Public Education was invented in the nineteenth century to produce the workforce needed by the industrial revolution, as brightly explained by Sir Ken Robinson:
This model is
no longer useful. As the Knowledge Society brings the Knowledge Economy,
education must be able to help each person develop his or her particular
talents and affinities, since talents produce knowledge, and knowledge is the resource. The education model based
in standardized curricula and hierarchical learning methodology does not
produce that each person develops its particular talents. I am afraid most
people in the world actually do not work in what they like most and are most
talented. And that, in terms of knowledge economy, is a monumental waste of
resources.
The point
is how can we generate an education model
that can be personalized and yet scalable. Here’s a proposal.
Schools
have two roles: instruction and formation. With instruction children learn
things, with formation, they acquire habits and values. Learning is actually
what gets the bigger part of the time spent at school. Habits and values are considered to be a
consequence of learning. Why do we name “hard skills” those that come from
instruction and “soft skills” those that come from values, if it is not that we praise
more instruction than values? And, no time is spent at school in acknowledging the
talents and affinities of each child.
The
Internet is increasingly allowing instruction to be self-done. Sugata Mitra has exprienced with children who teach each other using Online contents (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html) . Roger Schank has experienced with "learning by doing online" (MBA Online, La Salle at http://www.beslasalle.net/portal/masters/masters-mba-mbaol-online). Salman Khan (The Khan Academy, www.khanacademy.org/) has introduced an interesting new paradigm called “flipping the
classroom”. Children in classrooms are instructed by the teacher and do
homework at home. Khan makes it the other way.
The methodology
consists in making students get instructed at home through the Web, with lessons
uploaded to YouTube. This allows students to “rewind and play” the lesson as
many times as they want, until they get it. Or, to comment with other fellow
students through social networking until they get it. In the classroom is where
“homework”, that is, the repeated application of the concepts learned, happens
with a one-to-one computer approach. The teacher monitorizes who is doing well
and who is not, and makes the advantageous student help the handicapped one. Plus,
there is team work to discuss matters and present conclusions. This makes
students learn, think, and apply what they learned. And get used to work as a
team.
I think
with this approach you don´t need classes to be as long as they are now,
liberating time that can be devoted to the “soft skills” part. This is where
the teacher becomes a mentor rather than a teacher, helping each student to
discover his or her talents and affinities. With the information raised from
flipping the classroom, each student can be guided to those subjects more related
to his or her affinities and talents. With this, the students in most classes
will share talent and affinity, making the class something thrilling and
challenging to both students and teacher. Mentoring then can be specialized by
affinities, with teachers related to the subjects where affinity is shared by
the students, making creativity part of the methodology of teaching.
This will
help students when confronting what professional career they want to follow.
In Knowledge
Society professional training will become an ongoing activity. But, instead of packaging
knowledge under a college or post graduate degree, the student will be able to
choose what subjects he or she should follow in order to better develop talents
and affinities. Universities will provide accreditation of subjects. A
personalized curriculum will be able to be made by each person, structured and poured
in job searching engines, making it possible to match jobs, talents and
affinities. Therefore, jobs will be given to people most talented and related
to the soft and hard skills needed for the job, in a worldwide job market
searching for specific knowledge jobs.
With the “flipping
the classroom” paradigm, the fragmentation of college and the universal
access to the Internet, students will be able to attend classes anywhere in the
world (limited only by language, which can also be learned Online), making
education more competitive, innovative and cheaper.
I think
that in 50 years' time the way people are educated, search for a job and develop
their professional career will be totally changed. Less and less people will
have a permanent job in an organization. More opportunities – and more
uncertainty – will be available as the Knowledge Society and the Knowledge
Economy evolves, focusing in intangible assets rather than tangible ones.
It took a
lot of guts to our forefathers to produce and make possible the Public
Education paid by with taxation to educate a huge amount of people which, up to
then, had no access to education. It will also require a lot of guts to change
the actual paradigms which are no longer suitable for the present Society and
Economy, due to the fear of uncertain results and the lobby that will be raised
by incumbent members of the Education sector which might see a threat in the
new order of things. But that is just what happened two hundred years ago when
Public Education came to place.
The bottom
line is that the new paradigm will have to fulfill the needs of Knowledge
Society, that is, that each person may work where he or she is most talented
and likes best working at. Only then will knowledge create the maximum value it
may reach, since knowledge is the product of people interacting with other people, with
nature and with things created by people.
Alfredo Barriga
