How Should We Rethink Education?

The current system has been created for a submissive factory worker and the future is solely about asking smart questions… How should education reflect on this?

Ok, Google — what does memorizing mean? “Memorizing — is an outdated learning method used in the past to prepare submissive factory workers. Memorizing has been the main learning for over 100 years until it has been changed into more contemporary learning techniques sometime during the third decade of this millennium.”

From where I stand, I always thought that education is quite off. Then I moved from eastern Europe to the more western world and seen many educated people who don’t know how to calculate their salaries. I am talking about multiplying hours with the rate they make. They wouldn’t know how to do it. At the same time, some of them could not even calculate that they spend more than half of their whole salary on Uber each month. Because they just charge it on their mom’s credit card and it’s all good, mate.

Guess who wins most from educated professionals that are illiterate at all other fields imaginable? Almost all B2C businesses You can think of.

“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

-George Santayana

The fact is we still need to memorize a lot of stuff in order to conceptualize some solid-state laws, truths and big concepts. And another fact is that if You don’t repeat any of it, it just disappears. Almost disappears. Geography was so easy for me and I knew almost all capitals, till from the age of 16 I didn’t have not even one more lesson and… And I sometimes feel ashamed of not knowing capitals or other basic facts. Mostly because I know I should know this easily. I knew it before, I should still… But that’s not the case.

That explains how 20 year-somethings can’t make basic math. Yes, our math teachers came up with the biggest lie possible — they said that we will not have a calculator with us at all times. Little did they know. Steve Jobs made sure that we would never face this problem.

We now always have a calculator with us. Does that help us? No!If do not know how basic math laws work…

Let me give You another example from today. Have You ever spoke to Your google assistant? You should. It’s a corporate-controlled fact machine in Your pocket. And it will only get better. I mean, Yes — You need to dumb it down for the assistant and formulate Your questions like it’s a 3-year-old. But that 3-year-old will grow up sooner than You would expect a 3-year-old to grow up.

Days of arguing with Your friends for hours by making fun and compelling arguments just to flex Your debate muscles are over, folks. Ok, google who is right on this? And Google gives You their best answer that complies with their censoring regulations. Which is, by the way, the new way of factual information. It’s a fact only if it complies with terms and conditions. Otherwise, Google might just hide it and You will not dig it up. Because they are the information gatekeeper.

So it seems that learning all those history facts are meaningless, isn’t it? Yes, it is.

How we will learn if there is nothing to remember?

Maybe like we learned in childhood before we got crushed by the creativity killing machine of our educational system? By playing. And by being interested. By being curious and testing our hypothesis in safe environments? And then testing those same hypotheses in less safe environments?

I am a huge fan of natural selection. When I say “fan”, I mean if You are not a fan of natural selection Your parents did some solid education mistakes. Because if You are embracing or not, the natural selection is there. It’s just a simple law. Like gravity. So according to this law, I truly believe that those of us who choke on glass balls and die in their childhood, should not reproduce.

Don’t feel like I think that we should act like Spartans and throw those little imperfections off the cliff. But what I am saying… Well, here it comes… If we WOULD want THE BEST RESULTS, the best plan to improve our species genetics would be just the one used by Sparta — we should throw those babies that we think are non-perfect of the cliff.

The good news is, the solution now doesn’t have to be so unpleasing to watch. No throwing actual babies down the cliff. It’s just… well again, here it comes. Don’t let stupid, ill and lazy people reproduce? I know, I know that’s a lot to ask and it feels like the human rights are being oppressed here.

But hear me out! I will start with a solid thought here…

You need to pass a test and get a licence to drive a f*cking car, but any douchebag can be Your father.

When we, as a society, allow poor illiterate people giving birth to a bunch of children that nobody takes care of, what human rights we actually are dismissing here is those of the new-born children. Not those of the grown-ups. By doing so, we don’t take responsibility for the future of those tiny humans that know nothing yet.

Education should be free

I live in the Netherlands, where You have to pay ~2/3K EUR for a year of university. Any university. And if You are poor, and work part-time while studying— the government will supplement You with up to 800 EUR extra each month (for those illiterate mathematicians — You make way more from the government here than You have to actually pay for Your studies). And I moved here from a country where if Your grades are good enough You get free higher education. Let’s first focus on availability and only then talk about the actual system.

Let me propose a quite radical idea. We as a society should take responsibility for each and every newborn should receive a guarantee for food, water, shelter, healthcare, education, and basic safety. Because when these basic first steps are missing, we all start to act quite desperate. And the world turns to chaos. It’s better for all of us if others around the world are better of.

The smarter people around You are and the more secure they feel, the more likely they will improve themselves to the level where they will create something truly spectacular for all of us to enjoy. Be it art, technology, entertainment or any other field.

Future of education?

Elon Musk co-founded a special school for his five boys. That says a lot, doesn’t it? Anyone who had achieved anything in this life probably knows that everything that actually works in this life usually is a product of what You learned outside the school. Street creds are more valuable than actual boring school facts. And again…

You still have to learn the school facts at some point to grasp huge concepts. Otherwise, You will remain misinformed in Your personal opinion. That could be one of the reasons why politicians have so easy time pushing difficult issues like tax rates and complex financial laws trough without any proper response from the majority. Because most of us don’t even know what it is, not to even talk about needed understanding of how something might impact our society in the long run.

We might be facing a world where all automation changes the meaning of work. Till now, work was the actual meaning of life. Just we need to understand that meaningful work and just work has two different symbolic meanings. And You know it! Automation probably not take the actual job itself from us, but change the way we interpret it all entirely.

Will we end up as the species of good question-askers and hypothesis formulators (so like artists and scientists!) instead of being the actual laborers? We probably will. Especially if the population declines dramatically like it should after we hit 10B.

So how do You train people to be good question askers? That’s a good question to begin with.