Is Your Learning Prescribed or Subscribed?
I just finished reading Jay Cross’s book, Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance. I highly recommend it.
In it, Jay mentions that about 80% of our learning happens informally yet costs a fraction (1/5 to free) compared to formal learning. Interestingly, despite its effectiveness and low cost, it still seems to get largely ignored and plays second fiddle to formal learning.
In schools, informal learning is often frowned upon, described as playing around, being off task, coloring out of the lines. Students are seldom given much choice in what they learn and how they learn it. Schools are based on prescriptions, pushing learning onto students. If you put your hand up and ask someone to put theirs up against it, you’ll soon notice that they are pushing yours. Push creates push-back. Most learning in our lives happens from subscriptions not prescriptions. People understanding what is useful to them and it pulls them in, helping them become members of a community of practice. Due to the internet, social media, and cheap to free software, students today have near-infinite opportunities to subscribe to their own learning choices. Top down is becoming less relevant. Top down doesn’t provide the opportunities for practice needed to learn how to learn.
What does your school to do promote informal learning? Does it have a plan in place? Has it even considered informal learning as a viable (and powerful) option to formal learning?
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