Assumptions about education
The basic assumptions behind education will need be revised, that's for certain! When exploring the idea economy concepts, you often bump onto education topics .
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Education as it is conceived right now is to provide one-size-fits-all solutions.
Being generic in the idea economy is exposing you more and more to becoming obsolete .
Rather than helping kids prepare for the future economy, schools are creating problems rather than solving them :
Their tools are rote memorisation, standardisation and indoctrination.
The very structure of school life was designed to prepare people to work in a factory ( the bell, disciplinary process, hierarchy, canteen lunch...)
EDIT funnily enough answering @wealthy-easily I remembered this video and watching it again I must have been channeling mostly the ideas from this one:
The outcome of all that is by and large, intended or not: obedient, conservative thinkers which have little self knowledge and who are very risk averse. You might say the oposite of people who probably will do well in the future idea economy.
In the discussion whether or not an education systems can adapt to prepare young persons to participate effectively in the idea economy often people mention curriculum as the culprit ...
l think changing merely the curriculum is choosing a more fancy color lipstick for the pig.
We need to explore much more fundamental questions when re-imagining education as a system :
What is school supposed to accomplish ? Is it doing that by any real life metric?
Should there be a curriculum ? If so :
Why don't kids learn about the basics of functioning in society eg personal finances , psychology, emotional self management, collaboration, how food impacts mood & health, how to cook , how inter personal relationships work, how their cognitive processes work (and how marketing manipulates these biases constantly ) ?
Should there be textbooks given they are out of date the moment they are printed and kept in use for decades .
Should there be any teachers , if so what should their role be?
Should we even have these expensive school buildings ? Could you decentralize schools? And have school distributed in the community ?
Can we use the money currently put into bricks , to develop minds by a community approach ?
Why can't teenagers work for while if they don't find school productive ?
Should school attendance be mandatory for the kids ? Why not build a system where kids want to go to instead of being kept as part-time prisoners ?
Why do kids need to sit still ? Why do they need to be in a classroom paying attention to a teacher for an hour at a time? It goes against most of what we know about human physiology
and cognitive performance !
(Why are kids being forced to take meth (= ADHD medication) for that matter ?)
Why do they get 5-6 different subjects a day, why are subjects taught in isolation?
Most of rules and regulations in schools seem to be made up for the convenience of the schools not for the benefit of the kids .
The whole situation seems closer to the Stanford prison experiment rather than the ideal of creating a place of learning and self development.
I used to think about home schooling parents as cranks, but I can understand their motivations now.
Here is a video of what seems to be a best-case scenario of home schooling.
But on the other hand, I'm sure homeschooling might not be the best option for everyone.
The whole concept of "school" needs to be experimented with and questioned : no one better than Ricardo Semler of Semco fame to do that:
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What else am I missing with this article, agree? Don’t agree?
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I suppose the problem with school systems is the same as with democracy: "Democracy is shit, but it's the best thing we have". Of course there are things that can be made better in schools and are done better in some countries than others.
The problem with changing early education is that if you change it too much and it goes in the wrong direction, then all the kids who got that worse education at an early age will probably suffer from it for their whole life, due to the way kids are at early ages. I think this is being tackled in Finland for example by changing the curriculums slowly. For example the old "hand writing" was removed from the curriculum, so Finnish kids won't be taught how to scribble "fancy" letters on paper anymore. If they want to learn cursive, it'll be up to them. No one uses that anymore anyway. Just one example of how things change slowly.
Of course the obvious argument is that the world is changing faster. Yes that is true, but we go back to the problem at the beginning. I don't know what should be done, but I think education is still very important.
I'd say that education is definitely important, the education system as it is right now is fast becoming irrelevant.
I think we are fast moving to alternatives with online education like Khan Academy, Udemy, Udacity etc. booming.
Just changing the curriculum does not address the fact that the setup remains the same:
Teachers broadcasting to students, students retaining little.
All students learning the same thing, not aligned with their interests but a collection of knowledge and skills a committee said is important.
Meanwhile the structure itself stays the same: authoritarian, monolithic, trying to fill kids heads with the same knowledge.
Should maybe have put this video in too:
It's true that there are some things that could be taught differently to some people, but there are some things that everyone should understand. I think the current system is also a side product of resource scarcity. There is just so much knowledge to teach children and how do you decide who needs what knowledge. The other extreme would be to start dividing children at an early age based on how they seem to learn into different classes. But what could go wrong with that? Well I think it is quite simple: they change.
The idea of a better education system is relevant, but it is really hard to accomplish. I think it is too dangerous to let children, OR their parents decide if education as it is, is for them. But I hope that developments keep on happening, so that we can adjust to the modern world better and better.
It is is a tough situation because as you say, it's not the ideal for most people, but one teacher can't tutor 30 kids and teach them all privately everything they need to learn unless they go through what can be referred to as an assembly line. But it should never be assumed that everything on that assembly line is important for ever.
Difficult things.
Some more challenging of assumptions:
Why do kids need to be divided up by any classification?
Especially age group seems like a pretty arbitrary way of grouping kids together. Maybe groups need to be ad-hoc on an interest or project basis.
Why do they need to be taught any curriculum of knowledge?
Knowledge is ubiquitous, any presupposed decision of what is important knowledge or not, is bound to fail.
Experimental learning, e.g. like with Lumiar has the advantage that to realize any project, it is inevitable to learn and use the basics.
Say they want to design and build a bike, basic maths are going to be necessary, can't design a wheel without knowing about Pi e.g
It they get used to looking for knowledge and facts rather than passively sitting there and being spoonfed, it seems to me that they learn much more valuable underlying skills and a healthier relationship with knowledge.
This pull system of knowledge on an as needed basis seems to me much more reasonable than the current push system as in trying to push it all in their little head without linking it to any perceivable real world utility.
Also the assumption that you need a "teacher" for kids to learn is under attack: kids are perfectly capable of teaching themselves and others see:
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/self-organized-learning-sugata-mitra
EDIT :
Adding that the whole concept of teaching kids to be curious and to learn is pretty preposterous on its own. Kids are naturally curious and little learning machines. What schools don't like is if their interests stray from the sanctioned boring curriculum and that is where the friction starts.
Well age groups do have a developmental psychology theory going for them. A year in the life of a child is huge, someone might be slightly above or under their year's average, but how do you judge that?
As for other assumptions of learning, it's true that we decide what is important and that might not be the best way. But again it is really hard to say what would be better. Anyway, I totally agree that changes need to be made. But how do we make them so that we don't fuck over any age group or generation, since the results will be seen years after only. Kind of ethical issue already. Same as with science, we can't test everything because of ethical limitations like giving a cure to someone and not the other. :)
That's why the developing world will leapfrog the developed world eventually, you already see it with adoption of technology: found an awesome video from
Sugata Mitra
That is actually true. It is easier to experiment in regions were they haven't established a one single way.
I feel we need more of a civilized society than a educated society, education more kind of starts from the way we treat people .... N that solves most of the world problems
Does education civilize ?
Too often education seems to be touted as the cure-all for all the worlds ills .
I'm less and less convinced that education systems as we know them now are going to be able to adapt or evolve.
The way we treat people currently is as if they are mass production items . Kids who don't meet "The standard " are often left behind or given up on. Seems like an awful waste of human potential .
Probably side solutions are going to be invented as a competitor to the current education system.
Once people start to catch on that kids from these alternatives consistently do better , things might flip around .
My reply is a bit late as I've just come across your post but nevertheless, here it goes..
The questions you haven't asked is: Do we need an education (Sugata Mitra)?
If you believe in a future where robots will do most jobs and everyone will receive universal basic income then people need to know how to keep themselves busy. This will be different for everyone and an education that is targeted to make people uniform won't be useful at all and might lead to more problems than you can imagine.
A question I get asked a lot however is, why do you think differently? You went through the school system. So how come some of us (a minority for sure) think that something is wrong with the school system?
Hi @supermama thanks for responding, steemit.com seems a bit abondoned and broken (don't get any flags about replies!)
It is a question that is fair to ask I think. I would ask "Do we still need the education system?" besides that. Education in an ever more complex world might be unavoidable but to achieve successful outcomes it needs to shift it´s focus from knowledge based to skills based. Look at Tony Wagner's 7 Future Survival Skills.
here the system might have value, IF it can step away from the previous way of doing things... my hope for that is low. More probably that it just withers away and more and more people opt out for alternatives. Which is a tragedy because in the mean time it is stealing a good decade and a half of untold billions of children with increasingly little to show for it....
Teachers are not fully equipped with the knowledge needed to accept change. Teachers repeat what they have learned and seen from their teachers and this follows the same vicious cycle. Children have to sit still and repeat like parrots because it's convenient for the teacher and the control he/she gets to delegate over them. It's easier to put children on medication so then the teacher and the parents do not have burdens. Technology is still taking a backseat and children are expected to find whichever card is dealt at them, interesting. It's a burden for teachers and parents to provide the necessary attention to learners because they are in a rush to complete schedules. This has to change and it needs to start changing at home. Homeschooling can only be useful if there is support at home.
I wouldn't place the blame on the teachers, they are just as frustrated as the kids I'm sure. The problem is that no one from the inside can really challenge the status quo. Any experimenting is timid tweaking rather than radical rethinking. Ironically because the people produced by the system itself don't tend to be creative risk takers, that is kind of bred out of the population. So I doubt change will happen from within.
EDIT sorry forgot the homeschooling, that can be a solution but obviously some parents will be better capable than others. There should be a support structure for home schoolers which helps out where necessary but which is able to step back and let things take its course. This controlling element especially is one of the aspects which I think dooms the education system to mediocrity. By forcing people to meet the standard, only a very narrow spectrum of development is addressed to the detriment of so much diverse human potential...
No, the teachers can't be blamed solely, of course not, but they have no means to do thing differently because they are not told to do things differently. A certain way of doing thing gets comfortable and prevents change from happening. The comfort zone - afraid of change, like you said now : "don't tend to be creative risk takers". Parents lately have far more better things to do than to educate their children, do not talk to them about anything and just scroll up and down Facebook, ignoring the children to bring themselves up. This is why I say, it needs to change at home.
that part is certainly true, for most people homeschooling is an out of reach luxury. Probably community schooling is an approach that makes more sense, depending on your community of course
Let me rather say, the FIRST step would be a change in the home. From there, every other step can be worked on.
Oh, and Resteemed. Because I can!
Much appreciated! Things seem to be very slow the last few days!
Who is pushing an agenda for what reason? What is their true motivation? Is it to educate based on best available knowledge for the benefit of the student, no matter what age?
It is to drive a political agenda that benefits not necessarily the learner, but the 'master'?
The world is a projection - a hologram - a representation of a lesser known reality.
As the fish 🐠 , in its limited aquarium dimension only experiences the world outside as a movie it can not participate in, it also does not KNOW what the aquarium is, or who made it. Are we trapped in the same dimensional limitation because we cannot perceive higher dimensions?
I think I went a bit off the course here, so briefly back to the original subject...
We, as sovereign human beings do not only have the right, but a duty to teach what we believe is right - not only to our children. We must also be willing to defend our position.
I recently posted an article on Opinion vs. Positions. This is relevant, because a Position is build on and defended through our own research. Perhaps, a reader will shed all opinions for good after reading This Article.
-ch @globocop
Motivation:
I tend to look for systemic answers, I simply don't believe in the cartoon view of the world that there are "them" pulling the strings behind everything... it is simplistic thinking.
The education system was created with the best intentions, and really has taken the human race very far in an astoundingly short time (200 odds years is nothing really). For a long while it worked. But the circumstances have changed. (the video in the comments of Sugata Mitra is really good at explaining this)
Right now though it is a system that has not kept up with the demands of the last 20 years (how could it really).
There are indeed very powerful incentives to keep the massive business of the schooling system in a status quo. Despite all the complaints about reduced education budgets, money spent on education is MASSIVE. The textbook industry, teachers unions, the buildings,... lots of gravy to go around.
I think there are a lot of individual actors who are not incentivized to change things all too much.
So I don't expect this system to solve itself. It is a monopolistic system that will come increasingly under attack by smaller providers who leverage technology and new principles like Self Organised Learning Environments, internet, cloud learning, decentralisation and all that other good stuff.
Interestingly, when I was exploring this area, I have started to think that the developing world has an opportunity to actually leapfrog the developed world in education too.
Simply because they don't have entrenched centralised systems, they can make the jump immediately to decentralised, self organised systems leveraging technology.
This has already happened with cellphones, cashless payment systems, solar adoption etc.
This will sound crazy to many:
Because education could also jump on the exponential technology growth curve, we could well have a discussion in 15 years on "how can the developed world catch up to the developed world in education?"