Education 2000:Creating Modern Learning Communities

This article appeared originally in New Horizons for Learning's On the Beam Vol. XII No. 3 Spring, 1992 p.7,15:342,350

by John Abbott

What if?

What if a community were to dedicate itself to a long-term program of reform that would:

• identify the community as the center of educational change
• develop learning opportunities (the home, parents, other adults, community groups) to supplement the school's traditional teaching resources emphasize lifelong learning for the entire community
• and introduce educational technology on a sufficiently extensive scale to transfer the way learning is structured.

What would happen?

That was the dream of a number of key businessmen and educationalists in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s. Drawn together by their concern that far too many young people saw learning (as developed in schools) as something imposed on them, as boring and certainly not something for which they wished to take personal responsibility, they started to ask critical questions as to just why it was that the embryonic enthusiasm of young children "to find out" seemed for many to be numbed, if not killed, by conventional schooling.

Their immediate reaction was very English. They called a conference under the title "Education 2000" but, very non-English, they made this an intensive five-day-long series of workshops to which were invited an absolute cross section, not only of professions and trades, but of age groups and levels of responsibility. Their findings emerged as Hypotheses for Education in AD 2000.

Published by Cambridge University Press, their conclusions, which now seem almost bland and much of a piece with many contemporary writings, were ridiculed as being too far-fetched, visionary and impractical. Readers will recognize the symptoms--to be up in front is to invite criticism and scorn. Change is always threatening, especially to establishments.

But it did not just rest with a report. A group of enthusiasts really did want to press the "What if?" questions. In particular, they wanted to test two key hypotheses:

First, that new approaches to the teaching/learning process are now available which are more effective than traditional teaching programs. The need for change is three-dimensional; to shift the balance of teaching to learning; to provide a greater variety of learning experiences; and to make clear the responsibility of the learner for active participation in the process and for achieving successful outcomes.

The second hypothesis was that such approaches to learning would help young people develop the range of valuable skills-- confidence, personal responsibility, enterprise and working in groups and teams-- as well as master the intellectual skills associated with formal, structured learning.

What made this particular test so exciting was the format that Education 2000 set out in four basic assumptions:

• Education is the responsibility of whole communities.
• Most learning takes place outside the confines of school.
• There is an untold wealth of educational opportunities in human communities.
• Information technologies have infinite possibilities.

So many educational reform movements in the past, however informed and inspirational they may have been, have been hampered (and eventually destroyed) by an insufficiency of time for teachers to own the reforms; by insufficient resources for pupils to work independently; by insufficient understanding on the part of parents, and insufficient time for the whole process to operate.

Fortunately, while schools were pursuing reform, industry and commerce has been forced into reconsidering its own structures with many companies and large corporations discovering that, for their survival, they have to exploit and develop the learning potential of their staff. "The learning organization" became the buzz phrase in British companies as it did in American. As companies sought the most effective way of doing this, what did they find? Programs which were dependent on conventional teaching styles were not nearly as effective as those which, resembling apprenticeship models of old, necessitated the wholehearted commitment and involvement of the learner to something which he understands and owns. "Learning (properly structured) on the job" beats formal instruction any day.

Among the Chief Executives of such companies were potential allies--informed and energetic allies--of radical school reform which had a genuine inside/outside as well as outside/inside perspective.

Starting in late 1986, with funds provided by business corporations, all the secondary schools of one town of 35,000 people--Letchworth in Hertfordshire-- were able to increase their staffing by 7% for three years. This released every teacher, on average, for 7% of their time to work in teams within their own school, across schools and with community leaders to open up ''a new model of learning." This process really sought to change the balance between teaching and learning and one which saw informal learning outside school as being as significant (and in the long run even more significant) as learning in school. One computer was provided for every seven pupils and an electronic-conferencing system was installed serving the whole community.

And what happened? Teacher morale rose sharply; truancy and dropouts have almost disappeared; pupils are far more productively involved in their work; there has been a 300% increase in the number of books taken out of school libraries in a single year; 770 people a day use the conferencing system. The change has started to happen in that one town and eight other communities in England have now started similar programs.

Does this have significance to America or other nations? Yes indeed. The nations' old industrial model of schooling is collapsing as economies shift further from their manufacturing base to economies that essentially need thinkers as well as doers. You in America are achieving most significant breakthroughs in your understanding of how the brain learns, and what this means for education. While as yet lagging far behind other forms of medical research, findings in neurology support those from psychology that show the critical importance of learning being structured in ways which are compatible with the way the human brain learns naturally; that we learn when we are trying to "make sense;" when we are building on what we already know; when we recognize the significance of what we are doing; and when we are learning collaboratively in a team/social setting. Essentially, it seems, our brains learn best--and grow to learn more-- when we exercise it in highly challenging but low-threat environments. Each brain, it is becoming apparent, is as individualistic as those physical characteristics which give people their individuality. The brain drives itself and is remarkably resistant to external influence.

Schools alone cannot meet this challenge. This requires reconceptualizing the total environment in which children learn-- the home, the street, the street corner, TV, videos--the list is endless, but it contains influences which outweigh what the school can do on its own. To really rise to the challenge of providing young people with an education appropriate to the challenges of the 21st century we have to implement what I call "Whole System Change" or, as Jesse Jackson said recently, "We have to make education a total environmental process."

---

About the Author

John Abbott lectures on both sides of the Atlantic on education issues. He is director of the Education 2000 Trust and is working with The Johnson Foundation to bring theorists and educational innovators together to devise new strategies for learning.

Visit the 21st Century Learning Initiative has set up its own website at: http://www.21learn.org

21st Century Learning Initiative
c/o Rothschild
1101 Connecticut Ave., NW
Suite 700
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-1698
Fax: 202-862-1699
http://www.21learn.org
E-mail: John Abbott 21learn@mnsinc.com

---

© March 1992 New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.org

For permission to redistribute, please go to:
New Horizons for Learning Copyright and Permission Information