“What
is the purpose of education?”
This is the question posed by my ‘Agroecology’
professor in our first lecture of the semester. The lectures are given in a
small classroom and there are only 15 people taking the course so it is a
perfect environment for discussion. He opened the floor to debate and everyone
in the class launched straight into ripping apart our current education system.
Unsurprisingly we all began to vent our anger about the heavy focus on exams,
coursework and the pressures of getting a good grade… at any cost. We have all
endured the annual stress of revision season. We have all sat in airless rooms
for days and stared at textbooks that we no longer have any desire to read. We
have all got to a point of despair where we don’t care how much we understand
the content we are learning, we don’t care if we agree with it, we don’t care
if we forget it all 5 minutes after handing in our paper. All we care about is
squishing it into our brains just enough to enable us to bang out a good exam
and get a good mark.
But …
what if the cost of getting a good grade is
your education?
Arguably our outcome-focused mindsets cost
us a whole skillset. Our educational reward system is stifling our ability to
think, to question, to be curious and to take academic risks. Often these
skills don’t noticeably improve our grade outcomes, so why bother? There’s only
so much time in a day, and we all have other time commitments outside of our
studies…. sports, hobbies, friends and family. Noone has time to do everything.
We have to prioritize the things that are most important to us and no one has
time to become an expert on every interesting topic they have ever come across.
But being inquisitive is not the same as becoming an expert. It is about
learning to question, learning to think critically and learning to be
interested. However, this learning process does take time. It requires time
spent thinking and discussing. Furthermore, taking ‘academic risks’ is … well risky. Why push the boundaries when
staying nicely within them can get you 10/10?
So
the next question our professor posed was – how would we improve the education
system?
This we found a lot harder to answer. There
was a definite pause before anyone said anything. It’s easy to criticize the
current educational system but designing a better one is a bit trickier. Ultimately
our society requires assessment and without fundamentally altering its
underlying structure we are not going to change that. So how do we assess
people in a way that rewards critical thinking, curiosity and risk? In other
words, how do we assess the process of thinking rather than just the outcome? We
have to somehow eliminate the constant fear of failure before people will have
the courage to push boundaries. As my professor so eloquently put it: education
should be about “providing people with a
safe place to fail”. He argued that the role of a teacher is to create an
environment in which his students feel like they can experiment with ideas
without jeopardizing their grade.
So
how do you create a safe place to fail? Is failure not an integral part of
assessment?
My class was then tasked with creating our
own syllabus and coming up with our own assessment methods. For the first time
ever I was asked specifically what I wanted to learn and how I wanted to be
assessed, something that really took me by surprise.
Agroecology is “the study of ecological
processes applied to agricultural production systems”. For our syllabus we
decided to look at how to integrate plant and animals together into farm
systems. Wendel Berry, a writer, farmer and environmental activist, highlighted
the idea that by separating plant production from animal production, we created two
problems from one solution.
“Once plants and animals were raised together on the
same farm — which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure,
to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities
of commercial fertilizer. The genius of
America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution
and divide it neatly into two problems.”
Berry, W., 1996. The Unsettling of America: Culture &
Agriculture 3rd ed., Sierra Club Books. p. 62
Outside of class each person has to design
an integrated plant animal system that includes 3 trophic levels and that could
be applied to the UBC farm. During class we can discuss whatever topics
relating to ‘agroecology’ that we want.
In terms of assessment methods, there was a
unanimous decision to veto all exams. We then decided on four different,
equally weighted, methods:
1.
Class discussion – the quality
of your contributions to class debate.
2.
Review presentations – three 5-minute
presentations: one for each of the three trophic levels of your integrated
plant-animal farm system. These will be assessed by both the professor and my
peers for clarity, understanding, insight and novelty.
3.
Critical thinking assessments –
three writing assignments relating to broad topic areas (not specific titles),
with no word limit and assessed in a similar way
4.
Final project proposal – a
final write up of our integrated system proposal for the farm again with no
word limit, no specific title and no particular structural requirements.
So far I have done one presentation, one
writing assignment and lots of class discussion. For the first time in forever, I have felt
like I have had the space to think, to engage and to get excited about all
sorts of things that I want to learn about. I enjoy spending three hours every
Tuesday and Thursday sitting and discussing whatever topic comes to light that
day. The debate can veer off in whatever direction we choose, there is no set
syllabus that we have to cover. The fact that my class contribution is
continually assessed has surprisingly not made me nervous to open my mouth, but
instead has given me an incentive to stay engaged and think more critically. I feel
as though I am improving my process of thought, not just my outcome.