The learning process

It was good to see an article from a member of the Education facility of our own University published in Salient. Namely that of Jack Shallcrass. Considering we students are concerned with the process of education by the very fact that we are involved in it, I feel students should be more aware and more critical of the process that is shaping our lives. I feel the Education faculty, by its very nature, should get down from its academic cloud and take a more active public interest in the education debate of the when, how, and why of education. 11m faculty, instead of being one of the dullest on campus, should be one of the most vital, so how about it, you lot in Hunter?

Education theory and terminology has a habit of being vague and ambiguous, like too many politicians statements. Take the concept of a university's function as the encouragement of learning (para 5, "An Imaginative Grasp on Living Knowledge' Vol 37, no5). This begs the questions—learning for what and how. People learn things for many reasons many of them negative e.g. "I've got to learn this junk because I've got to get a degree, because I want a high paid job". This is an example of intrinsic negative motivation, and takes all the fun out of learning. Society encourages students to learn because it needs professional people, and offers attractive material rewards to encourage this learning with the results that a university too often serves as a finishing school for the elite, and for the training of lawyers, accountants etc. There are many negative qualities evident here. Our examination system is largely a negative goal because it encourages learning for the wrong reasons. And as for the method of the learning exchange! Our over emphasis on the lecture routine with its one way communication, utterly defeats any theory on the 'true learning situation' so thoroughly expounded by the Education faculty, which should be practising what it preaches. I fully agree that the most important quality to be gained from the learning process is the ability to think clearly and to discriminate, but how the hell can this be adequately achieved when the teaching system practised by the university is so contrary to a true learning situation? Just how many staff treat you as sentient beings rather than as sponges? How can they when a lecture situation is so often only oneway communication? How many students find the work load too-great to play an active part in student affairs? In-term assessment is still in the teething stages and there is still no satisfactory balance between in-term, and end-of-term assessment, with the result that negative learning still predominates over positive learning.

What's my problem then? My problem is that somehow I have the idea that education is meant to be a positive process where one is motivated to persue the task of learning for its own sake, but in our present teacher-learner system, this sought of idea sounds like verbal diarrhoea. If the ideal of education is a positive learning process, then ambiguous statements like 'the encouragement of learning' are completely useless and misleading. The list of qualities and values give by Jack Shallcrass are positive in that they are desirable skills, but somewhere, somehow, the total learning situation at university must be made more positive so that these qualities are fostered rather than squashed. Then perhaps, students will be more prepared to commit themselves to others, rather than self.

B. Cook