Exploring Criticism
I think there’s value to reading criticisms of the work that I do. My old boss, Jan Murphy, would say “a criticism is just a poorly worded concern.” Another perspective is that without considering the pitfalls and shortcomings of a thing, we’ll never be able to make it better.
So, yesterday I read an opinion piece that digs into Why Experiential Learning is Not As Good As Classroom Learning. There’s a lot to the article, but I think that the crux of it appears in these paragraphs:
“Almost all of us will eventually have to work for a living, and that will always require sustained ‘real-life, engaged learning.’ It will also call for immersion in interactions with average minds (like most of our own) working toward mundane ends. As educators, we should be proud that we give our students, while they are students, the opportunity to interact -- through their reading and writing, their laboratory work, and our instruction -- with what the best minds have discovered and developed within our various disciplines. This is something the ‘real world’ is unlikely to offer them regularly once they leave college.
Oscar Wilde once said (contradicting Goethe) that it is much more difficult to think than to act. The most valuable thing we can teach students is the ability to think through, with patient focus, demanding intellectual challenges. Solving a difficult linear algebra problem, working to understand an intricate passage from Descartes, figuring out how, exactly, the findings of evolutionary morphology explain the current human stride -- all these are examples of the sort of learning that we should be proud to provide our students. And not one of them features ‘real-life’ engagement.”
I wanted to hate the post.
I wanted to scream the message that I have privately saying for years: “School is not the best place to learn. The more we can make the learning in school match the learning that happens out of school, the better.”
But I don’t hate the post.
I think that the author, John Kajinsky, has a great point. There is value to pondering, to thinking, to immersing ourselves in ideas. Good Experiential Learning needs to keep that in mind.
The draft document: Community Connected Experiential Learning really emphasizes reflection and application as key ingredients to Experiential Learning. Without both elements, we run the risk of Experiential Learning becoming “job training” or “a fun field trip”. It’s by transferring knowledge from the experience to larger concepts/ideas that deep learning occurs.
Here’s an example:
“... experiential learning in the classroom means students learn through doing, such as gardening to learn botany. But it is important to note, that experiential learning goes beyond an active methodology. Experiential learning is about cultivating a keen awareness of the lesson’s meaning and relevance to the individual… it is about bringing lessons from the abstract to the concrete.
When a child asks, “Why do I have to learn math?” They are not requesting examples of how math may be relevant to a particular future job. They are asking, “Why does this matter right now? How is this relevant to my immediate reality?” This is why a major component of bringing successful experiential learning into a classroom involves making lessons immediately relevant to the student, so that they can respect the process of learning.”
Another, example happened in my board two weeks ago. Students used the experience of milling fallen trees to dig deeper into ideas around human interactions with the environment.
They used the day’s experience as a provocation to learn more about how human interactions affect the environment.
While I recognize that a “classroom only” approach would allow more time for deep thinking, it would also not present the rich provocation for learning that this experience provided. Perhaps this question ought to be asked before planning any Experiential Learning: “What learning will this experience help us to flesh out through deep reflection and meaningful application?”
Thoughts?