Crisis, Whose Crisis?

Posted on | February 7, 2008 | 2 Comments

George Siemens points to an interesting item from Peter Tittenberger – Crisis, What Crisis? – in which he casts doubt on the ‘crisis’ in education invoked by so many at the present time. He doesn’t get any real sense of impending crisis from universities, from Government, and most tellingly, from students.

He writes:

“Maybe the arguments are right and we need a revolution in education – but the arguments aren”t coming from many instructors, educational administrators, governments, and most tellingly not from students or their parents.”

On the other hand, Greg Whitby, in a comment on my blog today (in response to a post that I wrote on his piece Relevancy or Retention), is very clear that:

“The biggest challenge we face [in education] is not literacy levels, data analysis or professional development – it is relevancy. Young people are dis-engaging at increasingly alarming rates. I know that Stephen Heppel says a similar thing and he is right. Schooling has to be a part of living, not apart from living.”

Of course, the disengagement of young learners today from their formal education is different in kind to what happened when the baby-boomer generation were revolting in the 60s and 70s – today’s young people certainly do not seem interested in taking to the barricades. But that should not fool us into thinking that all is well. Peter, I believe, understates the problem when he writes:

“But has it reached the ears of students? Are they lobbying the government or occupying the president’ offices demanding better teaching, a revised curriculum, or more use of technologies. Maybe some are quietly unsatisfied, but the majority of student activism is centered on money – the cost of tuition, books, ancillary fees, and student loans seem to be the focus of the student agenda.”

So, are students merely ‘quietly unsatisfied’ or are they disengaging in droves?

Technorati Tags: george siemens, greg whitby, peter tittenberger, crisis>, relevancy

Category: education, government, higher education

Comments

2 Responses to “Crisis, Whose Crisis?”

Greg Whitby
February 11th, 2008 @ 5:14 am

Crises are manufactured to detrac tfrom effort on the really substantive issues. Try this: Recent media coverage in Australia over the last few days has been on the “discovery” that literacy and numeracy skills have not really increased in Australia since the 1950s! This has led to the usual suspects emerging from where ever they live and say that we need to 1. be tougher, have more tests ( for teachers too) get teachers to work harder and even spend more money.
All this does in hide the need for intelligent debate. It is a dialogue that has to start with questions like, “what does it mean to be literate in today’s world. Lets get to answers to this and we’ll really make a difference in schooling
Judy O'Connell
February 21st, 2008 @ 8:58 am

For my money you can’t go past listening to the students – and what better place to listen to the reflective converstiontion about learning than to visit the Student 2.0 blog! http://students2oh.org/ Just let the silent majority speak up! and things just might be sorted!