October 11, 2023
In my 2009 Project Based Learning Design and Coaching Guide, I speculated about the longevity of Project Based Learning. I titled my introductory paragraph ‘PBL: A Bridge Just Far Enough.’
By that, I meant that PBL was not the final iteration of great teaching and learning. As the world around schools changed, I saw PBL evolving until the label faded. At that point, the student-friendly process of challenge, inquiry, design, solution, and presentation—the essential elements of high-quality projects—would be commonplace. I imagined that one day a young child would announce to her parents at the dinner table that “Today, we did something really weird at school. It was called a lecture.”
It’s clear PBL has not reached the exalted state I predicted. Call me naïve; I plead guilty. However, unexpectedly, the prophecy came true. The original vision of transformation associated with project-based learning has disappeared in many schools, watered down with ‘projects’ designed to entice students into engaging in a standardized curriculum with little authentic meaning beyond testing and admissions.
The reason behind the disappearance is no mystery. High-quality ‘real’ PBL succumbed to environmental conditions unfavorable to creativity, experimentation, deep reflection, extended collaboration, and meaningful action. If a system values control over human ingenuity, PBL can’t do its work. It doesn’t fit.
Fortifications remain in place that ensure the standardized system will continue its blockade for some time. The arguments over how soon it will shift into a modern format are well-known to educators, so I won’t replay the school reform conversation. But the already visible signs of disruption—such as the 40% of teachers leaving the profession or attendance drops of 20% in California schools—point to an implosion ahead.
In any case, I don’t believe the arguments will matter. Here’s my first point: Standardized schooling will fail sooner than we imagine because the planet is in danger of failing. For those who keep calendars, the current deadline is 2050, less than three decades away, and the same length of time it takes for a child to become an adult.
No wonder over 50% of young people report trauma when contemplating their future or find their mind wandering during Maths. No wonder behavior issues are exploding, fueled by not unreasonable antipathy toward teachers, the classroom, the curriculum, and the system. No wonder many parents endorse a four-day school week. Those are signs of a manufacturing system gone awry, with revolt on the assembly line.
For PBL, however, the erosion of the standardized system is a lifesaver. In a world confused by machine intelligence, doubtful of its capability to address climate issues, surrounded by social disruption, and forced to contemplate the meaning of the 100 sextillion planets coming into view, Project-Based Learning is exactly right. It will be back.
But not in its present iteration. To move the needle on the planet, PBL will need to up its game. Planet-wide disruption has serious side effects on quality of life, but it’s also forcing us to probe deeper into humans and their capabilities. It’s telling us how to liberate human ingenuity on a scale necessary to face the future as adults, but also to create the conditions through which the 1.3 billion youth on the planet experience the maximum opportunity to explore their gifts and eventually thrive and contribute.
I term this allowing genius, which sounds like a reach, except I’m not talking about a legion of Einsteins (though a few more would be fine). I think in terms of welcoming a neurodiverse, decolonized population of youth into a guided, collective effort to redirect the future, take action in their communities, and become co-learners engaged in the very challenging task of restoring order on a chaotic Earth.
Neither do I mean genius in the usual sense of inventiveness. Genius and joy were once intimately connected. To move PBL forward, PBL must embrace the chief ingredient driving societal change now: Freedom. Freedom is essential to discovering inner strengths, purpose, and those mysterious emanations from the human mind and heart that lead to the spontaneous combustion of insight and new ideas.
This fits with my view of PBL. I’ve never considered PBL to be a ‘strategy’ or ‘method.’ The foremost attraction of PBL for me is that beautifully crafted project-based work enables and supports the fundamental process through which humans learn. It’s pretty simple. In the flow of creative thought, in response to challenges, learners of any age feel engaged and happy. When creative thought leads to action and positive accomplishment, the feeling gets better. It leaves you wanting more. That’s called curiosity, the doorway to engagement with the broader world. But mostly, that process brings the inner life to the surface. In the past, I’ve argued that the best outcome in a project is brightness—that expression of joy on the faces of young people when they feel the results of their work.
Mass mobilization of brightness is the goal if we hope to make it safely past 2050. But that will depend on whether educators can leave behind a standardized system as well as develop an unstandardized mindset, which embraces ideas that point opposite to many truths now held dear by education and society as a whole, as well as remove barriers to the expression of natural genius. Here are talking points that I will expand on in future articles:
Leave the blank slate behind for good. Offering freedom for youth to cultivate their genius begins with restoring faith in the human capacity to learn without instruction. The barrier is the input-out model of learning, which relies on conventional scientific wisdom related to evolution, brain function, and genetics. All of these are under deep review. Eventually, they will shift our views on personalization, student-centered inquiry, and the outmoded 4 C’s. The ultimate vision is to begin by honoring each young person for gifts not visible to us or perhaps to them—and then begin instruction.
Prepare for the age beyond the Anthropocene. Underneath the falling apart, the human race is trying to unify, reintegrate with Nature, and prepare for a coming hard winter by forging a global mind capable of meeting an existential challenge. Life is headed toward what one scientist calls the Symbiocene. This reintegration not only restores hope and purpose to learning but allows young people to understand that their generation is leading the way to collective intelligence. This will dictate a fresh approach to deep collaboration, personal openness, biocentrism, cultural humility, and creativity as a communal rather than personal endeavor.
Decolonize Knowledge. I implied earlier that neurodiversity is an appropriate evolutionary response to the repositioning of a chaotic planet. Autistic minds can process information faster. Attention deficit is a handy multi-tasker with lots of creative juice. The explosion of different maps to reality is tied to the belated, but still timely realization that the Scientific Revolution displaced many other ways to view life. Let’s normalize this. It’s overdue to design a curriculum that merges Western canon with indigenous science, pre-scientific wisdom, and truly diverse paths to ‘knowing.’ It’s time to let go of outmoded instruments of knowledge measurement, such as IQ. Look around and I believe we all see the same thing: A world becoming less logical and more diverse in its thinking. Maybe that’s the genius we’ve been missing.
Action is the Antidote for Despair. This is the most obvious but also the most critical. Leaving youth sequestered in those four walls while the world burns won’t work. I guess that much of the trauma reported by youth is a kind of PTSD response to the unkind, unjust, and nearly (in many cases) unlivable. Exhibiting genius is a function of resiliency in the face of threat. The only recourse is to rediscover hope and strength through action. Turn schools green. Make community action a norm. Build eco-literacy skills and knowledge. Cut out the 90% of the zombie curriculum that serves the old intellect. Turn empathy into learning, as I once wrote in my favorite blog.
Go to Part 2: The New 5 Cs are the New PBL: The Old Cs Are Useless | Thom Markham.
You may also be interested in reading more articles written by Thom Markham for Intrepid Ed News.
