What do we need education for? Some would say we need it because we are on the highest spot in terms of evolution in the known universe , and we need to stay there. Teachers will be shocked if anyone doubted the need of thorough history investigation or chemistry experiments or Maths. Well , there used to be common sense in the education systems but there is a man called Tim Berners-Lee who simply rewrote the very principles of it and dug the foundations of a new era , and he didn’t even do it with such particular intention , how sweet. Nowadays the best scientific institutions are not the MIT or Oxford or Cambridge , well they are but to a very narrowed group of super-talented geniuses. The ordinary sinful man , which also enjoys a beer alongside the studies or perhaps even a hobby , knows three other , I dare say equally big knowledge wells – wikipedia , google and youtube. Will Smith once said “Read , you can’t come across a problem that hasn’t bothered someone else before , and he has written about it.” His words apply perfectly for the case , with online sharing of information and we’re talking of huge volumes the approach to a problem is rather different than it used to be , you can literally ask the man who came up with the solution what are the best options for your case. It would take time though. If you approach the case as an economist things get even better , no one wants to read from a textbook that is out of date and costs twice the amount of money for Internet and can only be used by one person.
To stay on topic – today we don’t need to force teens to study all the subjects thoroughly , I think this is a waste of talent and time – why should a young poet waste precious hours on chemistry , while he could be the new Shakespeare. My point is that children has to be taught how to fully enjoy the goods of the web , with just maybe a little supervision , maybe. 14 year olds and I’m sure about that can achieve the IQ level of a 50 year old man from the past within a fraction of the time he once spent. And I can feel the arguments about quality already building up in your heads. Well lets face it – the education today may be a complete joke , I’m not saying it is , I just suggest that if one decides to abuse its weaknesses it could be. Online diplomas , remote education and so on , just to receive a piece of paper with your name on it and a lot of memories of getting drunk. And even if you have put down the effort to graduate the best institutions in your country , one day you’ll inevitably go to a job interview and they will let you know , be sure about it , that you’ve not gained enough experience during the course of that 3-4-5 year study and you need to clean a lavatory for a year or two before you can apply for a more noble job. And yes – your boss didn’t go to Harvard , but he simply used the technique which was used by one of the late legends of our era – Mr.Steve Jobs – accumulate knowledge only in the fields you desire and do your best to be the best at it.
Lazy-reader version: Allow the Internet in the classrooms , don’t enslave the children with in-depth knowledge on plutonium , they can get the information quite easily if they need it. Keep the education in the pace of technical progress and we might have the future pictured in “The Jetsons”.
