In my last post, “We learn what we do”, I suggested that we take a look at what teenagers today are doing online to observe how they interact and learn from their online peers. It was suggested that teenagers today are doing the same things that workers of the future workplace need to do according to studies and even today’s employers. The most prominent aspect perhaps of the teenagers’ activities online is that much of it is a social interaction.

Teenagers enjoy the social interaction that takes place online with their friends. However, this interaction is not totally a waste of time. Teenagers are able to connect with their friends at almost all times of the day. Even if one is not around, one is able to leave messages online which can then be picked up later when we come online.

These teenagers are able to find like-minded souls who can chat about the same interests. They do so through social networking platforms like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Twitter, Multiply and others. They share their interests whether in music or photographs through these same platforms. They egg on one another, they lavish praise or even trade comments or even insults on these platforms. They exchange information about their pet interests and about their activities and about what is hot too. In short, they socialize conveniently on the Net and while they socialize a lot of collaboration takes place, and through that learning takes place too.

However, I am not suggesting that all learning that is being done in school should then go online and into social networking platforms or the chat medium. The important point or lesson perhaps to be learnt from the example I have given above is that a lot of learning takes place among teenagers today on the Net. The manner in which they learn requires them to acquire the very skills that is sought in the workforce of the future. Skills like collaboration, communication, seeking information, reasoning and other vital skills of the workforce of the future is evident in the social interactions of the teenagers online. But they are currently almost absent in the typical classroom environment of a school. Is it a wonder then that many teenagers find school such a chore and a very unexciting place to be?

It is very much in the hands of teachers and school administrators to try and effect a change in the classroom climate so that learning takes place in an environment more in tune with the requirements of the future workforce. We cannot expect students of today to be the effective workforce of tomorrow by forcing them to sit down and listen most of the time. Clearly the social dynamics under which learning takes place must undergo a change.

Teachers today may not be able to make that change without some assistance. Teachers tend to teach the way they were taught. Teachers tend to also think of literacy that their charges need to acquire as the same literacies that was relevant for them when they were students. This paradigm needs to be changed and it can only occur first, by creating an awareness among teachers and school administrators of the need to change the way teaching and learning takes place.

Secondly, teachers must be given the training that is necessary for them to take a step back in their role as teachers and allow more of the work of learning to be done by their students themselves. In Singapore, the Ministry of Education has been promoting this “Teach Less, Learn More” approach in schools. Teachers must learn to be comfortable to design lessons that require students to explore, collaborate, use abstract thinking skills and even ask questions of their own. If these skills take place in the classroom it should be the product of conscious design on the part of the teachers, and not because of some lucky coincidence. Students must be given the opportunity to rehearse their roles at the future workplace in today’s schools.

Thirdly, a serious re-assessment of learning is required too to reflect this changed paradigm. The over emphasis on high stakes examinations as the main method of deciding who has learnt what is in need of an overhaul. Certainly there will be a place for written tests and examinations but there should be more use of alternative modes of assessment in the school environment to better reflect the way the “new” teaching and learning is to be done.

Schools everywhere today, must take up the challenge to prepare their students to acquire these skills or literacies. Singapore has seen the need for such a change despite its educational system being often lauded as a sound one. Schools in neighboring countries, Indonesia or the Philippines must also be alert to the need for these changes, and perhaps even more so before they get too immersed in high stakes examinations school systems because high stakes examinations system can be truly addictive and hard to give up when one realizes that it only gives illusory highs.

When I was a consultant for a school in Bandung, Indonesia, a parent came up to me for a short chat. His children had been raised in Australia and were adjusting to the school they were in. He told me that his daughter had asked him why she had had to learn the Sundanese language and whether it would be useful later when she joins the workforce. He said that he told his daughter that he did not think it was important to learn Sundanese. He went on to say that there were many things that she had to learn in school that was not important for later employment. He told me, almost apologetically, that he had always tried to be honest with his children. I knew he was right then because here was a man who has been out working in the real world, and he knew that much of what is taught in schools today would have very little relevance to the real world.

In my last posting, “Where are we heading?”, I suggested that perhaps most schools are not doing a good job of preparing students to be part of the real world; to be part of the future work force. Much of the skills that are required in the future workplace like “abstract reasoning, problem-solving, communication, and collaboration, attributes associated with so-called “knowledge work”, are seldom consciously taught and emphasized in many, if not most, of schools today. These skills require students to “do” not just sit, listen, memorize and regurgitate.

Marshall McLuhan, who coined the phrase, “The medium is the message”, in his 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man,  advocated what Dewey had already advocated before, and that is we learn what we do. When McLuhan said that the medium is the message he meant controversially that the medium in which we function will determine what we learn and not the content. For example if in a Geography classroom the teacher lectures the class about plate tectonics, Marshall would contend that what is learnt by the students in the class is not plate tectonics but obedience and deference to authority. This is because that is all that the students do in the class (the medium). McLuhan would probably argue that it is fallacious to say that schools today teach anything else except obedience and deference to authority.

If McLuhan’s (and Dewey’s) argument is correct, then even more so that the current and most pervasive model of teaching in use schools today is in need of a great overhaul. Where is the abstract reasoning that is asked for of the student today? Where is the problem-solving? Where is the communication and collaboration? Even in Singapore, a country that is often lauded for the success of the education system, such skills are seldom taught or students are seldom put into situations that require the use of such skills in the school setting.

One may ask if these skills are student-friendly or to put it another way, are students able to function in a school that emphasizes the use of such skills? Perhaps some clues can be found in the way that students interact with their peers today. Just look at the social networking, blogging and instant messaging phenomena that is so popular with teenagers today. What are the skills that we see teenagers using when they interact with their friends and peers from all over the world? I believe schools can take learn from this world wide need to communicate and collaborate. If teenagers today learn the skills of the future workforce today it is most likely not from schools but from their peers online.