IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

7 Learning
Learning as a Design Issue
You may remember the advertisement for an information services company
that featured a water pipe, tied in a knot, over a person’s head. A solitary
drop of water dripped out of the pipe’s open end. The ad’s visual
metaphor and accompanying text were about the removal of information
blockages. A good information system, the ad seemed to suggest, will pour
information into our heads, a bit like filling up a bucket.
Pipe-and-bucket thinking pervades policy that has to do with learning
and education. The British government is even building a ‘‘National Grid
of Learning’’ that will connect all schools to the Internet. It’s a great political
metaphor—knowledge for all, just like water or electricity. But it’s an
outdated model of learning. Learning is a complex, social, and multidimensional
process that does not lend itself to being sent down a pipe—for example,
from a website. Knowledge, understanding, wisdom—or ‘‘content,’’
if you must—are qualities one develops through time. They are not a thing
one is sent.
Content vs. Thought
Formal education is already crippled by too much content and too little
time to think. By the early 2000s, no fewer than 270 different entities were
in a position to send directives to English schools. The tap has been left
running for so long that teachers and pupils feel like submariners in a disaster
movie—afloat near the ceiling, struggling to breathe. As Ivan Illich
understood thirty years ago, when he proposed the ‘‘de-schooling of society,’’
1 the best solution to our many education dilemmas is probably to