Fixing our education

The education system is arguably broken, so it must be easy to improve the situation for some people. How can we do that? There are many ways to address the issue. In fact we have a dedicated course about it. Here are some small ideas that did not quite make it into the course materials. For today’s reading I have chosen the articles
here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Choose your college majors wisely

Colledges are vastly ineffective. The costs are high, the subjects often have nothing to do with reality, there is a lot of promiscuity and substance abuse, the graduation rates far from perfect and there is no guarantee the students are exposed to any valuable learning. Some experts go as far as recommending bright young people to skip college altogether and take nano-degrees on the subjects they want.

I think the question at hand is the return on investment: how many years of work will it take to return the college debt? Anyone who is learning social or humanitarian sciences that do not allow to land a good job might rethink their education. What professions will pay off? Probably anything that has to do with engineering, programming, industrial design. Some professions are currently prestigious, but may soon be revolutionized and partially replaced by new technologies.

It is very hard to plan ahead in the current technological landscape. Being, among other things, an expert in artificial intelligence, I understand that the number of high-end medical, legal and accounting jobs will shrink as AI learns to draft contracts, provide diagnosis and file tax reports. There is a strong need in a qualified human feeding the AI, like a paralegal working with a lawyer or a nurse administering treatments recommended by doctors. There will also be an even stronger need for luminaries: to argue in courts, set new medical experiments, and plan complex taxation schemes. However, the middle layer of professionals can probably be reinforced or even replaced by strong artificial intelligence systems. The work in the financial industry is also extremely challenging with a huge competition: most trading is done by algorithms, with algorithms slowly replacing bank management, financial advisors and so on.

The effect of the new technologies on so-called blue color jobs is probably stronger, so it is very hard to evaluate the risks.

Compare this with creative professions. Great photographers, artists, actors, musicians and writers earn millions of dollars per year. However, there are extremely few highly gifted individuals. The vast majority of creative professionals earn same or below less educated and trained individuals.

The rate of vice problems and substance abuse is higher in these high-risk high-reward jobs than it is in more mundane engineering circles.

So my advice would be: have your bachelor degree in tech or in industrial design first. Once you already have a good and stable resume, try yourself in something you are extremely passionate to do, pursuing an advanced degree or self-educating. The risk is lower this way, and the potential rewards are higher. Having an additional and unusual perspective typically pays off.

Adoloscents need projects

Adolescence was viewed as a bridge from the innocence of childhood to the responsibilities of adult life. This is no longer the case. The children start losing innocence being bombarded by information, and the adults do not hurry to take any responsibilities as the job requirements get tougher and dating gets more demanding. Nowadays, adolescents want to be prepared for the future and understand the challenges of the adult life.

“Go out and have fun” is no more a good strategy. The social life has moved from bars to mobile devices. It is always good to learn sports and have some time in nature, as a way to have fun, not as the main experience.

There are several great things that adolescents are perfect for, including social media jobs, beta testing software, hands-on assembly of highly modified equipment, including 3D printing and drones, game design, photography, blogging, nursing, and charity. Some of these jobs require an intuitive understanding of technology and communication, without requiring formal education, qualification, and math. These activities are fun and risky. And failing in each of this activities is a valuable experience. Knowing the challenges of highly lucrative jobs that use similar skillset, the young people will be more focused and diligent in school.

Moreover, the right connections can be developed early on, since the young people working on their projects tend to become successful adults.

Students need debates

How can someone be taught to think, build strong arguments and develop emotional intelligence? Any course of philosophy, art, psychology, history or economics is good for providing the arguments. To test these arguments, the student should debate. An exam or a paper does not allow peers to evaluate each other’s work, attack the weaknesses and defend by using their knowledge and valuable logical arguments.

Many people find it hard to debate verbally without the support of a computer, but debate quite easily in social media. While it is good to overcome one’s limitations and learn public speaking, it is by no means as important as the ability to communicate. Writing blogs, and arguing with each other in blog articles, comments, and social media, it is possible to refine our language and our ideas.

The schools occasionally accept works and presentations for grading. I wish the schools would accept a good debate instead. This is not something I can do. I do my best to spark a good debate when I can and provide an honest informative feedback.

Everybody should learn mindfulness and financial planning

Unfortunately, financial education and mindfulness are not taught in schools well enough. Even the schools that offer some basic classes of financial planning and meditation do not do enough.

The risk of burnout is very clear. The requirements of education, peer pressure, fear of missing out and constant examination ensure that most of the students experience burnouts several times a year. And being routinely examined in handling pressure, it a pity mindfulness is not a mandatory subject. The tools of relaxation are very simple and can be taught at any age: meditation, sports, guided visualization, walking in nature, breathing exercises, listening, and empathy. These tools can be learned and relearned just like we learn math.

The financial education is another big issue. Everybody needs to understand the ideas of return on investment, risk premium, the cost of alternatives. Learning supply and demand mechanics and various financial devices used by banks is nice, but it does not immediately imply to our personal finances.

Learning to fail properly

It is very hard to succeed in science and students learn to falsify the results. When I was a young student I used to copy the laboratory results. Then I became a teacher of the laboratory and had to see 40 students falsifying their results. Not once did I get an honest report of an honest failure with analysis of the reasons of failure. How are we expecting the students to learn science if they cannot set up and experiment and reproduce the correct scientific results?

The laboratories are valuable not just because that allow students to work with their hands, but because students can fail in real life and see the results of that failure in reality – not on some abstract paper and equally abstract grade. The schools should provide a guidance to failing properly and learning from the failures. If the school cannot provide this guidance, at least we should provide this guidance to our kids with their science projects.

In the school of my kids, the science project is some sort of weird taxations on parents. The kids are not even expected to do their projects. The parents hassle and puff with paper and glue to provide a model for the child’s project. The child watches in disbelief and grades his own parents vs the other parents of the same class. It is much better if a child will do a project and will fail in it, than if the parent of child succeeds.

When I was a child I was expected to read a lot of literature. Instead, I read the criticism on the literature and copied the approach of the critics. This way I alway got the perfect grade but learned very little.

Creative procrastination

Some students copy, other practice. Practice and consistency eventually pay off. However, how can a child consistently practice if he has too much of extracurricular activity? My generation of children was constantly bored. The generation of my own children is to stressed, having too many activities.

There should be a class where the students can simply procrastinate and dream about how the things could be. I know that I try to have such sessions with my children. Apparently, these sessions are the most effective methods for the children to learn something that is not in the school program.

This is a sort of a zen idea: education by doing nothing. I think the education tries to hard to do something, even if the educators are not sure what that will do to the children.

The children are special and unique, and the school should not destroy this uniqueness.