Asians for English

I was wondering to myself that perhaps I need to explain to my Chinese-school students that there is a distinction between "studying" and "learning". Often, when asked whether they read at home, they say "yes" but what they actually mean is that they take out a dated school textbook, copy lines off it and memorize words, lines and whole paragraphs.

I repeat myself quite often to my students that a proficiency in English or passing tests is not enough to meet the demands of the 21st century learner.

When you ask a student what goals they have for learning English, without fail they will say, "To prepare for the future". I often struggle with myself that it isn't enough to teach them the 4 skills in acquiring English - I needed to also nurture a confidence both in their self-esteem and their self-directedness in using the language in real life. It is a Sishyphian mental and psychological effort because the 2 hour per week session with me gets pretty much undone again in school.

A proficiency in English is a very small part in wanting to be "competitive and prepare for the future". But how much can an ESL teacher do when students already come with a mindset that "studying and schooling for a steady job after school" is the same thing as "learning English for the future?"

And then I came across this in Seth Godin's blog on whether Education should be about schooling or learning (yes, there is a sea of difference between the two). It summarizes the more complex arguments I was making to myself :

School was the big thing for a long time. School is tests and credits and notetaking and meeting standards. Learning, on the other hand, is 'getting it'. It's the conceptual breakthrough that permits the student to understand it then move on to something else. Learning doesn't care about workbooks or long checklists.

For a while, smart people thought that school was organized to encourage learning. For a long time, though, people in the know have realized that they are fundamentally different activities.

Note the phrase "people in the know". To know the difference between schooling and learning has wide repercussions for parents, parents of students of today (and tomorrow) and educators. I see many ESL teachers in Malaysia still preparing students for obsolete tests like the UPSR and the PMR which has been phased out in an announcment last year. *

A majority of people out there that I meet ARE NOT in the know. The problem is that people who are not in the know are not looking for information that would inform them. They either tune off or misinterpret the message I am trying to convey because they have no reference point to the things I'm trying to tell them. They just don't "get it".

When we measure the yardstick of learning using the benchmarks of 20th century mass schooling we are setting ourselves up (and our children) to fail miserably as a 21st century learner. Do people get it? I hope more people get it and open their mind's eye to see what's coming.

*Read a letter posted on independent internet news portal, Malaysiakini here.