http://www.fininformatica.it/wp/cck08-week-2-schools-and-rizhomes/

Reading the Cormier’s article I was struck by the vision of rhizomatic model of education as a sort of chaotic, completely guideless learning (Cormier says “curriculum is not driven by predefined inputs from experts”, ) that seems incompatible with the very notion of course and school (for example, is this course a rhizomatic experience?).

And what about the experts? I still advocate the need of experts! In my previous post about “ordinary connectivism” I presented an example in which experts were “special nodes” in our daily knowledge network.

Neverthless, the point is that anyone could be expert in something. This could seem trivial, but I guess this is a big point in which our schooling system seems unsuitable.

Schools are grounded on the idea that only teachers are experts, while students are usually semi-empty brains to be filled with notions. Students with peculiar abilities are rarely appreciated at school, if they are not aligned with the mainstream of the (mostly fixed) curriculum.

This way, schools encourage a very low level of epistemic belief in their students: the absolute knowing, in which “knowledge is always certain and it is obtained from authorities” (Jonassen, Marra & Palmer, 2004).

Unfortunately, this dramatically unfits with the multiplicity and flowing nature of knowledge (”knowledge is not static”, G.Siemens), nowadays!

Even if I’m not for de-schooling our society and I don’t (yet?) realize how “community can act as curriculum”, I’m as much convinced that schools must change, if they want to keep up with our changing society, maybe including some forms of rhizomes inside them…