User control over educational content: a funny idea!

The fact that students can study whatever interests them at will is a real liberation, and at the same time a remarkable gain in educational efficiency; what interests them can evolve very quickly for them. The depth of the Internet fascinates every working student.

What didn't interest him yesterday interests him today, because it's linked to what interested him before. Integral calculus or political science interests him now because he sees the link with his original subject.

For children, just about everything interests them at their level, and they can move from one subject to another as long as they find links.

Autonomy?

But there's a fine line between letting them fiddle with the content, and education is rightly reluctant to cross it. A research approach is not the same thing as the appropriation of content supported by experience and references to experiments or achievements.

Let's consider that the entire scientific process is integrative and participatory, but with rules.

Each scientist's contributions are first derived from a rigorous personal approach, in principle, then discussed and integrated into the general corpus, often at the cost of fierce struggles and questioning of the entire previous corpus.

The co-creation of knowledge dear to constructivism has never led to any official or practical knowledge, or at least I've never seen any. Co-construction produces encyclopedias, directories, all sorts of things useful to groups, but nothing fundamental in terms of knowledge, because it lacks one element: rules. The rules are accepted by the group, but their application ultimately comes from a recognized authority; the group no more than the individual can be judge and jury.

Participatory content

So, before giving in to the fashion for "participatory content" in education, it's a good idea to clarify its uses and limits. Reliable knowledge is usually far removed from the spontaneous participation of each and every one of us, according to our mood and desires. The quality of knowledge is more easily determined by facts and achievements than by the number of individuals and their opinions.

The user's control over educational content is and always has been in his or her own space, whether it's a notebook or a blog, but to make it a pedagogical principle for teaching and learning to groups is a contribution that will have a long way to go before it becomes part of recognized effective practices.

Illustration: Gudella - DepositPhotos