Teachers' belief: The Objective of Education Is Learning only

This statement may need reiteration at times as appropriate. But it is not a new statement. Wharton is not set up to provide employment to some teachers and associated employees. People are not sending their children to schools and colleges for giving salaries to teachers. Neither teachers nor administrators believe that education exists for teaching.

The purpose and objective of education is learning by the student or learner. How should a society organize its learning process? Should it be mass education? Or should it be home based customized one to one education? We made certain decisions in this regard so far based on our cumulative experience of thousands of years and if our researchers come out with new insights, we as a community that believes in science and progress of science stand ready to modify our systems. But the general presumption that teachers believe that objective of education is teaching is totally a false assumption or postulate to begin with.

The current education system did deliver results to a large extent. It is an effective system. Is it an efficient system? Can its efficiency be improved? Even effectiveness of systems can be improved when the objective is a broad one like learning of children. The researchers have to identify gaps in the current systems or knowledge base and then come out with theoretical conjectures that solve the identified problem of lack of theory. The theoretical conjecture is to be tested empirically for propagating it as a scientific theory. Persons who are not researchers but want to propose policy prescriptions have to go through the relevant research findings and use them to develop their policy prescription.

Dubbing everything existing as an ineffective and inefficient is to insult all those Wisemen on whose shoulders Newton said he had stood and observed things to get a much better picture.

We believe in improvement and continuous improvement and we want ideas on how to improve education at every level. But this article does not provide balanced view and does not identify the facts related to the strengths and weaknesses of the current education system at various levels like beliefs, attitudes, behavior and systems (of parents, children, educators and administrators) and come out with appropriate suggestions based on the facts and related explanations.


By: K V S S Narayana Rao, Professor, NITIE, Mumbai
Sent: 02:52 AM Fri Aug.22.2008 - IN

Comment written in knowledge@wharton article

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2032

'The Objective of Education Is Learning, Not Teaching'
Published: August 20, 2008 in Knowledge@Wharton
In their book, Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on
Track, authors Russell L. Ackoff and Daniel Greenberg point out that
today's education system is seriously flawed -- it focuses on teaching rather
than learning.