I noticed that people learn something when they’re ready for it and it ‘speaks’ to them. Otherwise, they may be able to demonstrate competency on a Learning Outcome but they will forget it very soon after (reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon). I regularly ask my former (engineering) students whether they remember ‘this or that’ in one of my courses and the answer is either ‘yes, I need to use it’ or ‘no, but I remember the demo’ or something similar.

Within the context of the current societal and economic system, Learning Outcomes seem reasonable. The problem is that our societal system has the model of building products (in this case, ‘graduates’), rather than nurturing and enriching lives. Would a nurtured and enriched person flourish in the way societies are currently setup? It’s all interconnected. Societal and economic systems have to change so that a nurtured and enriched person is an objective for society before we can set it up as an objective for education.