Blog

Educators just Don't Understand Education Properly

By ACS Distance Education on July 18, 2018 in Education | comments

Are we suffering from a bad dose of miscommunication? Good communication involves someone delivering a message and someone else interpreting. Often the delivery can be good; but what if it is misinterpreted because the listener is inattentive or has preconceptions?

Referring to higher education -Alan Finkel (Chief scientist at the CSIRO) was quoted in today's Australian newspaper I say "Engage people through real world problems" and people hear "Great, let's toss out the text books" .

I say "Students should be work capable", and people hear "We need to teach generic skills instead of content"

It appears that a lot of education industry movers and shakers may have been hearing what they want to hear, instead of hearing the real messages that are delivered to them.

As a result, we have had continual degradation of our mainstream higher education system.

Perhaps as far back as a couple of decades, educators reached a fork in the road, and took the wrong fork. Now it is very difficult for them to hear and acknowledge the mistakes they have made. Perhaps their subconsciousness is driving this miscommunication, or perhaps it is a sense of short term self preservation. Whatever the reason; higher education is clearly not on the best track to the future - this is why we departed the mainstream system many years ago.

Finkel says: "The skills needed to be flexible, agile and collaborative are developed by mastering content."

We'll continue doing what we know is right - focused on providing high quality learning experiences; and hope that others like Finkel become enlightened, speak out, and their words are better understood for the intent behind them.