Thoughts on education

I have a young child, so education is now an important topic for me to think about. Education is one of the important topics in the book ‘The world is flat’. Great book by the way. In there the author makes comparison between the intensity of Asian students as opposed to a typical American student. It also talks about the decline in investments in science and technology and how this might affect the US market in terms of innovation and its capability to adapt to a world market.

In some ways I feel I have been there, maybe not as much as I think it goes in some Asian countries (India and China). I have been in a highly competitive system where you work and sleep school work and you are being evaluated on a daily basis against everyone else doing the same thing. I suppose I should first explain I was never a brilliant student, I was always average. Within the top branch maybe but never much more than that. I have come to realize since then that it has a lot to do with my character (no comment). I did a French engineering degree which is not understood really outside of France.My parents put me in a city’s school, as opposed to my home town one, when I was sixteen because I was showing aptitude for school work and it would increase my chances of getting a good job. Since then, working in school was my entire life, or felt like it. Going on vacation was a way to forget things I was going to have to learn again. I was quite lucky, this only lasted 6-7 years. A quite short time compared to students in India who start at 11 and never stop of course. I majored in Math and always fancied myself to become a teacher until I realized most people in my class were not listening and as I never wanted to force people to have to listen to me, I pretty much gave up. I got into computers instead.
So I learnt lots of math and really enjoyed that part. I did a Master in England and the math level there was so low, we were studying things I did when I was 16. All the French students from my school got A without going to the class. We just read the material to understand the slightly different notations.
Since then I worked as a developer, then a manager and never used any of it ever again. I feel all I learned was the ability to be focused, work long hours and analyze a problem logically. This in itself is not so bad, but not worth all those long hours learning things I don’t remember and will probably never use again.

So with that background, sorry for the long one, I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the system. I wished we had more practical studies, how to buy a car, how to buy a house, manage your budget… Of course this will not create tomorrow’s minds but it would have been really relevant and helpful. Also, we always worked on theory and never quite applied any of the things we did. Even with math, there are so many applications for almost everything, we could have had nice projects to put everything in context. I always hated statistical lessons until later on I found out they are everywhere. We could have had analyzed results from questionnaire and find the patterns but no. Always bland theory. For my master I did neural networks, it would have been great to study that instead. But the school system seems to want to force the theory on you never telling you how it is applied. No wonder nobody wants to study science anymore. We do so much chemistry and only play with tubes and flames once or twice, what is up with that?

On the other hand, what we really need is to open the mind and encourage a thirst for learning. I am not sure anyone knows what will be needed for the next generation. It would be easier to teach them the thirst to learn and let them decide what they need. I don’t believe we can do that by having young mind sit from 8:00am to 5:00pm all day from 10 years old until 25 and more. There is no time left for contemplation, reflection. Only when the mind relaxes and sleeps can it organize/analyze all the information forced down during the day. My friends have slightly older children and they have no time left to themselves. As soon as school is done, here comes the sport activities and they are always going left and right. Probably to compensate the kids having to sit down all day and making sure they get to move around as well. Kids are meant to play, this is how they learn. I am not sure doing it earlier and earlier is also the way to go. Kids who learn to read at 3 do not necessarily enjoy reading, and to a large extend read, as much as those who learnt at their own pace around 4 or 5.

Here is one on my favorite talk, related to education:

I was also rather inspired by:

Both of them seem to suggest to me that the way forward might not be for us to cram information, as fast and as quickly as we can, into our kids. We might just kill their ability to dream and think outside the box. We need to make sure we give them room, sooner rather than later, to search for themselves what the world is all about. I am not for total deregulation of course, there should be some curriculum we make sure every child has. But we also need to make sure there is enough time and opportunity left for the child to find its own interests and way to look at the world.