Teaching is human work. Systems are not designed for this.
Teaching is human work. Systems are not designed for this.
Education is structured as a system – standard, measured and scale. But learning does not work this way. And teach? Teaching is a human work – improved, emotional and deeply personal. This difference is more than philosophical. It is a practical and daily problem for educators.
I. Education is a system. Learning and teaching are not.
This presents a challenge: when systems stimulate decisions, but people do work, friction is inevitable.
II The systems are made of parts. People are not.
Education, as a system, is made up of parts – and these parts can be designed in several ways. In other words, they are subjective because we, as individuals, are subjective.
III. Objectivity is a useful illusion.
We only become objectives under the tense control of others, and even then, this objectivity is temporary. Once we go from an object of study to something familiar – from a person to a person – objectivity is lost.
(For the biologist, the species becomes a primate becomes a monkey becomes a friend.)
IV. Thanks to the loss of objectivity, we obtain the connection.
It is thanks to this loss that human connectivity is won. And it is through the connection that we discover our interdependence. By the way we connect with people, spaces and ideas, we start to give meaning to ourselves. One shapes the other.
V. The system is not – and cannot – hover for it.
Education has no mechanism to support this process. This work is the responsibility of teachers. When this does not happen, the learning marrow has disappeared. It becomes a shell.
(It is at this moment that academics go from a worthy corpus of knowledge to a mechanical process which denies its own wisdom.)
Systems do not plan for people. They speak in code. Teachers speak in human languages – and this burden is quietly immense.
VI. Systems do not speak. People do it.
Systems use binary language. People use emotion, gesture, silence and laughter. The system cannot speak to the teacher. The program cannot speak to the community. But students, families and teachers can. These are the only real parts.
VII. Reality is a loop that we build and revise.
How we see each other how we see the world. And how we see the world shape that we think we are. We build and co-build a reality that strengthens our identity.
(Think of the way you have seen 17 compared to the way you see yourself now – and what caused this change.)
VIII. Teachers reflect two incompatible languages.
This is an incessant process that education constantly interrupts – because it never learns the language of the individual student. The child with this story, sitting on this chair. Teachers are the translators – flans in humans and the system, and stretched between them.
IX. Systems reduce. Teachers humanize.
When the system favors performance on people, knowledge becomes notes and certificates. It is not malicious. It is predictable. The systems are looking for measurable and throw the rest.
X. Technology amplifies the system, not humans.
Edtech has promised relief. But without the design and communication centered on humans, it simply energizes the system – triggering each corner, illuminating each ineffectiveness, accelerating each point of pressure.
The best Edtech can do – without the voice of teachers, students and families – is a disturbance.
XI. Start with humans, not the system.
If knowledge, wisdom, literacy and critical thinking are always our goals, we must start not with programs, but with people. With the conditions that help these qualities to emerge in the real world. We work back humans, not politicians.
XII. Ask better questions.
We could do worse than starting with a question:
If knowledge emancipates the mind, once released, where is it going?
And then ask:
How can education make room for it to flourish, not just to work?
