On the relevance of education: Leigh Blackall

On the relevance of education...

Ok, so, the first question:

From my perspective, education is not relevant

or perhaps shouldn’t be relevant now.

Because I think education is only as relevant as we all believe it to be, of course.

And I think recent technologies and recent statements

–I’m talking recent over the last 30 to 40 years –

there’s been a lot of questioning of the process

and the institutions around education.

And with the recent technology of the last 5 to 10 years,

those questions have become more readily accessible,

a lot more people are accessing that question,

thinking about it and furthering the conversations on.

So the belief that education is relevant is being undermined.

Therefore, the answer to the first question is no,

then there’s no answer to the last question:

how do you make it more relevant.

But you need an alternative.

If you’re going to say no, education is not relevant,

then you need an alternative.

And, from my mind, this is simply a semantic difference.

The meaning of the word education has with it institutionalized,

credits and certificates and bureaucracy.

But the rhetoric used in education is around learning.

Now, education and learning to me are completely different things.

Education is a bureaucratization of learning,

and learning is pure and simple.

It’s being conscious, is exposing yourself to the right thing,

it’s seeking to question things.

And so, that’s the question:

Is learning relevant and if so, how do we make it more?

Then I agree, learning is obviously very relevant, very important.

The problem we have, had had, at least the last century,

at least the last 50 years, is that learning is being impacted by marketing.

And our capacities to ask the right questions,

to find the right information,

and to even have the motivation to find the right information,

I suspect is being impacted by marketing,

which tends to want us to think shallow,

in a shallow way, to desire shallow things,

and to keep us in a very immature state of mind, I suppose.

And so, I think then how do we make learning more relevant?

We need to counteract that.

And so I think, educational practitioners who are more

than just people who offer certificates and open the gate for people

to get pay raises and new jobs,

people who a genuinely interested about our collective consciousness

and empowering people and stuff like that,

need to counteract the marketing machine and help kids,

I suppose, to get beyond the fashion magazines and things like that.

I don’t really have a clear idea how we do that,

but I think there are writers out there who have a clear idea.