Riding a Bicycle
The founder of Praxis, Isaac Morehouse, argues that if we taught the riding of a bicycle in the same manner as we teach most subjects in school and other traditional instructional settings, we would have students engage in activities disconnected from the goal of bike-riding (such as drawing and measuring bikes) and we would present lectures on the history of bicycles and the relation of bicycles to the ecosystem that produces rubber trees for the tires. The student, however, would never have the chance to actually ride a bike.
So much of what is called education focuses on teaching rather than learning. It is often assumed that the teacher, or some other subject matter expert, must merely—in the words of Paulo Freire—"deposit" knowledge in the minds of passive students. The material is dutifully delivered with minimum interruption by the learners. The teacher is active; the participants remain passive.
This lecture-heavy approach to education is often justified because the teacher has a lot of "ground to cover" and it is more efficient to prepare an oral or audio-visual presentation or demonstration to a mass audience. Even if this were true, with the development of social media such as YouTube and platforms like Ted Talks and Khan Academy, why would anyone spend hours listening to a live presenter when the content could be delivered through a pre-recorded video? The value of adding a brief question-and-answer period is also debatable. Today's learners can pause the video, re-listen to parts that have raised questions or uncertainties, and listen at their leisure, when they are most alert and motivated to do so. They can even venture to address remaining questions to any of the many online experts on the subject.
While certainly useful in some instances, the lecture approach to education fails to take into account what science and history tell us are more useful and effective methods for acquiring and retaining knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Research consistently shows that adult learners are more likely to retain ideas and knowledge when they do something with the material. Skills are retained and enhanced by application and practice. Repeated testing shows that we retain about 20 percent of what we hear, about 40 percent of what we hear and see, and about 80 percent of what we hear, see, and do.
In the face of copious scientific evidence that supports the concept of learning by doing (e.g., learning to ride the bicycle by actually riding the bicycle), one is left to wonder why traditional education insists on the quiet classroom, with rows of passive students listening and taking notes, while the active teacher reads from a script or extemporizes.
Aristotle reminds us that "anything we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it ... We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts." Moreover, this is not exclusively a Western concept, as some might argue. A Chinese proverb admonishes: "Tell me and I will forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand." Again, we are reminded that learning is more effectively ingrained by the act of learners doing something with the object (e.g., ideas, skills, attitudes) they are intended to learn.
A one-size-fits-all, pre-programmed script or lecture may make things easier for the teacher, but we mustn't lose sight of the fact that education is not about convenience for the teacher but effective learning for the "student." The root of the word education is from the Latin, ex ducare. Ducare means leading and ex means out. Education thus means "leading out," the ability of a person to discover and grasp the meaning of reality and the world in order to function better within it. "Education is the kindling of a flame," Plutarch reminds us, "not the filling of a vessel."