Fix the education system? Let’s not.
It’s not a tear in the fabric. It’s a crack in the glass.
Finding things that everyone universally loves is tough. But finding something that everyone despises is easy — look no further than the education system. Down the same road, one hears ideas and pleas to fix it up. We ask, is that a sensible thing to do?
We’re constantly reminded to not fix things which aren’t broken. Certainly, that’s not the case here. The system is clearly broken — the question is how badly is it broken?
When a system that is supposedly tasked with preparing one for the future itself lives in the past, we can argue that it is broken enough to be not worth fixing. Almost every remedy — be it at the policy level or on the ground—that is implemented makes the entire system survive another day on the ventilator. It’s a tape on cracked glass, not even stitches on a tear.
The existing system is broken enough for us to consider a drastically new system. A fix won’t cut it, we need a complete replacement.
To ponder over what the future of education would look like, let us look at the history of the entertainment industry. A century ago, only the elites had access to entertainment, which was largely created and consumed in one’s immediate surroundings. Today, content creation and consumption have been democratized. It is of critical importance to note that while more number of people have been consuming media as well as creating it, the spotlight shines only on a handful of creators all over the world — we want the very best and we can get it. We need less of teachers and more of facilitators — guides who help us out when we get stuck. How about we initiate this change in the field of education?
While what the institutions expect from students has not changed much since the very inception of schooling, the internet has ensured that the expectations of the students from the system steer away at an exponential pace. There is hardly any common ground left. Students aren’t distracted, it is just that websites are doing a better job at grabbing their attention and keeping them hooked. One isn’t defined by their college major but their adaptability.
Only a system which adapts will build people who can adapt. Let us build it.
The internet as it is won’t be the replacement that will help solve the problems that we have. We want to use the potential of the internet to let people study what it is that they want to study while augmenting it with an intelligent way of deciding how the user does it. Searching for the optimal resources is not only a highly personalized task, but is also a time consuming and frustrating process. By leveraging technology, we have set out to build a system which understands your needs, capabilities and motivation. If done right, this might just go on to make quality education and mentoring be consumed at scale, because it sure would be addictive.
The decentralization of education is around the corner, it shall no longer be a one-way street. Collaboration shall replace competition, curiosity will wrangle and get rid of the fear of failure. Peer to peer learning will win over the dehumanized teaching methodologies of today. Education would be more inclusive, the entry barrier being lower than ever. We want to make interdisciplinary studies the norm, not a novelty. The bursts of creativity, the spontaneity of ideas would not just be a side-effect of being constrained but the desired outcome, instead. The future is where learners are respected more than the boundaries and boxes that we have invented.
The future will be what we build it to be.
Fix the education system? No thanks. Let’s dethrone it and let every person own their learning curve.
Want to help see the world learn? Talk to us.
