I love watching TED talks — they provide unparalleled insight into humanity as speakers articulate themselves from personal experiences instead of making a speech from an utopian perspective. This TED talk was different in that the speaker drew inspiration from his toddler. Dr. Wesch (the speaker) made me question my own interpretation of learning. Throughout the talk he made some excellent points — some I agree with and some I disagree with — and contradicted himself onetime. At one point he condemned academic institutions by quoting inconsequential statistics. Presuming the failure is real, I think the burden of failure should be shared equally by students and administration/faculty.
Dr. Wesch started his talk by mentioning that commonly class rooms are addressed as “fantasy land” and that people believe that the real world exist outside of class rooms. He derided this common belief and tacitly expressed that class rooms should replicate real world environment. I disagree with this tacit insinuation — class rooms are safe spaces created to teach the tools necessary to succeed at life; replicating real world situations and teaching tools at the same time would be futile. He also expressed that the schools have normalized an extremely “narrow view of learning” by defining learning as “dumping information on students.” I think this learning system is apropos to schools as this is the age to attain knowledge and once there is enough data/information/knowledge available to students, they will be better equipped to be more critical. Similarly, all the technical classes require some degree of knowledge before the students can begin adding novelty to their field of study — hence “dumping information” proves to be effective in most of the cases. Dr. Wesch also juxtaposed his toddlers learning with students learning at school, which seemed a far stretch and even slightly farcical to me — there are very scientific reasons as to why toddlers are more resilient to failure and why adults are averse to failure. Another aspect that invalidates the aforementioned juxtaposition is the difference in pressure, stress, time constraint, and the risk associated with the activity — all of which alter human behavior. Towards the end, Dr. Wesch condemns the A-F grading system and claims that he actualized an alternative grading system for one of his classes, but never explained what his system was. According to me the A-F grading system is apt since it fosters competition and competition is the best motivator — demonstrated by the space race. He also expressed that he had fostered a collaborative environment in the same class, where all students helped each other succeed — I don’t think this is reflective of the real world, and hence antithetical to his original purport that class room setting should duplicate the real world. I agree with him when he exclaims that teachers need to be more compassionate and construing.
In totality, I really enjoyed the talk and Dr. Wesch’s idea of teaching/learning. Additionally, I think that Dr. Wesch’s ideology can be an inspiration to teachers, all around the world, to better connect with their students.
vibhavnanda 