The Age of Conventional Wisdom

Pablo Picasso once said "Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up". If there is such a problem...

What's going on with our education system?

The talent pool is blurry while companies struggle to pick the next golden egg. Words such as creativity, proactivity and innovation are common in our today business language. Actually, often these words work as hurdles that measure an applicant's feasibility. But I believe that there is a mismatch between what companies are looking for and what universities and schools are providing to the real world.

This mismatch is the consequence of a fast-paced world rooted by sluggish institutions. Along the 20th century, countries witnessed the incipient birth of modern technology and software services. Likewise, we have shifted from a non-qualified economy to more qualified workers, pumping up the number of global universities students around the globe. The start of the information era changed the requirements of modern works. The skill set required to build the future relies even more on the power of innovation and adaptation.

We are curious beings by nature. Toddlers crawl everywhere and try to leave their cradle. They explore their environment by endless experimentation. Grabbing, touching, gazing, smelling, eating, all these sensorial experiences are aimed to make an understanding of the world. Curiosity embarks us in an endless trip of discovery. It invites us to meet our preferences and test new things. Curiosity drives to creativity. But since curiosity is displaced in most of schools, our creative output is becoming less efficient.

Creativity is a scarce resource. These are my six reasons for what I think our education system is outdated:

1) Qualification system is not fair and it fosters competition instead collaboration

How do we actually qualify our students efforts? Are we attributing their efforts fairly? These are questions rarely to hear been asked, but let's reflect a bit. We qualify our students by assigning qualifications to their efforts. This score is a proof of content understanding and performance. That's not bad, it's utterly necessary to track student progress, and by using scores (numeric ones or alphabetical ones) we can measure it. Though, I believe that the current qualification method falls short by solely considering the level of knowledge for a specific given content. There more aspects to be contemplated.

Overachievement is one of them. Our daily jobs require us not only to accomplish what is meant to do but to excel at it. But at school, if we've acquired new relevant content by reading more, that amplified knowledge will not count in the exam. Only what is asked to read is the only thing that matters. This hinders curiosity. In the same way, previous performance or self-improvement is not beard in mind. Students who show a constant log of improvement of and step to step refinement are not rewarded. Context does not matters.

Inherently, the score is liable to comparison as it shows solely individual performance. While group works and shared tasks attempt to stimulate collaboration, students are still being measured individually. As their qualifications are individual, students begin to realize that a higher score means I am better than you. It sets the ground to a "who have the best qualifications?" war. I think kids and teens can not see the positive impact of building something bigger together because it is not reflected on their scores. They only can see their individual contributions rather than the whole final result of their works together.

2) Learning relies more on memorization and repetition instead critical thinking

The memorization of multiplication tables are pretty familiar to us but, in fact, memorization is a well-spread practice among many subjects. From history to geography, and philosophy to civics. We strive to remember useless dates and facts that does not concludes to the understanding of content. That's what happens when we aim to solve the "what" rather than the "why". Our education system prefers to build short-term knowledge in lieu of long-term meaning. Students build an habit of memorizing that encompass all the learning we do after school. This can get extremely stressful as large quantities of content must be studied.

Memorization itself it is not bad. Repetition and memo techniques are worthy if you goal is to retain some knowledge in your head for a period of time. But if your goal is to create a decision frame for life, memorization won't lead you anywhere. Institutions must develop lateral and critical thinking in their students. Otherwise, you will find yourself studying a photo instead a film. Do not evaluate one single instance. Start looking how acquired knowledge pays off in future. Just memorize one thing: Memorization is not understanding. Memorizing is inauthentic learning. Real learning can be achieved by problem solving.

3) Content is rigid and hard to adapt once a course began.

Before a class starts, content was already planned and structured. The professor has a roadmap that indicates what, where, when, how and to whom the content must be given. He is able to forecast his classes even not knowing who their students will be. This approach is a thorn nailed deep. The drawbacks of not hearing students' learning preferences are serious and impact in the overall course satisfaction. A syllabus must follow a logical line of content but should allow positive divergences in it so as branching content. A rigid syllabus void possibilities of optimizing the classes on-track and adjusting them to the students' demands.

Our education system does not contemplate the differences about how we learn. Even so, we encounter ourselves in a moment where content can be consumed in dozens of different formats. Content and format preferences should prevail in course planning. If the professor does not meet his students yet, the syllabus must be flexible enough to be tailored according to students' preferences. We have to start assuming the differences about how we learn. We have to craft a more interactive scheme with content that can be delivered in many ways.

4) Standardization does not speak for the wide array of distinct passions 

Passion discovery is one of our biggest faults as society. I have no doubts that passion is inherently human and we all have one. If so, why we struggle with vocational tests, career path changes, college drop-off and meaning of life questions? While the "lucky ones" find their passion earlier in life, most people has to get through life itself to find it. Nevertheless, some people never find it. Passion is our underlying mission to this world. It is a burning desire hard to identify. But, again, why? Despite there are many answers to this question, I'll frame mine by analyzing how standardization affects passion discovery in schools.

Standardizing subjects is an efficient way of creating more averages and less outliers. In a even more meritocratic world, being the standard won't help you out. People excel in its passion, so trying a little bit of all will be like throwing punches into the air. Schools kill creativity when do not bolster exclusive patterns and try to equalize a large group of kids. I understand that there are crucial subjects that must be learned, but the way we learn those subjects must be diversified as well as there must be significantly more elective subjects. I understand that specialized schools exist, but it is not enough.

To unveil a child's passion, education system have to aim for personalization and must be fully integrated with parents' in-house education and extra-curricular activities. An ecosystem that aids children to explore what they enjoy the most to do and encourages them into continuous refinement. Schools, colleges, universities, all of them must act more like facilitators than instructors. Not by telling exactly what to learn but by giving people the right tools to develop and pave their own way.

5) Lack of autonomy and control

The clock is ticking. Impatience invades students' faces. The break is still 40 minutes away.

Time is pressing upon us. We rush across the city. We are about been penalized for truancy.

"School is a prison" - How many of us have heard this expression before? Beyond the joke, I think nobody is taking this expression seriously. Why students have to feel like in a prison for the sake of knowledge? Going straight to the point, traditional schools are really perceived like a prison in many ways. Their strict rules, unquestionable authority, tight agenda, and reduced space and freedom of movement do nothing but undermine students' commitment and overall wellness. Breaking it down:

Rules are conventions. Conventions should preserve the wellness of individuals. So friction between authorities and students occurs when obsolete rules collide with students behavior. Rules must fit constructive and sane practices and students conduct. In the same way, rules should been explained from the "why" (reason for existence) and not from the "what". Orders must be banned in favor of suggestions. Conduct must be only monitored and corrected when it represents a real threat for individual integrity. Being the rebel one does not imply to be the bad one, there is no need to be an utterly compliant child.

6) Industrial age values: the whole system is production-oriented instead user-oriented

The values of our education system are traceable from industrial age when following instructions were all you need for success. But, in today's world, we are measured by how well we communicate our ideas and collaborate with others. Institutions produce professionals like batches. Year over year, a group advances to the next learning instance. Nonetheless this system is flawed as it does not permit quick recognition of problems. As we look overall performance, laggard students crawl unsolved issues to the next year. With time this cause disparities in the distribution of individuals comprehension of the studied fields.

So, the "production" of professionals should follows lean principles rather than batches. Lean production applied to education means that each student's understanding is tracked individually to ensure fully comprehension before advancing to the next learning phase. Year repetition and laggard students can be avoided. The best way to accomplish it is by putting the student in the center of the educative system. Instead pushing content ahead, we must pull that content to our students and then move forward. This is a change of paradigm.

Reflections about what is coming next and how can we tackle this issues

Although I am sceptic about efficiency of current education system, I must acknowledge that some countries address these problems very well. For instance, the education system in Finland promotes equality (there is no concept of "bad" and "good" schools), cares genuinely about each student's development, fosters a culture of giving and not taking, and so on. These systems knew how to stay apart from industrial age values and think the school as a discovery experience rather than a doctrinaire institution. This was possible by putting the student as the center of every single educational decision.

On the other hand, I just want to clarify that there are still creative minds out there. A tough school is not enough to undermine an inherently creative child. There are many variables aside education institutions that influence personality. Nevertheless, education plays a strong role in fostering kids to develop world-demanded skills and aiding them in the search of doing what they love to do. Schools have a huge potential and responsibility to improve even more the creative output of a society. There are many curious souls that are being mitigated by obsolete systems. We have to unchain ourselves from past's best practices.

Despite all I have pointed out, I'm very optimistic about the future of education. Universities and schools have a lot of challenges yet to face, and both government and private entities must provide intelligent solutions in order to encourage this change. In my opinion, sooner or later, there will be a strong change of paradigm where:

• Repeat beliefs, not words: internalize own beliefs and develop independent thinking, instead copying other's words.
• Rules are conventions: explain always the "why" of forbidden actions and how they impact on others to generate early empathic relations.
• Abscene of rigid frames: students receive an influx of differente formats and sources of content. They knowledge is evaluate according to the general understanding of a subject and the relation that made with other fields, instead evaluation by particular pages.
• Self-directed learning: students are fully autonomous and care about the importance of learning. They have more liberties in selecting what they want to know and when.
• On-demand content: the syllabus follows a path but it can have positive deviations/branches that create more value in students.
• An extensive playground: their notes must be a mix between personal self-improvement, overachievement, and how this impact positively in others. Forget homework. Let children be children in their free time. Notes must not be put at the eyes of a teacher.

There is a lot to work in this field, and I am eager in seeing more ventures and politics dedicated to change the world for better. However, is not enough to only adjust current values to the requirements of the current world. Institutions need to learn how to adapt at the same pace that societies do, or rather, they have to be ahead. Education systems must be the face of tomorrow, not the roots to the past. But most important, schools must be a place where kids learn while playing.

Any thoughts?