35. Lifelong Learning: A Conversation With Dr. Brian Esselman

Affton Unplugged

By way of first principles, let me assert that education is its own reward. To that end, it is obvious that all students, regardless of ability, should be presented with the genuine opportunity to learn. More a matter of clearing an academic space than preordaining a set of artificial outcomes, I believe that education should be an experience that each student authentically owns.  This is not to say that a common curriculum cannot be agreed upon but that each individual teacher should be aware of the absolute necessity to relinquish their control over the learning process. Student angst stems not from a fear of genuine ownership of their education but rather from the fact that our bureaucratic system inherently tends to contest that ownership.  In essence, we sometimes suffer from the fallacy that we can impose learning upon others.  Instead, we must be vigilant in safeguarding the opportunity to learn.   In so much as this is the case, I believe that we must allow the students that we teach to admit mistakes and overcome them.  The learning process is evolutionary.  Future successes are predicated upon past failures. Students must own what is, at root, an intrinsic experience. We should instruct, guide and support but never control.  Accountability ultimately rests with those who seek to learn not those who vainly yearn for the blind indoctrination of the young.  Our society and its future, depends on content mastery, innovation and the freedom to choose.  To deny this, is to shape and mold our students into the strictures of an arrogant abstraction, one that will not survive even the first few years away from public education.