Singularity

There was a television programme on recently that followed a group of schoolchildren as they took part in a project to learn all about fireworks. Clearly this is an interesting subject for most children but what was fascinating was the fact that they used this single project to learn about a whole range of, what we traditionally call, “disciplines” – from physics to design, via computers.

The programme showed up a few interesting things. Firstly, and most interestingly, that almost anything can be learnt through the in-depth pursuit of a single subject. It makes me wonder just how far learning could go along this route. It also highlighted how far away this approach was from the way that we’re all normally taught. Lastly, it was interesting to see a teacher (I think he was a chemistry teacher) embarking on a journey himself.

The web is changing learning. There is almost an unlimited range of knowledge at children’s fingertips now and this shift has the potential to cause a leap from the old, compartmentalised way of learning to a new, complex system that allows for boundless exploration. But what is this educational future going to look like?

A couple of years ago I studied, for a short while, with a graphic designer who had gone to art school in Leipzig, Germany. He had spent a whole year of his education drawing, and re-drawing all the letters of a single typeface. What seems like a ridiculously narrow focus was, according to him, an incredible learning experience. Through this activity he had developed craft and learnt about all the important elements of design like composition, contrast and line.

This way of learning contrasts sharply with the self-driven, “surfing” education that the internet might draw us into, if we’re not careful. What we need in the face of such educational possibilities is a sense of purpose, a singularity of vision. And here is where things can really change for the better. My school experiences seem to share a lot with Naomi’s. After all, we did go to school at about the same time. I imagine, however, that our experiences are pretty similar to most people’s. The idea of school seems to be that there is a basic set of Things We Need to Know.

Things We Need to Know seems to have an unspoken hierarchy. At the top we have maths and science, followed by languages and humanities and then any kind of artistic pursuit. If you can know a bit of all of these then the school’s job is done. Most importantly, you don’t need to know why you need to know these things. I know that Naomi had a terrible time trying to get to the bottom of why she needed to learn calculus. It’s actually pretty useful if you want to be an economist or a physicist, but it’s not that relevant to most things.

So this is where my school went wrong. It’s not very useful for children to be told that they need to know certain things because that’s just the way it is. How is anyone supposed to inspire children when they can’t even get across the fact that algebra helps you to work out things you don’t know? This is the purpose of algebra. It seems logical, then, to demand a school system that removes the barriers between subjects, that gets across why it’s good to learn things, and that uses exciting, real-world projects (like the fireworks one) as a framework for the infinitely complex learning experiences that are available to us. Perhaps teachers will learn something too.

Tweet it