There are a number of ways of characterizing different kinds of learning. For simplicity we’ll introduce four different “Levels”:
We also want to introduce two different “Modes”:
We claim that the most powerful Learning is in the “Interest-Directed” modes of Levels 0, 1 and 2. In the United States and many other countries, primary, secondary and undergraduate college education systems mostly use the Top-Down modes of Level 2. Trade Schools and other vocational programs mostly use the Top-Down modes of Level 3.
Each of these Levels can be used successfully in some circumstances. Our claims are that (1) some of these Levels are over-used, (2) the Top-Down mode is over-used and (3) there are alternatives to the traditional and most common approaches that can be much more effective!
Human curiosity often brings us face-to-face with questions, known to researchers as problems, where there are not yet any organized and accepted answers or explanations.
The processes of Science, Mathematics and Creative Engineering all require Level 0 Learning. The Learner is in a direct relationship with Physics, Logic and Pragmatic Possibility.
Level 0 Learning generally benefits from, but can also be hindered by
Nearly everything we learned as children is also Level 0 learning, including our fluency in our native language(s). More will be said about this below!
When there is an existing Scholarly or Research Literature with Good Explanations addressing the Subject Domain, Learning becomes a matter of
Primary materials are generally targeted at the authors’ colleagues who have extensive expertise in the subject domain. Academic convention may result in research papers which are unnecessarily abstract and divorced from the more concrete models and examples which drive the researcher’s intuitions in their discovery process. With some exceptions, primary materials are often difficult to comprehend without the background possessed by the small group of researchers addressing the same problems.
Accessible primary (and good seconary materials discussed below) are distinct from popularizations where approximations and analogies are used as substitutes (rather than bridges) to a complete understanding of the subject. It’s very common for popularizations to eliminate key mathematical parts of the best explanations. Academic tradition disdains popularization and the reputation of scholars who make their work more broadly accessible can suffer if their materials appear to be popularizations.
Level 1 Learning requires a willingness to stop as often as necessary to learn prerequisite materials which may include, for example, unfamiliar areas of mathematics. Level 1 Learning is most accessible to Learners whose Love of Learning is complemented by strong Learning Skills.
Secondary materials and procedures are designed specifically at educating students about a specific subject.
The Traditional Education Approach may use:
The Traditional Top-Down Approach covers the material to be learned in a Linear Progression so that all pre-requisites are mastered sufficiently before each new topic is presented. Planned exercises support the progression. The students are “trained” in specific problem-solving methods to apply to each problem to produce the (generally unique) “correct” solution.
Alternatively, a Bottom-Up Educational Approach may use:
The Traditional Top-Down Educational Approach can be very efficient when it matches the background, learning-style and pace of the Learner. Even when the traditional approach seems to work well, it may suppress rather than develop the intuitions essential to mastery and creative (generative) expertise.
Bottom-Up Educational Approaches are designed to facilitate the simultaneous growth of Learners’ formal and intuitive understanding of the material with the intuitive “Hands-On” processes going first. These alternative approaches often allow Learners more flexibility to set their own pace and detailed trajectory.
Bottom-Up Education tries to avoid implying that there is only one solution to any given problem and instead presents contrasting solutions and encourages the Learner to explore additional solutions.
Industrial Training has traditionally been designed to train Blue-Collar workers
Expertise and creativity and especially experimentation have traditionally been seen as undesirable characteristics in Blue-Collar Workers.
Recently, increasing computerized automation has been reducing the demand for uncreative workers at ALL levels of organization. It is increasingly possible to automate the uncreative work of Workers, Managers, Planners and even Executives.
The modern viewpoint, championed by Deming and others views first-tier (manufacturing and customer-facing) workers as key experts in providing quality of goods and services. These first-tier workers have the greatest opportunity to see what works and doesn’t work and how processes can be improved. Innovative approaches such as quality circles were designed to utilize this expertise, both for immediate application (continuous improvement) and also to communicate it up the chain-of-command, leading to what is sometimes called a “inverted” hierarchy, i.e. where managers work FOR the first-tier workers, helping them do their job best, and providing two-way communication with the rest of the enterprise.
Modern education systems arose, grew and took their current form during the pre-modern industrialization era, which was also a time when most if not all large societies had a very rigid class structure. We can easily see that much of the structure of our educational institutions and the way we think about education (our Educational Paradigms) are not well adapted to current needs. While nearly everyone admits that our educational system is in crisis, our institutions and unconscious assumptions (those pesky paradigms again) resist even well-proven advancements.
First, an extended example, please read this first:
Linguists now know a great deal about the structure of human language. Linguists have built mathematical and computational models which can, respectively represent and perform much of the processes involved in human language understanding and generation. Despite great progress, the best linguistic models fail to account for the fluency of native speakers of any human language.
Traditional language teaching in schools is done in a top-down mode where the teacher has students consciously memorize words and rules and apply that knowledge to understanding and speaking the new language. Most students find the process difficult and distasteful, dropping out if they can. The students who complete the program are “proficient” but almost never fluent. As an example, schools in Japan and France require seven years of this kind of study of English, yet the results are far from impressive.
There are two problems with the traditional approach:
(1) Since even professional linguists do not know the rules which native speakers follow, it is impossible for teachers to train anyone to follow them!
(2) Conscious processes are severely constrained by limited cognitive resources. Unconscious processes have access to the brain’s massive resources of pattern-associative memory and parallel distributed processing. Native speakers acquire and exhibit nearly perfect intuitions and performance in a short period of time through exploiting natural, largely unconscious learning processes.
It is often said that learning human languages well requires special resources present only in the young. However, educational programs based on immersion have shown that adults can become fluent in new languages just as quickly as or even more quickly than children do; when the immersion is managed properly fluency can be achieved in one school year with no more time than is usually allocated to a single subject.
Learning a human language is an Interest-Directed process which can be “facilitated” and “coached” but not well “taught”, i.e. it can be optimized by a well-designed immersion, exposure and engagement process.
Linear, conscious attention during the early phases of Language Learning can be harmful as it inhibits the acquisition of the language intuitions which underlie fluency.
Many key intellectual skills work best when mostly performed by unconscious and automatic processes, e.g.
Again, despite massive research investments, our best scientific models and computer simulations of all of these skills fall far short of human ability.
The highest levels of expertise and mastery in most areas involve a small amount of Conscious Awareness organizing a larger amount of intuitive and automatic skill.
If these highest levels of expertise and mastery are to be available to more Learners, the learning process must facilitate rather than suppress the development of foundational intuition. Formal, conscious understanding will aid the learning process when it follows rather than leads intuitive understanding. The Learner can tell the difference: Rules which align and organize intuitive understanding give an “A-HA” response and “click in”.
Seymour Papert made an explicit analogy between learning languages and mathematics when he said “What would happen if children who can’t do math grew up in Mathland, a place that is to math what France is to French?” "
Most of what we know we learned without conscious direction, through immersion in the world and in our social surround. Although the skills we acquired in this natural process of engagement are our highest, our most fluent skills, if they remain unconscious they will never go anywhere, they are Closed.
Most of what is taught, consciously and successfully in school fails to engage long-term interest in the students. It is either soon forgotten or is applied in rote fashion when needed, rather than vigorously expanded upon. When the student’s interest is not engaged the learning is, once again, Closed.
Closed Learning reaches some level and then stops. It ossifies, becoming less and less likely to be built-upon as time goes on.
Open Learning is driven by curiosity, often in periods of almost obsessive concentration. Open Learning is driven by a desire for depth and breadth as well as connection and integration with everything else in the learner’s world and existing knowledge. If it stops, then it becomes Closed and ossifies. Ideally, Open Learning is never completed; obsessive interest dies down to a more moderate level after a few months and becomes integrated into the Learner’s more general interests.
The biggest criticism which can be leveled at the current way education operates in our modern societies is that it discourages Open Learning and the Love of Learning in most young people.
The ability of a few Learners to come out of their formative years with their Curiosity and Love of Learning in good shape is a wonderful fact about human diversity. Like IQ, it speaks to some important characteristics of individuals. That some Learners will do well even when everything is against them (not because everything is against them) says little about what we should be doing to support Learners in general.
Here and there we are able to observe groups of Learners almost all of whom do extremely well, because of a special teacher or an alternative educational process. It is a sad fact that our existing educational systems actively avoid being informed by these successes. We can do better than that.
We know that there are processes which result in nearly all young people emerging from childhood with
This should be the birthright of all human beings. It is our job to make it so. Any program of “education” which does not have this as its ultimate aim is misdirected.
Please use this handy form to contact us if you’d like to assist with any of our projects.
As an important contextual background for our projects, we recommend that you watch these two 10-minute videos prepared by the (British) Royal Society for the Arts:
Here are links to some of our working materials and projects taken from the draft LOEL website: