future of Education

I wrote about the future of education before, about the future of knowledge and what it could mean for universities.

http://ed-leading-edge.blogspot.com/2008/07/future-of-knowledge.html

Here, I upon receiving some tweets from my dear friend Shaun, I'm going to map out how things might look like some few decades (maybe 2 or 3) about how the future of education might look like.

Given that there is already this major thing called independent learning going on, where students just go on their own path and learn new things themselves, the current system as it is, based strictly on syllabi and curricula feels rather anachronistic - students find their mental faculties constrained by such ideological boundaries. Yes, syllabus and curriculum still have their place in helping students organise knowledge, and a good syallabus should be a starting platform for students to explore on their own, but in a world where information and knowledge is *free*, what we need is the skills to enable students to manage the information on their own.

In other words, I propose that students be able to manage their own syllabus about what they want to learn, and how they want to learn. And bringing this to university, it means that students take lessons from whatever profs teach, but do not stick to modules, but rather combine ideas from different modules and come up with something synthetic - something that is relevant to themselves in their own context.

Yes, logistics will be a nightmare, and frankly, it will be impossible to introduce these kinds of systems. The module system still has its place, no doubt, but the influx of information and knowedge out there... that is going to pose quite a challenge to the current system anway.

The main problem, is of being constrained, that people feel trapped in what they are allowed to learn...

But I think that individual modules, independent learning, creation of individual syllabi - that seems to be how the future might look to be...

Then again, we could all have memory implants into our brain...

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The Intelligent Society powered by search

While wandering around trying to look for a Cheers, 7-11 to get my 100Plus or H2O, a scary future came to me. It was about imagining the future of cashiers, and I was wondering how even the lower paying jobs can be made into highly intelligent jobs...

I thought about this as I was asking the cashier a rather strange question. I was asking her what I could buy with less than a dollar. The cashier didn't know the answer, so I began thinking about this problem. 

I then realised that damned Google are going to rule the way with their search power. because a lot of problems in the world in the everyday world are essentially search problems... 

Anyway, I realised that if we can begin to see everyone as a repository of information, and are essentially information arbitrage agents, then... every activity can be value-added by adding that information component. 

Currently cashiers are only at the tail-end of the retail experience. You select the item yourself, and proceed to payment. Nothing really much else to it. But if the cashier was instead seen as an information agent, then...

'hey man, what would you like...'

'looking for a drink. just came back from a run'

(cashier checks stock of 100plus, isotonic drink)

'here you go. would you also like to buy an energy bar to help you recover from your run?'

Hmm.. just thinking. How expensive would it be if the cashiers took something like basic food science and brain chemistry? This kind of information are probably used by industries in their foodmaking, but if convenience stores act like... neurochemistry manipulators... 

I shudder at the thought of that. 

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America vs Singapore

While blogging last night, I had a realization about a fundamental difference between the outlook of America and Americans, and Singapore and Singaporeans. Here, America and Singapore refer to the government in power, and Americans, Singaporeans refer to the people respectively. 

I wrote something like this:

i think about why america is the hub of innovation, and i think i can come up with an answer, albeit tentatively. i think about the way americans always look to the future, daring to dream, and sweating it out to make that dream work. in singapore, we can't seem to be able to look at that future on the far horizon, and all that we seem to be able to do is to dwell on the present, to see and react to things as they are, not as what they could be. I think the attitude pervades a huge section of whatever we do - social policies, education policies. We prepare our kids for the future, but that future immediately becomes the present, and so what we have only been able to do is to give them the skills for a possible future, whether it might happen or not. What we should be doing, is to give kids the skills to pursue their future however they want it to be, because the future is NOT what the government think it might be.

So I'm thinking and thinking, and now I see that our perception of the future shapes our present, about what we do now, without ever thinking about the fact that our perceptions could be dead wrong. The future is an expectancy that we create, and it shouldn't be an expectation borne out. If everything were planned out, which things don't, then... it ain't called the future, ain't it?

I don't think this is my most coherent post, but I think I raised some valid questions, about the way we see our future, and how it shapes our policies, and the way we think. I think Americans have the highest number of future-fantasizers (serious ones) per capita. Or people who have the vision and the conviction to imagine a different future than what they've always had, and to work towards that... I think the day will come when people will go to university not thinking about what the future might be when they graduate, but rather, what the skills that the university will give them to CREATE THEIR OWN FUTURE.

Until we do that, that will be the day we stop making economic machines in the machinery of Singapore Inc, and that will be the day when the brain drain might actually reverse. 

After sleeing for about 6hrs and looking at these again, I am convinced that I am right. That one of the key difference between America and Singapore is that people in America bother to dream, are given the tools to dream, and given the tools to make their dreams come true. In Singapore, people also bother to dream, but they are not given the tools (encouragement, tacit or overt) to develop their dreams, and these dreams die in an environment that is covertly hostile to their dreams. Nor are Singaporeans given the tools to make their dreams come true. This I refer to the education system, that the education system is more like a dream-breaker, in moulding people to think in certain directions only, as opposed to helping the kids with their dreams, or their basic ideas. 

Looking back, if I was a purely pragmatic person, I wouldn't have come to USP. It is precisely because that I don't really think like 'normal' people that I choose USP. Oh wells. 

But somehow, we are given the tools to make the dreams come true. There are excellent entrepreneurial systems in place that allow people with good ideas to make money 0ut of them. But again, this system is kinda biased towards people with money-making ideas, and is... a kind of anti-emphasis with regards to the thousand other things that people want to do. I want to write for 'fun'. I wonder where the literary networks are. I guess a dance culture is a bit stronger due to popular influence, not to mention songs and songwriting. Those are more developed. But a thinking culture is hard to find in Singapore, and this is one thing that Singapore will have to be develoepd in order to become a truly world-class city full of world-class people, a people who dare to dream really big and act in their own way to get to the place where they want to be. 

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Ideascapes

My time at writing has led me to rethink the idea-imagination concept about how people think. I think in time, there will be tools that will enable us to draw connections between the thoughts and ideas that we hold in our minds. I think there really be some Platonic Essentialism somewhere, but not going to go there now...

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Equations as lenses

I don't really have time to do a proper examination and the entailments, but... i'll just say this for now. equations are really lenses with which we view the world! Einstein was mashing Maxwell's Equation with Newton, and out popped Relativity!

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