How to establish an individualized education system?

Essentially that is what Ken Robinson is grappling with. As we dive deeper into more complex understandings about the extraordinary variability among human bodies and psychological conditions, it is becoming clear to educators that the well-established, homogenizing system of educating may not be the most effective. Not only do we see this need for change towards a system that honors the subjective experience of each student, but students are beginning to feel they have a right to ask for it. They are beginning to recognize themselves as intelligent individuals with valid experience in the world to contribute to a learning environment, even before the point where formal education is complete.

In recent decades schools at many levels of the education system have begun to abandon the one-size fits all method wherein the student’s only role is a passive receptacle for information transferred by a teacher. Some colleges and universities are moving away from requiring ‘general education’ credits. Many have opportunities for students to individualize their experience within a major and even to create their own major. Where class size allows, many high schools and colleges have embraced discussion-based learning in the classroom where, to an extent, students direct their own learning and contribute their own perceptions and experience as class content. Not only does this enable students to become more engaged, but it also validates subjective experience as something worth paying attention to.

Education has long been about the objective facts, yet the word itself refers to something indisputable, and this is where we get away from real depth of critical thinking that educators want their students to participate in.

What if I don’t see it that way? How else could this be viewed or understood?

Perhaps, in part, this is why a great perceptual chasm between body and self exists. We aren’t used to listening to our gut reactions, our felt sensations, and first perceptions. We aren’t used to giving those immediate and intimate things weight.

Any physicist will tell you that at best any equation that describes physical phenomena is a model that only operates under an exact and ideal set of conditions, yet perfect conditions rarely exist in the world. If we consider the current educational system in this light, we see it is also only a model. It takes faith to break away from as prescribed and long standing as the  educational model, but in a nation that values individualism as much as ours, we may not be able to help ourselves from taking the leap.

The essential flaw in education as we know it today is that it is based on ancient and often primitive practices whose equalizing purpose was neither conscious nor clear.

-Moshe Feldenkrais