one observes, imitates and models something one may not learn it. Subsequent studies show that, attention, retention, reproduction and motivation are four main characteristics a learner should have in order to learn an observed behavior. Even though “student centered” or “learner centered” teaching and learning methodologies have come to surface in the late twentieth century, they have always been in practice prior to that too.
Psychologists such as B.F. Skinner, Jean Piaget and John Dewey have contributed immensely in this process of understanding how humans learn and have often described the importance of learner having the proper mental state and the motivation in order to get all the necessary receptors open so that the new information is received without any obstructions created by the existing knowledge and the frame of mind.
Current education systems do not seem to place any importance to any of those. In fact current online education processes have no room to even consider the students’ frame of mind. Students are also, more often than not, considered as extensions of the very machines they use to communicate with the teacher.
Since the server capacities and the band width are limited the whole teaching/learning process goes on with cameras switched off. Teachers and students do not see each other.
Therefore, non-verbal communication has become irrelevant in this transaction process. It has even become fashionable to ask the students to “think out of the box” while the system is in the bigger box of what everyone else is doing.
What if the system went out of the box and said, schools and universities will not continue their regular programs during this time, at least until a fair and feasible way can be implemented. Do not worry about any examinations, instead the students are required to read, watch and listen and learn (age appropriately, of course) everything they can learn about the pandemic, the history of similar pandemics, scientific information about viruses, different ways to control such pandemics, what type of indigenous treatments that can be useful, how other countries are handling it, what types of problems different countries are facing due to this pandemic, what are the roles and responsibilities of policymakers, healthcare professionals, educators, law enforcement and so on, all the way down to oneself?
Neighbourhood
What if the students were asked to volunteer their time in helping out the people who need help in their neighbourhood in whatever the way they can, starting from their own parents’ efforts of making a living? University students can teach schoolchildren in the neighbourhood some subjects they do not usually learn in the school perhaps. Of course, once one is “out of the box” the choices are limitless.
So, what if they didn’t go to school for two years, if they apply themselves to learn whatever they can and through that if they learned about different countries, different political systems, science behind the viruses and vaccines, how to be useful in helping to combat the pandemic, and about the difficulties their neighbours are facing, being compassionate towards others, the true meaning of being a global citizen instead of climbing trees to stare at a screen for hours? Would they be less educated and therefore be damaged goods?
The writer has served in higher education sector as an academic over twenty years in the USA and fourteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected]