On the relevance of education: D'arcy Norman

On the relevance of education...

How is education relevant?

I mean, I see education…

I mean, sort of the stock answer it’s the organized transmission of culture, right?

That’s kind of important…

You want to, you want to teach the younger since they came up,

you want to impart the culture and shared experience,

so obviously education is important because

that’s the institutionalization of that shared experience.

How do we make it relevant?

One of the problems with education right now is,

although that’s how we’re imparting culture it is completely impersonal.

It is an institution as a factory-based thing: “We will give you education”.

And I think one of the themes I’m hearing especially at the Open Education Conference where we are now,

is the role of the individual perspective, the multiple perspectives and

taking ownership so it is internally motivated.

And once we get that internal and intrinsic motivation,

the self-motivation, the self-directedness as well as the institutional side of things,

hopefully education gets more relevant to the individual learners

as well as all of us as a shared culture.