Traditional education - and our warped view of Creativity within Science.
Hey everyone, so in my hunt to create content for you all, I've been lucky enough to come across @sndbox-alpha's new theme - Education & Science.
The way the 'Sciences' are taught in Education is a strong topic for me - Most first-world country's mainstream education is lacking. Systems are dated and the split between 'Creative' fields and 'Science' creates separation between individuals and industries that instead, can collaborate.
Let's get into it,
How was Science portrayed in your Education?
Photo by Jess Watters on Unsplash
And do we even need traditional Education?
For me, I went to a traditional Primary School and High School in Western Australia. After graduating, I went straight to university for a year and a half before dropping out. There were many reasons why, one of the main ones being I didn't feel I needed a degree in Computer Science to do Computer Science.
If I wanted to develop code, I could develop code; we're all aware of the incredible online resources we have available to us. In fact, there's only a select few fields that you need to study traditionally to succeed and create impact within; and thanks to Blockchain driven systems, even these fields have new avenues opening up. (Cheers to the decentralisation pioneers)
Doing well in Science required little more than linear-thinking.
I didn't mind Science in high school, it was a field I could study on my own and succeed at on my own; completing calculations in physics gave me a kick and the theory within Chemistry got me excited to learn more about the world around us.
My Chemistry teacher saw the value in connecting with us a bit more than other teachers; the classes were more collaborative - anyone heard of Le Chatelier's principle on chemical equilibria? We called it 'Le Chat', which became 'The shit'.. Anyway.
'Science' was actually really interesting; however, passing classes merely meant applying the right formulas and regurgitating theory - the tests lacked space for creativity and collaboration, as most traditional schooling environments do.
And despite this not being the case in all schools, it is for the majority.
Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash
Experiential learning: the process of learning through experience. Wikipedia
Finland has the best schooling in the world; and from my research, this is down to their focus on experiences first.
The country spent time prioritising their own issues along with the world's; and refined these into learning experiences within their schooling program; meaning kids learn how to collaborate towards solutions for current problems. How amazing is that?
Source
Aside from traditional education lacking focus on what is important & relevant now, and using factory-like environments to teach, there's another issue I have; this one a bit more particular to Scientific fields.
Art Vs. Science - Science Vs. Art
In the last couple of years, particularly since returning from my solo travel, my understanding of creativity has expanded incredibly.
Creating something out of my experience, even if it's just for myself, has helped me process and actually feel like I'm making progress. What I've realised is that creativity can be accessed and applied to anything (and although there's a place for personal creations, our creations do hold value for each other.).
Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash
Through my schooling, the Sciences were seen as non-artistic & non-creative fields. Compared to music, visual art, dance and cooking - which if you were good at, you were considered creative.
Weirdly enough though, the testing methods there weren't much different to Sciences like Chemistry & Physics - but were seen as creative fields regardless.
There is in fact a ton of room to get creative in the way we learn and solve problems, we just weren't given these opportunities in traditional education; and the affect of labelling one as "non-creative" can form some incredibly limiting self-beliefs.
For example, a very close friend of mine is a full-stack software engineer; a passionate one. During an extremely stressful period about 10 months ago he would say, "all my life I've been the scientist and now I want to be the artist." As if his thousands of lines of code weren't refined beautifully and the software that'd been created didn't have creative value.
Because the processes were a bit more scientific and analytical, he didn't believe his creations were artistic. When in fact, computer science is arguably one of the most creative fields in existence.
The split of 'Creative' fields in Education
It frustrates the shit out of me.
It's completely ironic, especially considering that the 'Liberal Arts', oldest programme in higher Western education encapsulated what was required to live 'as a free person'. This included anything from music all the way through to physics - and my current understanding is that the liberal arts once taught what you have to know to be truly free in the relevant state of society. Source
And now, what is required to be 'free' is a mess, it's hardly talked about. Our lives are spent in a limited freedom designed to have us live capitalist-serving lives; and with it come limiting-beliefs over what we can and can't do - and this, is perhaps our largest issue.
Photo by Glen . on Unsplash
Creative freedom still feels a way away for mass-society, but maybe not. Decentralisation is a great answer to a lot of questions we didn't know we had. At the end of the day though, all we are really doing is going back to what our intuition tells us is right.
What do you think?
How will education change?
How will 'work' change?
Have you learned something new that you once thought you couldn't?
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, reach out by commenting, upvoting or resteeming! I appreciate all of the support.
See you around
So many votes, and no human feedback and interaction, @carpet.duck. So happy I was led here. ;)
Thank you for putting this post together. Very interesting to read and absorb and cheer loudly to!
Truly paradigm-shifting!
Help him release that programming.
LOVE how you wrote this entire paragraph. So on the nail perfect. ;)
Exactly! And yes, VERY exciting.
Within a short 10-30 years so much will have changed. Follow your intuition. Participate. Help co-create the next several paradigm shifts and beyond. AND have FUN doing it.
Thank you for Who You Are Being, all that you do and Blessings again...
Aw @angelacs thank you so much!
I know right! I really got recognised by some whales here which is absolutely appreciated(!) but nothing can really replace human interaction - thank you for reaching out, I really appreciate it!
It makes me really happy that so much of this connected with you. There's so much more research for me to do in pulling these kinds of ideas together. And there's other topics which spring off these ones.
Thank you!
You are very Welcome, @carpet.duck. You're right, there is no substitute for human interaction. ;)
LOVE to hear that and I'll be looking out for your other posts. Have FUN and Angel Blessings.
This is such a great post and an interesting topic!
Considering it was only yesterday where I was on a walk with my Mum, and I was telling her how when I have my own children, I would rather take them travelling around the world and home school them, and they can socialise with other kids in sports clubs and music groups!
I went to school and university and got great grades. But the biggest development for me was travelling and finding yoga. I have always strived for freedom. I work so hard to try to build my own empire on my own terms and I wouldn't have it any other way :D
I am so excited that we are in the process of a HUGE movement. Decentralisation, finally taking control of our lives and happiness, no longer thinking we have to listen to traditions of how life is 'supposed' to be!
I can't wait to read more of your views :)
Ah thank youu! I wonder how your mum takes that kind of stuff. They eventually just have to trust - but I can understand their worry/disbelief.
I'm beyond excited for the decentralisation movement.
It's nice to see you here, thank you so much for reaching out :)
She is used to me :)
I guess I am lucky that my parents trust my journey. They provided a rood over my head and always were there to support me, but I discovered most things for myself in my life, so they can't really interfere.
I think they realise that times have changed since they were planning their own lives and I think they are fascinated but confused with how all this 'online stuff' works :)
I did the whole 'get good grades and go to uni' thing that satisfied them, afterwards I didn't last long in the corporate world out of knowing there is so much more out there and then I explored and haven't followed the norm at all since :)
Yes these are such exciting times!! I am really looking forward to witnessing the shift in people's perception. It will be like when credit cards were distributed, older generations couldn't get their heads around money being on plastic! My nan didn't want to use hers because she didn't 'believe it was safe' or possible?! haha.
It will be similar with cryptocurrency. Most people struggle to understand it and therefore decide they don't want to know about it until they have to. The next step will be the governments influence perhaps?
I believe this is the year of legislation trying to govern it or get onboard, then the next 5-10 years ill be a huge wake up call for the world :D
What are your thoughts?
My thoughts on crypto adoption?
Hmm there's a few things that need to happen. Obviously if government shifted their systems to work in a decentralised fashion then that would probably be all we need, however that's not likely to happen so suddenly.
For me, I believe that the old world and the new will exist alongside each other - decentralisation doesn't suit everyone in every location, and there's no reason that centralised/governed areas of society can't exist.
I believe over time we'll see services and platforms come up which merge with the current world and still use centralised entities. There are a few examples of this happening, Simply Vital Health and LivenPay are the two I know. They are still going to be governed by a central body but allow the power of Blockchain to exist.
The wild west of crypto where 100% transparency and 100% decentralisation is a massive change to how the world is right now and I don't think it's actually a good idea to jump to that, because people wouldn't know what the fuck to do with all the responsibility they have - we're very attuned to letting someone or something else handle our situation.
I think it'll be a slow process over the next 5 years, with useful marketplaces for the main-stream popping up around that 5 year mark - and after that we'll see people slowly transition their lives to decentralised platforms for the reason that it's simply just more valuable.
Agree 100%
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STOPAll my life has been an eternal conflict between the rigidity of formal education and the imperative need to unleash my creativity. I have spent long years of study in Basic Sciences; I am a biologist and MSc in microbiology and I have worked, as you said, for the industry and for capitalists, which did not leave me more satisfaction than a monthly salary, a lot of fatigue and a great emptiness. The day I resigned from a large company and a large salary (at the cost of my personal satisfaction and even my health), I began to give priority to what I really wanted to do, Art; but, I fall back into formal education to obtain my third degree.
However, studying art would present the magical opportunity to see science in another way, maybe I always saw it that way, but I had not had the opportunity to put this to the test. I decided to work only in research projects where the science-art or art-science duality was one: I have worked for 14 years in microphotography and I have taken my work in science to the art museum!
But where I got most satisfaction was being a teacher, teaching something as rigid as "Research Methodology" in a way that even you, @ carpet.duck I think you would have liked. I firmly believe that the educational paradigm must change and allow the development of the creative potential of each individual.
Just a few days ago I started writing for Steem Blockchain and it seems just great !. Although the best part is finding items as interesting as the one you write. I loved your post and obviously we are a few people who agree with you. I hope to read more about it.
Thanks so much for reaching out Leyda! unfortunately I can't understand your Spanish posts just yet but I'll pick up what I can through the pictures and some translating.
I'm really happy for you that you've taken on something that aligns more with yourself - I've never 'studied' Art so I wonder what a degree in it is like.
Your kind of work is the blend of genres that really gets me excited these days, thanks so much for sharing it, I look forward to more of it.
And I don't doubt you could teach me Research Methodology! It does sound quite interesting (different ways to go about researching a particular field/topic and creating something out of the different parts? Just my guess but it sounds pretty exciting and useful).
It's awesome to have you here! Thanks so much for reaching out I really appreciate it. I look forward to seeing you around!
"Thanks so much for reaching out Leyda! unfortunately I can't understand your Spanish posts just yet but I'll pick up what I can through the pictures and some translating."
I am sorry. From now on, I will try to write in English, even with the help of the google translator. I would like to know if this platform allows to publish the same post in two versions, in English and Spanish.
Don't be sorry!
I guess you could have 2 different versions, yeah. It might be nice to have a custom introduction though to seperate the two from each other a little bit - This might help avoid the content being flagged and have it still be unique.