Against the flow: Issues regarding ‘independent learning’

By Darryl Coulthard

I learned that the best way to ruin something was to let an open-style teacher near it and make a project out of it … It seems to me dishonest, hiding real relationships of power and knowledge under the cloak of participation and democracy.

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I have a number of remarks regarding independent learning and life long learning as well the means to get there. Some are based on my experience as a university lecturer; others are simply personal, referring to the way I think I learned best and what my sons say.

Independent learning is of course the Holy Grail. I read of TH White, that as he had achieved First Class Honours in Distinction in English Literature from Cambridge, he had ‘the advantage of being able to read’. White after a long and intensive study had at some time come to the point of being an independent learner. At university we often preach to the students about independent learning. Most, even at university, find this difficult, if not impossible, and prefer the easy option of being taught. It drives me to distraction and when you hear of ‘dumbing down’ at universities; the lecturers are not only talking about declining standards but significantly, a decline in independent learning at university and the rise of ‘spoon feeding’.

Most recently, the idea of ‘independent learning’ is being increasingly talked about in secondary colleges. Indeed I observe that its apparent resurgence correlates with a decline in independent learning at university. The correlation may be spurious but it does give pause for thought.

Independent learning at secondary school, as I understand it, is a handbag of interrelated ideas:

• Making or providing the opportunity for the student to ‘take control of their own learning’
• Allowing the student to ‘work at their own pace’
• Introducing projects and assignments that excite the passion in the student
• Problem based learning
• Student-centred learning generally, where the curricula focuses on where the student is at and empowers the student to take charge
• Increased relevance, or demonstration of relevance, to the students
• A more ‘democratic, participatory’ environment rather than a ‘hierarchical, authoritarian’ approach
• Less structure and more open class rooms

The image of the student and teaching is optimistic and expansive. I would suggest utopian. Underpinning all this is asking the children to do a lot to take responsibility for things that they are far too young and inexperienced to do. Secondly, it reminds me of something of a puppet government: the strings are still played by the teacher but we all pretend they don’t exist.

Finally it provides the pretence of teachers and students as being on equal footing with regard to curricula and teaching. Of these three issues, the first is probably misguided, while the latter two are perverse.

At this point I wish to express that at some points, all teachers will and should use the handbag of ideas associated with ‘independent learning’ to motivate, reward and teach, students. My issue concerns the extent they are used and that they comprise the underlying philosophy of education.

The ideas of independent learning are certainly not new and I was subjected to them as a child in the 1970s. I hated my open classes and liked my structured ones. My maths went backwards in the open classroom as I struggled with the projects. I felt an enormous sense of inadequacy. I hated assignments where I had to go and research. I loathed school excursions. In classes that asked me to express my opinion, I shuddered as I listened to my gormless peers express opinions aimed to please their teachers. I knew that I didn’t know these things, felt inadequate and shut up. I resented those peers, the ‘Hermione Grangers’ who always piped up with the current ‘right’ opinion on whatever we were doing and would invest a disgustingly long time on some stupid project. I learned how to wind them up but also to keep my interests quiet.

I learned that the best way to ruin something was to let an open-style teacher near it and make a project out of it. Teachers weren’t my friends, although I admired, liked and respected quite a number. I feared and respected some too. To borrow from Marx, if there is such a thing as class consciousness, I and my peers had ‘teacher consciousness’. Having a teacher sit beside me doesn’t even bear thinking about: “Yes Miss, no Miss, can I go now Miss?” Listening to my own children at the kitchen table I find that their attitudes to school, teachers and ‘sucks’ are not that much different to what mine where.

It seems to me dishonest, hiding real relationships of power and knowledge under the cloak of participation and democracy.

As you might imagine, such an experience certainly colours my attitude towards whole scale implementation of open learning. It seems to me dishonest, hiding real relationships of power and knowledge under the cloak of participation and democracy. I knew that I knew nothing; that doing less work was preferred to doing more. I knew that I couldn’t go home and ask my widowed lower middle class mother in a working class area to assist me in some project on the French Alps. Both social and financial capital in our home were in short supply. I’d much rather conjugate verbs than do such assignments. Get me to learn the quadratic formula by rote before giving me a ‘relevant’ statistics exercise.

It’s not always beer and skittles, icecream and iPods.

Lest I be misunderstood, to repeat my point is that such exercises, projects, assignments and approaches have their place but to recognise their limits and may be counterproductive if done for too long or too often. Such projects can motivate and excite. They might also ‘engage’ the ‘disengaged. However, I have learned that learning can be and often is difficult, tedious, frustrating, seemingly irrelevant and requires a fair amount of effort, patience and discipline to get over such bits. It’s not always beer and skittles, icecream and iPods. Independent learning cannot be given, it can only be earned. That what is needed may not seem relevant.

How children are taught has more urgency now here in Castlemaine as we commence the master plan of our new school. How the community wishes our children to be taught will determine how the school will be planned. I would like to think that we can develop a master plan that embraces a form of teaching method pluralism. Some teachers, some subjects, some times, some student cohorts lend themselves more to open than structured classrooms and vice versa. I would also like to think we can develop a master plan that produces a ‘living school’, one that can change and adapt with some grace to changing demands and fashions of school pedagogy.