I have been very concerned about education for a very long time and have finally started to understand the whole thing. How about that? It has taken me over 70 years though. I would like to share some of my ideas with you. That is the purpose of this blog.
First, a little short story. Years ago I heard this story about a person who was trying to put together a complicated puzzle and was getting no where. When they turn the pieces over, they found that on the back side was this picture of a boy and when they put the boy together, they also put the complicated puzzle together. That may not of sounded like such a big deal, but it was. The human mind has been programmed over millions of years to deal with the problem of survival in the physical world that we lived in. The human mind does not deal so well with artificial games that us humans have cooked up.
Take language. Humans have been communicating with vocal language for millions of years before a human cooked up the idea of a written form. A lot of the first trials at a written form did not work out too well. Many tried pictures to represent the words and that did not work very well. It was when the cymbals were for the individual sounds of the words that humans started making real progress on a written language. Humans still kept the original sounds of the words and did not have to shift to a code cooked up by inventors. If you look at "Windows" as used by computers, you will also find that it follows the natural mental organization of the human mind. Remember some of the first attempts with a totally nonhuman code? It was complicated and did not work very well. This build up is to point out how critical it is that any type of education needs to build on the natural human mind rather than something that is totally cooked up and foreign. Now education.
Given the above, are you starting to see how our education needs to build on the natural programing of our human minds and not some total abstraction? I contend that you are born with what ever real "smarts" that you are going to have and that no amount of education can change that. We all know that not all people are born with the same level or mix of "smarts", but most have this basic naturally programmed "smarts" and it is that natural "smarts" that education needs to build on. Now. exactly what is education?
From my point of view, it is the learning of a bunch of "algorithms". Don't know what an "algorithm" is? It is a procedure that if you follow will yield the answer to your question. Here is an example. What is 9 time 8? It is 72, right, but what does it mean and how did we get the answer? Think of it this way. We all have 10 fingers so we count in sets of 10. That is natural isn't it? If you were to give me a hand full of nuts containing 9 nuts and you did that 8 times, how many nuts would you have given me? Ever think about why we use the term "times"? Now you know. We could have laid the nuts out in 8 rows of 9 nuts each and the counted them up to get the number 72 which would be the "area" measured in units of 1. Calculus goes to great lengths to find area by a process they call integration, but down deep, it also builds on this natural human programming.
When it come to education, what mostly goes on is that we learn "algorithms". Look at a dictionary. The words are arranged in alphabetical order and by knowing that simple algorithm, we can find almost any word in the dictionary. One complication is that when us humans cooked up the alphabet to match the sounds of spoken words, we did not do a very good job and for that reason spelling is still a challenge to this day. When it comes to just simple memory without any natural backup, us humans do not do too well. If there is some kind of natural law, rule or concept backing up the algorithm the human can master it much better. Now, some people have naturally more "smarts" than other and can learn these algorithms faster and find the answers faster, In school when you take some kind of test, it is mostly to see if you can follow an algorithm and also how fast you can operate that algorithm. As a kid, I was about average on leaning algorithms, but I was one of the fastest when it came to operating the algorithm. For that reason, I often got the highest grade on the test.
All algorithms are not about math and numbers, many are about decision making that one will need to survive in the real world, but that is not made very clear in school. Here is an example. We learn all kinds of facts about history, but it is not clear to students exactly why. The purpose of all the facts is to help make our decisions in the future. Take the Second Amendment to the constitution that allows us to own guns. To make a current decision on how much regulation we should have on gun ownership, we need to fully understand why we had the Second Amendment in the first place. Without that understanding, how could a person today come to the best answer and many don't.
Some education is clearly just for entertainment and pleasure. Learning about Old English writers is enjoyable, but it is not what real education is all about. It is clearly an optional part of education as are sports and music. What we need is the understanding of the "natural" laws of nature and the world that many of the algorithms are built to deal with. Given an understanding of those natural laws, we should be encouraged to invent our own new algorithms. Have you ever come up with an algorithm for anything or do you know anyone who has? I did not thinks so. Does knowing a lot of algorithms make one "smart"? I don't think so. Can a person expect to get by in this world by only knowing a few important algorithms? Yes!! These people are often referred to as "one trick ponies".
The problem is that we have too many of them.
The challenge for education of the future is how efficiently we can teach students needed algorithms and developing new and better algorithms. We appear to have come to a mature plateau when it comes to teaching algorithms and if the human race expects to progress farther we need to figure out how to teach needed algorithms to students at a younger age and more efficiently. Currently it costs too much and takes too long to teach the needed algorithms. We have to solve that problem!!
PS---Isn't a tool or a machine just another algorithm? Think about it? We don't need any more people who only know the algorithm of how to walk behind a mule pulling a plow. Algorithms of the future will be more complex. Sorry about that!
First, a little short story. Years ago I heard this story about a person who was trying to put together a complicated puzzle and was getting no where. When they turn the pieces over, they found that on the back side was this picture of a boy and when they put the boy together, they also put the complicated puzzle together. That may not of sounded like such a big deal, but it was. The human mind has been programmed over millions of years to deal with the problem of survival in the physical world that we lived in. The human mind does not deal so well with artificial games that us humans have cooked up.
Take language. Humans have been communicating with vocal language for millions of years before a human cooked up the idea of a written form. A lot of the first trials at a written form did not work out too well. Many tried pictures to represent the words and that did not work very well. It was when the cymbals were for the individual sounds of the words that humans started making real progress on a written language. Humans still kept the original sounds of the words and did not have to shift to a code cooked up by inventors. If you look at "Windows" as used by computers, you will also find that it follows the natural mental organization of the human mind. Remember some of the first attempts with a totally nonhuman code? It was complicated and did not work very well. This build up is to point out how critical it is that any type of education needs to build on the natural human mind rather than something that is totally cooked up and foreign. Now education.
Given the above, are you starting to see how our education needs to build on the natural programing of our human minds and not some total abstraction? I contend that you are born with what ever real "smarts" that you are going to have and that no amount of education can change that. We all know that not all people are born with the same level or mix of "smarts", but most have this basic naturally programmed "smarts" and it is that natural "smarts" that education needs to build on. Now. exactly what is education?
From my point of view, it is the learning of a bunch of "algorithms". Don't know what an "algorithm" is? It is a procedure that if you follow will yield the answer to your question. Here is an example. What is 9 time 8? It is 72, right, but what does it mean and how did we get the answer? Think of it this way. We all have 10 fingers so we count in sets of 10. That is natural isn't it? If you were to give me a hand full of nuts containing 9 nuts and you did that 8 times, how many nuts would you have given me? Ever think about why we use the term "times"? Now you know. We could have laid the nuts out in 8 rows of 9 nuts each and the counted them up to get the number 72 which would be the "area" measured in units of 1. Calculus goes to great lengths to find area by a process they call integration, but down deep, it also builds on this natural human programming.
When it come to education, what mostly goes on is that we learn "algorithms". Look at a dictionary. The words are arranged in alphabetical order and by knowing that simple algorithm, we can find almost any word in the dictionary. One complication is that when us humans cooked up the alphabet to match the sounds of spoken words, we did not do a very good job and for that reason spelling is still a challenge to this day. When it comes to just simple memory without any natural backup, us humans do not do too well. If there is some kind of natural law, rule or concept backing up the algorithm the human can master it much better. Now, some people have naturally more "smarts" than other and can learn these algorithms faster and find the answers faster, In school when you take some kind of test, it is mostly to see if you can follow an algorithm and also how fast you can operate that algorithm. As a kid, I was about average on leaning algorithms, but I was one of the fastest when it came to operating the algorithm. For that reason, I often got the highest grade on the test.
All algorithms are not about math and numbers, many are about decision making that one will need to survive in the real world, but that is not made very clear in school. Here is an example. We learn all kinds of facts about history, but it is not clear to students exactly why. The purpose of all the facts is to help make our decisions in the future. Take the Second Amendment to the constitution that allows us to own guns. To make a current decision on how much regulation we should have on gun ownership, we need to fully understand why we had the Second Amendment in the first place. Without that understanding, how could a person today come to the best answer and many don't.
Some education is clearly just for entertainment and pleasure. Learning about Old English writers is enjoyable, but it is not what real education is all about. It is clearly an optional part of education as are sports and music. What we need is the understanding of the "natural" laws of nature and the world that many of the algorithms are built to deal with. Given an understanding of those natural laws, we should be encouraged to invent our own new algorithms. Have you ever come up with an algorithm for anything or do you know anyone who has? I did not thinks so. Does knowing a lot of algorithms make one "smart"? I don't think so. Can a person expect to get by in this world by only knowing a few important algorithms? Yes!! These people are often referred to as "one trick ponies".
The problem is that we have too many of them.
The challenge for education of the future is how efficiently we can teach students needed algorithms and developing new and better algorithms. We appear to have come to a mature plateau when it comes to teaching algorithms and if the human race expects to progress farther we need to figure out how to teach needed algorithms to students at a younger age and more efficiently. Currently it costs too much and takes too long to teach the needed algorithms. We have to solve that problem!!
PS---Isn't a tool or a machine just another algorithm? Think about it? We don't need any more people who only know the algorithm of how to walk behind a mule pulling a plow. Algorithms of the future will be more complex. Sorry about that!
