Four Themes in New Education and Ivan Illich Was Right

Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue's responsibility until it engulfs his pupils' lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. We hope to contribute concepts needed by those who conduct such counterfoil research on education--and also to those who seek alternatives to other established service industries.—Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, 1971

NEA - a venture capital firm (New Enterprise Associates and not the National Education Association) just released a short analysis of key trends in education written by Joe Sakoda, a partner of the firm.

US K-12 students consistently lag behind their peers internationally. There is a debt of $1 trillion carried by higher ed graduates in the US. Networks and falling delivery costs for devices (pads and tablets) coupled with rising expectations for education worldwide have shifted the market for education.

The NEA paper suggests a significant market opportunity and new (or emphasized) mandates for brick and mortar institutions. Four key trends identified are:

1. Disappearing classroom walls via networked and mobile media move education delivery from a broadcast to an interactive model.
2. Democratizing Educational Content high quality educational elements from organizations like Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ and others.
3. Learning from Big Data Analytics gives schools an ability to see "what's really going on" using the tools of Internet commerce. "Using platforms such as Desire2Learn, administrators can aggregate learning analytics at the school district, state, or even national level, enabling best practices and insights to be shared among stakeholders. The State of Tennessee recently demonstrated the power of Desire2Learn’s statewide predictive analytics, lowering their annual dropout rate by 25% across 45 university campuses by looking at historical student data and identifying opportunities for faculty and administrators to intervene. "
4. Transforming Local Campuses to Global Institutions "Chinese citizens spend 3.5 times more of their disposable income on education than Americans on a percentage basis. The U.S., particularly in higher education, is home to the most respected learning institutions on the planet, and the emerging markets have seemingly insatiable demand to access it. More than one million students have registered for free for online classes through Coursera, which partners with more than 30 leading institutions like Stanford, Penn, and Michigan." The vast majority of these students are from outside the US.

Worth consideration. Read the full article: A Crisis in Education is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Note: Ivan Illich developed very similar principles back in the 1960s and 70s. Mike Glodo (the writer here) had this take back in 2007, Thank You Ivan Illich , and an earlier piece Convivial Systems: Broadband, Ivan Illich, and Architecture from 2005. In my opinion, if you are not aware of Ivan Illich's work, especially Deschooling Society  you're not hip education-wise.

Network Based Language Learning: Crowdsource Model

Learning From a Native Speaker, Without Leaving Home

By ANNE EISENBERG

Published: February 17, 2008

If you can’t manage a trip abroad to learn a foreign language, the Internet and a broadband computer connection may do the job, too.

Commentary: Trend O'Rama!

One of the challenges of learning the foreign language becomes the available time to practice, and to a great extent learning the agility required for fluency.

"LiveMocha (livemocha.com), for example, is a free site where members can tackle 160 hours of beginning or intermediate lessons in French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Hindi or English. There is no charge for tutoring; instead, members tutor one another, drawing on their expertise in their own native language."

The "technology" has great potential (and testimonials from its users) and solves problems of time, location, and costs. Expect with time that these services will have certifications; institutions might well consider how to interoperate with these networked educational programs and leverage the resources offered.

Over time, both "real" video and improving audio will continue to enhance the "being there" experience (referred to as telepresence). For the shy, virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) will be used to shield identities (as well as promise French instruction from, say, Pepé Le Pew).

Thank You Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich, founder of Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC)and author of many essays of ethical pondering and proscriptive advice in education (Deschooling Society, for example) anticipated the deconstruction and ubiquity of informational systems as resource webs.

"Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends on knowing that secret; that secrets can be known only in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags. New educational institutions would break apart this pyramid. Their purpose must be to facilitate access for the learner: to allow him to look into the windows of the control room or the parliament, if he cannot get in by the door. Moreover, such new institutions should be channels to which the learner would have access without credentials or pedigree--public spaces in which peers and elders outside his immediate horizon would become available."

"Educational resources are usually labeled according to educators' curricular goals. I propose to do the contrary, to label four different approaches which enable the student to gain access to any educational resource which may help him to define and achieve his own goals:

1. Reference Services to Educational Objects-which facilitate access to things or processes used for formal learning. Some of these things can be reserved for this purpose, stored in libraries, rental agencies, laboratories, and showrooms like museums and theaters; others can be in daily use in factories, airports, or on farms, but made available to students as apprentices or on off hours.

2. Skill Exchanges--which permit persons to list their skills, the conditions under which they are willing to serve as modelsfor others who want to learn these skills, and the addresses at which they can be reached.

3. Peer-Matching--a communications network which permits persons to describe the learning activity in which they wish to engage, in the hope of finding a partner for the inquiry.

4. Reference Services to Educators-at-Large--who can be listed in a directory giving the addresses and self-descriptions of professionals, paraprofessionals, and free-lancers, along with conditions of access to their services. Such educators, as we will see, could be chosen by polling or consulting their former clients."

"I will use the words "opportunity web" for "network" to designate specific ways to provide access to each of four sets of resources. "Network" is often used, unfortunately, to designate the channels reserved to material selected by others for indoctrination, instruction, and entertainment. But it can also be used for the telephone or the postal service, which are primarily accessible to individuals who want to send messages to one another. I wish we had another word to designate such reticular structures for mutual access, a word less evocative of entrapment, less degraded by current usage and more suggestive of the fact that any such arrangement includes legal, organizational, and technical aspects. Not having found such a term, I will try to redeem the one which is available, using it as a synonym of "educational web."

"What are needed are new networks, readily available to the public and designed to spread equal opportunity for learning and teaching."

Illych began the work which comprised "Deschooling Society" in 1967, and finalized the published work after discussions in Cuernavaca at Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC) in November, 1970.

Now that's futurism. After 37 years, reality starts lining up with the vision.

I've relied upon Illych's "big ideas" in crafting my own educational path after attending CIDOC in 1974. Later, I returned to Illych's thoughts in developing technology adoption "models" for telecommunications clients and financial companies who needed to deal with what was apparent chaos but in fact celebration of the access and flow of information.

Thank you, Ivan Illych.