here’s an idea.
let’s create a place, a barren building. make sure it is rectangular with few windows and doors that lock automatically. we’ll call this a school. fill the place curmudgeonly employees. adults who wish they were anything else but employees of this place. we’ll call them teachers. create a schedule that lasts eight hours. and make sure that it starts at 8 am. and make sure that people feel obligated to stay until at least 5 pm.
we’ll call this a “school day.”
i have a thesis that education is not about a knowledge — it’s about wisdom gained from digital and physical experiences and the ability to extrapolate newfound wisdom into action.
the logic behind my silly thesis is derived from the internet. i believe that memorizing and conceptualizing knowledge is an obsolete skill — chatGPT3 and google can do this for me. what really matters is being able to use internet based tools in conjunction with personal experience in a way that allows for personalized reasoning — which should lead to business ideas, artistic creation, or unique career paths.
it’s the only way we beat the robots.
early 2010s scholars determined that humanity has three universal learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. data shows that 33% of humans prefer visual, and 26% auditory, 14% kinesthetic, which doesn’t add up to 100% because 22% of students prefer a combination of two. this, of course, does not account for the slim amount of read/write learners that have been identified since the scholars scholared about a decade ago. instead of pulling in information via words, art, or movement, read/write learners prefer inhaling textbooks, taking oddly specific notes, hanging out with dictionaries in public places, and using library cards unironically.
i’m a read/write learner. this explains a lot about me.
bookstores
yellowpages
email
a degree in accounting
this is a list of things that will make no sense to a person born in 2023 when they are 23.
school (somewhat useless):
only use 12 pt times New Roman whence creating an MLA-ready bibliography. don’t touch the asymptote. i before e except after c. three part theses and five paragraph essays. pemdas. to kill a mockingbird.
experience (somewhat useful):
A/B testing newsletter headlines should be done using New York-based readers. data analysis via SQL or Python is always better with 3 redbulls. twitter. the art of bombing and nailing an interview belongs on the same canvas. property taxes (both digital and physical).
- drunk kram
You might read The Aims of Education by Alfred North Whitehead.
I’d also recommend drawing a distinction berween knowledge and learning. It’s an “old” topic, so there is plenty of loterature on the subject.
Have fun!
Smeds