The fact that education and schooling are two totally different concepts and acts isn’t something new for most people, but recent research says that traditional university education is actually counter-productive to the learning process. Though this may seem surprising, the reason for this counter-productivity makes it seem clear why this happens. Schools are essentially systems, and they are systems designed to gauge different things from students — such as aptitude in finishing assignments, ability to follow directions well, and timeliness — that aren’t actually integral to the learning process. More than anything else, they use a model called the “teacher-responsible design for education,” in which the impetus is on the teacher to communicate information to the students, rather than on the students to gain and absorb the information.
The teacher-responsible design for education conflicts with what is called the “natural learning” model of education. The natural learning model is the entrepreneurial model. It is the process by which we learn by observing a problem, analyzing it, attempting to solve it, usually fail at solving it, and trying again and again until we have solved the problem. More than anything else, these models differ by whom the responsibility to learn falls on to learn. In the current model used in universities, if students don’t learn, it is the fault of the instructor, rather than the fault of the students. Continuing to reinforce the model used by universities will just continue to reinforce the idea that it is the job of an instructor, and not the job of the student, to learn.
A recent study by the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business notes:
Adults know how to learn and they have known almost since birth. The call for natural learning
wherein each person has control is consistent with evidence from other markets. Efforts to improve the
efficiency of various outcomes by a third party’s use of extrinsic rewards have been counterproductive in
all markets studied to date. Instead of allowing people to spend money to educate themselves – or their friends, family, and employees –governments tax people and decide who should be educated, about what, and how. Organizations hire people for their certificates rather than for their ability to perform jobs.
The research agrees, you’re a born entrepreneur.
March 13, 2014
