The Future of Education: More Spiders, Fewer Leaves
The Industrial Revolution made the developed world rich by specializing labor and capturing economies of scale. As manufacturing operations got bigger, labor could be even more specialize and everything got cheaper, so that consumers could buy more goods, and the accumulated profits could be reinvested in increasing the size of the manufacturing operation and further specializing the laborers.
The modern system of education both co-evolved with and was organized to serve the needs of the Industrial Revolution. It required universities and high schools to hire specialists for teachers and provide courses organized into specialized topics. And the more education any student got, the more specialized they became, until finally the PhD became an exercise in everything a person could possibly know about nothing.
This video from Sir Ken Robinson explains that the factory is still the dominant metaphor for education.
The realization that we are now (in the United States) in a post-industrial revolution — i.e., the Information Revolution — helps reveal…
