Cubic Blog

I just watch a couple of TED conferences video recently. It’s “Schools Kill Creativity” from TED 2006 and “Bring on the Learning Revolution” from TED 2010 by Sir Ken Robinson. (Thank @eig for sharing it in Cubic Research Group) I have to admit that I’ve never been heard of his name before. But I like almost every his point of view on education. Many of them are just like what I thought earlier, while others was surprising me.

About a year ago, I had a speaking session at ICTEd 2009 which I named it “Cloud Learning : A learning in digital age”. I suggest that our current education system was built in an industrial age, the age of mass production. It aims on creating workforces as a resources for corporates. Of course, it’s a mass production. Every single student will have the same curriculum to form their knowledge, ideas and perspective to match the industry’s specification. One may be molded to be an engineer, a doctor, an accountant or a driver depends on how occupation markets direct them to. And because we love Prada, Ferrari and Apple. Employers would more prefer a personnel who produced from Berkeley, MIT or Oxford. As we can see, almost none of education system perspective sees one person as a person.

In my session I was also noting that in Thailand, the education system was built in monarchy age and was first limited to aristocrats. So the education system also serve as a social class symbol.

In conclusion, I think current education system based on mass production industrial concept. Person is material, study field is part type, curriculum is specification, grading is quality-control and degree is brand.

But what’s the problem in current education system? There’re 2 important changes in our world that make our education system outdated. It is the development in information technology and the rise of creative economy.

Information technology grants us the ability to send and receive information across the world at a speed of light. The more rapidly information exchange make mankind’s wisdom to be even more rapidly developed. An education that built on content-based concept couldn’t change itself to newer knowledge fast enough, resulting in outdated knowledge in classrooms that we spent a thousands of dollars to attend.

And information technology allow anyone to be a content publisher, unlike yesterday curriculum that created from a number of noble professors and someone-who-actually-knows. There’re a lot of information floating around us nowadays that simply false. But we were taught to know what they said, so we’re lack of ability to evaluate the reliability of information we get. So now so many people know so many things that completely not correct.

The rise of creative economy force corporates to be creative. And to be creative, they need someone like-no-other in their organization. Unfortunately, old education system aim to create workforces that comply with specification in mass production perspective. So everyone was produced to be identical and lacks of creativity.

Refer to what @eig said, so many people concern about education crisis nowadays. But no one actually suggest a way out. In my opinion, the Education 2.0 must complies to the following concerns:

1. It must concern person as an individual person. Because every single person is different by his/her own knowledges, wisdoms, thoughts, cultures, perspectives, languages or even social classes. The new education system must be adaptive and flexible enough to fit itself to learner, not vice versa like nowadays.
2. It must brings out the best in one’s talents. This not only serve as a qualitative goal like better skills and knowledges on each learner, but also serve learner’s spiritual needs as a human. Just like Sir Ken Robinson said in the video. Hours can be just five minutes if we’re doing what we like. But if we’re doing what we hate, five minutes could be hours to us.
3. It must concern that information climates are always change. And more information technology developed, the more these knowledges change rapidly. The new system shouldn’t focus on transfer knowledge to learners. But to teach them how to acquire knowledge fast and effectively.
4. It must concern that knowledge is useless without application. Education system should develop one’s skills on applying knowledge to practice that useful to them, society, country or the world.
5. It must fully, or at least partially compatible with the old system. It’s simple engineering concept that new system without backward compatibility could end up with no one wants to use it. By that I mean it must still somehow possible to evaluate how learner perform in the system. Or to put it simpler, it must give some clue what’s employers-in-old-world-education gonna get when hiring an employees produced by new system.
6. It must be cost effective. Current education system is very expensive compared to output. However, to create better system that complies with all these concerns may result in even more expensive education. New system must be inexpensive enough to be accessible from everyone, or at least, most of us.
7. And the one last thing, it must effectively and distinctively co-operate with other human civilization system like politics, economics, religions or even healthcare system. Humans use these systems for mankind’s ultimate goal—happiness. These systems have their own distinctive goals to achieve, and also co-operate in some aspect for maximum output. For example, politics may take part on how society decides what everyone should know in elementary education, while economics must help education system defines what people should be to be an effective resources. Also, it’s crucial to decide which system must take responsible for some matter, like moral. Should it be politics, religions, education or all of them? This is a question that Education 2.0 must has an answer.

Despite these specifications, we still have one big question left. Do we really need an Education 2.0?

Of course, as long as there’s no new better version of Windows, there’s no reasons to upgrade. We just somehow didn’t like what we have now, sometimes we even don’t know what’s the problem in our current system. But even we have no idea what’s the better system is, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start now.

One thing I came up is, we should have some statistical research to find relations between education successfulness of a person against other factors. This should give us some clue where the problem is. However, what is education successfulness still yet to be defined.

Now we, Cubic Creative, are currently aggressively looking into this issue. We even already developed some of the models what we hope it could be implemented in real-world situations. However, this is a very, very long way to go. But like I said earlier, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start now.

What’s your idea on Education 2.0? Please share with us. Together we can create a new revolutionary education system that, somehow, better than before.

“These technologies, combined with the extraordinary talents of teachers, provide an opportunity to revolutionize education. And I urge you to get involved in it because it’s vital, not for just to ourselves, but to the future of our children.”
                                                                 â€”Sir Ken Robinson (1950-present)