Vinaire's Blog

Reference: Subject: Education

You may read the transcript here.

Here are the main points from this talk (February 2013):

(1) The current schooling system was designed to meet the administrative requirements of the far flung British Empire of 1700s, which were as follows,

• The graduates must be identical to each other.
• They must have good handwriting, because the data is handwritten.
• They must be able to read. They must be able to do multiplication, division, addition and subtraction in their head.

(2) This schooling system does not have DISCERNMENT as its requirement. But that is the requirement we need to meet today. We need education that produces people who are able to discern what they study, because they are going to be faced with increasingly dynamic job market.

(3) Computer somehow seems to excite the children’s desire to learn.  Experiments show that children learn to browse and play the games on computer by themselves.  They even learn enough English themselves for this purpose.  They easily learn about computer parts and their function.

(4) In nine months, a group of children left alone with a computer in any language will reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West.

(5) A speech-to-text engine in the computer was able to improve English pronunciation of the children. Children could even learn “biotechnology of DNA replication in English” to some degree when they were told that it was an important topic to know. Their scores improved even further when their efforts to self-learn were encouraged and admired.

(6) Today learning is more interesting and effective through cell phones than through books and schools. We now have almost instant access to information that we need to know. Does that make knowing obsolete? Encouragement seems to be the key to self-learning.

(7) Any threat tends to shuts the brain down. In the age of Empires, it was important to teach how to learn and survive under threat. Today we need to teach to bring out creativity.

(8) We notice from these experiments that learning is the product of educational self-organization. If you allow the educational process to self-organize, then learning emerges. It’s not about making learning happen. It’s about letting it happen. The teacher sets the process in motion and then she stands back in awe and watches as learning happens.

(9) Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) are collaboration and encouragement put together. Ask big enticing questions. Then give the child a hint and relevant materials. He will figure it out.

(10) We can design a future of learning by supporting children all over the world to tap into their wonder and their ability to work together. It will be a school where children go on these intellectual adventures driven by the big questions which their mediators put in. It’s a facility which is practically unmanned. There’s only one granny who manages health and safety. The rest of it is from the cloud.

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Reference: Subject: Education

I have a feeling that the stage is being set up for a grassroots revolution in the field of education. Bill Gates is backing Khan Academy to develop internet based course content that is relatively easy to grasp. Ivy League institutions like Harvard, M.I.T., Yale and Stanford are making their course materials available online.

However, a lot more needs to be done beyond just providing the course content on-line to get a revolution going in education. There are already reports like The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course. We need a learning revolution at the grassroots level.

The following factors are required for the success of such a revolution.

1. Rapidly addressing past failures in one’s education.
2. Generating a passion for learning in the young and old alike.
3. Setting up the student to start learning on his or her own.
4. Making course contents available that are easy to assimilate.
5. Providing a path to researching new knowledge.

Most of these points can now be handled by applications provided at The Book of Subject Clearing. Easily graspable course content is already being made available on Internet. It is the product in (5) above that will ignite the learning revolution.

I am now retired. I can provide assistance to those who want to start on the course in Subject Clearing. I can communicate through the Comment Section of Vinaire’s Blog to answer questions regarding this course. I may even provide demonstrations by arranging upon request online Zoom sessions for Subject Clearing applications. As soon as some people start becoming efficient with these applications they can also join me in assisting new people starting on the Subject Clearing course. Once a passion for learning takes hold the progress will accelerate. Then only the sky will be the limit.

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Please light the candle for education

The Dot Com bubble. The Housing bubble. The Great Recession. What’s next? Inequality! You can make a difference.

Nobel Memorial prize winner Robert Shiller talks to Charlie Rose about inequality.

The growing gap between the rich and the poor is alarming. This does not necessarily mean that the rich are more productive than the poor. It simply means that the economic system favors capital. The rich have somehow amassed so much capital that it is sustaining itself. The capital in America may be functioning as a security blanket, but it is certainly not being used to bring about a happy and productive society.

In this extremely competitive America, a poor person gets blamed for being lazy and unproductive. But a rich person is not necessarily being productive either. He may be just as lazy and unproductive because the system is taking care of his capital. So, culturally and educationally, the rich seems to be as destitute as the poor. The education system has long failed in America, because, today, looking at the situation in Washington, the blind seem to be leading the blind.

There is nothing wrong with a system which makes capital grow; but there is everything wrong with a system that does not allow that capital to be used for increasing the potential and productivity of people in the society, but only as a security blanket for a few.

The people in America are struggling and giving up hope in increasing numbers for a productive and satisfying lifestyle. The current system in America is doing nothing to help people achieve their individual potential.

We need to educate people, help increase their potential, and make them more productive.

Let’s have a grass-roots education revolution! 

Let’s just take our focus away from capital for a moment and put attention on increasing the human resources in America. The best method to increase security is to educate people around us into thinking more rationally. That was my reason for starting Free Math Tutoring.

Currently, when I go to Starbucks and Barnes & Nobles on weekends, I set up my laptop, and I have on the back of the laptop pasted in big letters, “PROJECT RECOVER AMERICA – ASK FOR FREE MATH TUTORING.” I am already tutoring three students free.

If it is education that is going to help this country recover from its current down trend, then let’s each one of us start offering help in that direction. Don’t worry about what to educate people on. Just educate them on what you do best.

We need a grass-roots movement to forward education. The best education is to help a person learn to think systematically on his own. That can be done through any subject. I do it through math. It is a lot of fun.

I always encourage those around me to get involved in education if only as a tutor. My wife does a great job educating her “little sister”.

Our country is facing a huge situation. When one is actively doing something about that situation, no matter how little it  may seem, it makes one feel better.

By helping others learn, a person also learns himself or herself. It is a win-win situation. So, let’s start doing it. Do not wait for help to come from somewhere else.

So, let’s start an education revolution using a grass-roots effort.  When we get going help will come.

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