On 9 Jun 1995, John Gould wrote:
> ....
> At a deeper level, many of the responses to this strand might be
> asking "How do we create sustainable learning communities for a Knowledge
> Society?"
>
> Maybe the questions we need to generate are those found in Senge's
> operating principles of LO: how do our schools embody new capabilities for
> all its customers, clients, stakeholders; how do our schools nurture
> leadership throughout the system; how do our schools foster learning
> through practice "with" and performance "of" knowledge and understanding;
> how do our schools design new patterns of knowledge (curriculum) that
> blends knowledge (academics) and skills (vocational) as being equal; and,
> how do our schools encourage risk taking to expand the learner's learning?
> Let's see what we can come up with!
John presents some excellent questions here. IMHO, there is a real need
to find the answers. As a teacher, I have frequently encountered the
argument "Why should I study this, I will never use it again. I see no
relevance to my life." And as a person with many years behind me, I have
to admit that the likelihood is that the traditional program of
instruction is NOT relevant to the lives of many of our students.
My most recent teaching experience has been at the university level where
I taught classes in technical writing. My students came into the class
expecting to have just another dull writing course. Most of them left
with the comment that it had been both more informative and more fun than
they had expected. My major writing assignments involved interviews with
people who worked in the technical fields the individual students were
entering, research on real community or university issues with a focus on
providing the results to the groups involved in resolving those issues and
so on. In other words, I tried to make their studies relevant to their
needs and interests--and have them do the type of writing they might
actually be doing in the workplace. For most of my students, this was the
first time they had seen a connection between what they were doing in
class and what goes on outside of school. It was an eye-opening
experience.
I would certainly be interested in learning more about ways to make
learning meaningful in the workplace as well as in the schools.
-- RoMay Sitze, rositze@nmsu.edu