An education ecosystem inspired by the fitness world
Edited by Alok Suman
The goal of education is to equip the forthcoming generation with skills they can use to contribute to society.
In today’s day and age, the rat-race to success that every child is being forced to compete in has mutilated the process of learning.
To understand the pitfalls of the current education system, let’s look at the origin of this model of standardized education.
What our present system is
Modern education is sometimes called the Utilitarian Idea which focuses on “useful learning”.
This model had a clear objective — a standardized education system that creates a productive, well-equipped workforce.
‘Factory schools’, as they are now called, originated in early 19th-century Prussia. For the first time, education was provided by the state and learning was regimented. Dozens of students at a time were placed in grades according to their age and moved through successive grades as they mastered the curriculum. They took an industrialized approach to education: impersonal, efficient, and standardized.
Allison Schrager for QUARTZ
Key characteristics of the “Factory School” Model
- 12 years of compulsory education for everyone.
- A notion of High Schools and Elementary School. The elementary school focuses on basics to further facilitate specialized learning. High School pays attention to specialized skills for a specific career path.
As industries grew, the demand for a skilled workforce was more than the vacancies.
This meant good education was valued. Eventually, the number of industries hit a saturation point. But the supply of the workforce from schools did not.
This led to an overwhelming number of applicants for several jobs.
This meant a screening process was required. After screening, only the people who performed best started getting employed for industrial jobs.
The increasing competition for limited jobs is a problem we are still facing today. It has just got more extreme.
Some of the obvious pitfalls
This “factory school” model is reliant on the public sector for the creation of jobs.
People who might excel in the standardized test might not fit in the specifically defined boxes for public sector employment.
This model focuses solely on employee generation, with little focus on employment generation.
The excessive supply and limited demand mean there will always be excessive competition for a scarce job market.
How we can relate education to fitness
Lessons from the fitness world can be an effective tool for a better education model. One which is more suited to today’s digital age of entrepreneurs and leaders.
The curriculum should take into consideration that we are grooming individuals who are going to have our advantages and limitations.
This is the opposite of the standard curriculum that created monotonous, docile minds good for factory production lines.
The world today requires more independent thinkers and problem-solvers who should be free to decide whether they want to be job-seekers or job-creators.
The mentor-mentee relationship
- Goal Setting — Individual endeavors rather than standardized curriculum-based learning. Students should get to decide their learning journeys, with the council of their teachers, based on what they already know and what more they want to learn.
- Custom curriculum for individual students created by subject matter experts. Students get prescriptions for courses based on their interests and goals.
- A safe environment for learning and room for making mistakes prevents children from getting discouraged. Providing multiple ways of achieving the same goal along with guidance as required help in keeping the learning process interesting.
Inclusivity
Classrooms are based on the skill being learned, removing segmentation based on the skill level of the learner or their age. Think about a gym. Professionals work out alongside the rookies but follow their own regimen. It’s about personalized learning. Likewise, teaching the same curriculum to everyone is not the solution.
Mindset
- Understanding where you are and where you are going. Test your skills before you start a course. There might be skills at which one might be instinctively good. But others require some polishing and fine-tuning.
- Figure out which method works for you through experimentation. For example, in the gym, there are choices for gaining muscle and strength. Cross-fit, bodyweight training, weight training, powerlifting will incur the same results. Similarly, there can be different ways that suit different students. Some learn better through written material. Some through videos and lectures. Others by looking at how someone else does. A few even learn through games/simulations.
- Balance life, sleep, food, family, mental health along learning.
- There is no right or wrong time to learn. Learn when you feel like it. If you have to go to school 5 days a week for 3 hours a day, you choose which 5 days and at what times.
- Learning multiple things simultaneously. Getting space to pick up and drop new courses based on interest, removing compulsion as much as possible.
- Responsibility of self-improvement on the learner. Here the learner chooses what, how, when to learn and at what pace. Kind of like video game characters where you can add power-ups, abilities to the character, depending on how frequently the player plays and what levels they have cleared.
- Celebrating achievements without drawing comparisons with other learners.
What we can do to blend fitness and education
The expectation of learning a specific skill in a particular amount(semesters/quarters) of time imposed by the K-12 model does not work for every student in the classroom.
Some flexibility in the pace of learning and the ability to assess evaluation whenever a student feels prepared might improve learning for the majority of students.
Most people going to the gym are at least 18 years old. They have an inherent sense of responsibility and a drive for their goal.
Students in elementary schools can not be expected to take the initiative of learning on their own.
They may need some level of guidance and handholding to gain certain essential skills which are beneficial for everyone.
Keeping these two points in mind, self-paced learning with proper guidance could be a good starting point for our new, refined education model.
Our new model needs to combat the lack of guidance in self-paced learning representing today’s online MOOCs.
A time-bound curriculum and assessment where failures are penalized heavily (like in our K-12 model) are counter-intuitive for getting the children excited to learn.
A model which can balance these aspects might be beneficial for elementary education and Junior High.
The self-paced learning model with low guidance can be expected to work for students in specialized learning environments like Senior High and beyond.
The idea of personalization might be perfect in an online environment, but might not be suitable in physical classrooms, especially in places like India where the student-teacher ratio is not ideal.
So a hybrid education model could be a step in the right direction, considering most students are already spending a lot more time on the Internet than in their classrooms.
Parting thoughts
The ideas discussed here will need some correction based on the feasibility of their implementation.
The desire of grooming individuals with little sense of competition would make the employability assessment and self-assessment difficult.
The ideas of self-paced learning with proper guidance transcending age boundaries need some fine-tuning.
Mankind has achieved great things when we have put our minds to it.
And what could be a better cause to unite than the educational needs of our future generation?
So think of a more joyful, exciting, and relevant education model. It is the need of the hour.
