

Education 2.0: The Importance of Ownership - joshkaufman
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/ed-20-the-importance-of-owners.html

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joshkaufman
Here are the two paragraphs that jumped out at me:

 _I was hiking with my son yesterday. It was a long hike for a boy his age and
he asked me, “Dad, do your feet hurt?” I turned my head as we walked and said,
“Yeah. They hurt. But not all hurting is bad and you wanted to get to the top
of the hill. Do you want to stop?” He thought about it for a long while, ten,
maybe twenty steps and said, “no, but my feet hurt too. I’ll be glad when we
get to the top.” Ed 2.0 won’t make our feet not hurt. We’ll just be hiking to
more wonderous places._

and...

 _Ed 2.0 is about encouraging ownership - genuine heartfelt ownership of one’s
own educational destiny. The institutions will transform faster than we can
keep pace. Between the cracks of our existing educational infrastructure will
grow varied species of educational delivery the likes of which we have never
seen and cannot possibly forecast. What our students will need is a love of
learning but we should not mistake this for an easy love affair. A love of
learning is a hard relationship. Learning hurts sometimes. Learning is scary
most of the time. It’s impact is all-too-often proportional to its agony. As
Benjamin Franklin described it, “Those things that hurt, instruct.”_

I'm spending my professional life teaching business to adult learners. There
seems to be a very significant and visible difference between people who
understand that learning is sometimes difficult (but that's okay), and people
who believe that everything should be easy or simple. The former inevitably
grow, and the latter give up or stagnate.

I'm also competing, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, with MBA
programs. Compared with self-education, many of my readers consider MBA
programs a form of "easy mode" as if it's a good thing - they know they
probably won't learn anything practical, but the structure is handed to them,
but at least they'll "complete" it and get a sheepskin at the end. Some choose
the safe, predictable path instead of taking ownership for their own learning
- even if it's more expensive and less valuable. (Most individuals who take
ownership for their own learning in MBA programs are the people who don't need
them in the first place.)

I really wonder if "ownership" can be taught. If so, I'd like to teach it.

~~~
Qz
It can be, but often people have to get themselves in a rut 'the easy way'
before they're willing to learn it (at least I did).

------
forkandwait
I like to distinguish between "vanilla fun" and "Nietzschean fun" (after the
German philosopher). You get to experience the latter by simply pushing your
pleasure button over and over like the rat in the experiment (drugs, sex,
dancing,food, etc). You get to experience the latter by cultivating a sense of
self-development through willing submission to some sort of (often painful)
discipline which makes you grow out of yourself. You have be excited about
growing, rather than trying to hold on to who you already were, in order for
this "fun" to be fun; a lot of people grip ferociously to who they are and
don't want to self-overcome, and so they can't really become learners. Math
homework, physical training, etc -- all Nietzschean.

Don't get me wrong -- the former should be part of everyone's life. But so
should the latter.

~~~
sketerpot
The latter is what raises your baseline level of happiness, while the former
is mostly temporary and fleeting. I like them both, of course, so don't think
that I'm knocking vanilla fun.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill>

