The overarching purpose of school ought to be that children should want to keep learning more about themselves, others, and the world around them.

That’s a paraphrase of the driving force behind the work of Seymour Sarason, an educator and writer who has had a huge influence on my thinking about schools and learning. For Sarason, “productive learning” was learning that engendered “wanting to learn more.” Anything that didn’t cause students to want to learn more was “unproductive.”

Want to argue with that?

When I bring up that idea in my coaching or workshop contexts, no one disagrees with that purpose. Schools should be laser-focused on helping kids learn. That is at the core of our work with children, especially now at a time when our kids will be required to know how to learn their way through the world in self-directed, self-determined ways. 

So, the question becomes, why aren’t we better at creating the conditions for “productive learning” to happen in school?

Some of that, as I have mentioned before in this space, is because most schools have very little coherence around how they define what learning is. Personally, if you don’t have a definition, just steal Sarason’s.…