ReWrite the World Blog Challenge Day 9

I imagine a world in which learning is lifelong and encouraged at all ages.

So that:

• Schools welcome teachers and learners of all ages,
• Communities have a reciprocal teaching and learning ethos.
• Society develops with technological change and integrates greater levels of understanding our humanity.

Our current thinking about learning is that it’s primarily the formal kind. The kind that involves sitting in a classroom using informative learning. This style confines us to the idea that learning comes from outside of us, from other’s who know more. In general, it negates our life experience as a teacher and encourages us to distrust our own knowing. 

Our current thinking about learning is founded on the idea that there is one way of doing things: the ‘right’ way. This limits our curiosity and innovative approaches to looking at how we might do things differently. We are not encouraged to challenge the status quo, yet the appetite for ‘innovation’ calls for creative thinking, risk-taking and questioning why we do what we do. Those who do these things are the rebels, the rogue thinkers to who trust their experience and deeper sense of knowing despite what society tells them. 

If learning was lifelong and encouraged at all ages, then:

• People might be willing to make mistakes, ask questions, take risks, seek out new options for old problems and amplify our understanding of how life works.
• People might be willing to make mistakes, as questions, take risks, seek out new options for old problems and amplify our understanding of how life works.
• We might value continual learning as a way of life and see inefficiencies as an opportunity to seek a better way to do things.
• We might invite advancement, and develop new models for commerce, technology, and how we govern ourselves.
• We might learn to trust each other, our selves, to hold robust discussions that lead to far-reaching solutions to wicked problems. 

Can you imagine?