You Are So Much More Than Your Diploma and So Is Your Learning Journey
It is time to broaden how we think and talk about the formation that occurs in schools, colleges, and other formal informal learning environments.
Look in my office closet. You will find a stack of diplomas and related documents in a box on the top shelf, including a 6th-grade diploma. Look further into the box; several certificates indicate successful completion of workshops, training, and certificate programs.
What do these documents mean? Choose one of these items and find another person with an identical piece of paper. Then, ask this question. What do the two of you have in common? Find three or four more people with the same paper and ask again. Do this again until you have interviewed twenty to thirty people. What would you expect to discover from this exercise? With perseverance and carefully crafted follow-up questions, you might learn a little more about the meaning of that piece of paper. You may also discover what the paper does not signify.
In the case of my certificates and diplomas, they are historical documents. They only show what I did in the past. At a minimum, barring the possibility that I cheated through the program or school, they indicate that I met some minimum threshold of requirements needed to graduate at a given time in history. However, there is no guarantee that I still meet those requirements. Graduation requirements, curricula, and the faculty likely change over time, so simply seeing that diploma in hand does not show what I do or do not know compared to someone who graduated twenty years earlier or later.
Looking only at the diploma indicates a fraction of what a person learned while pursuing a degree. One might expect that the diploma is evidence that the person met specific standards for college-level reading, writing, listening, and speaking, as well as competence in certain bodies of knowledge. However, suppose you think back to your most recent schooling experience. In that case, I have little doubt that you can recall people with widely different levels of knowledge and skill who earned the same diploma, even the same grades, in many classes. If three such individuals applied for the same job, I am confident that the hiring body could (often with ease) discern the differences between the three.
While nature contributes to these differences, nurture is no small influence. Self-nurture, in particular, makes a tremendous difference. Consider the following questions to get at much of the learning beyond what the diploma signifies.
What did the students do during their free time?
Did they attend optional lectures on campus or in the community?
Did they get involved in extracurricular activities?
Which books did they read for fun or personal interest?
How many books did they read?
Did they travel domestically or globally?
What sort of volunteer activities occupied their time?
What sort of late-night conversations and debates did they have with their classmates?
Did they cram for every test, pull all-nighters to finish every paper, or spread that work over weeks and months?
Did they explore topics in their professor's offices or over lunch or coffee?
Did they work with their professors on any research projects?
Did they spend time building a personal learning network that extends beyond their campus, finding others who share their intellectual interests?
Did they attend any professional conferences, workshops, or related events?
How much time did they study?
Did they do just enough to get the grade, or did they sometimes over-learn and dig deeper into a topic just because it interested them?
Did they work during school or the summer? If so, were these jobs anything to make some money, or were they used to learn new skills or better understand a given profession?
Did they ask many questions (in their head or out loud) in class and while reading?
How much did they learn how to learn?
Did they develop effective organizational strategies, study skills, problem-solving heuristics, and strategies for listening well and communicating persuasively?
What friends and mentors did the student develop?
How did they nurture their emotional growth and development?
Did they intentionally find ways to practice postponing gratification, empathy, or the ability to understand the nonverbal and emotional responses of others?
What sort of relationships did they develop amid their studies?
These questions help us surface the difference between two people who attended the same school and had the same diploma. There is little doubt that how one answers these questions will determine much about what someone learns. In fact, one's answers to these questions may influence the rest of a person's life much more than simply looking at their grades or their performance on individual assessments.
Diplomas, grades, and credentials certainly have a role in society, but we are wise to remember that they offer a limited view of a person's learning. They cannot provide a deep, multi-faceted, meaning-rich view of the learning and formation that contributed to that person's present gifts, talents, and abilities.
This is not to say that formal learning communities lack value. When done well, they are potent contexts for instigating, stretching, supporting, influencing, inspiring, and equipping people in their learning journeys. Yet, the scope of their influence is too often reduced to a GPA, stated major (on the college level), and piece of paper declaring that one met a narrow set of requirements for graduation. Perhaps it is time to broaden how we talk and think about the learning journey.