Randumbness

We live in an age of randomness…an expectation that things don’t have to make sense. And the more we celebrate it, the more it distorts our frame of reference. From Flo the Progressive agent to Jan the Toyota receptionist to Aaron Rodgers’ discount double-check, it’s almost a competition of mindlessness, pushing us to the point where things not only don’t make sense, they don’t matter. It’s randumb…a mindset without context.

What started as a fad of ironic detachment has become a shift from substance to style: if it looks good and sounds good, then that’s good enough. There’s no actual vetting of ideas or working to find the facts. If it feels good, go with it. If enough people buy it, believe it. We actually purchase status via brand identification…self-identifying with corporate mythologies…and losing ourselves in the process.

To be randumb is to be intellectually lazy. If nothing matters, then anything goes…flocking as birds of a feather around opinions that conveniently support biases and beliefs. As long as we feel good about it, we can discount anyone who questions us, insulating our thinking. It escalates from randumb to randumber…like Lloyd and Harry playing out their magical, farcical thinking to its ridiculous-yet-logical conclusions…

It’s so much easier to laugh at self-constructed chaos that defies any sense of responsibility. Want to poke a jab at reality? Post a meme! Want to counter someone else’s jab? Post another meme! None of it matters. We like and share and post and comment, and none of it has any impact on reality. Idiocracy is not just a bizarre cult comedy; it is a cautionary tale.

This escapist anthem is as old as Mick Jagger’s scowling “get off of my cloud” and as recent as Aloe Blacc’s smarmy, “I didn’t know I was lost.” What was supposed to make us more communal has driven us underground into exclusive randumb bunkers…and we can wait anything out, so long as it doesn’t impact us. What could possibly go wrong?

While it is quirky and fun, randumbness isn’t reality resistant. I can create my own little insulated existence, but right outside lies real world contexts: disease, hunger, injustice, ignorance, hate…and it is in these contexts we can make a real difference…impacting the real world as profoundly as it impacts us.

As educators, this is especially true, because it is on our classrooms and communities that all of these very real challenges manifest themselves as we work with children and their families. Our charge is to help them reach their full potential by making school a place where they can be healthy and safe and engaged and supported and challenged. There is no smug, aloof, irony-embracing mindset for dealing with reality. We have to be immersed in it to impact it…and there’s nothing randumb about that.

The pendulum will swing back again, and this age of randumbness will be a faint memory. That’s how reality rolls. But after we’re done looking back, shaking our heads, wondering what we ever saw in it, where will we be? Where will our children be? What is the impact of this current no-context culture on our future?

Should we form a bubble to discuss and come to agreement on what makes us feel good…or hunker down and get to the hard work in front of us, immersing ourselves in contexts that are not relative nor negotiable, being responsible for forging our own legacy as educators?

No brainer?

I hope so.

Learning Needs a Context

Reposted from User Generated Education:

How often have students (ourselves included) been asked to memorize mass amounts of facts – historical dates, vocabulary words, science facts, get tested on them, just to forget almost all those memorized facts a week or two later? Why do educators insist on continuing this archaic and ineffective instructional practice? Memorizing facts often means a waste of students’ time and energy. In some cases, too many cases, learners lose their passion and excitement for a subject or topic that, if taught in another way, may have not been the case.

Authentic learning can be the driving force for increasing context and relevancy. Jan Herrington describes authentic learning along two axes – the authenticity of the task is on one axis (from authentic to decontextualised), and the setting is on the other (the classroom/university to the real setting). The goal of educators should be to increase authenticity which leads to more contextual learning (and vice versa).

The visual image I use to describe context is all of these unconnected facts floating around in the learner’s brain. Since they have nothing to connect to, they end up flying away. This is especially true for abstract concepts. The following are some suggestions for establishing context…

Read More…

No One Right Answers Anywhere

Today I’m announcing a game-changer. And once you let it sink in you won’t be able to look back. Ready? Here it is: there is no one right answer. And I’m not just talking about in classroom instruction and achievement assessments. This is bigger than that. There are no one right answers anywhere, at any time, in life.

How can I say this? The dawn of our global society is shining light in every corner of every culture, every context, every preconceived assumption, and forcing us to think beyond traditional ideals and values.

You can have one right answers in isolation…in a silo…in a vacuum. You can control the variables there. One right answers can still exist in algebraic equations, but they no longer apply in everyday life…and they no longer apply in education.

This means standardization is a false premise for any education policy or practice. Standardization was an industrial-aged ideal that aspired to a specific profile of student success. And in the process we labeled and marginalized anyone and everyone who didn’t fit that profile.

Intelligence quotients are no longer acceptable in quantifying human potential. A century ago the IQ was formulated to identify an entire class of bean counters and paper pushers. There is a much fuller, richer spectrum of human ability which our global society seeks to tap into today.

The profession of education is no longer one class of workers who can be led along like sheep. The decentralization of education to meet the unique needs of all teachers, students and families is the strongest force for true reform of education as an institution.

Traditional formulas for success are also becoming irrelevant. Policies set by elected officials stand like paper tigers, and students today are poking holes through the arbitrary expectations that have no basis in how they learn, grow, and contribute to a global society.

There are no traditional career paths moving forward, either. Students will have multiple careers. So will teachers. No one will prepare for one profession. Everyone will create their own opportunities to contribute to the global economy, and no one will be thinking of “job security” as experience, seniority or tenure.

When there is no one right answer for anything, all the handicaps and obstacles fall away, and everything becomes possible. It pushes us past our physical and mechanical limitations to redefine our world, our work, and our worth. It will no longer matter where we are on this planet, we will all matter. We will all make a difference. And finally and for the first time, we will begin to make progress on all of the unresolvable problems of every age that has preceded ours: war, famine, disease and good stewardship of the earth.

As a member of the last wave of the baby boomer generation, I am resigned to the fact that we have the hardest time letting go of the one right answer mentality we inherited from our parents and grandparents. I have also come to accept that this transformation to a global society probably won’t hit critical mass until my generation is no longer in power to reinforce the outdated value of the one right answer.

But I am bound and determined not to fade away without speaking strongly in support of our progeny and the steps they are taking towards that global society they see so clearly within their grasp. They do not limit themselves to one right answer. They do not accept preconceived notions of what is possible. They ask questions. They seek answers. And they solve problems. Who can be opposed to that?

As uncomfortable and uncertain as it may be to let go of the world we once knew, it is time to acknowledge there is no one right answer anymore. Creativity. Innovation. Transformation. Buckle up, baby boomers. It’s going to be a wild ride.