David Putnam: Information Literacy The Key to Learning

This is quote from David Putman, Academy Award-winning film producer of movies such as Midnight Express, Chariots of Fire, The Killing Fields and The Mission, who is now now a member of the British House of Lords and advocate for educational change.

In an interview on ABC's Latline on Monday November 15th, 2010, David Putman said, "The most important thing I think teachers can do for young people is to make them inquiring, is to ensure that they know how to gather information, that they check information and they take their information from a multiplicity of sources.

If you can get a child to do that and then become interested in the whole process of information gathering, you're halfway towards becoming a learner. And once you're a learner, you're a learner for life. That's certainly been my experience."

What a great description of the nature and effect of information literacy.

He went on to say, "I think that children are getting better and better at gathering information. The problem is that for people of my age and indeed a good deal younger, we get kind of disturbed by the way in which children gather information. And I think it's us, it's my generation and teachers of my generation or in their 40s, 50s, 60s who have got to in a way close that gap with kids, because if kids begin to think - young people begin to think that education has nothing to do with the way their lives are and the way in which they live their lives, they will blame education; they won't blame themselves; they'll blame education.

And my greatest single fear for education is there's a kind of gap that's growing between the way that young people see themselves and the way in which they kind of learn and the way that teachers would like to teach.

Teachers have got to find a way of closing that gap and of meeting young people halfway in terms of using the tools that they use and using the language indeed that they use. We can't, I don't think, sit in some ivory tower and expect young people to come to us. That's just not gonna happen. We must find a way of meeting them halfway."

Read the complete transcript or watch the video at: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s3067187.htm