Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

At present I’m reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. OK, I may be a bit late in actually reading this book, but it’s now out in paperback and the second edition contains more comments from the author on the implications on education.

Then I picked up on Terry’s post concerning his views on this week’s news on coursework plagarism. He tells an interesting story of being offered £100 to write an assignment back in 1982. The media has picked up on two strands - first is that of straight copying, and second of out-sourcing coursework assignment writing to India. Tom Friedman would have no doubt loved the latter as an example for his book!

It would seem that computer students have been using Rentacoder to write elements of their code rather than doing it themselves. While Edexcel are to use Turnitin to examine scripts for plagarism.

To me it seems to be a clash of old and new worlds. The ‘old’ hang on to present systems while the ‘new’ embraces tools and opportunities to make things easier in a world that is slow to change. The truth is that in the ‘real world’, those companies that want to succeed have been out-sourcing coding and a whole load of other stuff for a long time! It is the methods of assessment that are obsolete, and probably what we are teaching students as well. I tend to agree with Peter Levin of the London School of Economics who is quoted in the Education Guardian’s article:

“Learning would be - as it should - a matter of gaining, assimilating and building on knowledge and ideas from any source. Teachers could go back to teaching. And essay sellers and the plagiarism police would go out of business.”

Levin’s “proposal is to publish all student writings that gain a pass grade on the web under a Creative Commons licence. Students’ understanding of a topic would be tested by asking them to synthesise a unique handful of these essays into an essay of their own.”

Friedman argues that Globalisation 3.0 is not just Globalisation 2.0 intensified. It’s not just about finding cheaper forms of labour, whether industrial or intellectual. “… America’s [read developed countries] job is not to to fight with India and China over the middle but to invent the new middle and more.” The question is, which world are we educating our children for?
If you have not got time to read The World is Flat immediately, watch Friedman’s lecture at MIT in May 2005 here.