Who Controls What You Learn and Rhizomatic Learning

Today, I sat down and tried to wrap my brain around Rhizomatic Learning w/ Dave Cormier which I watched last night in the etmooc archives. Ok, so let me get this straight.. "We, as in all of us, or those in a class or Mooc" decide what the learning goals are?? Or is it that we are just introduced to a concept and end up going where it takes us? I must admit, I did not join etmooc without two goals. 1. To me more connected with like minded people. 2. To get and share great ideas in emerging technology and digital identities" as it pertains to my own curriculum design pursuits. I teach/facilitate in Computer Technology and that is why I am connected. I don't think I would be a very valuable teacher in the 21st century if I did not keep up with technology, technology is connections, new applciations, freedom on knowledge, blogging for reflection...sharing with wiki's and learning how to do it correctly(at least that is what I see).

In a Rhizomatic learning environment, do you sign up for a course that states "you decide what you will learn"?? Wow, would'nt that be great! I love etmooc and I love online learning, blogging, wiki's, new apps to play with. So the sad news is while I do teach these courses, they still have very specific standards which I must state in my syllabus and my goals for the week/unit must be detailed in our online CMS. I am blessed as I get to make my own curriculum as it pertains to the standards but that was not the case when I was in public education.

So I am grateful but yet I am stuck. What could be and what is reality is so different. Those of us that share and connect learn so much more than those who follow the conventional models of being educated but they do not have a choice. How do we get that to change?? I love the concept, I love that it has a meaningful name but how do we help others see the light??

Visit Classroom 2.0
Today, I tool a small break and moved over to my classroom2.0 community. There I found the longest and most powerful blog/paper I had read in a long time. Carol Black will be speaking to the classroom 2.0 community on FutureofEducation.com February 5th. The topic is "Who is Educating us", Please read her blog post On Power, Knowledge, and the Re-Occupation of Common Sense. It was after I read this powerful change seen in communities that go from community education to "formal" education that I realized they were essentially being stripped of great lessons and being removed from their culture of learning. You see we need rhizomatic learning, in is in our nature as human beings yet we strip in away as soon as we empose "standards", or "goals as deemed by others". The most powerful thing I received from reading the whole blog was the following:

In “developed” societies, we are so accustomed to centralized control over learning that it has become functionally invisible to us, and most people accept it as natural, inevitable, and consistent with the principles of freedom and democracy. We assume that this central authority, because it is associated with something that seems like an unequivocal good – “education” – must itself be fundamentally good, a sort of benevolent dictatorship of the intellect. We allow remote “experts” to dictate what we must learn, when we must learn it, and how we must learn it. We grant them the right to test us, to measure the contents of our brains and the value of our skills, and then to brand us in childhood with a set of numeric rankings that have enormous power over our future opportunities to participate in the economic and political life of our society. We endorse strict legal codes which render this process compulsory, and in a truly Orwellian twist, many of us now view it as a fundamental human right to be legally compelled to learn what a higher authority tells us to learn.

You see in her blog and I quote: "One of the most profound changes that occurs when modern schooling is introduced into traditional societies around the world is a radical shift in the locus of power and control over learning from children, families, and communities to ever more centralized systems of authority. While all cultures are different, in many non-modernized societies children enjoy wide latitude to learn by free play, interaction with other children of multiple ages, immersion in nature, and direct participation in adult work and activities."

They had rhizomatic learning and it is now gone. They are forced into classrooms where the state/government decide what they must learn. If you have made it through reading the longest post I have writtent to date, I would love to hear what you think.. How do we move more towards a Rhizomatic learning model? Is it possible? Do you see why Carol Black and myself are so upset that natural learning has been replaced?? Your comments as always are appreciated. :)