Education about education
Learning is about exchange and collaboration
A group of high school students building and programming electric toys and robots in a robotics classroom is a good example of collaborative learning.
Ilan Kelman
Agder, Norway
In 1948, the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights offered Article 26, paragraph 1: “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.”
The inevitable question is: What is education?
These days, formal education seems to be mainly about sitting in a room watching a screen displaying slide after slide. Occasionally, a whiteboard, blackboard, or other system is used, such as for showing how to develop and solve equations. It is nonetheless about an apparently knowledgeable someone at the front of a room talking to (rather than with) the allegedly ignorant masses within the room.
The classroom environment is evolving. Question-and-answer, back-and-forth, and interactive discussions are being integrated into the lecturing. Small group discussions, tasks, and exercises are the norm for 10 or 100 students.
This is still all formal education. Roles are assigned as learners and as teachers. A legal mandate exists for the learner to be on site, or the learner decides to be there, often paying a fee for tuition. Yet we learn in so many other ways, through informal education.
In Norway, much is learned and taught by skiing through the forests and on the mountains during winter’s depths. The country’s landscapes, histories, and cultures come alive as the day-time stars sparkle on the snow and the aurora dances overhead. Not to mention the wisdom gleaned of the weather and the oceans by heading out on a fishing boat to catch plenty to eat and sell.
Norway’s Indigenous people, the Sámi, offer a rich education about the food provided by the land, the rivers, the lakes, and the sea. Those who herd reindeer learn by following, leading, and using the animals. Appreciating how to gain clothes, nourishment, and stories happens in the outdoors—knowing by doing and experiencing.
All these forms of education are perfectly in line with the second paragraph of Article 26 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance, and friendship among all nations, racial, or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.”
The obvious contradiction is that not all groups named necessarily support the “maintenance of peace” or “understanding, tolerance, and friendship” among each other. Plenty of schools and other formal education institutions, as well as informal education, preach and train for the opposite.
Intriguingly, the first two paragraphs of Article 26 might be countermanded by the third and final paragraph reading: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”
Does this statement mean that parents can choose an education form or process that does not strengthen “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms,” as per paragraph 2?
From paragraph 1, might some parents oppose placing their children in formal education that is “equally accessible to all on the basis of merit”?
Who chooses for children whose parents are not around? Many parents would not be deemed fit to make such decisions, whether due to medical conditions or being felons. Others sadly passed away.
The question is not only “What is education?” but also “Who gives it?” At baseline, “Who makes education decisions and enforces them?” The answer, as inevitable as these questions, is “It varies.”
At least the Universal Declaration of Human Rights offers a starting point. The principles are easy to challenge and not so easy to implement consistently and effectively. They nonetheless remain as beginning principles for discussion and efforts at practice.
There can certainly be no disagreement about what is perhaps the key principle to any form of successful education, that it is an exchange and collaboration among everyone involved. The teacher always learns and the learner always teaches.
This article originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of The Norwegian American.
