Or maybe a bunch of our so-called “educational leaders” will get finally get some counseling for their childhood conflicts they had with teachers and grow up. Then we can get rid of all of this weird stuff we are debating now and get to some real educational reform. You know – stop throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

Look, I get that there are problems out there and we need to change things. But students as co-teachers and teachers and co-students? Are we getting so egotistical as a species that we can’t even stand to admit that we might need to learn from someone else? That it is okay to have a hierarchy in class, as long as we teach those on the top to be open and non-abusive?

If students teach themselves, with teachers as co-students, where will they get their knowledge from? They will go out and read blogs or books or Tweets by experts.  So, if a person has the title of “teacher” or “professor,” students couldn’t just learn from them. But this person happens to, say, go out and start a Google Wave… then it is okay for other students in other schools to then learn from them?

I am all for active learning and students getting to participate in their learning…. but let’s not forget that the instructor is also a valuable resource.

A few people say we don’t need teachers and BAAAA!!! “we don’t need teachers any more” they all say.

Someone says “schools will be obsolete by 2010 and BAAAAA!!! “schools will be obsolete by…”

Oh, wait… what year is it now?

And no one has still explained how people who work in education are going to put food on the table in an open learning new world order future. Every class everywhere in the world is going to learn from a billion experts putting a bunch of free resources out there in their spare time? Yeah, right….

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I’m no fuddy-duddy open education hater myself… but I have felt a little discomfort over several aspects surrounding the open education movement.  One of the oddest to me has been the predictions that universities will disappear by the year 2000.  Opppsss… missed that one… I mean 2010 for sure.  Oh, wait… gonna have to make that 2020 now.  I wonder how long people have been predicting the death of the university now?  I remember those claims associated with closed circuit tele-courses many decades ago.

Finally, though, we have George Siemens breaking through the cute kitten syndrome barrier (as he calls it) on open education and raising some concerns that need to be addressed… not as a person that hates change for the sake of hating change, but as a person who likes the ideal but wonders if things aren’t going that well overall:

http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=151

One really disturbing aspect of the open education movement is the continued association with the fragmentation of the entertainment business (mp3s, Hulu, etc, etc).  I have no love for greedy music companies, but the fragmentation of that industry is seen by many as destroying it.  Less and less money is filtering to the artists, and most attempts to fix that have not worked.  Do we really want to change our educational systems to mirror a system that is choking the life out of the very people it needs to survive?  Sure, you will still have people making music even if there is no money in it, but you can only get so far on free services and volunteer work.  Trust me – I have tried.  Eventually, you have to have money flowing in to a system in order to keep the people in that system alive (at least as long as food costs money).  That flow of money will not happen with fragmentation on the level that we are seeing in the music business.

But that is how many have proposed we get rid of universities: make teaching volunteer work.  Really?  I would have to say “good luck on that one!”  How many classes can a full-time worker, parent, spouse, etc. handle in their spare time?  Many of you reading this are wondering what this spare time myth is.  One professor typically teaches something like 3-5 classes.  This would mean that someone out there (this faceless entity that will someone guide education once universities die) will need to grow the general pool of teachers by three to five fold to get all of these volunteers.  Did I miss the end of the teaching shortage some where?  Was there a memo I missed?

Of course, I know I am dealing with some of the more radical ideas out there.  But they always get brought into the mix when open education is discusses.  Don’t get me wrong – I think at its core, open education is a good idea.  I am just glad it is finally getting some close scrutiny.

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