Future of School Education
The way we learn things has undergone tremendous change with the ubiquitous access to the Web. Everything we need to know is out there. Every topic that would be taught in schools is online. The Web is making everyone a teacher and everyone a student. This is a very unique phenomenon that makes the world flat and accessible. If you are deeply interested in say, blockchain, nothing stops you from learning it from the experts in that field nor read papers published in that domain and form your own thinking and be a researcher on your own. If you want to make a self-driving car, there is enough out there to teach you.
However, there is a big gap in the way education at the ground level has changed. There are still classrooms. Ferrying kids in the morning and dropping them back home. Making them go through books whose contents are a drop compared to what is out there online. Bad teachers whose concepts are skewed and who are under pressure to make a living compared to world class teachers available online. A nation wide or state wide syllabus that creates these books, conducts exams effectively acting as a band pass filter, making everyone go through the same subjects irrespective of where the students would find their interests in life eventually.
The argument that mathematics, science, social science and languages which are generally taught in schools lay the foundation for a wide variety of things the student has to face in life in the future may have some truth in it. But for someone who is going to take up Marketing and sales of toys in life, the time spent on Huygens wave theory of light or differential equations is extraneous. It appears like for a very long time our Education system keeps us clueless of what we want to do in life.
In short, we have created a huge obstacle for everyone to cross until they find that they could have travelled a straight path to what they wanted to be. In the era where the Web did not become the teacher, the school system was the only way for someone to gain knowledge. Since every one had to pass through the same gate over time when the number of people crossing the narrow gate swelled, we ended up making the entry criteria more difficult with unrealistic competitive exams. However, in an era where there is no constraint for learning what makes us still maintain the same old gate for everyone to pass through?
it is time to rethink our learning. A person who likes to learn about Crypto Currency can pursue that without the need to study Inorganic Chemistry. A person who wants to learn Robotics can pursue without the stress of mastering the grammar of multiple languages. A person who loves to understand Indus Seals need not solve Fourier Transforms.
Education should move out from a constrained syllabus one has to get through to the freedom to pursue topics of interest across or within. All we need is a curated list of hyperlinks on a wide variety of topics and allow the students to choose what they want. The rigour of grading and certification should be on those topics which the students choose and the opportunities in terms of research, employment or entrepreneurship should be exposed for students who pursue those topics.
It is still possible that some topics have high demand than others. But now there will be many gates to pass through and students can choose their gates instead of forcing everyone to pass through a single gate. Also, this brings back the joy of learning, joy of contributing to areas of one’s interest without wasting precious time on things that are extraneous.
When a country has citizens who are joyful and engaged in activities they love, prosperity and progress are automatic.
