Students vs. Learners

The blog post that I found most interesting from my Google Reader endeavor was ARE THEY STUDENTS OR ARE THEY LEARNERS?. This article was written by David Warlick and comes from his blog 2 Cents Worth. This article focuses on the differences between students and learners and how as teachers we help to create the divide between the two. Students are treated almost as employees that are forced to come into our classrooms and "learn," while learners have a desire to learn new information on topics they are interested in. Warlick's argument is that by treating our students as capable "learners", and not lazy "students", we can begin to change the culture of our schools. Warlick argues that we need to, "teach in order to make ourselves obsolete." What he means by this is that we cannot spoon feed our students information and expect them not to be lazy and unmotivated to find new information on their own. Instead we must begin to place more and more responsibility back on the learner, in order to better motivate them. I thought that this was a great blog post for any classroom teacher to read, no matter their opinion on this issue.