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teach a man to fish…
By audhill | August 2, 2007
David Warlick’s got a good point. He talks about independent learners and preparing students for their futures. And he’s right. Learning how to be an independent learner is not just an essential skill… it’s the essential skill. David talks about it in terms of preparing students for a future we can not describe. Okay….
But from another point of view, we’ve never been able to describe the future. Our inability isn’t because technology has changed the landscape. We already know that broad patches of the future will look very similar to the present and that many of the jobs that will be needed in the future are nearly identical to ones that exist today (see Tom Hoffman). Rather, every person travels their own road, and no education system, no matter how advanced, can provide for every individual trajectory. What David refers to is a central truth about learning and teaching that has always been true. It is not more true today, it is just true like it’s always been. A good education prepares you to be a learner and provides you with a foundation that you can build upon. It’s an age old wisdom, not a new event: Most of what you need to learn you will teach yourself.
Interpreting what it means to be an independent learner varies among educators and there is disagreement also about how and when to encourage independence. Most responsible educators would agree that independence is developmental. That is to say, a third grader has need of a different sort of independence than a tenth grader whose needs are different from a college sophomore, whose needs are different from a midlife adult. In the earliest years, teachers use the dependence of children to guide them toward learning that will be important later. As the child develops, the first type of teaching must be literally dismantled so that the student can replace the external teacher with an internal one. In a sense, it is a paradox. The form of learning that is correct for one time must be unlearned to make way for a new understanding. Yet, both are correct in their time.
I teach the middle years… the place where dependence begins to be dismantled. My job is to help 7th grade students reframe my purpose in their lives and to help them to build the confidence in their own understanding. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have information to impart or that it is time for them to determine the full landscape of what they need to learn. My job is break down their dependance on an outside expert and evaluator who always tells them which way to go on a problem, whether something is good, or how long it should be. It’s a frustrating experience for many of them; not surprisingly, those who are motivated by grades have the worst of it. They are not interested in anything except the shortest route to their goal. The A: where is it and what do you want me to do for it? It’s a difficult lesson learning how and when to listen to and take your own counsel, to find things out for yourself. And, in fact, few of us learn it all at once. I suspect that most of us learn it many times over during a lifetime. The point is that if you are going to be the architect of your own life, you can’t be a dependent learner who expects to be spoonfed every bit of learning you get.