Stephen Downes

I have a couple of recent items. In The Form of Informal, I argue that critics of informal l;earning equivocate between two senses of the word 'form', and that 'informal' does not mean 'without structure'. Also, in Virtues Education I look at the argument offered by Paul Tough in a recent New York Times article. The methods described by Tough may appear to work, I write, but they are not scalable, and even if they were, the sort of cultural subversion he describes creates far more harm than he imagines. "Indoctrination, however much it appears to work in the short term and on a small scale, is not the answer. Empowerment is, and only ever has been."