Good Article,

you forgot to mention the social pressures put on students, but coming from Harvard i doubt there are many students with financial, social and family pressures.

Society has shaped us to have an answer to every question, and so we will.

Fundamentally, we dont have time to engage in critical thinking unless someone is paying us.

This does not stop critical thinking, merely it is done by the passionate of their own accord or with the stability to do so, not by the wider students down rung who do it because they have to.

Society wants achievers, and students have ambition in most cases that is the reason they are there in the first place.

It many not guarantee a thing, but it does guarantee opportunity if you have selected the right course with the right supply and demand.

As the Professor reminded us, “one of the most significant extensions of our knowledge over the past 30 years is our understanding of how students learn.”

Unfortunately, within Australia at the present time there exists a shrill cadre of commentators, some of whom call themselves education “experts”, yet who remain willfully ignorant of the last 30 years of psychological research evidence about how we construct knowledge, and are determined to influence politicians and public opinion to return us to the days of stuffing heads full of soon-to-be-forgotten content.

Did you know that when former HSC students were quizzed on key facts from their exams only six weeks after sitting their HSC, most had forgotten more than 50% of the content? If we don’t equip kids with the skills and motivation to learn for themselves, then their years in school will be largely wasted. That is why the Professor is arguing for process over content.

I can honestly say that since graduating I have had no cause whatsoever to use the facts and dates I learnt about Ancient Athens during my final year of high school. Fortunately for me, what survived was an ongoing enthusiasm and thirst for researching information and attempting to distil knowledge from evidence. For this, I credit my ancient history teacher who encouraged us to debate the unsolved questions from the period (eg. who was to blame for the Peloponnesian war?) and even to watch the BBC’s production of that fictionalised history “I Claudius”.

But there are those who would happily sack my excellent ancient history teacher for being too “trendy” or “postmodern” or other such garbage terms, and replace her with a drone who wrote notes on the blackboard for us to copy. Had that occurred in my class, I would have failed the subject through boredom, and been left with nothing from the experience.

And I certainly wouldn’t have grown up to seek explanations and ask difficult questions of the people who are trying to ram their “facts” down my throat. No wonder they want to eradicate critical curricula from our schools.

Prof Wilkinson evokes memories of my time at university as a mature age student. Our course was to do with the primary extractive industries, although we aspirants had grown up spoon-fed, in suburbia.

We found the concepts baffling and some of us dropped out (your scribe considered cutting-and-running).

In fact the sticking point which concealed the road to Damascus, was our natural reluctance to drop some of our most dearly held myths. When we re-created processes for ourselves in the lab, we discovered that the world was not QUITE the way we had always pictured it to be in our minds. A truly transformative moment.

Un-learning is the unacknowledged ingredient in the getting of wisdom. It is the sine qua non, the transmutation of the alchemist himself, the re-making of the student in whole. Newton's Principia is a masterpiece of un-learning.

Un-learning, the transformation of the student, has been amputated in the service of the myth that Time = Money, two metrics which have no real existence. It's insane, self-defeating and anti-intuitive.

Poor students, always getting a hard time. They're only studying Astrophysics - it's not as if it's rocket science...

Actually, it's quite suprising that Astronomy students wouldn't know what causes the seasons. A quick look at the available courses (assuming that Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics relies on Harvards Astronomy Department for teaching) reveals that at least one course should have covered this at least in passing (http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/hco/astro/academics/courselist.html - No135 Planetary Systems Astronomy).

In order to point a telescope at the right part of the sky, an astronomer needs to understand declination and right assention as well as ecliptic planes and the axial tilt that brings about the seasons. For no other reason would an astronomer really need to what causes the seasons. It seems like the students were taught how to point the telescope without understanding why closer objects on the ecliptic plane traversed the sky differently to distant stars. How rather than why.

One would have hoped that Harvard would have lifted its game in the intervening 25 years.

I rather think the Professor is comparing apples with oranges in this piece.I don't think that basing a paper on the findings in an American university (albeit that the University concerned is regarded as one of that countries finest) empowers one to make a blanket assessment of university practices and undergraduates worldwide. I also take issue with his classification of "generalised" study courses. What on earth are "general" courses in any case? Is the Professor in fact reverting to the age-old argument between The Humanities and the Sciences?

I am doing post-grad studies in the Lit/Dram which means I have spent the last few years of my life studying the Humanities. And I do not agree at all with the picture the Professor paints of both students and their educators. As a "mature" (daft bloody title, that)student I came back to Uni with a different outlook on life to, say, a middle-class school leaver. We had different lessons both to learn and to unlearn. And we came out of the process with respect for other peoples experiences, ideas and viewpoints, as well as a thorough grounding in research methods. We were encouraged to question, to debate, to probe, to find answers and to realise exactly how little we had consumed of the vast areas of knowledge that exist.

Mate, if anyone had thrust a camera and mike in our faces at graduation and asked the same question we might not have come up with the right answer either, but by the gods, we would have had a bloody good time debating it!

Mmmmm,
A teaching and learning director at Harvard University does not realise a teacher is just a facilitator. They set up the environment so learners learn. That is about it.

I was unimpressed with aspects of my university education. It seems that the old 'lecture and tute' model is unshakeable, even as educational psychology comes ahead in leaps and bounds.

When I was doing my education degree, it always amused me that we studied the 'constructivist' theories of Piaget and Vygotsky - theories that had been around for longer than my university - in a 'transmissive' way. That is, we sat in lecture theatres and took notes as lecturers explained the need for interactive, hands-on learning. We completed multiple choice exams whose very questions condemned 'black and white' answers and favoured assessment that allowed students multiple pathways to express their learning. We were filled with facts and theories, but the experts 'teaching' us those facts and theories didn't take the time out to demonstrate them.

I think I have since become a pretty good teacher, but it took considerable trial and error - paid for by the students I was teaching - before I got there. All of which could have been avoided if we had been taught to teach in the manner in which we were being taught to teach.

Otokonoko,
You amuse me.
How do you teach those who don't want to learn?
There is not a soul on the planet that can do that.
Therefore teaching begins by having empathy with the student and facilitating his environment and befriending him whereby he begins to realise that it is to his advantage that he needs to learn.
Now is that a teacher? Do teachers do that?
No, they would be tossed out of school fro getting too close to students and may be even sexual harrassment.
The person who empathises is someone who cares for the wholistic person.
And you won't find anyone who cares in teaching.

Glen,

I'm not sure how your post relates in any way at all to what I have written - apart from the statement that I think I have become a pretty good teacher. And I stand by that. Most of my students would, too.

As for the claim that nobody in teaching cares, I am a bit confused. If I don't care, I am not sure why I put in countless unpaid hours helping students to improve their work. I'm not sure why I am often still in the staffroom at midnight preparing lessons to engage my more disenchanted students. And I'm not sure why, when I am at work at midnight, I am seldom alone. Apparently all of us selfish teachers are doing this for our own benefit?

Maybe you have never seen it, but I have seen a whole class - lumped together because they are 'challenging' - turn around over the course of a year and get involved in their lessons, complete their assessment and turn their Es into Cs or better. I'm not sure that anyone but the selfish, uncaring classroom teacher can take the credit for that.