Saturday, March 19, 2016

Proper education

A note about why I haven't yet posted this year: 2016 has been a harder year than 2015. I've been sidetracked by many concerns, as time goes on and the question of my future becomes increasingly pressing. However, I've identified the bad habits that have led me astray in this crucial time, and I plan to cut these out entirely, at least for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, I'll now be able to bring my goals back into perspective, and my life back into control.

What brought me back to this blog has been the increasingly nagging thought in the back of my head that to fully digest a complicated concept, it is necessary to write about it. There have been many complex ideas that have crossed my mind over the past few weeks, but I've been too lazy to explore them further. And I've realized that to truly develop and mature them, it might make sense to put the proverbial pen to the paper.

Today, I'll explore the notion of proper education; what I mean by it, and what I identify as pitfalls in improper education.

I'm starting to view lectures, and even readings, as far less important than we think, and largely a vestige of how the Ancient Greeks transmitted knowledge. The true value of lectures and readings comes from discussion and deconstruction - the real work one does following the lesson. The main points we get out of lectures and readings can be summarized in a few short bullets, that when explored and digested bring out their true value. So why are we putting ourselves through such massive amounts of listening and reading?

One could argue that what one does learn from courses that inundate students with information during hour-long lectures and 100-page readings is the ability to sift through large amounts of information. This might be considered valuable in today's information-rich world.

But we don't actually live in an information-rich world - we live in an information-dense world. Graphics, summaries, videos; all these bite-sized chunks of data that surround us are able to impart us with surprisingly large amounts of knowledge and insight. This is why we're able to crowd our visual field with so much information, leading to the distractive qualities of our age.

The ability to sift through large amounts of insignificance when focusing on one thing is lost on us, as when we do focus on one thing, there is no insignificance to sift through. Instead, the insignificance comes before we focus; the crowded visual field of information. Where before we would have to sift through information after being drawn into its source, we now have to sift the sources before drawing ourselves into them.

A fitting metaphor would be the idea of feeding ourselves. Classes could previously get away with teaching us how to cook our meat, how to slice our vegetables, how to bake our pies. But how are we supposed to know which meats, which vegetables, and which pies to prepare and cook, when we are surrounded by such a multitude of choices in our modern supermarkets? And, in fact, why should we? We're surrounded by meals that have already been pre-cooked and pre-digested; perhaps the true issue is knowing how to select which ones are healthy.

In this light, a successful lesson is one that already poses the problem in a real world situation, then invites participants to tackle this problem. This is an easy way of making knowledge gaps known and apparent to all, and a natural way of addressing those gaps. Indeed, then the professor can either directly impart his or her knowledge regarding this gap; perhaps the most valuable form of teaching in this context, or point the participant to a targeted resource. If the professor doesn't do this, he or she will tend to begin teaching before even knowing the student's gaps, and that may lead to wasted time.

Now, as a disclaimer, I don't actually believe that feeding ourselves should only be about learning how to find the best pre-cooked resources. There is obviously value in learning the process of preparing and dissecting food - and concepts - oneself. But this day and age does demand some degree of re-prioritization, and when applied to education, that could lead to a more effective system of learning.

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