What should education be? i guess it should be first of all relevant to one’s local context. If i am not able to relate and engage with my local context in a studied and thoughtful manner, then what is the point, a stranger within my context? City people call village people who come to the cities as immature and frown upon them. Its correct, because the city life is not the context where they have been trained or thought much about! Similarly village people laugh at the oohhs and ouchs of city people when they go to the villages. Eventually, after staying in a new context we learn to adapt and intermingle into the new flow. This is self-education for adapting and survival. Often we come into a new setting and do not feel morally or intellectually aligned with the existing context. So we try to evolve a context better suited that will be apparently more helpful to the settings, this is self-education for leadership. Often we use ideas and thoughts and languages from others (books or people or digital media) to educate ourselves of our context. This probably forms the bulk of our self-education. But often we explore alone, we experiment and play with our surroundings and learn the hard way. We learn through failures and by reflection of actions and outcomes. This is self-education through experience. How much of the above can you consider as being felicitated by our schools and colleges?
Apart from the above contextual education, why do we need formal education in schools and colleges? Using education we come to know about the stories of different material, human and political worlds from a bird’s eye-view. We are able to place things and know why things are the way they are and how did that cup travel from the sand and clay mine in some distant place to the potter and then to the market and then to our table, even if we did not witness the actual process. Formal education is the short way to learn what pure-experience would have needed multiple lifetimes. This transferable and passed-on knowledge is referred to as ‘universal knowledge’ in Mathew B. Crawford’s book – Shop class as soulcraft. Universal because many people can at once have this kind of information and which may not be as unique as the people themselves.
Universal knowledge comes with its various peculiarities. Since it is universal, and hence too generalized, it’s not really contextual and can’t often be directly used to survive or to lead in very unique contexts. Also being universal pieces in unique minds, and the lack of real contextual testing as this kind of knowledge is too irrelevant, the only way to compare as to its quality of retention in the unique minds is to subject each one to universal tests. While some tests emphasize and ask for perfect rendition, others encourage some intermingling of various pieces of related universal knowledge with some sprinkling of contextual inputs. The former are what produces system-crackers – people who are good at cracking examination systems like competitive exams and so on. The latter are the hopeful lot.
But why should such distant, universal knowledge systems be so encouraged into our unique minds? For one, its super easy to do so! The effort to retain and hopefully understand these pieces of universal knowledge is also pattern-wise repetitive, and so there are many common and proven ways to do so – vocal repeating, repetitive writing, etc. It is similar to practicing a skill such as lathe turning, but only with minimal involvement of thinking and other senses. A lot of traditional knowledge systems use these methods. The other alternative of asking people to put in thought, get involved and so on takes simply more time, needs more dedication and also needs much more teaching inputs. Testing of such hybrid universal knowledge is also very difficult as now there could be as many unique responses as many students are there! This latter kind of education, though very rewarding intellectually, is not mass scale-able. So a majority of education in India is of the practical type – rote learning based. Another aspect of why this is so powerful and prevalent is because this is similar to how mass production systems work! Industrial requirements are of people who can handle the same kinds of universal machines (lathe for example) in the same way as prescribed by the lathe text book without adding in any self-flavor for the fear of producing non-uniform products (even if the non-uniformity is trumped by better quality). Also the outcomes of such mass manufacturing systems are easily consumed by the same universally tamed people (uniqueness died much early) who are gullible with one-size-fits-all marketing strategy. So the dulled mindset required for acquiring universal knowledge and reproducing it in perfect actually fits the mass manufacturing system in both ways, as good labor and as easily manipulable consumer. A win-win situation!
But the ease of retaining and playing with universal knowledge is also what makes it popular and manageable! What do we draw when asked to do a tree? In contrast, what do we draw when asked to draw a lamp pole? The image above kind of illustrates this point : a tree due to its uniqueness can be drawn in many ways, while a pole’s representation will almost be similar across drawings. Not only due to mass manufacture that a pole’s design is more or less fixed, but also because it is simple to comprehend and pass on. It does not have random branches and surface texture, or internal structure for that matter. It’s a predictable piece in the material world and also in our minds’ images. However, this is not true. Although its perception is simplified in our minds and languages and afar all poles look the same, each one is very different from the other irrespective of how top-notch the uniqueness-killing mass manufacturing processes are. Each pole has a slightly different surface finish, its structure has different lenghts and so on (the reason why engineers are forced to use tolerances). So the image above is a metaphor on how we like to see life and how it really is. It seems our understanding of the lives we live in is more driven by cognitive conveniences (the pole) rather than the immense breath and diversity of truth (the tree).
So how does it all relate to education? Because of the emphasis on universal knowledge, thanks to the mass manufacturing and mass consumer world we live in, we often turn out to be zombies with a tamed functioning in life – birth, schooling out the uniqueness of each one, averaging everyone to fall in line and compete with eachother over retention of universal knowledge, etc. For those who pass this mechanical zombie like ability, they enter mass manufacturing systems as laborers and consumers and live zombie-like lives in their well defined cages made with bars called conformity. These poor souls set the mainstream aspirations for those who could not fall in well into the retention and spit-it out game, and they feel equally zombie-like, forced to undervalue themselves and never get good avenues or vocabulary to understand or improve their lot. Education then becomes a pass to a certain fashion of life, and looses its real meaning.
Here’s another sketch of how things look on a graph. Experiential learning or 1st hand learning is slow and tedious, but provides the best quality of education – one that is very contextual and immediate to begin with. However it does not pass easily from one to one, takes years of apprentice training under masters of the art, and has less bearing outside the local sphere! This is mostly artisanship kind of labor (see previous blog post “Automation Vs. Artisanship“). But as one’s knowledge source goes farther from 1st hand experience, its quality looses out but its quantity and supply increase leading to easily acquisition and proliferation! Of course one gains a worldview and comprehension of things far beyond one’s immediate reach.
The outcomes of the brain-body-content one pursues predominantly decides on certain personal and professional outcomes, as listed above.
Innovation Vs Consumption: In my opinion, a laborer who does not exercise skills or engages with evolving skills can be termed as a consumer of the opportunity doled out by a higher power. Similar to the way we consume news without analyzing its content critically, or if we buy the material goods and pay no value or attention to what it’s role is and how to use it well and appropriately considering costs, environment and our personal greed Vs need demands. Whereas innovation appears in its natural form when we self-learn in the first hand mode. We explore the bounds of our understanding and senses, we dare to go beyond into the wild. This may not be innovation for the remaining world outside of the doer, but its innovation for the self. Without this, there is simply no way to innovate for the world.
Curiosity Vs Fear : When we involve in 1st hand exploration, we are driven more by innate human curiosity even if restrained by fear. Curiosity trumps fear of loosing or getting hurt, emotionally and physically. By fear i mean of the feelings we go through when we grapple with uncertainty. For example, when i finish attaching all wires and devices to a SmallDAC system (opensource PLC alternative that i developed) for the first time, there is a huge apprehension to connect the last wires. Often i am not able to mange it sanely, i take a walk, avoid working on the project for few hours, run away from it. Eventually the nagging thought of ‘what will work and what will light up lets see’ takes over and brings me back to the setup to do the rest and plug on the power. The 4-5 seconds after power is thrilling with my finger on the power button ready to shut it down, just in case smoke… The argument between curiosity and fear could always be there when something new is being done with awareness that things can go unpleasant.
Prototyping Vs. Stereotyping : Explained in details in another post here.
Experience Vs. gossip: TBD
So, the question is, what education do we want for ourselves and our kids?