The Why
I am done school. Likewise, many of my friends have also recently finished their formal education, and I think they'll agree that it's easier to evaluate what we went through now that it's over. It is often difficult to understand what you're doing when you're in the midst of it. It is for this reason, I think, that many of us ended up at university in the first place: we were busy doing.
It's easy to go through the motions head down without a known purpose. In life, there is no shortage of tasks to do, of milestones to hit, or of achievements to unlock. We each have the responsibility to ensure we are doing what we want, and that we are doing it passionately. With this, I take a critical look at my recently completed education, to gain perspective and determine how to approach both my future and self-directed learning. If this sounds reasonable to you read on, and don't worry, you will not be tested.
I am done school. Likewise, many of my friends have also recently finished their formal education, and I think they'll agree that it's easier to evaluate what we went through now that it's over. It is often difficult to understand what you're doing when you're in the midst of it. It is for this reason, I think, that many of us ended up at university in the first place: we were busy doing.
It's easy to go through the motions head down without a known purpose. In life, there is no shortage of tasks to do, of milestones to hit, or of achievements to unlock. We each have the responsibility to ensure we are doing what we want, and that we are doing it passionately. With this, I take a critical look at my recently completed education, to gain perspective and determine how to approach both my future and self-directed learning. If this sounds reasonable to you read on, and don't worry, you will not be tested.
Another motivation for this post is to distinguish education and learning. Learning is a choice – not something done unto you, while education is useless without it. Education and learning can, and should, be complementary activities. Perversely, we learn only at school or work, yet learn poorly in either of these constructs. We fail to learn much outside of the classroom as school does a poor job of stimulating an interest in learning. Often, the result is the opposite of the intention – any curiosity once held is squashed while learning is made to be neither exciting nor fulfilling. After eighteen years of classes, how many people do you know that are genuinely interested in science or the arts? How many people come out of school excited about what they have studied? And how many come out of school excited to be out of school?
What needs to change? Access to data has changed what we should be learning. From the time my grandparents were in school to when I enrolled as a chicken-legged frosh, we've gone from having $1000 sets of encyclopedias with a finite amount of increasingly outdated information to having $300 phones with access to ever expanding, highly searchable, and easily shared information. Over this time period, with the marked evolution of information access, schooling of the populace should have changed just as dramatically. However, most of my schooling was spent too like my grandparent's: attend class, read at home, write a test - repeat. I retained little of the information presented, the focus most of the time, yet took away enormous benefit from the relatively small amount of time where collaboration, creative processes, and true problem solving (completing the square doesn't count) were the focus. Invaluable resources exist at school in the form of great teachers and inspiring peers and I can only imagine how much more I could have profited were those ratios switched.
The How
The notion of a polymath is somewhat lost today. We need only look to the badasses produced by the ancient Greeks and the amazing progress and output from key renaissance contributors to gauge the merit of a polymath. A well rounded education is more than favourable – I would argue that it is more fulfilling and natural than its counterpart. What can't be argued, however, are the measurable advantages that come from exposing ourselves to a varied education in arts, science, and physical training, in their most general. Those who avidly pursue the arts may experience side effects such as increased language skills, better memory, and favourable adaptations in brain structure. Exercise almost obviously benefits learning and plays a crucial role in proper brain development when we're young, memory retention when we're old, and likely a gazillion other ways I need not reference. These two components in a well rounded education are where many of us lack focus and and attention. Combining these with the usual curriculum of rational thinking and process oriented work will only improve the graduates being sent out into the big wide world.
Plato's academy was not a poor excuse for a movie theatre. Van Gogh painted in the french countryside. Einstein famously went for day-long walks. The point is that unique ideas, revolutionary ideas, rarely come out of standard operations in disengaging and unappealing environments. The optimal learning environment will be unique to the individual, although there are common links. Many of the suggested improvements, calming instrumental background music and exposure to nature, would appear to have come out of some hot-boxed hippie commune, and they probably did. What we care about is that they work; those tactics have been shown to increase content retention and problem solving and increase productivity and creativity. Whatever environment you prefer, just make sure you choose it. We spend most of our working lives in stale classrooms and impersonal offices, so opt for more inspiring work places on your own time.
What needs to change? Access to data has changed what we should be learning. From the time my grandparents were in school to when I enrolled as a chicken-legged frosh, we've gone from having $1000 sets of encyclopedias with a finite amount of increasingly outdated information to having $300 phones with access to ever expanding, highly searchable, and easily shared information. Over this time period, with the marked evolution of information access, schooling of the populace should have changed just as dramatically. However, most of my schooling was spent too like my grandparent's: attend class, read at home, write a test - repeat. I retained little of the information presented, the focus most of the time, yet took away enormous benefit from the relatively small amount of time where collaboration, creative processes, and true problem solving (completing the square doesn't count) were the focus. Invaluable resources exist at school in the form of great teachers and inspiring peers and I can only imagine how much more I could have profited were those ratios switched.
The How
The notion of a polymath is somewhat lost today. We need only look to the badasses produced by the ancient Greeks and the amazing progress and output from key renaissance contributors to gauge the merit of a polymath. A well rounded education is more than favourable – I would argue that it is more fulfilling and natural than its counterpart. What can't be argued, however, are the measurable advantages that come from exposing ourselves to a varied education in arts, science, and physical training, in their most general. Those who avidly pursue the arts may experience side effects such as increased language skills, better memory, and favourable adaptations in brain structure. Exercise almost obviously benefits learning and plays a crucial role in proper brain development when we're young, memory retention when we're old, and likely a gazillion other ways I need not reference. These two components in a well rounded education are where many of us lack focus and and attention. Combining these with the usual curriculum of rational thinking and process oriented work will only improve the graduates being sent out into the big wide world.
Plato's academy was not a poor excuse for a movie theatre. Van Gogh painted in the french countryside. Einstein famously went for day-long walks. The point is that unique ideas, revolutionary ideas, rarely come out of standard operations in disengaging and unappealing environments. The optimal learning environment will be unique to the individual, although there are common links. Many of the suggested improvements, calming instrumental background music and exposure to nature, would appear to have come out of some hot-boxed hippie commune, and they probably did. What we care about is that they work; those tactics have been shown to increase content retention and problem solving and increase productivity and creativity. Whatever environment you prefer, just make sure you choose it. We spend most of our working lives in stale classrooms and impersonal offices, so opt for more inspiring work places on your own time.
We overestimate our abilities to figure things out and forget that we learn by doing. Student interaction, real time feedback, and open ended problems increase engagement and interest, which leads to better retention and increased understanding. Free time and open ended problems may seem soft to the 120-hour work week investment bankers, but setting aside a small portion of our time to curiously explore what interests us is a good idea. Free time coupled with curiosity only produced Wikipedia, Facebook, Khan Academy, and a gazillion other innovate companies and projects. But don't worry, if you're too busy I'm sure someone else will do it. Traditional thought processes have gotten us a long way and these processes are invaluable. Different academic and social contexts call for different types of problems, teaching, and learning. I only argue that we could benefit from from a variety of approaches and that none should be discounted simply for tradition's sake.
Paul Cézanne did not set out to paint The Card Players. He probably had some free time, oil and a canvas, and inspiration. Great work, meaningful work, does not come out of following directions or working within the proverbial box. Sitting down with a set of instructions, confident that there is a correct answer, helps students to learn a process, but this is not the type of problem solving we need in today's world. Using an algorithm does not equate to understanding, which is a huge oversight on the part of those structuring curriculums. The focus in school on problems of this nature may be attributed to ease of analysis. It's easier to assign grades, rank students, and judge performance when the answers are yes or no, a or b, 3 or 4. Easier is not often better, and here it holds. Too many problems are simply too complex to fit into a neat set of steps, and it's exactly these problems that we need to be learning how to solve.
Being out of school is only going to accelerate my learning and I hope the same holds for you. I now have a full schedule of electives and class starts whenever I see fit. School isn't perfect and I don't expect it to be. I simply think that rather than continue to fine tune what is already in place, we could benefit from an overhaul. That overhaul starts and stops on your own time. Keep learning.
P.S. Seth Godin's e-book is a great resource for those interested in a thorough critique of current education.
Paul Cézanne did not set out to paint The Card Players. He probably had some free time, oil and a canvas, and inspiration. Great work, meaningful work, does not come out of following directions or working within the proverbial box. Sitting down with a set of instructions, confident that there is a correct answer, helps students to learn a process, but this is not the type of problem solving we need in today's world. Using an algorithm does not equate to understanding, which is a huge oversight on the part of those structuring curriculums. The focus in school on problems of this nature may be attributed to ease of analysis. It's easier to assign grades, rank students, and judge performance when the answers are yes or no, a or b, 3 or 4. Easier is not often better, and here it holds. Too many problems are simply too complex to fit into a neat set of steps, and it's exactly these problems that we need to be learning how to solve.
Being out of school is only going to accelerate my learning and I hope the same holds for you. I now have a full schedule of electives and class starts whenever I see fit. School isn't perfect and I don't expect it to be. I simply think that rather than continue to fine tune what is already in place, we could benefit from an overhaul. That overhaul starts and stops on your own time. Keep learning.
P.S. Seth Godin's e-book is a great resource for those interested in a thorough critique of current education.
