Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Learning’s first principle – the most important thing i learned this year

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

The first principle Dave Cormier writes about is this: do they care? He writes, "Our job, as educators, is to convince students who don't care to start caring, and to encourage those who currently care, to continue caring." In the comments comes an unexpected treat from David Wiley, an old paper on the same subject. "Why bother learning how to use all these 'effective instructional strategies' when people aren't even going to engage with them?" he wondered. My take is different. I see education less as an enterprise in making people do what they don't want to do, and more as one of helping people do what they want to do. And there's something wrong with the selection mechanism when a student can pay and spend four years at a university and still not be engaged in learning.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Oct 11, 2024 05:19 a.m.

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