I’ve always been confused about what education was supposed to be and this is my attempt to reconcile that confusion…
Focusing In
Definitions of education vary from the act of transmitting useful knowledge to enabling self-actualization to the formation of a capable citizenry (among many other possibilities). These many definitions reconcile on a theoretical level – who can deny the appeal of an erudite, self-actualized, capable citizen? However, this is not a very useful definition. It’s a list of desirable characteristics instead of a description of what education is. Another approach is to view education as an institution that concerns itself with all of those goals outlined above. What would happen if that institution disappeared? Would people cease to learn? No, they would continue to learn and adapt as a necessary byproduct of our particular neurophysiology [1]. However, the efficacy of that learning would be suboptimal. Standards and other educational paradigms function to harness the collective efforts of past lives into a coherent whole which benefits everyone [2]. Without the institution of education, we would rely on a smaller set of lives from which to draw experience (likely our immediate social graph and recent past) [3]. At it’s simplest, education is a side effect of everyday life and what we happen to be concerned with at any point in time. I contend that the only difference between regular, everyday life and education is focus. And choosing where to apply your focus on is arguably the most important function of your life.
Short-Term Versus Long-Term Focus
The implications of education-as-focus are myriad. For one, cramming most of our formal education up front in our lives is silly [4]. Hopefully we place the same importance on living at age 75 as age 8. Certainly, some 75-year-olds might react by saying that they are more capable of deciding what to focus on for themselves than any 8-year-old. To this I would respond, if you are worried about comparing yourself to an 8-year-old then you might actually need the help. This is a perception problem. We are used to formal education applying only to certain problems and then mostly at certain stages in life. It is my hope that a robust system of education could eventually meet the needs of people in every stage of life and apply to any problem. Currently, however, this is not the case.
Formal education is generally focused on the long-term in that it helps us deal with future problems. This is in contrast to “doing” which is focused more on the short-term [6]. When we are young, we focus more on formal learning to help us deal with the problems in our future. When we are older, we focus more on solving the problems that we learned about when we were young.
(Graph Coming Soon)
Current Pattern of Focus
One small problem, though…how do we know what problems are relevant to our future? And what do we do when we run across new kinds of problems?
(Graph Coming Soon)
A More Ideal Pattern?
What’s The Problem?
As a child, I was confused as to why we weren’t fixing the problems I was being taught to worry about [6]. “You’ll understand when you’re older”. I received this answer often when growing up [7]. Well, I’m older and still bewildered. I understand that curiosity, skepticism, creativity and truth often take a backseat to obedience and the status quo. I understand that millions of people must ignore their capacity as human beings to get through their day, trudging zombie-like through as many hours as possible – that’s to say nothing of the distractions we content ourselves with much the rest of the time [8]. The world would be a better place if we enabled people to better take advantage of the capabilities granted them at birth. Fortunately, it is through exposure to a better way of doing things that I maintain hope that this is possible. We can solve these problems through rational means, including the means to be more rational [9].
The Future: Uncertainty and Complexity
Those trends most relevant to our future are uncertainty (post coming soon) and complexity (post coming soon). Well, in a sense these have always been mankind’s biggest problems but with the exponential rate of technological progress, the average person has to deal with them on a more regular basis [10]. The skills associated with dealing with these two concepts will only increase in importance as we continue down our current path of rapid discovery. Unfortunately, these two issues inspire fear in many people. This is dangerously reflected in a preference for certainty and simplicity/familiarity, the building blocks of closed-mindedness and irrationality [11]. We, as a global society, need to do a better job at equipping people to handle (and be comfortable with) both uncertainty and complexity.
Difficulties
“Never mistake a clear view for a short distance”
- Paul Saffo (http://www.saffo.com/idea1.php)
I’m not the first to think about “the education problem”. I’m also not the smartest nor the most powerful. So why try to fix monolithic systems and ideas, so set in their bureaucratic foundations that change can only occur at a glacial, generational pace? How do we improve delivery to the millions who don’t have access to any formal education? I’m not delusional. In most cases, it’s easier to bypass to the old system completely, taking only what’s useful. We are in current technological upheaval and much of what I’m writing about will happen anyway. I just want it to happen faster. The ideas are out there. What’s needed are good synthesizers. That’s why somebody like me can actually make an impact. If I can show solutions that can be replicated then you have no choice but believe me (reality deniers notwithstanding).
The Arguments Against Change
There are those reluctant to any change. I’m imagining a thin man, well-clad in top hat and monocle saying, “But we would sever the ties linking us to history. We would lose the symbols and traditions that comprise our cultural narrative. We would lose our precious institutions. This I cannot bare”. To you, Mr. Monocle, I apologize. Just think though, you’ll probably be dead by the time true change happens so you have nothing to worry about. Maybe they’ll write about you in a book. Hopefully not.
There are also those people currently in power, fed by the institution, that would be negatively affected by any serious changes. They might counter with the argument that nothing trumps experience and consistency. To them I would say, nothing trumps results.
The scariest argument I’ve heard is that I’m overestimating the average person’s capacity to improve. I just don’t buy that. The average person has never had access to the right tools. This argument is usually used as a justification for that failure.
Solutions
Instead of trying to come up with one grand scheme to fix every visible problem I’ve decided to attack this in bite-size pieces (some are certainly bigger and nastier than others). Each of these will be contained in its own blog post here on my site. The format will remain consistent for each post and after each one goes live I will include its link here. Eventually, this page will serve as a sort of table of contents for all of my structured thoughts on the issue. The more unstructured thoughts will just go up at random and won’t be linked to from here.
Section Format (per problem)
A. Statement of Problem: Self-explanatory.
B. Counter-Argument: Run through objections and current issues
C. Proposed Solution: My proposed or borrowed solutions.
D. Examples & Applications: Find the wins out in the world. They can be from any area or industry.
E. Review: What is there left to explore in this issue? Is there significant room for improvement? What don’t I know yet? What is outside of my scope?
Posts (Highlighted Problems):
- Intention versus Reality
- Theory/Reality divide
- The Win
- Overprotection
- Black Box Thinking
- Motivation/Akrasia
- Long Term Thinking
- Skepticism/Empiricism
- Half-Assing
- Personalization/Choice
- Politicization/Monetization
- Isolation
- Reinventing The Wheel
- Conceptual Divide
- Notion of An Educator
- Competition
- Out of Date
- Cross-Domain
- Specialization
- The Baseline
- Data, Recording, and Statistics
Note: that the numbers are meaningless except as an easy way to refer to each heading (not in order of importance or anything like that)
What This Is Not
- A focused discussion on epistemology. It will come up, but it is not my main purpose to discuss the philosophical merits of skepticism, for example.
- A comprehensive examination of cognitive neuroscience and early education.
- Preaching social change at home. Hopefully this would happen as a side-effect but what happens after the student goes home (especially if the environment is not conducive to learning) is beyond what I’m writing about here.
- Totally novel thought. Socrates wrote a lot of kick ass stuff in his day and I’m not trying to supplant serious thinkers in the area. It is my goal to synthesize what’s already out there. Most of what I’m writing is descriptive not prescriptive.
Some of these areas are as important or more important than anything I’m writing about and I don’t mean to diminish them. It is my hope to address them eventually.
Footnotes (click the footnote to go back to the text)
[1] I’m not well-versed in cognitive neuroscience but I invite you investigate further.
[2] See the development of writing as an example.
[3] See Network Theory and Social Network Theory. It’s also worth thinking about how an expanded social network (WWW, email, Facebook, etc) affects our focus.
[4] I define formal education to be an artificially imposed focus, apart from everyday life. Something like computer programming, for example, must be arrived at by formal means unless you truly grew up surrounded by it. Humans are hardwired for language acquisition, by contrast, which doesn’t require extraordinary focus. I would also expand informal education to include those things you learn in the course of your daily life which may depend on immersion in your environment, like the basic conventions of human-machine interaction (e.g. press the button and something happens on the screen).
[5] Of course, you could argue that certain learning follows mostly from doing. “[INSERT QUOTE]” p. XXX Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
[6] In my childhood world this meant mostly my family, friends, and classmates. My worldview was small but my intentions weren’t. Often, adults laugh this off as “cute” or “well intentioned but unrealistic”. I’m not sure if it’s an automatic response because it’s what they were told themselves or because they don’t want to deal with the question or because of something else entirely. It’s unfortunate that we lose many potential chances to teach empowerment to children. In discussions with Maria Nuñez (yes, the momski), we have talked about potentially using her philanthropic business AimSkyHi to help fund projects created by children for this specific reason.
[7] Read Paul Graham’s The Lies We Tell Kids
[8] Did Alduous Huxley or George Orwell get it right? Amusing Ourselves To Death by Stuart McMillen
[9] A rational life is a more capable life, and one worth living. The Twelve Virtues of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky
[10] The Law of Accelerating Returns by Ray Kurzweil
[11] Black-box thinking is the best example of this. Sit certain people down in front of a computer and they simply shut off. To them, everything that happens in the computer is unfamiliar and complex. They mentally see the computer as a black box that takes input, does some magic, and sends output. Frustratingly, by refusing to build a mental model of the computer and its conventions, they remain incapable of dealing with it in a comfortable way.