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Intelligence of the Heart

Posted by: Ross Laird in education 1 year, 2 months ago

I spend a great deal of time with two kinds of people: teachers and students. In some ways, these two groups are at opposite ends of the continuum of learning. Sure, teachers and students co-create and share the environment of learning; but what I hear from each group is different. Students (of all ages) talk about the many ways in which the learning environment fails to meet their needs. Teachers, on the other hand, tend to talk more about how to preserve and nurture that learning environment. In this sense, both groups are working toward the same goal: to make the learning environment useful and purposeful. But I find that they have radically different notions about how to accomplish this goal. Students want to deconstruct and rebuild the system; teachers want to preserve and enhance it. Students want more autonomy and service from teachers and institutions; teachers want more commitment and loyalty from students. Students demand new technologies; teachers are (or they tend to be) anxious and suspicious about new technologies. Students yearn for more intensity and risk in their learning; teachers seek more safety and structure. Sometimes I wonder if these various impulses and aims are inherently complementary or fundamentally contradictory.

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