Tag: thoughts

Is big data the past? Privacy is the future for education?

s1690803/ / Is that the future?, Weekly task

This was one of my first tweets with the #mscidel hashtag of the week. Are big data and data-driven concepts that are we have overcome? I mean, I am very conscious about the importance and the relevance of data collection these days. However, I think that big data is something that has been proof it generates so many ethical issues with privacy and biased results, that offers generalizations and trends, but actually is not giving us real “useful” information. Or at least information that doesn’t generate ethical issues.

Big Data represents a number of ethical considerations, particularly around privacy, informed consent, and protection of harm, and raises wider questions of what kinds of data should be combined and analysed, and the purposes to which this should be put.

Eynon, R. (2013).

For years, (and still happening) data has been collected indiscriminately with the idea of having a lot, collecting as much data as possible with the idea that it will help us to solve education system issues. Collecting different data points without and see what it can offer, and what conclusions we can get from there. It seems that over these years teachers, educational institutions, and families have become a data production, responsible to collect and record data, as Williamson, B. (2017), points out in his book: Introduction: Learning machines, digital data and the future of education.

Considering all of these, I wonder why would we like to use big data in education? Are we not moving forward to a more inclusive system, where minority and diversity should be taken into consideration?

I started the week asking this, and after this week readings, discussions on Twitter and cheating a little with the knowledge of my husband. I can say that big data collection will pass to a better life. I am being optimistic, and I think we are moving to a reality where yes, we accept that our data is being collected, and assuming that is used beyond our complete understanding and capacity.

 

But at the same time, though, we are aware of the importance of being conscious and careful about the data we share and to whom. People are not that open to share personal data as it was years ago, and I would say that the trend now is to talk about models of data collection that guarantee a high level of privacy. If we put the focus on education, we can see how students are more careful with their data, as well as other activists in society. People are aware and are taking a more active role with the collection use of their own personal data.

As I said, I cheated a little here, and I used my husband expertise to know more about privacy and what is the current flow. He works as a Google researcher in machine learning and privacy, so I thought it would be really useful to know what big tech companies care about. Using his knowledge, I have learned that the tendency now, and what companies are working with, is based on building trust on users. How? collecting data as much anonymous as possible. Also storage it’s an issue and collecting everything it has a cost. Privacy is a delicate topic, and considering what has happened in the past, tech companies know that they need to guarantee a maxim level of privacy. In that way, different methods and protocols are implemented to guarantee encrypted data collection. You can read here what I shared on Twitter about the topic. He explained what is Differential privacy and some protocols that are used to minimise the identification of people and treat data as much private as possible.

What he pointed out, and I think it is very important when we talk about education is the tendency to move to a focus data collection, instead of big data. It is a way of having only information that is relevant to the purpose, nothing else, that way it is more difficult to identify the person. As I mentioned while reviewing the MOOC, for example, much demographic data is asked. This should be considered a bad practise because demographic data make us unique easily. If we have several data points from people is difficult to have anonymity, many data means that is difficult to hide using aggregation data. You will never have more random that that real data. For that reason, moving forward to models based on focus data collection is a necessity. And education can and should be playing an active role in this battle.

As a conclusion, and answering my own question, I would say that education should not care about big data, but it should care a lot about focus data collection. I think education has an important role in making people aware of this and pushing for regulation and policies. As my dear classmate Paul, suggested in this tweet, education should be working together with data scientists in order to find consensus and work together to achieve good practices in all different contexts.

 

Eynon, R. (2013). The rise of Big Data: what does it mean for education, technology, and media research? Learning, Media and Technology, 38(3), pp. 237-240.

Williamson, B. 2017. Introduction: Learning machines, digital data and the future of education (chapter 1). In Big Data and Education: the digital future of learning, policy, and practice.

Alexandra Wood, Micah Altman, Aaron Bembenek, Mark Bun, Marco Gaboardi, James Honaker, Kobbi Nissim, David R. O’Brien, Thomas Steinke & Salil Vadhan*. Differential Privacy:A Primer for a Non-Technical Audience

Kobbi Nissim, Aaron Bembenek, Alexandra Wood, Mark Bun, Marco Gaboardi, Urs Gasser, David R. O’Brien, Thomas Steinke, & Salil Vadhan* Harvard Journal of Law & Technology Volume 31, Number 2 Spring 2018 BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND LEGAL APPROACHES TO PRIVACY

 

Pre- thoughts about badges

s1690803/ / Ideas and thoughts, Who I am and what I think

I would say that I like badges, I actually use several apps that use badges in order to show improvement or just the fact that you have earnt what kind of achievement. However, when it comes to the use of badges in education I have some questions and doubts.

I am quite familiar with the use of badges for different contexts, I could say that I am a user/fan, and I don’t miss the chance to win one if I have the option. I see the effect they have on me and the satisfaction I have when I get one. I definitely see the engagement power they have.

One of my favourite ones, and probably the first one I started using is Swarm. I actually started using this app, a long time ago when all the company was under Foursquare. Now they are split into two different apps, Swarm kept the social and gamification aspect, earning badges, while Foursquare,  it become a rating app, similar to Yelp.

I confess that I have the secret routine of checking in places and earn coins and badges for my unlocked places, like you have been in 5 Thai restaurants, here you have the Thai restaurant badge!

Inspired in this app, in 2011 I worked designing and creating the education proposal Agora: Citizen participation activities. (Everything is in Catalan, sorry). I did the educational foundation and methodology for children aged 8 to 12 years old. I designed the methodology and some activities as an inspiration to the teachers who will use the guideline.  The main idea of the proposal was that students needed to create their own city using the elements and values they wanted. In order to do that they needed to pass some activities. For example, if they wanted to have a green area in their city, they needed to pass the “green area activity”, then they earned the proper badge, and they were allowed to build a green area. The idea was that they had the virtual and the physical city in their classroom. I didn’t have many resources and clearly, the badges handmade, you can check the website I did for this programme here.

All the proposal was website based, all the instructions and activities were placed in WordPress and basically, the kids just needed to read an do it, in real life. I think I created something blended without knowing… Also, my plan was that all the classes shared their results: how many badges they have earned, pictures of their cities and everyone would be able to see what others were doing, share ideas and get inspired by others. Everything with the Open spirit on.

It was quite sad because the proposal was not very successful. Many teachers found that kids were already spending too much time in front of the computer (at home!), and they didn’t want to encourage the use of the blog as a guideline of the activities… Surprising, right? Also, another complaint was the fact of earning badges. Many educators considered that this was not the best way to motivate students. They argued that they should learn and that is the real reward, learning! The majority of the professors considered that giving the badge or points was not a really good way to measure their motivation. I have to say that at that point I shared part of the arguments, and I knew the proposal was quite risky.

A year after that, I moved to San Francisco, and I started teaching Spanish to young children and teenagers. Teaching in a different country I had many shock cultural moments, but one that makes sense to mention is the fact that part of my kit tool class they gave me, was a lot of stickers and an ink buffer (star shaped). I was supposed to give stickers every day and at least use the ink buffer with a couple of kids… Many days I forgot, and when my manager noticed told me that I was not motivating enough the kids because I was not giving enough stickers. The stickers were the motivation? It is true that students were clearly into stickers, but I thought it was quite sad.

In my experience, badge culture is something Anglo-Saxon. It is clear than the UK and US have more tradition on badging and there is a clear influence on other countries. Is it for the better or for the worst? Are there any viable or credible alternatives at the moment? Gamification it’s a very interesting approach, however, doesn’t undervalue what is really important (the learning for the pleasure of learning)? Or is that really important?

At the end of the day, we all go to work because we know that we will have a salary at the end of the month, and if we do good, even better than expected, we will be able to ask for more rewards…

Learning space – thoughts after these two weeks.

s1690803/ / Answering comments, Ideas and thoughts, Weekly task

On my first post of this block, I described a learning space like “a prepared environment where the student can interact, play and learn from it. We can find a learning space in real life, however, I am thinking in a place that is designed, it pretends to simulate the real world in a challenging but also no-threatening way. It is a safe space of not judgment and where the student can feel free to investigate and challenge their abilities with the support of materials and knowledge.”

After these two weeks, I have been going back to that post to examine my previous thoughts after reading the articles,  everyone’s metaphor, and especially the comment you left. This has been resonating in my mind the whole week. “I wonder whether this accommodates the contemplative walk where we find ourselves working through a problem, or the moment in the middle of the night where we might be struck by an original idea, and so on? Can a learning space not also be somewhat more impromptu and unplanned? I suppose it depends on how we define learning?“

It is well exposed on Bayne et al (2014) and Nordquist, J. & Laing, A. (2015) articles, that we are in the situation to affirm that technology has changed the way we can work and learn such that the constraints of time and place are re-defined. Learning space is a fluid and mobile concept and it goes beyond a class or virtual class. However, ‘contemplative walk where we find ourselves working through a problem’ can be defined as a learning space?

I completely embrace the idea that learning can happen everywhere, anytime! Also, I totally share the idea that you can learn while you are walking around or sitting in a cafe. However, where do we draw a line here? depending on what is happening in our brain? I mean, if we are in a cafe solving a problem, then we are learning and the cafe becomes a learning space? but if we are in a class thinking and planning the next summer (without following the class activity), we are not in a learning space?

Going back to the idea of “prepared environment”, I am still thinking that a learning space requires some preparation/intention behind, of course, a cafe can become a place where learning might happen, but not sure if it should have the category of learning space. I hope I can explain myself.

When I think about “prepared” I mean, that someone (the teacher) has an idea in mind, they is thinking in a specific goal to achieve by the students. This set up doesn’t mean that the activities and steps to rich the goal will happen in only one space, in a specific time or with concrete resources. If I use this course as an example, I would say that the prepared environment is: the IDEL virtual portal, with all their elements: announcements, forum, materials and curated articles. Teachers of the course don’t know where the students will engage with the materials and when this will happen, but you know and have some ideas and expectations of what students have to do in order to show progress and learning, don’t you?

That way, I would say that even that I can find my self walking around thinking about the course, and having unplanned learning moment, I would argue that this moment was somehow planned by you (James, as a teacher). Because you were anticipating (and hoping) I would have an “aha moment” and I would learn something. I guess for that reason, we could call ‘learning space’ to all the places I have been thinking and engaging with the materials (physical or virtual).

I remember, when I was teaching people that will become educators of after school classes, normally people with a little background in education. I remember I selected and designed some activities that I thought it was a journey to arrive at a certain point. I expected they would be able to change their view and preconceptions about children. I didn’t want to arrive at the class and make a statement. I wanted them to think about and arrive at their own conclusions, obviously with my particular bias because we know that education is never neutral! I wanted them to have an “aha moment”, and probably that didn’t happen during the hours we were together in the class. I also prepared reading, poems and song for them. I am sure they engaged with those on different places, and probably they critique, answered or made questions about the materials in their minds, far away from the class. I would consider those moments as something prepared. Does it make sense?

Of course, I think that someone can learn without anyone acting as the puppet master of their process of learning! this is not what I am thinking. But, for me, in order to consider a “learning space,” there is involved this idea of preparation and of course interaction with someone acting as a guide, and the design behind.

Learning environments are successful because users are motivated and educated to learn how to use them in particular successful ways. They are helped, educated, and supported to use environments in new ways. This is particularly the case when technology becomes an increasingly significant aspect of the learning environment. This means that the planners, managers, and leaders of learning environments have themselves also to become active agents in the curation, facilitation, and activation of the networked learning landscape that they have helped to brief, design, and construct.

Nordquist, J. & Laing, A. (2015)

 

As a conclusion, I would say that my previous idea of what is a learning space has not been changed completly, but it has been enriched with more arguments and thoughts. Today I would say that learning space can be defined as the structured context that has been designed to let students play, think and learn. The prepared environment is not only a place where students can learn from, the kind of preparation can make that students engange and learn from a huge range of fluid and open spaces.

 

IDEL MAP

s1690803/ / Ideas and thoughts, Trying tools, Weekly task

 

Following your suggestion about trying to go further into exploring the use of different resources this week I have intended to use tools I never used before, for example, ThingLink, actually, I think it is the first time I do an interactive image.

In this image I am trying to express what is my engagement with the IDEL course, making special attention to this week’s topic: learning spaces.

I used the University ID because it is my personal connection to the programme. I wanted to make the ID the protagonist of the image story. I carry my ID everywhere, basically because I have it in my phone case. An interesting fact is that I don’t carry it in my wallet. When I got it, I decided to put it on the phone case where I don’t have many spaces for ids, but I keep the important ones: bus ticket, debit card and university ID. Why did I decide to carry it there? I am not sure, maybe I am giving some mysticism, but I have realised that this ID is what makes me feel connected to the course and makes me identify as a student, probably it what makes me feel to be in the campus, whatever I am, embracing the concept of new mobilities paradigm’ that is discussed by Bayne, Gallagher and Lamb (2014), which supports learning in unbounded regions and terrains.

It has shown that the material campus continues to be a symbolically and materially significant ‘mooring’ for a group of students who may never physically attend that campus.

Bayne, Gallagher and Lamb (2014)

With the image, I want to present the different places where I have engaged with the IDEL course and the different tools and resources I have used so far. I would say that my laptop has been my main moored item. It is quite funny because my laptop is not portable anymore, it only turns on when is charging, so it really moors me. However, I feel that my learning space has been fluid in terms that I move around my home depending on what is space is free and quiet to be. Usually, the headquarters is my living room, a comfortable armchair in a nice corner where I like to sit to read and, of course, to write all the post in my blog.

Sometimes, I go to use the uplift desk (usually when I want to keep my eyes open and don’t fall asleep), or a read in the bedroom when everyone is sleeping. On this week Padlet I have discovered that some classmates use a voice reader to hear the articles and be able to do another thing at the same time. I have been inspired by them, and I am sure I will use it in the future to brake more bounded and rigid container that is “reading”.

As you can see in the image, I have used a Kindle, which helped me to be freer and bring my learning space outside the house, for example checking the materials from a playground. But I have also used inside, reading in the Kindle and writing in the laptop. Many times I have found myself having two virtual places used at the same time, for example playing Minecraft on my phone while I was checking tutorials on the laptop. I can say that I have deflated the sedentarist claims.

 

 

 

Learning space – first thought

s1690803/ / Weekly task, Who I am and what I think

A learning space is a prepared environment where the student can interact, play and learn from it. We can find a learning space in real life, however, I am thinking in a place that is designed, it pretends to simulate the real world in a challenging but also no-threatening way. It is a safe space of not judgment and where the student can feel free to investigate and challenge their abilities with the support of materials and knowledge.

I like the Reggio Emilia view that considers the physical space as the third teacher. I could try to say it with my own words, but I think this quote of Loris Malaguzzi is a perfect description of what I understand for a learning space, what should have and be.

We value space for its power to organize, promote pleasant relationships between people of different ages, create a beautiful environment, bring change, promote options and activities, and its potential to unleash all kinds of social, affective and cognitive learning. All of this contributes to a feeling of well-being and security in children. We also think that, as has been said, the space has to be a kind of aquarium that reflects the ideas, values, attitudes and cultures of the people who live in it.

Poseur vs. Impostor syndrom

s1690803/ / Answering comments, Ideas and thoughts, Is that the future?

Thanks for transforming my impostor syndrome to something interesting and worthy to connect with the programme! , I have been thinking about your comment on my “In a rush!” post.

“Perhaps it’s a feature of online and predominantly asynchronous learning, however, I wonder whether it is easier to get the feeling that everyone is more productive? Is it may be the case that you’ll notice other members of the group who are posting more regularly, but without knowing what is happening in their blogs or whether they have circumstances that particularly allow them to do more reading, and so on?”

I made this picture half an hour ago, that is the reality of the majority of the time I am checking the platform. Online user: me and myself! Sometimes there are a couple of people, but I have never interacted. I never thought of opening a direct message and say “hi, how are you doing?” Maybe because the functionality is one to one? It could be cool to have an open general chat where you can comment without sending a direct message?. If we were sharing a physical space I would say something for sure, at least waving everyone being in the space. I cannot imagine myself entering a class or study room and don’t say hello to my classmates. I am sure that we would have started a conversation about the readings, the activities and maybe some personal topic. Is this expected on online learning? Is this something cultural? The fact that we are a cohort based around the world make this interaction more difficult?
“Maybe in the physical campus, it would become apparent through corridor conversation that, in fact, lots of people are in the same position as ourselves? You’ve made me wonder whether there is any existing research around this – the idea that online we are more inclined to inflate or be intimidated by the output or energy of our peers? Fascinating!”Thanks again, what I am finding fascinating the capacity you have to see the potential of a paragraph I wrote when I was tired and overwhelmed after a long week! Maybe you made me see a great example of what a teacher can do and not a simple facilitator ;).

After your comment, I did a quick search about the topic, very quick! I end up finding many articles that talk about the impact of social media in the perception/satisfaction of the students.  I feel this could answer some of the questions are formulated. When I read your comment I connected the context and feeling with something it is a hot topic now: the impact of the social media and how it seems that we live in the era of poseur culture. So, maybe these articles could give us some clues? Saddly, I was not able to read many, because were not free (also, lack of time!) and I got stuck in the abstract. Find some examples underneath.

Overall, what I have seen is that studies talk about the benefits of using social media, and how this improve engagement and communication among students.  Here, though, we can read the summury of the authors and they conclude that: The study finds that: (1) perceived usefulness of social media has positive effect on the use of social media in student learning; (2) perceived risk of using social media discourages the use of the tool, and (3) SMU has positive effect on student satisfaction.

Without reading the full article, I suspect the authors found out that the students are afraid to use social media in terms that usually this expose to much of their personal life, maybe something they don’t want to share and want to keep it private because they are more aware of the consequences?. Maybe we are having a generation of students really aware of the importance of projecting themselves in one direction when they are using social media, or when interacting in a digital environment. Actually, I found some articles, like this one that highlights the idea that “Socially, millennials are indeed more risk-averse than older Americans, perhaps because of the reputation-damaging potential of social media.” Everyday, there are more studies that show the difference between the lack of risks taken by new generation compared with older ones. Also, what are the impact of insatisfaction, lack of realism and depression because of the use of social media. Can this be translated to online learning platforms?

The fact that we have students (and I include myself here) that grow up socialising and having a concrete realitionship with social media, (again, poseur culture, influencers, and all he superficiality that involves social media) maybe we are having the same actitud when we are learning online. Exposing only what we want to show and never show the complete picture…

Is this something that can be prevented? how? the teacher has a responsibility here? (if we narrow our questions to higher education)… Many questions a no answers…. yet!

I love this Ig account, showing all the strategis that advertising and social media use to modify reality and show something that is difficult to achieve!

 

 

 

 

 

References

  • Mahdiuon, R., Salimi, R. and Raeisy, L (2019). Effect of social media on academic engagement and perfomance: Perspective of graduate students. Link here.
  • Waleed Mugahe AL-Rahmi and Mohd Shahizan Othman (2013) Evaluating student’s satisfaction using social media through collaborative learning in higher education. Link here.

 

Thoughts about my bot

s1690803/ / Ideas and thoughts, Trying tools, Weekly task

I have spent too much time deciding what kind of bot I would like to prototype. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was considering different ideas (FQA, math problems, grammar helper…). I realized that I was considering two types of bots, based on two different approaches.

One scenario would be “building” ca bot similar to the ones we have checked on Twitter. These kinds of bots don’t have a real bidirectional interaction. These bots are based on a code that tweets something every X time. For example, the one I talked about in the other post from the museum. We can see how this kind of bots are exposing a topic, publishing tweets with a concrete topic and there is no interaction with people that reads it. The majority of bots we have found as a class are in that direction, probably because the Twitter platform stimulates this particular use of bots.

Considering this approach, I liked the idea of having a bot that tweets problems that students would solve. Maybe instead of mathematical problems itself, the bot would tweet riddles where the knowledge of mathematics is needed, to make it more playful and nicer than a typical mathematical problem. Students could check the message – riddle and use a hashtag to expose their ideas and possible solutions.

 

A second scenario I have been thinking is a more interactive bot, where students can ask and get answers. Maybe this bot is more sophisticated and would need more code knowledge behind, but also are probably richer and can be really considerate a teacher bot*, as we see in the article of Bayne S. (2015). Teacherbot: interventions in automated teaching, and their “botty”. In these bots we see how a student or, the bot itself, can start a short conversation tha will trigger a level of learning.

In my idea of having a grammar helper bot (to support the learning of a second language), we can imagine how a student would ask a question related to a grammar doubt,  for example: Tell me what is the conjugation of past simple for the verb to sign. The chatbot will understand the query and will give a correct answer. Therefore, the bot we could offer a sentence as an example of the use of this conjugation. Also, we can be more ambitious and the student would ask the bot to check the grammar of a short sentence.

 

Considering these two broad types of chatbots I wonder if there is (or it will helpful to have) a categorization that defines the complixity of the bot, how is the interaction between student-teacher-bot, and how this has a real impact o enhanceing the role’s teacher.

 

 

Many questions, no answers

s1690803/ / Ideas and thoughts, Is that the future?

With the level of technology we have nowadays, a reality where teachers are replaced by robots or an AI  seems very close. In the article of Neil Selwyn: Robots in the Classroom? Preparing for the automation of teaching he opens the debate to see if classrooms are ready to incorporate robots.

However, my question is: do teachers need to be replaced? Are teachers actually needed any more? I mean, do we want to use the new technology and automated artificial intelligence to replace the traditional teacher’s role? What is the point of that?

In my opinion, the traditional teacher figure that focuses on delivering content, which is sadly the most common kind of teacher we find, is not actually offering anything interesting in the teaching-learning process. I would say that the teachers that enter into a class and spend their time only explaining a bunch of details, dates, or concepts, are not the “good ones”. We all could agree that this kind of teachers can actually be replaced by books and readings, there is no need for robots or high-level AI. So, what do we want to automate exactly?

In my opinion, the elements that describe a good teacher cannot be replaced by any machine. I think that a good educator is the one that guides the process of learning, not the one who actually delivers anything. I believe that teachers are facilitators. They are responsible for creating an environment where the learning process can be developed, respecting the pace and motivations of each student. Can this be done by a robot?

Also, why would we use AI to teach something in particular? Let’s say, history for example. Why do we want to use the latest technology to explain when an important event happened? This information is already available for the students in seconds, in their hands. Are we actually using the new resources to improve and make a change in the way we learn and what we learn?

Trying to answer these questions, I was happy to read Selwyn’s article (2017) and how he explores the differents Models of how teachers can integrate technology. The first pages of the article helped me to know and organise concepts and ideas.

“ While some teachers are clearly able to effortlessly ‘assimilate’ and incorporate digital technologies into their teaching, others achieve only a  pragmatic ‘accommodation’ of technology into their established modes of working”

As Selwyn’s points out there are some teachers who assimilate tech very well, while others are just using the basics. I guess we should avoid creating the idea that using tech “correctly” makes you a better teacher. After last week readings where we focused on understanding the necessity to have a constructivist and critique view, I think this should not be about if the teachers use it or not and if they are “better” teachers if they do it correctly. As usual, this is a much complex debate about the role of teachers. Then, what is the teacher’s role?

When I visualise a good teacher I see a person willing to improve their practise. Taking time to learn, observe and develop their skills. In that sense getting familiar with technology that will enhance their job, it is necessary, as well as learning new estrategies of communciation, engangement, it is part of the pack. A good teacher will understand that the use of technology will not make their class better or more interesting perse, but it will give them the opportunity to subtitute or transform what is needed in order to improve their job, and help the with the learning process of their students.

“In this sense, technology ‘integration’ is perhaps something that teachers achieve through experience and increased mindfulness.”

“As Mishra and Koehler put it, it is not enough to be either a good teacher, or a  subject specialist or a  skilled user of technology –  ‘merely knowing how to use a technology is not the same as knowing how to teach with it’ (p. 1033).”

Considering all of this, as I said in one of my privious posts, if a teacher can be replaced by a robot (or video, AI, book, etc.) it should be.

Contradictions?

s1690803/ / Ideas and thoughts, Who I am and what I think

I wanted to do a visual post this week, so I decided to experiment with Canva to create a week mood poster that shows some of the ideas I have been thinking this week after a forum threat that Huw initiated.

This is actually something that has been bugging me forever (well, at least since I was in uni and working in the education system). What is education for? What is the role of the school as an educational institution? Why do we need a structured education? Can we compare what is education for primary/elementary school or high education?

I have to admit, that since I am a mother this question resonates even more than before. Maybe because of my personal experience with structured education, or maybe because of my professional background, or maybe because my studies… every day I am more convinced that the education given by school is not necessary. I believe that what children need is play and experiment with their real life, not living in an artificial bubble of learning where they “only” interact with their peers (aged group) and have a curated random content that needs to learn in some specific path. Sorry, I know I can be very critical and pessimist with structured education, but I am being very general and taking a very radical side here – just to make the exercise -.

In that way, my first quick answer when asking what is education for? (elementary ed.) is saying that basically, is a place where parents can leave their children while they are working. That way children can learn what is needed to become future workers that will maintain the (wheel) system. If I have to answer what is higher education for? I would say that is the place where a tame citizen will go in order to learn more specific skills and get a certificate of course! it will allow developing their professional life.  Is this pure instrumentalism,  isn’t it?

 

If I consider myself as a feminist anti-capitalism activist, can I be part of this (educational) system that collaborates to perpetuate this system that I don’t believe? This is a very short post about all my contradictions and internal dilemmas.

  • Being an outsider of the structured system (practicing unschooling) is a true way to battle the instrumentalism of the education?
  • The constructivist that Hamilton & Friesen (2013) propose, can be implemented in the current system? degrees/evaluations/tests/structure, etc.
  • Are these thoughts coming from privilege? I know I can afford to unschool my son, I have the resources/knowledge to give him the skills he will need in the future. Is a school, then, the only way to offer equality? Equality means homogenization?