An educational revolution

Governments are unable to initiate educational reforms because the education machinery is too vast and complex.

Educators, be they in school or higher education institutes (HEIs), simply do not want to and are incapable of change because it would involve learning a whole new set of skills, values and understandings of the new 21st century learner – hugely due to the fact that the new learner wants autonomy and does not take instruction and orders easily.

The public is reluctant to move, and are frozen to immobility because the internet is bombarding them with so many expert opinions and each touting itself as the best new 21st century education system. There is also the myth that old ways and values that were good for our forefathers should be brought back to instill old values and ethical moralities.

Industry demands new skills for new market places and emerging technologies, but want to have the chicken before the egg and still maintain that their profits cannot be touched and are reluctant to participate and catalyse educational transformations that are not their “core business”.
Experts - teachers, academics, administrators, ministry officers – already know that we have to change but simply do not want to be the first to initiate risky maneuvers that will put our heads on the chopping block, and possibly resulting in the government of the day having to face the vote-controlling public with bad news.

Clearly though, education systems have to change to meet the needs of newly evolved brains of the human race and the newly evolved demands of the 21st century. What is next?

I would propose that whatever we plan on doing, we are already out of time and we have no time to plan for changes that occur in slow steps. We need a revolution that is akin to what is happening in the Middle East, where people have taken the law into their own hands because they realise that talk leads nowhere. They are mired in environments where violence greets different ways of thinking, and where fear is used as an instrument of control.

Let us look at this proposed model of a series of steps that need to occur before we can achieve our wanted outcomes of producing students with innovative, risk taking and wise decision making behaviours. It assumes that what must catalyse the whole process is that first step of a transformed learning environment, which is pretty similar to the natural world we live in. We respond to the changes and stressors in our environment and we either evolve positively or negatively in order to survive in the transformed environment. A positive reaction enables us to survive successfully, and a negative reaction will diminish our chances of being successful.

l e a r n i n g s p a c e t r a n s f o r m a t i o n
Anytime Collective & Computational Intelligent Access
s t a k e h o l d e r s i m p a c t e d
Learners, Educators & Administrators
t r a n s f o r m e d p e r s p e c t i v e s
Intrinsic Motivations, Relevance & Meaning
b e l i e f & a c c e p t a n c e
Autonomy, Purpose & Mastery
t h o u g h t p r o c e s s e s
Creativity, Thinking and Intuition
s t a k e h o l d e r o u t c o m e s
Innovation, Risk Taking & Wise Decision Making

Assuming that this model is mostly correct, the all-important event that has to take place is the introduction of a catalyst into our learning spaces, from kindergartens to HEIs. What shape would this catalyst take?

From my perspective, the answer has to be an affordable technological tool that is intelligent, and is powered with “anytime Collective & Computational Intelligent Access” in our Learning Spaces. Figure out yourself what shape that tech tool should take and what kind of Collective and Computational Intelligence applications exist that are able to meet this need. A real dilemma, but certainly, doable solutions exist.

One of the crucial initial outcomes for a transformed learning space is the acceptance of educators for student autonomy. Educators must start accepting that in this age of the internet, learners more than ever need a life guide who will be able to help them understand the invisible rules governing the code of good human conduct. We should accept, with open arms, that we cannot compete with the internet in its ability to present data in varied and interesting ways, at the click of a button. What the internet will not be able to offer though for a very long time to come, is the ability to help learners understand values, ethics, emotional interactions, wise risk taking behaviours and the many complicated rules of relationships and teamwork.

The internet will never be able to teach young people that the hardest stage of solving problems and creating solutions in the real world is the very initial stage that deals with getting people in your team to stay motivated, focused and willing to contribute their full energies and talents to achieving sought after outcomes. It is about dealing with red tape and following vexing procedures that kill enthusiasm and spirit. These are things that only a human guide can help show and identify as the crucial intangible obstacles to everyday human accomplishments.

Educators will hopefully come to realise that they are actually giving up their roles as the providers of content to become someone who is so much more valuable to the lives of learners. In Malaysia specifically, educators have to contend with the struggle to provide learners with insights and understandings into the big picture of racial and religious acceptance, not just tolerance. We are constantly bombarded with every excuse to judge a people based on race, religion and wealth, and educators here play a crucial role to show learners that excuses are for the weak minded and bigots. There always are solutions in the real world – provided we are willing to engage with others and have the ability to make people want to engage with us.

Educators are still needed who are expert in their specialised areas, and who can provide big picture views after a long period of specialised experiences in their subject areas, living through mistakes, applications and real world implications for that specialised subject area. The internet offers a small chunk of knowledge or data, and it requires experienced guides to show relevance, meaning and possible pitfalls of that independent chunk of knowledge. The one thing I can state with confidence is that we will need educators to become very focused on communicating ideas and stimulating discussions and dialogue.

I am not proposing anything that is completely radical, and neither am I proposing something that is abstract and difficult to grasp. We are always making choices knowing the facts and sometimes knowing nothing, and those choices lead to decisions that will change our lives for the better or for the worse. This is one such circumstance. We cannot afford to adopt a wait and see attitude because right now, any country that takes a calculated risk and jumps feet first into a brand new education curriculum, will potentially have the chance to lead the world and go down in history as the new pioneers of the 21st century.