Schooling vs Learning

I was at the always-amazing ULearn conference in Christchurch last year and got asked to do a EdTalk.  These short video clips are done by the good folk at Core Education, where they essentially just sit you in front of a video camera and let you rabbit on about education and your own educational perspectives for a few minutes.  My buddy Jane Nicholls was working the camera and she kept telling me to just talk about whatever I wanted to talk about. When she sat me down and said “go” I still had absolutely no idea what to say. I just did a brain dump and quite literally blurted out some of the stuff I was thinking about at the time.

CC BY 4.0 Schooling vs Learning by Chris Betcher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

7 Replies to “Schooling vs Learning”

    1. Funnily enough, I do have one particular female friend who has told me that I have a Paul McCartney resemblance for years, but she’s the only one. I think we all look a little like other people in some way.

      I usually get the Russell Crowe thing… in fact I blogged about that nearly 4 years ago. When I was living in Canada I got it a lot, but I’m sure it was the accent as much as anything.

      When we were at the Great Ocean Road last month we took a helicopter flight over the Twelve Apostles. The guy we shared the chopper with was a Korean guy who actually said to me as we waited in line, “You a-rook a-rike a-RussellCrowe”. Which made me laugh. I nearly replied, “That’s funny, because you rook-a-rike-a Jackie Chan”. But I didn’t. 🙂

  1. Thank you Chris for insight. You’ve articulated what so many educators feel as they try to really teach kids rather than school them in accordance with “policy”.

    I’m only half way through my M.Teach (Secondary) with 4 weeks of prac under my belt, but the tension between schooling and learning, and the frustration that forward-thinking educators experience inside the system, is all hitting my like a tonne of bricks. And it also seems like we’re going backwards since the advent of standardised testing.

    I don’t imagine that a system overhaul will happen any time soon, but the least I can do is be as creative as I can with the 60min blocks of time I have with my students. And if that means I have to find ways of working around the system then that’s fine with me. My mother always said I was born to be a pirate.

  2. Hi Amy.

    It’s good to hear that as a preservice teacher you’ve already identified that this tension exists between “schooling” and “learning”. There are many working in education that either don’t realise it, or who do realise it and just tow the line because it’s easier that way. I can’t imagine going to work every day and doing things that I was philosophically opposed to, so hopefully just the fact that you are aware that schooling does not always equal learning is a pretty good start towards long term change!

    Good luck with the pracs, and thanks for the comment.

    Chris

  3. Trouble is once you realize that our education system is strapped into boxes, you just can’t teach it that way anymore, at least not with any heart. I still feel guilty when I create ‘unschooly’ learning opportunities, but why should I? I’m struggling with this thought while planning for my new role as coordinator of learning enhancement this year. I want to provide authentic, student-driven learning experiences, not just add-on, extra work.

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