New professions in education (and killing the teachers)
Here I will sentence all teachers to a rather uncomfortable guillotine ride — and worse, I’m not going to decapitate them, on no, my plan is to slice ’em in two equal parts. But before the gore, let’s talk about ants and Englishmen.
The ant’s ancestor could do a lot more than the common ant we know now: it was an all-around creature, more like a beetle. It could walk and fight and shag and sing and install adobe flash. In a way, it feels weird that an imbecile critter such as the ant evolved from a being who could do so much more.
But if you look at the complex structures an ant colony can pull off, you see a rather different picture. The individuals are specialized — narrowly smart, so the system can be smarter by putting them all together.
This phenomenon is called emergence and it’s everywhere in the Universe — you’re not a big ameba because your different cells have different superpowers.
Of course I’m using natural examples, but it also happens in human-made structures.
Murdering everybody everywhere: the English
The Redcoat army was the very best of its time because of a revolution in the way they saw the officers. You see, in ancient skirmishes, the job of the officer, warlord, commander was to lead the soldiers into battle. To stimulate, to instil courage. They were the ones booming warcries, challenging the foe’s might.
A stupid function. After many centuries of perfecting warfare and weaponry, the English figured something interesting: the value of having the soldiers aligned and shooting at the same time was so great, so colossal, that if they reserved 1 out of 10 soldiers (that’s an approximation, alright?) just to take care of forming a line, that would still be a good deal.
The Redcoat officer was not supposed to fire during a battle, he was supposed to align, to shout orders and to understand the superior’s signs to move ahead.
It was a bold move: suddenly the army lost 10% of its bullets. It was the army who dominated the World.
Not because they were bigger, not because they had the best weapons (they literally sold weapons to everybody else). It’s because they did the ant thing. They learned the proper way to specialise — now 10% of the Redcoat Ants didn’t have to worry about aiming, reloading and 90% had somebody to take care of when to shoot. Narrowly smart individuals, super genius system.
How unremarkable is school? — When boredom is allowed.
In 30 seconds, how many of your school teachers can you remember?
I can wait, think about it.
Some, right? The best and the worst, most probably — and that’s by design. The brain’s reward system is deeply connected to memory, stimulating the system for good or ill is the key to retain information. We remember the jokes, the really hard exams, the interesting subjects, the traumas.
But I can safely bet here that you can’t remember many of your former educators. Heck, most of them. You most probably can’t recall which of your teachers was the most knowledgeable in his/her field, unless you had some specific experience that activated your reward system. Unless he or she turned that knowledge into a joke. Bingo.
How unremarkable is Youtube? — When boredom is banished.
I’m a huge online video nerd and one of the things I like the most about it is the endless barrage of education pouring from it. This whole text came from an insight I had after watching hours and hours of online content.
Let’s pick a school topic: World History. I can’t be sure of what Youtube will show you when you type these words (the bot overlords know a lot about me and you), but I can be quite sure the first page will show things like: Extra History, Bill Wurtz and Crash Course.
That’s part n.01 of the insight: none of these channels are ran by historians nor were started with history content. They just happen to have a really great edutainment structure and applied it well.
Ok, but let’s dig a little deeper: let’s take a closer look at Crash Course, a Youtube Education behemoth, sporting more than 500 videos in more than 20 different high school level courses… but that’s just the packaging, the front page.
If you analyse the courses individually, you’ll notice something interesting (data is approximate and I’m comparing old and new videos as a single bundle, but you’ll get the point, alright?).
In courses like World History, Psychology, Philosophy:
A “popular video” has around 3.000.000 views
An “unpopular video” has around 500.000 views
Those are the courses presented by the channel’s creators John and Hank Green, two Youtube superstars with years and years of camera experience and a huge associated audience.
In courses like Economics, Physics, Computer Science and even Games (this last supposed to be super pop):
A “popular video” has around 450.000 views
An “unpopular video” has around 100.000 views
Those are courses hosted by specialists — who also happen to present well. These people have years and years of research and classroom experience.
Now. Who’s facilitating more learning? Is it the knowledgeable teachers?
No. It’s the famous guys. And please don’t get me wrong: they are super knowledgeable, their craft is to get you to watch the damn video and remember it afterwards.
Killing the teacher
That’s not a proposition, just a thought experiment. Bare with me.
Let’s say we wanna do a bold educational Redcoat move and change how the profession of the teacher work. Let’s say we’re super inspired by Crash Course, so we divide the profession in two: the knowledge bearers and the knowledge conveyors.
The bearers are interested in getting, understanding, organizing more information. They want to push the boundaries of human knowledge as a whole, but for that they have to choose one or another field. They’re always revising and finding new ways to structure the basic principles of their fields, but also delve into deeper, more specific topics.
Their main questions are: how do I make it better? How do I organize it better? How do I make it tangible?
The conveyors are interested in passing the knowledge ahead. They are not there to create new information, they are there to distribute. There’s not a single conveyor who does not understand the clockwork of dopamine in the brain, the fundaments of comedy, the power of breaks to increase focus. They are the translators from the raw boring-yet-useful words of the bearers to the eager eyes of the students.
Their main questions are: how do I make it relatable? How do I make it fun? How do I make it memorable?
Those two don’t need to work in pairs: a single bearer can provide crucial information for thousands of conveyors. A single conveyor can talk about chemistry, philosophy, biology, psychology (those examples are not farfetched, those are exactly the courses Hank Green hosts on the channel).
Why change what’s working?
“Oh when I was younger, nobody complained about school. This is just a bunch of spoiled Millennials crying onto their avocado toasts.” — No. Get out. Get out now.
School is boring, the few teachers who can produce both the bearer and conveyor energies are my damn heroes. School was always boring. The model we still use is based on a Prussian (not Russian, not German… Prussian) army model, definitely not made to be fun.
But fun is useful. Fun and painful are what you remember the most. You don’t remember the rules for ionisation nor subordinate clauses because nobody inflicted you with laughter or anger while teaching those. This is an abandoned spider web inside your damn mind — but perhaps the millennials can create a new system where even those pieces of knowledge can be put to better use.
The change doesn’t have to be immediate or absolute. The Redcoats got their officers after centuries of experimentation. But for the experimentation to start, somebody had to spark the first idea.
Was this spark a work of bearers or conveyors? Hm.
Final countdown (tururuuu-ru tururututuuuu)
This piece of text was inspired by my friend Ants’ (what a remarkably well suited nickname) text about new professions arising from climate change. I’m also interested in uncovering new possible careers sprouting from this very particular time we’re living. If you have any ideas on the subject, please let me know.
Also, if you read this ‘till the very end, please write here in the Medium comments below something a teacher told you when you were at school. I dare you to remember a full sentence.
Tchau!
