What's going on here?

I'm from a different planet. We don't do this back home. We don't even have people who call themselves SME's, instructional designers, classroom teachers or professors. Why don't you stop this?

Don't you realize the harm you're doing? Can't you see that you're messing up learners severely when you do this thing you call "instructing". I realize it looks harmless to be well informed and sharing expertise. It also looks harmless to fill your planet's upper atmosphere with carbon. We'll just see about that!

Where I come from, learners have a wonderful process cycling inside themselves. We call it "learning". We all do it. No one is excluded or judged to be inferior at it. This process gets stronger and more resilient whenever it's trusted, valued and supported. We care for this process in everyone of us. Learning is precious to our thriving and essential to our surviving.

Each of us is learning from everything that happens to us. We come to our own realizations about anything we've puzzled about. We formulate better questions to ask from what we've already figured out. We change our minds and unlearn half truths "at the drop of a hat". We're told we have open minds because we are so receptive to things that don't make sense to us yet.

When any of us visit another planet, we come back home very disoriented. We've been through experiences of "not learning". We've had this wonderful process inside us get disregarded and belittled. We've been pictured like we don't learn from everything that happens to us. We've been treated like we couldn't come to our own realizations if we tried.

We return to our planet with our learning process damaged, fragile and unreliable. We have trouble formulating better questions or unlearning whatever half truths we've picked up. We start to experience strange maladies that other planets call "motivation problems", "a lack of self confidence", "learning disabilities" or "a lack of aptitude". We feel like we've come down with some kind of disease while visiting other so-called civilizations.

As we debrief our voyagers on their return, we learn what happened to them and how they got so disoriented. In every case, they've had a run in with some SME, instructor, teacher or professor. They sat in a classroom or through a multimedia presentation where content was delivered. They all got controlled by someone who thought he or she was no longer a learner. They got mistreated by someone with no clue about the wonderful process going on inside her or him. They all got taught.

Our Council of Elders met last night. We've banned further travel to Planet Earth until you've ceased this aberration of continual learning you call "formal instruction". You'll be amazed at how many problems with your educational system will disappear when you stop this insanity. We'll wait for you to come to your senses before we return.

Runyon Albacran, Starfleet Commander

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