Humanity will never reach its full potential as long as our approach to education remains the same. The current system worked for its time, but its fundamental flaws increasingly irritate people who know they could learn exponentially more.
What Limits Us?
Limited supply of gifted teachers - Of the teachers we have, only a select handful are truly gifted at engaging students to reach their full potential.
Classrooms are Obsolete - Consider the extreme inefficiency of a classroom as compared to a 1-on-1 teaching environment. In a 1-on-1, the teacher zeros in on the student’s level of understanding and moves them forward at an optimized speed. In a classroom, teachers must moderate their speed to accommodate the weakest link.
Cognitively, the most critical determiner of success or failure in most classes is attention. Pay perfect attention and your success will be high. The trouble is paying perfect attention. It’s natural in a 1-on-1 when everything said is relevant to your current level of understanding, but in a classroom setting students lose attention when they already understand a concept and the teacher’s words become redundant.
The student’s challenge in a classroom, therefore, is phasing in an out of attention at an interval that they hope will catch enough crucial ideas to follow along. The teacher naturally becomes even more redundant and verbose with each concept to accommodate these attention intervals, and learning efficiency goes out the window.
Exponential Improvement is Simple
I had trouble with Geometry in high school. It was hard to pay attention in class, and the problems didn’t make much sense to me from the start. The moons must have aligned, however, because one night I came across a friend’s dad who could articulate Geometry very well. He looked at where I was struggling and started to help. An hour later, I was plowing through proofs we hadn’t even learned yet in class.
To my pleasant surprise, in that one hour I learned everything I needed to know about Geometry for the rest of the semester. I still couldn’t pay attention in class, but it didn’t matter because I aced every test the rest of the year.
Why don’t we all take classes like this all the time? Why do we waste months struggling with something we could learn better in hours? Soon we won’t have to ask these questions anymore.
Envision the Future
Imagine a global repository of videos of the world’s greatest teachers - your choice of the top 3 most inspiring, entertaining, and articulate Geometry teachers of all time. One is funny and uses a lot of stories to explain ideas, one is serious and concise, and one is a mix of the two. All are passionate about Geometry, and you can choose who you’d like to learn from.
I hear the arguments already “But it’s just not the same learning from a video than having a real teacher. You lose the human touch!” There is legitimacy to this response, but let me ask you this: You have to take a Geometry class, would you rather watch videos of the greatest Geometry teacher of all time whose teaching style suites your desired learning style, or would you rather go with the luck of the draw? If you’re still on the fence, read the next point.
Make Content for Self-Paced Learning
Presume you’re about to learn from a video of the greatest Geometry teacher of all time. How exciting - but as soon as you understand a concept you’re still going to have to wait through redundant explanations before she goes to the next concept. There’s no 1-on-1 efficiency.
Here’s where the new educational content model comes in. The greatest Geometry teacher of all time broke down the key concepts ahead of time, and mapped them to sequential times throughout the video. The key ideas in your current lesson are listed on the right side of your screen with a brief description of your current learning objective. You can skip to the next concept as early as you feel ready. If you move forward prematurely and get lost, simply go back and hear out the previous explanation.
Questions are Key
Teachers who have taught Geometry for 30 years know it’s the same questions that keep popping up over and over again. The solution? Post a list of questions that link to elaborated answers.
This will cover the vast majority of questions that come up. When a new question does come up the student can submit it to be answered. The teacher who curates the lesson will receive this question and be able to append another answer, if worthwhile. Her incentive for maintaining the content leaves the scope of this post, but in short it upholds her reputation as a quality content-provider and retains the royalties that accrue (if she doesn’t provide it free).
Optimize Your Feedback
A quiz assesses your understanding at the end of each lesson. So what? Here’s the value add: The new system tracks the type of errors you make, and provides a report with actionable information on precisely what you need to improve on.
Forget useless feedback like “B+” or “71% - Try harder!” Optimized learning should provide you with a report on your strengths and weaknesses of the key concepts. Got multiplication down, but always mess up on long division? Your report should show that.
The Possibilities are Endless
Imagine the shift in human potential with ubiquitous optimized education. Children and adults alike could continue education indefinitely. The world’s most talented teachers would be accessible by all, in a system that allows the individual to move forward at their full potential. Courses could be accredited through an educational review board, and passing a particular class would validate a standardized metric of understanding to be included on a resume.
Job postings could require X level-of-understanding in courses X, Y, and Z, and the ability for humans to assimilate understanding of emerging technologies would go through the roof.
Make it Your Volition
These improvements are required for us to move forward as a race. As a student currently attending one of the top educational institutions in the world, I find it increasingly unbearable to sit through lectures and learn so slowly. Whether you are a youngster just entering the system, or a professional acquiring new skills for your career, agree that our current system of education is rapidly growing obsolete. Tell me I am not alone. Spread the word, keep innovating, and help make this opportunity a reality.
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