All true. And more. Much more.
There’s another, deeper aspect to this “learner” newspeak, and it’s grounded in the constructivist philosophy that has essentially destroyed our educational system. That system has not only abdicated its responsibility to develop what Americans once considered good citizens, it has abdicated its responsibility for getting across the Three R’s as well.
The kids you (and I) have in school are not “children” or “learners”. In that environment, they are Students.
To answer mishu’s question: there’s a problem with this term in our new “progressive”, politically correct world. The title of Student naturally implies that there is someone on the scene acting as a Teacher. And our culture, of course, has come to assign specific, vital responsibilities to people who take on this title.
Constructivist theory specifically eschews this teaching responsibility, and has successfully transformed most classrooms using a new paradigm. The “outdated”, classical mode, where Teachers are responsible for lecturing, encouraging, stimulating, assessing and grading – teaching – Students, is now largely abandoned. A more “progressive” mode – typically a chaotic morass of activity, where “learners” collectively flail through loosely structured group activities to “construct their own knowledge” – has replaced the classical mode, while the former Teacher now acts as a “guide on the side”, and is more a referee than a resource.
All manner of psychobabble regarding “individual learning styles,” “metacognition,” and other nebulous factors have been used to justify this shift in classroom structure and teaching methodology. But the most critical result of the process has been the abdication on the part of Faculty and Administration of its responsibility to actually teach.
The most tangible benefit for constructivist “educators” in this new mode is that there is no accountability whatsoever for the faculty or the administration. If a “learner” fails to learn, there is no Teacher/Student relationship, i.e., no implicit contract involved that might be used to show a lack on the part of the Teacher. There IS no Teacher, per se. The result of this lack of accountability is clearly demonstrated in the continuing decline of quality education, despite the ever-increasing allocation of tax dollars and ever-growing tuitions supposedly allocated to its improvement.
There’s a lot more to this phenomenon than first meets the eye. The implications of enforced collectivist, group activity (and group assessment), emphasis on “diversity”, radical feminism, “social justice”, and multiculturalism, implementation of campus “speech codes”, abused tenure and many the other elements have conspired within this new education paradigm to replace classical education with something that is transforming our culture as we watch. It’s not a pretty picture.
