What am I supposed to think here?
George Siemens, in a
very recent blog entry, quotes from a business oriented blog that tells us
that business today has (or has to) change: June 21,
2006 The bottom line is not the bottom line: "As networks shrink the world, business
priorities change. Efficient production used to call the shots. Make lots of stuff,
gain economies of scale, and sell, sell, sell, even if what you were selling wasn’t
quite what your customers were asking for. But now customers can buy whatever
they want from anywhere in the world, whenever they want to."
And
in order to make things clear as to what he thinks we in education should learn
from the experience of other fields, he titles
this short entry: Bottom line
Think education
From
what I've read of his blogs and his articles, Siemens is a perceptive thinker,
with many significant things to say about education today. For that reason, I'm
trying to do what he says: Think education. To a certain extent, I succeed.
Or at least I think I do. I think that what he wants me to understand is that
like customers who, with the aid of today's technologies, can buy whatever and
whenever they want, pupils today can learn whatever and whenever they want.
So far, perhaps so good. But then the problems start. Pupils, after all,
are not customers. Suggesting that in education, as in business, we can
no longer sell what our customers don't want to buy misses a very important distinction.
Perhaps today's customers are able to make decisions about what they want, but
pupils are still at a formative stage of their lives. They're in need of exposure,
and particularly exposure to quality. We want them to develop the ability to make
intelligent decisions. In order for them to be able to do this, we have to help
them learn what's worth wanting, what's worth their attention and what's not.
That's education. Seeing them as an established market is something quite different.
Go to: The
greatest invention since sliced bread, or
Go to: A
magic strand?