Reflections on What is needed to change in Education by John Mason, 2011
First, we need to recognise that the world is changing very rapidly. You can no longer identify the need for a course in something, take a year or two to develop it and fund it and be delivering on an out of date need. ACS has a system for determining needs, then developing and launching a course within 4 to 8 weeks of identifying that need. I believe this is part of our success.
Second, we need to recognise that if a person is given a broad based and proper education, they will have a much stronger capacity to adapt to changes in their industry and the world at large.
Narrow, specialised training produces graduates who have a narrow vision (like looking down a pipe and only seeing what is directly in front of them).
Broader based training produces graduates who can see a much wider field of vision. They can see the changes coming up behind them and react to those changes before they get left behind.
Training is really something we should be reserving for Dogs.
People need education that will give them a capacity to adapt, understand the world around them, conceive new ideas, solve problems, connect and communicate with colleagues etc.
Third, we need diversity in education. The idea of a national education is a misnomer. It is easier to manage, but it produces less diversity in the graduates.
As a parks director in the 1970’s, I discovered that if I had different people with different backgrounds in a work team, I would get lots of different ideas thrown up when confronted with a problem (eg. from 5 different colleges, some studying overseas, some from interstate, some from Victoria, some from TAFE, some from university). If they all came from the same course at the same college though; the range of ideas would be markedly less.
Postscript: October 2015
from John Mason Principal, ACS Distance Education
"Despite being written 5 years ago; much of what is written here has not changed. The fundamental problem is (as several university professors have said to me); the global education system has too much inertia. It has moved in the same direction for so long, that it is extremely difficult for that direction to be changed"
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