I am going to go and piss on a lot of lawns today with this one.

But.

Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

Here we go.

What if schools get in the way of students?
Please note that this opinion is entirely based in the frame of the developed nation. United States. Japan. Western Europe. Basically countries where people have a large amount of disposable income.

Back to the topic.

We have an innate assumption that school is good. It’s the ultimate ‘parent’s word’ that has few spoken justifications beyond ‘you have to’, ‘it’s your job’, etc. And it’s not like we have a choice. Regardless of background or economic standing, these words are nearly universal. Children are a special case where their entire choice is dictated by the parent.

As a result, we have our schools. Pushing for a balance of academia and activity, our schools provide controlled environments for students to explore their world. Most of the time, the schools are built to give a fairly balanced, if not identical, education to each student. Regardless of the flexibilities of the IB or AP or any other academic program, students are inundated with work that is, on the surface, developed to give students different shades of gray.

Yet, with our economic standing, what if these assumptions and results were wrong? What if school, in the sense of “reading, writing and arithmetic”, had a negligible, minimal or detrimental effect on the development of kids. Partially, this is discrimination based on economic standing. But this is not a moral issue. A child of a billionaire is going to inherently have more opportunities and freedoms than a middle class family. Similar to Amartya Sen’s argument in Development as Freedom, the increased development is only going to allow for more choices and liberties. We, as members of the first world, are going to have more chances and flavors of ice cream.

In a sudden, but completely related jump, let us consider economics. The typical economist may work on figuring out prices and market theories to figure out how development or trade works out. But in the end, it is the study of the allocation of scarce or limited resources. Key factors such as diminishing returns and comparative advantage determine how the economist views the world. These are common concepts when considering trade, manufacturing or other various doodahs regarding our wellness. Yet, these are not considered in the educational field.

So, what if we did apply this to a certain range of students. What would happen if we considered diminishing returns in a student? Consider a student that has diminishing marginal returns as we increased the amount of math work (i.e. said student hates math). The economist may suggest the student ditch math class. Conversely, if the student loves math, the student would benefit from doing more math work. Most of us wouldn’t dream of growing rice in Antarctica or raising cows in Death Valley. So why should we force feed a certain type of curriculum on a student who rejects the material?

“But Genki! You’re insane!” may describe the thoughts going through your head. “We do a curriculum to make sure a student gets equal taste of all the intellectual ice cream!” To this, I have no argument against it. But why has the education in our much, much wealthier world remained in a strongly one-size-fits-all format, as if we don’t have the money to upgrade it ? Why isn’t curriculum customized down to the individual student level, where a teacher or mentor can nimbly adjust to a student’s desire of exploration and get the frak out of the way when the kids really ramp it up? Why are teachers forced into positions where they inherently block kids from their potential and interests? Why can’t teachers be guides for learners, making sure they follow ethics, principals and fundamentals of their interests? Why can’t teachers be co-learners, analyzing and offering constructive criticism?

Learning spawns learning. But why do we keep stuffing when we can be collaborating?

Why aren’t teachers enablers?

Since I am suffering from extreme writer’s block, I will take this moment in unintelligibleness to gloat about Seattle.

Because everything relevant, annoying or significant in the world seems to originate from there.

For instance…

• The object of everyone’s ire and envy, Microsoft
• Boeing airplanes everyone flies on
• The origin of the “i’ll just buy it online” school of shopping philosophy, Amazon.com
• The addiction and object of everyone’s distaste and envy, Starbucks
• The lesser known, lesser evil coffee addition peddler, Tully’s
• By extension, the entire post-modern international caffeine addiction.
• Bill Gates
• Paul Allen
• Me
• Nirvana
• Origin of the entire relevant music scene of the 1990s
• Eddie Bauer
• The company that originally made Sonicare toothbrushes.
• The player no one uses, RealPlayer
• Mario Batali
• The most overrated unknown player in the MLB, Willie Bloomquist
• Geoducks
• The Internet sensation known as Lolcats
• Jimi Hendrix
• Ray Charles started his career here
• Paramedics (all of them, really)
• Half-Life and the entire Valve family
• A good chunk of the current economic crisis (Washington Mutual)
• Costco
• Nintendo in America
• A half a ton of bioengineering and medicine firms.

Did I miss anything?

I have nothing to add to this video.

Reductionism.

Don’t really know the ‘official’ philosophy behind it, but the all-mighty Wikipedia says…

Reductionism can either mean (a) an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or (b) a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents.^[1] This can be said of objects, phenomena, explanations, theories, and meanings.

Sounds about right. After all, it’s all about reducing problems to simpler things. Nothing against holism, of course, since it is often that the total is a lot more than the sum of the parts. Development, as opposed to scientific investigation, is the opposite direction. It’s finding a way to put in a little to get a lot more. Otherwise, we’d still be using smoke signals and grunting a lot more.

Now, I’m no philosopher, and my problem solving isn’t on the scale of Planetary Motion, General Relativity or String Theory. What I seek is finding effective ways of learning and using technology. And it is my observation that typically we in education, as a whole, love to be dreamers and end up having gianormous projects or objectives. Or we make projects without analyzing the outcome (hello, technology babysitting), the process (hello, random technology project) or complete fear (hello, Mr. Scared-of-computer), and end up facilitating over a minor disaster.

The issue is that we aren’t separating the dreams and finding the objectives. Or, with regard to technology, we’re too stuck on integration as opposed to innovation. Technology in education isn’t optimized, as evidenced by large scale, high-visibility programs like one-to-one laptop programs and ineffective integration of technology into old curricula. These techniques are effectively shotgun shots and hail marys into the darkness. Much like William Easterly’s arguments regarding large-scale development aid plans (The White Man’s Burden), technology plans are planned programs with only theoretical ideals and pipe dreams. They rarely have the right experts in the planning process and attempt to anticipate too many variables in an infinitely complex world. At worst, they do not involve enough feedback from the learners themselves.

IT staff, educators and learners alike need to become Searchers, similar to Easterly’s proposal regarding economic aid. We need to find where technology is most efficient and recognize needs and tend to them. And we also need to gather authentic feedback (OF COURSE they like computers. What are they going to say? No, I don’t like YouTube? Get real.) from the students and make learning enjoyable, authentic and legitimate. If we keep handing laptops to students who need or want pencils, cameras, kitchen knives or hammers, the result will continue to be thousands of dollars of ineffective help. We need to recognize talent and skills that can be augmented or developed and use the same funds wasted on computers and printers and software on tools that can help develop the talent. If a student wants to explore becoming a chef, then a $100 chef’s knife, a copy of Kitchen Confidential and a book on Paul Bocuse is going to go a lot further than a computer. And when push comes to shove, we need to be learners that can nurture learners, not teachers that teach anything that breathes and expects it to learn.

It’s Occam’s Razor: the simplest solution is the best.