True Learning or Compliance? What do we want really?

I am a mother of four children ages 19, 16, 14, and 12 and I have, OMG I have so many “teachable moments” with my children on everything from what their thoughts are about the music and lyrics they listen to and what moves them about certain people and repels them about others, to how they process so many things including how they receive learning in their school system.

I often find myself asking them questions about how they choose and/or feel comfortable navigating discussions with their teachers in the classrooms, and I am excited about some of the conversations and interactions and disheartened from some of the others.  See, sometimes my babies express to me that some of their “educators” lack the ability to provide depth and engage with not just them but their classmates too because there is not always a genuine advocacy for learning.  You might ask what I mean when I say that, well, it’s simple as a parent of still three grade-school children, I observe some “educators” are more concerned with compliance instead of actually chartering a path to learning.

In some classrooms across the country, students are expected and in many instances “strongly encouraged” to follow directions, not think critically, not analyze and critique their teachers or the lessons taught, but to simply obey.  What does pure and simple compliance render?  In the simplest of terms, I believe it renders us apathetic, unthinking, and “sheep-like” adults who navigate various aspects of their individual and collective lives in the same way, compliance without the challenge of learning.

I found this image and it speaks clearly to my thoughts about education and learning.

Is that what we really want as a nation, an electorate body of emotionally unhinged and apathetic non-thinkers that are only moved by the nonsense of “dysfunctional drama-driven” reality television, social media famous nonsense?  We have a problem with thinking and much of that I believe starts in our educational setting because we have in many instances traded the concept and application of learning with the reality of compliance.

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