Education; A future to expect
Recently there has been a loud outcry on the effectiveness of schools especially as more articles come out of the number of billionaires who dropped out of school and more so in my country where schooling has a terrible return on investment.
Sadly schooling has been used as a synonym for education. If I were to pick a synonym for education, I would choose life because education starts the day you are born and does not stop until death regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not. Is that not what life is? A force that keeps moving regardless of you (I digress).
The history of schooling where one learns a subject/topic and gets tested on comprehension, knowledge of that topic has its origins linked to ancient China. The palace conducts an annual test, individuals partake in the test, and those that meet the required score are made part of the state bureaucracy.
A lot of progress has been recorded in the last 2,000 years, never the less we have seen in the previous decade or so, accelerated progress that has surpassed every other period in human history. The internet, the proliferation of mobile devices, have had a significant impact on our world.
· The internet was born and with it came easy access to knowledge.
· The world is more connected and one can easily meet people and congregate without being in the same physical space
· Advancement in technology means the technologies of 5 years ago are more or less obsolete. So the nature of work and skills needed changes at a rapid pace
These are just a few of the changes that have happened in the world. So what does this mean for schooling?
· You do not need a library with avast collection of books in an institution/home etc. to gain access to knowledge
· To learn in a group about a subject-matter with an “expert” does not require a physical class
· It means curriculum is constantly having to play catch-up because it is a centre-down based structure.
To properly lay the foundation of what education should be, let me attempt to define it.
Education is the sum total of a man’s experience through which he fulfils his purpose on earth.
So this definition is based on the premise that every individual has a unique purpose, Our DNA helps lay claim to this. Why would an individual be created/made/born unique to fulfil the same purpose as everyone else?
If we are born unique and with a definite purpose, the goals of education should be, firstly to help us discover our uniqueness, then our purpose before equipping us with relevant skills. Instead, people go to school, get skills through which they define their purpose (wrong way up!!!!).
“I am a doctor because I studied medicine”.
Instead of “I have great empathy for sick people, I want to live in a world where everybody is healthy, so I studied medicine. And now I’m a doctor, researcher, healer!!!”
If Education is to achieve these goals, we would need to move away from this schooling model. This is how I would structure education to accomplish these goals;
Curious Socialization; this is a social system where adolescents and very early teens interact with their friends, the society, in a social gathering (events, hangouts) in which they learn a language, discover personalities, find out things on their own. At this point, they are discovering their personalities
Structured Socialization; This is a slightly more advanced social system that organizes events such as seminars, conferences, workshops, concerts, exhibitions where teens are allowed to interact. Expositions, talks, opinions are expressed on a particular subject matter by experts, industry stakeholders, audience etc. It still allows for discoveries and curiosity. At this point, they are finding out about their purpose
Internship/Volunteer; Individuals are allowed to intern at companies, organizations that catch their interest, as many as they want to. Steadily getting to the point where they know the type and level of work needed to fulfill their purpose. They find a mentor that guides them in the area of their interest
Schooling: Individuals now go under teachers, expert and tutors to learn the relevant skills needed to fulfill their purpose. In this structure, they undertake real world based work to learn the relevant skill and knowledge required to pursue their dream.
The Future of education would be significantly affected by technology. These are the present technological tools and how I believe they would shape education.
Virtual Reality: As this technology gets better there would be less of a need to go places to experience them, as virtual reality would become no different from reality itself. What we would see is a 3 yrs old would go with her friends to Disney land alone and would be able to interact with real people who are also in the virtual world.
Artificial Intelligence: AI would drastically change everything especially education. Imagine having IBM’s Watson as your teacher, it is able to process a ton of data on you based on everything you have been doing. Your lesson plan and the instruction method would reflect your mood, your progress, and other data-set.
Social Network & Bots: Our social network would grow to become our life network, as technology gets better it would allow for easier interaction with 1,000 people using bots. These bots would be able to filter and aggregate message to communicate the chats/words of 1,000 people in one sentence. Hence, 1 shall become 1,000.
I can’t predict every technological advancement but am sure most of them would alter our education system. It’s time for us to take a look at this over 2000 years old schooling structure, it is due a “Total Disruption.”
