Bring me your Huddled Murdochs!

Instead of blocking Google images, how about learning some home truths from those who are coming after?

… learning will become a distributed system, dedicated to creativity, innovation, customised needs and networked across many sites from the family kitchen to the business breakfast as well as the classroom and workplace. Educational practices in the various systems need to open up, to become more permeable and responsive to changing economic and social factors.

The shift from teaching as transmission of knowledge to learning as production of knowledge means that an important responsibility for the system will be helping people learn to learn, and to become motivated to learn. In this scenario, teachers become learning entrepreneurs, managers or producers, and teaching gives way to the design of learning programs. (education.qld.gov.au/publication/production/reports/)

In short, teachers must become more like Rupert Murdoch, just as, with the humility of the immigrant, he has shown himself willing to learn from the natives. There is nothing else for it, as Mr Murdoch once wisely but provocatively said on another matter, but to “change the culture”. The digital natives have already come of age. It’s time the big systems - whether they’re media industries or education authorities - grew up too.