Empowering Visions Of Learning...

A Learner-Centric Learning
USER-FRIENDLY DESIGNS FOR THE LEARNER!

People are now becoming abundantly aware that the educational system of today’s mainstream is falling short of our expectations. It does so because its intent is not to educate. The main intent of the current educational paradigm is not to nurture the intellectual development of learners. The intent of the educational system is to produce citizens. That is, people who are complacent and easily incorporated into the current social system. This is a declaration of an active alliance for learner-centric education. This is a call for a fundamental shift in the way we work toward education. The education of a human being should offer tools that help them understand the world around them, not tools that help them exploit it. It must offer methodologies that help them to answer the questions they are asking from their own curiosities, not those prompted by the material on a test. It must nurture the natural human tendency for exploration and intrepidity, not discourage it because it’s not budgeted into they day’s itinerary.

The active alliance for learner-centric education is an attempt to expose a revolution in progress. Many parents and educators, inspired by a vision of a new paradigm in education have created learning environments that give learners the tools that help them understand the world, answer their own questions, and follow their own paths to create meaning in their lives. Because of the recent innovations in communication, these visionaries have been able to seek each other out and a new revolution in the way we look at the role of education in the human condition has emerged.

Education should be lifelong. We impose standardized education in a person’s early years, ostensibly to prepare them for life. Really, we are preparing them for incorporation. If we really wanted to prepare our youth for life, we would not sever them from it. We would not teach human history that lies to them about it and we would not bring our efforts to a screeching halt once we felt that the subject attained economic viability. The true purpose of education, making sense of ones self and the reality of one’s environment, predisposes a lifelong task.

Education should not be separate from life. This goes for children and adults. Working, playing and learning beget one another. To impose distinction between them is to stifle the natural predisposition to incorporate each of them into our every experience and exchange with the outside world.

The active alliance seeks to acquaint the mass majority with the success of the new paradigm of education. It seeks to expose the insufficiency on the part of current educational norms to provide education for the learner’s sake. It seeks to respond to widespread dissatisfaction with the current educational system, not only by providing alternatives but by providing ways of creating alternatives that can adapt to different communities and social dynamics. It promotes an adaptive mode of education that focuses on individual needs and the needs of communities dedicated to the welfare of education.

This is not an alliance consisting of a common page with logos linked to each other’s sites. This is the mobilization of educators, parents, individuals, institutions, corporations, organizations and communities who wish to adopt an attitude toward education that focuses on the needs of individual learning styles, on cooperative community learning, and on the necessity to breathe life into education.

Prepared by David Perez and Hai Dai