Some answers

Some answers

Q: What are the practical steps required to really change cultures and attitudes around learning for the better?

First of all, forget changing cultures – change attitudes and integrate those changed attitudes into existing cultures. (Changing cultures would take eons of time and have unexpected, unpredictable consequences.
Attitudes are slow to change but with clear demonstration, they will change. My wife and I teach in the United Arab Emirates, and we both see change happening – but it’s a slow process.

At schools in this country, much of what is thought to be ‘learning’ and ‘teaching’ is little more than rote memorizing. Some improvement and change has been seen, and many believe it can and will happen – those of us in Higher Education are working hard to present learners with new interfaces, and it is working – young people are not as frightened of change as older people can be – they have lived through a period of intense change since birth. Conservatism is an attribute of older people – change will come from youth.

Q: Who are the most important stakeholders in the effort to change culture and attitudes around learning? Is it parents, young people, teachers, government or all?

It surely is everybody. We all have a vested interest in improving education to meet the challenges that must come if we are to survive as a species. Younger people will live through more than the rest of us – they need to make it happen. I am 59 years old – if it happens, fine, if it doesn’t, what can I do/what do I care? Those last two thoughts are not mine, but they could be associated with the majority of people over 50 – even a lot younger.

Invest in youth – show those who think they have been left out of the loop that they have not. Anybody can teach someone who wants to learn, let’s see you teach a kid who has no apparent interest in learning what he is being taught. I say apparent for everybody has an interest in education – their own –even when they say things to the contrary and behave as if education sucks. Sir Ken said so at TED and it’s true.

Q: Are you seeing any best practice campaigns/efforts (taking place around the world) that are effectively working to evolve perceptions of vocational learning/practical education?

While education systems serve vested interests – government and commerce/corporations etc, you get what you pay for. Who imagines that any system that only seeks to get you ready to work in some mindless job and then at the last moment denies you even that crumb, can work for the masses of our children without gainful, meaningful employment, is on some other planet.

Walk around the streets of any city in the US/UK/Europe and watch despair surface in the form of self-abuse (substances=alcohol, drugs, mind-numbing video-games – all that stuff that kids do that adults with pension plans and cars in the driveway don’t understand – don‘t or can’t or both.

I don’t mean to be so negative. Actually, I do believe that there are people out there who care. We just need to make sure there are enough of them to make a difference.
I have been and still am doing some writing on the things that Sir Ken Robinson said in his TED talk.