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 
Well I think what he meant that the way the information is dumped on students is not correct. Different students have different abilities to grasp the information and there is no guarantee that they are actually learning from the information that is dumped this way. So there is a need to change the way the info is dumped. Let me give you an example. Since last semester a pathway education course curriculum has been introduced for some courses at VT wherein a classroom is not a traditional classroom with a single person lecturing a bunch of students in a lecture hall setting, but its more of a restaurant like setting with round tables, a lot of talking and encouraged discussions among students and teachers/TA’s about a concept/topic. A part of the assignments is qualitative(unlike the usual multiple choice quantitative solving assignments), where questions like ‘design an experiment’ which do not have a right or wrong answer are asked and they are graded as above competent, competent or below competent depending on how deeply a student goes in to answer the question. Such an ambience in a classroom lets the instructor to ensure if the students are grasping the concepts, the students are able to feel more connected to the subject as well as to others in the class are able to help each other in a collaborative and not a competitive environment. So this is an example of a change in classroom setup, a change in the way the information is ‘dumped’ and a change in usual A-F grading scheme. In my opinion, the real world is full of competition because competition(and not collaboration) is encouraged from a very young age and this needs to change.
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I am assuming that even in those classes, the final grade needs to be calculated in an A-F manner for “GPA purposes” (I might be wrong. this is just pure conjecture). I don’t think the reason why competition is pervasive in our community is because “it is encouraged from a very young age”, instead it is prevalent because of the very nature of life(hence taught from a very young age to prepare the child) — what happens when there are 5 directors seeking for a promotion to VP level ? Competition! I think there needs to be fine balance between teaching competition and collaboration. Teaching ONLY one of them is detrimental to the student in all ways possible.
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I agree with Adbhut when he says competition is there because that’s what we teach. The space race is a tremendous example of how cooperation and collaboration allowed us to perform amazing feats. And even with the initial competition to get to the moon, the collaboration on the international space station is what remains strong. Collaboration allows students to find their strengths and cover each other’s weaknesses. Pure competition just punishes us when we find our weaknesses. It discourages those that can be great but aren’t the very best.
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The way I see it is that cooperation and collaboration help us achieve goals, but competition motivates us to reach those goals. I also think that covering weaknesses always isn’t a good strategy — sometimes it is good to expose them (in a right manner) so that other person can work on improving them — just like airing out wounds.
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I agree that we need both, I’ve had advisors that refuse to provide criticism and it just limits potential. So you’re absolutely right that making someone aware of their weaknesses is good.
I disagree however that competition needs to be the driving force. Most of the basic research we take for granted has been driven purely by curiosity. Even sloppy science can lead to huge benefits (http://mentalfloss.com/article/21135/8-brilliant-scientific-screw-ups). Competition only hinders the U.S.’s science as we have many labs doing nearly identical research when could be specializing and collaborating to more efficiently use resources. Furthermore, both scientific and governmental politics cut funding from incredible research because they weren’t able to compete for any funding.
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I agree that (ideally) collaboration and not competition will furnish sublime results, but I don’t think that is how the “real world” works; albeit I would argue that necessity plays a bigger role (than curiosity) in invention (as the saying goes, “necessity is the mother of all invention”) and chance plays a bigger role in discovery. I have never liked the terms “cut-throat world” or “survival of the fittest” as they allude to humans disassembling each other, which in a sense is true (emotionally and psychologically); but again these are “harsh realities of the world”.
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Hi Vibhav,
I enjoyed reading your post, it was a different interpretation of Wesch’s talk than I’ve heard before and I am glad to hear a different perspective. On instruction, I would challenge and ask why it is that some educators prefer the stand-and-deliver method in the first place. Is it really in the best interest of the students or is it more comfortable for the teacher because they don’t have to work as hard? (It is easier to develop a lecture with slides versus planning an engaging experience-based session.) Is it really better for the students to be filled up with data, information and knowledge and then teach them how to think critically? Or is it better to build these skills concurrently instead of in stages? Do we want to tell them what we think they should know or is it better to teach them how to think about how to apply that fundamental knowledge?
I think part of what makes this particular pedagogy interesting is that it incorporates critical thinking earlier while also supporting the student as an individual. Thinking about it this way, the approaches Wesch describes mean that he is able to tap into whatever sparks his student’s passion to learn, what motivates them as an individual, then he leverages that for them and helps to direct the energy and interest in a positive way.
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Hello Sara,
I concur with your point insofar that critical thinking and data “dumping” need to occur simultaneously, howbeit I am not able to construe how a technical class (where the teacher needs to “dump” exorbitant amount of information in a single semester) would be able to deliver material in the aforementioned manner. Additionally, I am having trouble visioning how such a teaching methodology be scaled to class with more than 100 students ?
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Hi. I do not completely agree with you when you say that ” 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”. I believe that we all have different learning styles, and therefore, dumping information might not be effective for many of us. In my case, I am good at memorizing dumped information for exams, but does it mean that I am actually learning something? I wish that we had different classroom options to learn the same subject because we all learn differently from each other.
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Hi. In some cases memorizing = learning (till a certain point), for instance in medicine — you have to learn (“memorize”) all the medical knowledge that has already been produced. After you have understood(learned/memorized) all of that knowledge, you can start pushing the boundaries and coming up with new tools and techniques. For technical and scientific fields, I don’t see how learning can be any different than memorizing existing knowledge. At this point I would ask, what defines learning ? –according to me learning is the process of understanding information in a manner that makes the information retainable in your brain (hence memorization). So at the end of the day I would conclude that different learning methods = different memorization methods.
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It’s funny that you choose medical knowledge as your knowledge because pre-med classes are largely taught that way as a weed-out method. There is so much information that it is essentially impossible for someone to know it all. However, what people can do is learn how various pathways and molecules interact to get a broad understanding of the body. Having hands-on learning or virtual dissections or even evolutionary history classes can be far more helpful for a medical student because they can see all the networks inside the body and how they relate to other possible symptoms and such. If you’re just trying to match mental flashcards to what you see, you’re going to miss a factor that the patient didn’t think was relevant.
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You are absolutely correct. But at the end of the day whatever field it might be (virtual dissection, evolutionary history etc.) that field would still need to tell the student all the existing information/data (“dumping”) and that student would have to learn that information (“memorization”) to quickly use that information in conjunction with his/her medical knowledge. I think this process of “dumping” and “memorization” can be changed and stretched out for a longer period in order it to be effective — but the principle of the process will remain the same.
Now I absolutely abominate weed out classes. I don’t think they prove anything.
In essence what I am trying to say is that memorization and dumping have a negative connotation but are “necessary evils” of the education system.
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