Our little exercise from last time brought up a point that many of you had probably not thought of before: experience. Just how much of what you do are you able to do simply because you have gathered enough experience to do it well (or even, to do it at all)? I think we all agree on the answer: a lot.
All of us have had that experience of sitting in a classroom and suddenly realizing that what the teacher is talking about is actually the solution to another problem that has been plaguing you: maybe it was how to deal with your girl/boy friend while in literature class, maybe it was some insight to your hobby that appeared in science class. It doesn't matter, but all of us have had the experience of being in a learning situation (classroom, lab, etc.) and learning something that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual subject at hand. This common experience has a name: non-formal learning. A lot of our learning happens this way.
Even more learning occurs outside the classroom, in the "college of hard-knocks" as the Americans like to call it. This is the real venue for "live and learn". Building a soap-box racer, a model rocket, sewing clothes for a doll, building a float for the homecoming parade ... the list is endless: no matter what we do, as humans, we learn something just from doing it. We have all kinds of useful knowledge, not so useful knowledge (e.g. trivia), handy skills, and the ability to do something that others you know can't do, and all of this has come from the fact that you have survived as long as you have. Imagine now, you could get some kind of "school credit" for that. This is what is known in the (education) trade as "informal learning".
Common sense tells us that a lot of what we know and are capable of doing has come from activities that weren't necessarily intended to achieve those results. If it were possible to somehow "document" that learning, then there would be a whole lot more we could put on our resumes that might be applicable to the job we are seeking. Given the fact that talk's cheap and too many people are simply willing to lie to get what they want, having these knowledge, skills, and abilities documented by a competent authority, that is, officially, would solve that problem. This is what we also know in the trade as "accreditation of prior learning" (APL). And this is a program that the European Commission has been rightfully pursuing as well.
Yes, the two ideas I've been talking about in the last two posts constitute what could be called a "revolution" in education and training. What?! A revolution! Yes. For as harmless as they appear, these two concepts have the potential to change the (education) world as we know it. Why? For the simple reason that I mentioned at the beginning of these ponderings from Prague: they appear like good ideas on the surface ... but think them through to the end.
That's where we are headed next time.
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