An interesting fellow named Alex Lindsay recently wrote a piece called “The Future of Education“. It’s well worth a read as he presents some very interesting ideas.
Open Question: If something like his vision were to come to fruition in Canada, what changes would have to occur?
Well, you would need alot more sleazy rat-faced socialists like Alberta’s current premiere…
Check out http://www.khanacademy.org/ – it’s a real-life example of how this type of an approach to education can and is being structured.
Please forgive my cynicism, BUT …
* if it’s happening in Africa, then it’s being implemented by highly dedicated, underpaid NON-UNION teachers, which is NOT the situation here
* African students are also MUCH MORE ‘dedicated’ to learning than here (no distractions like texting / sexting / TV / etc. for them) because there is no welfare safety net / trampoline for those who fail to get an education
* I’m old enough to remember when phonics was replaced by “whole language” to teach reading, with similarly euphoric predictions, and with abysmally failed results
Those MASSIVE elephants in the room for we in Canada/the U.S. make this another utopian fantasyland for us, but I sincerely hope it can work for Africa – they need all the good luck they can get.
Oops sorry about the error …. I will post again.
For the more motivated …. THIS … will be the future of education.
Great way to create sheep. Although, the process today works quite well.
There’s something rather robotic about it all. Motivating learners with games, point rewards etc. is just another version of gold stars. Sometimes when you dissect a body of learning into small, discrete bits, there’s nothing worth knowing at the end of it. It may work as long as the novelty lasts, but once the need for hard work kicks in, students will need more than these to keep them going.
The social aspects (seeking a mentor, building your rep by accumulating points) reminded me so much of popular games. Playing for a better weapon, joining a respected guild, partnering with a knowledgeable player (yes I play) increase your chances for success. But to participate on projects with people you may never meet, bothers me. Perhaps that’s what the future will be like–in which case, I will be glad I’m not living in it.
The truly independent and creative thinker–the rebel if you prefer–would eventually find the system torture. Perhaps their best learning would come from attempting to sabotage it.
Nothing of what I say should be interpreted of defending the present system. Some aspects of it aren’t that bad, but some are terrible and not easily amenable to change. But I don’t think much can replace the involvement of interested and capable adults–parents, and committed and learned teachers. Whatever system is presented as the new and best will eventually run against the same sorts of problems that always occur when you’re dealing with education.
Plus, I didn’t like what the guy said about math and as a result all the rest of what he says is suspect.
@ Merlin
Let me guess,the materials are full of liberal precepts. I’m sure this Kahn may be an honorable fellow but he will loose control of the content eventually if he hasn’t already. The alarmingly large index for art history suggests he already has.
In General:
Education degrees are pretty damn whifty. They run a close second to bafoonications in academic weakness. This type of system would sure wipe out a lot of leftist unionized teachers. Not a bad thing.
Overall there is an opportunity to manage content more closely than in a classroom. Just send the kids in for P.E., Music, Recess, and phototherapy.
Fund students instead of teachers and something like this might happen, or something else. In any case, teachers haul in billions, we give them more billions, and the results are no better.
Vouchers for students to take to the school of their choice would dramatically improve education. The idea has to be sold to the public and faces massive opposition from well-organized and lavishly funded teacher’s unions of course, but it can be sold by using the liberal extremist’s argument against them, and that is: Why should only rich people have choices?
Read the article,sounds good. Then the experts unionize. The assistant experts who are more numerous, seeing the experts get a wage increase through the collective bargaining blackmailing of the expert’s Union, now form their own Union. Since assistants outnumber the experts, without their participation, the system ceases to function. The system can run without experts but not without assistants. Now the Union representing assistants, demands a benefits package on par with the experts and get it. The experts, in turn demand higher wages and benefits, seeing this as an affront to their superior educational skills. They win, because the perceived integrity of the system cannot exist without them. The assistants, seeing the experts win yet another wage increase, demand their own increases when there contracts expire. The taxpayers revolt, refusing to pay another dime, demanding a reduction in costs. Layoffs of experts begin, since they are the highest paid, and their Union is smaller then the assistants, and wields less power and influence with decision makers. The quality and integrity of the whole system continues to deteriorate as the assistants and experts demand ever higher wages, resulting in fewer experts, until there is a handful of experts left. Assistants start appointing from among themselves the duties once reserved for experts. They now demand more wage increases,commensurate to their new duties. More layoffs result, this time to the assistants.The experts, having seen this trend have long moved themselves into specialized higher fields of training and education, one where only they possess the necessary skills to teach. The assistants are now responsible for the primary educational responsibilities of all children. Class sizes increase. Since the system is based on the individual progress of the children, the assistants can deflect criticism of their own inadequate performance…………I’ll end it there, you get the picture.
The last generation or two has been taught thinking skills without being taught a knowledge base. That by itself explains all the brain dead motormouth a$$holes in the world. I was taught facts in school and learned how to think all by myself.
I remember my schooling which began in catholic grades school in 1949. We had an easy time learning to think for ourselves because no one was telling us what to think. That is not the case today.
The author is assuming well-prepared children.
In reality, today’s children are less prepared to learn than children of 1960-1990. 5-yr-olds arrive in school from one-parent families or busy families. They have had too little attention, touch and sibling interaction. They have had too much screen time and not enough time alone, bored and forced to entertain themselves. As a result, they will have had very little experience of wanting to learn.
Kids entering school also have less experience of the natural world than the farm boy, mother’s cooking helper or “mechanic’s apprentice” (offset by more exposure to travel, movies, computer games and Baby Einstein.) Lindsay says elementary kids should learn physics early. Explaining F=ma or inertia to a kid with no concrete understanding of “hammer makes force” and “ouch” will lead only to shallow learning.
What do unprepared learners look like? Well, they don’t get much done. When weak students take learn-at-your-own-pace or distance education courses, they don’t complete their courses. Perhaps the outcomes would be better if they started in elementary school.
I think education in Lindsay’s world would suit the upper third of students well (though they would benefit from lecture in later schooling.) The rest would take more than 12 year to complete a diploma as we know it. More likely, they would get less than our current education in 12 years. The upside is students will need to show more self-motivation than they do now. That may be worth more than a high-school education anyway.
I’m not saying this is a bad idea, just don’t whine or sneer when headlines scream about the decline in educational standards.
This
http://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U
presents a better perspective on the issue of education.
It was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA’s Benjamin Franklin award.
This is idealist BS. Presented is a program of undisciplined “do what you feel” pretending to be education.
Sorry not going to work becaue the subject experts could be leftist pan leninists ,or communists ,or Marxists and there you have it people discussing the merits of Marxism two hundred years in the future .nope . Teach history they way we know it through facts , and home school I say women are going to play a huge role in humanities advancement into the future I think mommy won’t be the working housewife in the future I think she is going to take control of her home and family as she had in the past and she will play a pivotal role in her off springs success in the future …but it will all come down to one basic fact what you put into life and the ones you love is what you will get out of them , that is on individual,communal,city,province,and country levels.
We saw it in America if you work hard and push Christian values and a good work ethic onto your future offspring you can lead the world , if the individuals in a country work hard and have strong homes and family ties and develop a good happy work ethic you will always be at the top or constantly for ing the others to up there standards to compete eventually ,the ones who live in camel sh!t hut’s and blow themselves up will go one way or the other they will either advance with the rest of the world or they will (yes even with there 8kids to our two) eventually die off. I bellies there are better days ahead but we may need to live through some darkness before we see them. And if not oh we’ll Jesus will come and lay judgment and that will be that!
Scar, the last two generations HAVE NOT been taught thinking skills; they have been taught propaganda by the state – in exchange for the state operating as a child-minder.
Why do married couples need a state child-minder – because the state steals 50% of the couples incomes, therefore both mother and father need to work, hence the need for a state child-minding agency.
How about the state stop stealing 50% of a married couple’s money and allowing them to bring up their kids how they feel?
the state steals 50% of the couples incomes
source of this opinion?
Laboratories? Where are they? Even in the most elementary laboratory one learns that Nature has not quite been captured in books, if one is observant.
No grades? True – but dividing accumulated points by calendar age is as brutal a measure of ability as can be devised.
It is always amusing to watch uncreative people (most teachers are uncreative) blathering on about creativity; even better when they convince themselves that they can teach it.
The regime sounds very rough and demanding, which is good; but very hard on real individuals and, yes, on the few genuinely creative people who come along from time to time.
I am not defending the status quo, which is certainly going to change and is changing; and articles such as Lidsay’s are useful contributions to the evolution.
Reorganizing the deck chairs on the Titanic. If its centrally planned and government controlled, it’ll suck.
In the future, -real- education will come from the internet. Just like real news does now.
the state steals 50% of the couples incomes
North of 60 said: “source of this opinion?”
Add it up in your head. Between all three levels of government (fed, province and local) and all the fees, taxes, hidden taxes and etc., not to mention all the tax built in to every single thing you buy including food (who pays the farmer’s taxes? You do. Who pays WalMart’s taxes? You do!) the average middle income household pays 50% to government, one way or another.
That’s half, baby.
Upper income households get closer to 60% because their federal income tax alone reaches 46%. As, oddly, do the poor because their income is very small. The government giveth with one hand, and it taketh away with the other.
That calculation has been done a few times by different outfits, Fraser Inst. is the easiest to find but there are others.
Exactly the point I was making. A lot of them pay little or no income tax with all the deductions. The taxes people pay are what pays for all those ‘free’ benefits all those folks believe they’re entitled to. Schools, roads, bridges, airports, police, fire, hospitals, medical care, etc. the list goes on. Why should a couple get a free ride?
Everybody should pay a fair share of what it takes to keep their country running.
The first thing that struck me when I read this idealistic piece was “where’s the competition?” Secondly, I thought it involves far too much interaction with people whereas I find I do best on my own.
The most important thing that children can be taught is how to read and this should be done by the most efficient means possible. Once they can read, then all they need is a suggested reading list of books and they can be let loose to accumulate knowledge.
What I’ve found is that people learn in very different ways, but everyone assumes that the way they learn is appropriate for all students. I can only speak of the way I learn which is on my own. Once I had learned to read, there was a huge treasure trove of knowledge for me to explore and it was a combination of directed and undirected reading. My primary interest was science and so I read only science fiction and ignored the incomprehensible novels that wasted words on describing human interactions. Now at least I have found a function for such works – rapid treatment of insomnia.
One of the novels that I was unable to read as a high school student was Atlas Shrugged and, even now that I know this is a seminal work of Libertarianism, I keep nodding off after plowing through a few pages — in marked contrast to the previous book I read a week ago, Neal Stephenson’s Reamde where more than once I found myself awake at 04:00 and realized I had to be at work in a few hours. /digression
The primary useful interpersonal interaction for me was to compete over grades or beating people in physical prowess (usually the former). There would be periods of intense solitary study, writing an exam and then enjoying the result. The realization that ones future rested on a single exam was intensely motivating; it might not be for other people but it was for me.
When I don’t have any competition, I don’t do nearly as well. I hate working in groups unless I do so by choice. Usually there are a few freeloaders in every group who like to bask in reflected glory if someone does all the work. When I used to program for a living, my productivity was orders of magnitude higher than now when programming is merely a hobby. I do have periods of intense productivity when I find a project I just have to get done but I definitely couldn’t make a living as a programmer working at the rate I do now. The last period of intense programming productivity I had was after an argument with a friend of mine who asserted that the days of the lone programmer are over and most programming is now done in groups. His current way of writing programs is to find a group of people with some knowledge of the problem via IRC and exchange bits of code and create a program from the interaction. My response was to very quickly finish several projects totally on my own.
Teachers are largely redundant in the mere acquisition of knowledge. I view education as having two primary forms:
(a) simple acquisition of knowledge and mastery of subjects that requires only appropriate reading materials and motivation.
(b) learning of subject matter where the most rapid way of acquiring the knowledge is through an apprenticeship via a master of the art: eg martial arts, medicine, and skilled trades.
One could, in theory, acquire the knowledge base of a skilled practitioner of an art through self-directed study but method (b) still exists because it works. The individuals who impart the knowledge for method (b) are not teachers in the conventional snivel servant unionized statist inefficient sense. The restrictive process of “certification” compels people to utilize method (b) as I have to do my house rewiring secretly as I don’t have official certification as an “electrician”.
So, despite the idealistic tone of the attached article, the future will see the demise of school teachers as they currently exist.
Games and simulations are a great way of motivating people to learn more quickly as long as their limitations are understood. Surgeons who play video games are far quicker at picking up the skills needed to perform laparoscopic surgery than surgeons with no video game experience. Real world experience is preferred, but dealing with hundreds of simulated cardiac arrests in a realistic game environment is likely to result in fewer dead patients at the hands of newly graduated physicians. Use of games is just the expansion of simulation technology from flight simulators into other areas of knowledge.
One can’t make non-creative people creative through innovations in pedagogic methodology. There are some people, who through their personality, are suited only for non-creative routine jobs and I’m glad that someone will do those jobs as I certainly can’t. Most of the really creative or brilliant people that I’ve known are not very good at working in groups. The sheeple can work in groups and those who like to strike out on their own should be able to do so. My opinion wasn’t highly regarded over 40 years ago when I expressed it in high school and it appears that the need to forcibly “socialize” people is one invariant in state education.
So in his futuristic version, the third world dictators have moved on from subjugating their own people and ending their warlord ways to bring about this utopian educational system.
Really???
While all this is going on, who was keeping the lights on, the toilets flushing, and the grocery store shelves filled?
Its a wonderful world where everyone is an expert in their chosen field, but oddly not once did he mention anything about shop class…..everything must just fall out of the sky.
People will always need a place to live, and pay what ever they can to get it. The cost of getting it built tends to go up when the carpenters are in short supply.
I’m sure a game will adequately suffice to fill the void.
North of 60 said: “Why should a couple get a free ride? Everybody should pay a fair share of what it takes to keep their country running.”
Dude, did you even read what I said? Low income earners pay a higher percentage of their measly pittance than middle income does. Its not about income tax, its every transaction you make in life. Welfare people get -creamed- by gas, booze and smokes taxes alone. Its one major reason why they stay poor, all their welfare dough gets TAXED AWAY and they can’t bank anything for when their crappy car needs repaired.
And since when is HALF OF EVERYTHING YOU MAKE even remotely a fair share? What planet is that fair on?
And what does this have to do with education, other than after health care its the single biggest government cost and mega rip-off we get slammed with every freakin’ day??
Loki said: “Most of the really creative or brilliant people that I’ve known are not very good at working in groups. The sheeple can work in groups and those who like to strike out on their own should be able to do so.”
Oh, SO true. reading your comment I flashed back to PT school where they were trying to make us work in groups. My group was me plus six flighty girls, they decided they were going to do some giggly bit of fluff about Girl Guides. I decided to learn something instead.
My contribution to the group was the therapeutic uses of recreational shooting for spinal cord and head injury victims, with a wheelchair accessibility analysis of the local shooting ranges. It was not well received. I got a stern talking to about not being a team player.
Still got a B. Totally worth it. 🙂