Vinaire's BlogReference: Education: TED Talks
The is a wonderful video in which two of my favorite gurus are talking about education. Their talk makes a clear distinction between intellect and intelligence. Intellect depends on information and accumulated memory; whereas, intelligence is inherent to the person as the ability to look and comprehend what is there.
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The Amazing AI Super Tutor for Students and Teachers, Sal Khan, TED
This seems to be a great advance in education. I am impressed.
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Reference: Course on Subject Clearing
This Key Word List and Glossary provides an overview for the subject of Education. Sub-topics in this area shall have their own Key Word Lists and Glossaries.
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The video above takes up these Key Words in the given sequence using the definitions from the glossary below:
(1) BASIC DEFINITIONS
Education, Literacy, School, Learning, Instruction, Indoctrination, Conditioning
(2) AIM OF EDUCATION
Aim of Education, Epistemic approach, Critical thinking
(3) LEARNING MATERIALS
Learning materials, Curriculum
(4) LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Compulsory education, Equal opportunity
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Aim of Education
Education occurs naturally. Its aim is to help one evolve to their fullest potential. Human society puts systems in place to facilitate education. Such systems should not attempt to control the education of a person. Education must occur naturally.
Compulsory education
Compulsory education refers to a period of education that is required of all people and is imposed by the government. Compulsory schooling means that parents are obliged to send their children to a certain school. If education is not happening then environment should be created for education to occur, but education itself should not be forced. The student should be allowed to follow a curriculum at their own pace. Standardized testing should not be used to categorize the students.
Conditioning
Conditioning is the process of training or accustoming a person or animal to behave in a certain way or to accept certain circumstances. There is social conditioning in every society. True education resolves existing conditioning.
Critical thinking
Critical thinking is the experience obtained from resolving anomalies. This experience is then applied towards resolving more anomalies. Critical thinking builds up on itself. The educational environment should make effort to facilitate critical thinking.
Curriculum
The student should determine what should be taught to him. The learning materials available should consists of modules arranged in a logical order starting from an overview and the fundamentals of a subject. Controversial subjects that contain “sexual” and “religious” contents are safe to learn when approached in this manner. The whole idea is the preservation of critical thinking to resolve anomalies. This consideration applies also to the education in morals, art and aesthetics.
Education
Origin: “brought up, nurtured, taught”. Education occurs naturally as the transmission of cultural heritage from one generation to the next. The basic aspect of education is literacy through which one acquires knowledge and problem-solving skills. Schools are supposed to facilitate education by assisting young minds in the process of learning.
Epistemic Approach
Education should take the approach of enabling one to see things as they are. On this depend truth, knowledge, and understanding. This approach facilitates the development of rationality and critical thinking. These abilities help one resolve anomalies and evolve.
Equal opportunity
Equal opportunity is a state of fairness in which individuals are treated similarly, unhampered by artificial barriers, prejudices, or preferences. This basically applies to learning materials and laboratory facilities that a person accesses to educate oneself. A person must demonstrate his abilities to an independent body to be qualified and certified.
Learning
Origin: “to glean, read, ponder”. Learning is the process of acquiring new knowledge, understanding, and skills. One reads and ponders until one grasps the new concepts and can apply them. Learning cannot be forced if the mind is to grow and become mature. When forced, instructions become indoctrination and learning becomes conditioning of the mind.
Learning Materials
Those materials are safe to learn from, which explain the fundamentals of a subject very simply, and build up logically on those fundamentals on a smooth, comfortable gradient.
Literacy
Literacy is the ability to read and write. It also refers to a person’s knowledge of a particular subject or field. For example, a person can become literate in another language or subject.
Indoctrination
To indoctrinate is to impose a set of beliefs so the person accepts them without examining them critically. There is some degree of indoctrination in every subject. True education resolves existing indoctrination.
Instruction
To instruct is to provide knowledge in a logical and systematic manner, so that a person can use that knowledge to improve his ability to think.
School
Origin: “leisure employed in learning”. School is a place where instruction is given to a group of children and young adults under college age. A child learns to speak language at home through imitation. He goes to school to learn to read and write that language. Later he learns other subjects by reading about them in that language. Schools are supposed to facilitate that learning process by teaching how to learn and to provide knowledge that answers questions and clears up confusions.
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Nov 2, 2022
I think that in future there are going to be no classes. The student will study the subjects they are most interested in. A subject shall be divided into modules. The earlier modules shall be basic and simple. The subsequent modules shall gradually increase in complexity and difficulty. The student shall follow his selected curriculum of subjects at his own pace. Upon completing a module he will be tested on it for understanding and not for memorization. He must grasp a module 100% before he advances to the next module. This is how he acquires qualifications and skills and gets certified on them.
The learning materials shall be available online, as in the KHAN ACADEMY. The student shall mostly study on his own either at home or at school. At school he shall have help available in case he doesn’t understand something or has questions. He shall get assistance on individual basis either from other students or from the teachers. The school shall also provide laboratory and equipment facilities.
Understanding can be tested by examining if the person can apply the materials he has learned. For example, can an electrical engineer do electrical engineering? You may verbally quiz the student on how he can apply certain concepts. Give him real world situations and ask him what action he would take based on what concept.
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Reference: Subject: Education
You may read the transcript here.
Here are the main points from this talk (May 2013):
(1) The legislation, “No Child Left Behind” is leaving millions of children behind. In some parts of the country, 60 percent of kids drop out of high school. In the Native American communities, it’s 80 percent of kids. If we halved that number, it would create a net gain to the U.S. economy of nearly a trillion dollars over 10 years. It actually costs an enormous amount to mop up the damage from the dropout crisis.
(2) America spends more money on education than most other countries. Class sizes are smaller than in many countries. And there are hundreds of initiatives every year to try and improve education. But most kids in American school are disengaged from education; they don’t enjoy it; they don’t get any real benefit from it. The trouble is, it’s all going in the wrong direction.
(3) There are three principles on which human life flourishes: the first is this, that human beings are naturally different and diverse. Education under “No Child Left Behind” is based on not diversity but conformity. Its effect has been to narrow the focus onto the so-called STEM disciplines. These disciplines are fine, but they’re not sufficient. A real education has to give equal weight to the arts, the humanities, to physical education.
(4) Kids prosper best with a broad curriculum that celebrates their various talents. The arts are important because they speak to parts of children’s being which are otherwise untouched. This narrow focus in education is like doing low-grade clerical work. This naturally makes them fidget, which generates various conditions under the broad title of attention deficit disorder, ADHD.
(5) The second principle that drives human life flourishing is curiosity. If you can light the spark of curiosity in a child, they will learn without any further assistance. Children are natural learners. Teaching is a creative profession. Great teachers mentor, stimulate, provoke, and engage. But one of the effects of the current culture has been to de-professionalize teachers.
(6) The role of a teacher is to facilitate learning. And part of the problem is that the dominant culture of education has come to focus on not teaching and learning, but testing. So in place of curiosity, what we have is a culture of compliance. Testing should be diagnostic. It should support learning and not obstruct it. It should not be the dominant culture of education.
(7) The third principle is that human life is inherently creative. We all create our own lives through this restless process of imagining alternatives and possibilities. It’s why human culture is so interesting and diverse and dynamic. And, one of the roles of education is to awaken and develop these powers of creativity. Instead, what we have is a culture of standardization.
(8) Finland provides an excellent model for education. They have a very broad approach to education, which includes humanities, physical education, the arts. They don’t obsess about STEM disciplines and standardized testing; yet they regularly come out on top in math, science and reading. There are no drop-outs in Finland. If people are in trouble, they get help and support quite quickly.
(9) The high-performing systems in the world individualize teaching and learning. They recognize that it is students who are learning and the system has to engage them, their curiosity, their individuality, and their creativity. That’s how you get them to learn.
(10) The second is that they attribute a very high status to the teaching profession. They recognize that you can’t improve education if you don’t pick great people to teach and keep giving them constant support and professional development. Investing in professional development is not a cost. It’s an investment, and every other country that’s succeeding well knows that.
(11) And the third is, they devolve responsibility to the school level for getting the job done. Central or state governments do not decide, and go into a command and control mode in education. Education happens in classrooms and schools, and the people who do it are the teachers and the students. If you remove their discretion, it stops working.
(12) Many of the current policies in America are based on mechanistic conceptions of education. It’s like education is an industrial process that can be improved just by having better data. There is this idea that if we fine-tune it well enough, it will all hum along perfectly into the future. It won’t, and it never did because education is not a mechanical system. It’s a human system.
(13) There are alternative education programs that are designed to get kids back into education. They’re very personalized. They have strong support for the teachers, close links with the community and a broad and diverse curriculum. They often involve students outside school as well as inside school. And they work. If we all did that, there’d be no need for the alternative.
(14) The real role of leadership in education is not and should not be command and control. The real role of leadership is climate control, creating a climate of possibility. We have to recognize that it’s a human system, and there are conditions under which people thrive, and conditions under which they don’t. And if you do that, people will rise to it and achieve things that you completely did not anticipate and couldn’t have expected.
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Reference: Subject: Education
Reference: Course on Subject Clearing
There are two parts to teaching:
In a school, information is imparted through lectures and supported by textbooks. In the world of technology today, lectures may be replaced by pre-recorded videos; and the textbooks may be simplified through precise definitions and animated examples. Both video lectures and animated textbooks can be made available online through Internet. One may access them anywhere. A good example of this is Khan Academy | Free Online Courses, Lessons & Practice.
There are going to be confusions in student’s mind. These may be handled through interactions with a tutor on line. Simple confusion may be handled on the spot; otherwise, the student may be directed to study the materials that he missed. The better is the quality, and sequencing, of the study materials, the less confusions will be there to be addressed by a tutor.
Schools then become places where one may go to study and engage in laboratory experiments under supervision.
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I see the ideal scene for education as follows:
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From birth, a child is exploring and learning. He is naturally motivated to learn. That natural motivation is killed when the child is,
When the child has been pushed past too many things not understood, he gives up on independent thinking. He then lets the forced schooling condition his mind. This is not a good situation because, as he grows up, he is unable to creatively think his way out of situations. He then becomes subject to a lot of stress in life.
A way out of this situation is Subject Clearing Your Schooling. This application restores the motivation to learn and to think creatively. It can be self-applied to oneself; or two people may pair up and apply it to each other; or a tutor may apply it his or her students individually as needed.
In general, one must never allow one’s motivation to be killed by the reasons listed above.
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Once one is motivated to learn, one can self-learn to a great extent in today’s technological environment. Self-learning can be supported greatly by a tutor who is familiar with Subject Clearing.
Self-learning materials have the following characteristics:
In self-learning it is very important not to go by something one does not understand. One’s mind should always be full of curiosity and eagerness to learn. Whenever, there is a doubt, perplexity or confusion, it should be treated as an ANOMALY.
An anomaly is any violation of the integrity of reality, such as, discontinuity (missing data), inconsistency (contradictory data), or disharmony (arbitrary data).
The moment one becomes aware of an anomaly one must make some effort to resolve it. He should actually resolve the anomaly; or, at least, add it to a TO DO LIST, that he checks on a regular basis.
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Self-learning helps a student explore his potentials to the fullest degree. He naturally picks up the subjects that he is most interested in. He would then excel in those subjects because he wants to. Self learning maintains and even enhances a person’s ability to think independently and creatively at all times.
Here are some elementary question to check creative thinking ability: What is Mathematics?
Here is an example of addressing the fundamentals of a subject: Numbers
The subject of education is explored here: Subject: Education
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