Saw this list of 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering (via Wired, via Bookforum) the other day and was happy to see that ‘advance personalized learning‘ made the cut — seemingly out of place among challenges like ‘provide energy from fusion‘ and ‘engineer better medicines‘.
The selection committee (some smart people there, including Craig Venter and Larry Page) included the challenge of advancing personalized learning as a “contribution to the joy of living” — the joy of living being one of four “realms of human concern” (the other three are sustainability, health, and vulnerability).
To some, concerns about the “joy of living” might seem like an afterthought — something to round out the list, or make it more appealing to non-engineers (i.e. people who have blogs and might write about it because one of their passions is listed).
But aside from the fact that we need some kind of purpose in life — something to do with all that good health and cheap energy — personal learning is an activity feeds back into the process:
Creative competence and self-mastery may be the most valuable resources of all: they bring all the other resources together; our ability and desire to discover and create are what make things into resources at all.
And if personal learning isn’t the key, then ‘engineering the tools of scientific discovery‘ (another challenge that addresses the joy of living) has got to be.
[P.S. I've redesigned and rewritten my homepage again, in a way that better reflects this educational aspect of my work.]
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