Traditional education sorts, standardizes and specializes minds to fit a position in the manmade economic system. We develop systems within systems built on systems to serve systems.
Our youth mazes through a perplexing education system to be considered eligible to participate in the modern civilized world. Most schools focus on structure and repetitive tasks rather than critical thinking and creativity. This kills children’s natural curiosity about the world and presets them on the path of narrow specialization. All children are creative in their own sense but the system’s main purpose is to produce conformist ‘human capital’ that can aid the industrial complex. Young adults are lucky to possess any free thought by the time they graduate from institutions that program them to think in a way that serves the needs of what is currently considered to be of economic value.
“Teachers themselves usually lack the mental flexibility that the 21st century demands since they themselves are the product of the old educational system. The best advice I can give a 15-year-old is: don’t rely on the adults too much. Most of them mean well, but they just don’t understand the world.” —Yuval Noah Harari
It troubles me to observe many of my gifted and creative peers come out of institutionalized education with domain dependent ideas, as if their vision became somehow constricted. It troubles me even further when I see these same vibrant students, once full of energy and ideas sent down the conveyer belt of the corporatocracy. Their vital creative energy is sapped at its source and channeled towards other interests. What is further troubling is observing how deeper specialized, PhD and Master’s degree holders are dependent on bureaucratic systems, and cannot function outside their specified positions.
This is the problem of the painstakingly polished gold wheel of deep specialization. When the watchmaker automates his production line and digitizes his mechanical cogs the wheels are too galvanized to change shape or sidestep into another field.
Industrialist Influence
How did today’s education system come to be? Since the early industrial revolutions, factory related training has been imbedded into schools. Industrialists influenced education by introducing the factory model school, which has remained unchanged for more than 100 years. Factory model schools batch process students’ minds towards systematic cult efficiency. Children are admitted into the system, then sorted and molded by automaton teachers into the different required pieces for tomorrows factories. As industry shifts so do the industrial job needs — this is mirrored in the competency changes of engineering and business management majors.
Industrialists are the architects of the current (and future) job market and are doing most of the technical employing. They need a specialized labor force that can operate machinery and follow instructions to produce the projected economic yield. Today, jobs are being automated and many technical specialists are being replaced by machines. Even finance is being disrupted, as financial analysts and fund managers are being replaced by robo-advisors that are able to better babysit your ETF portfolio. Finance majors low in the corporate food chain will need to learn new skills and adapt to the disruption that is sweeping across the sector.
Centaur Driven Intelligence
The interconnectivity of the information age has paved a way for innovation to be quickly developed, tested and implemented at scale. Industrial intelligence is shifting as survival of the smartest is being surpassed by survival of the busiest.
As industries change due to technological advances we will move from a specialized workplace to a multidisciplinary workplace—future employees will be expected to understand and perform a plethora of tasks and have a varied mental and digital toolkit to approach all kinds of different problems.
With data being churned out faster than we can draw insight from or digest, there is a race to decipher raw information and fill the gaps that translate into untapped economic opportunities. Executives are trying to use AI to spot hidden trends and identify patterns that will improve their business models and help them seize a bigger market share than they would by using conventional (time-intensive) human-centric analysis.
Since we are at the edge of both third wave AI and the 4th industrial revolution, future jobs will require communication with and through aware machines. I don’t think we will reach absolute automation — as feared by most AI dystopians — rather, I see AI becoming an extension of human thought, communication, actuation, and creative potential.
The mythical centaur has been re-envisioned in a less anthropomorphic and more algorithmic way—as demonstrated by financial markets with the use of machine chosen investment strategies. Note that complete reliance on AI trading tools has its risks. That’s why a half-human, half-computer solution has been proven to work best. Hence, it is wiser to merge qualitative human intuition with quantitative computer analysis to tackle business problems and environmental issues more effectively.
Degrees of Debt
The United States is a debt based economy and academic institutions are (indirectly) in the business of financially enslaving future generations. With the job market getting more difficult, having a bachelor’s degree is not enough. Many students opt for postgraduate studies but end up paying a hefty price—Americans struggle to pay-off student loans well into their 40s, some even into their late 60s. This early adulthood debt has the added impact of affecting future home ownership, prolonging retirement and diminishing debtors’ health, due to chronic stress.
General student loan debt facts: (updated: Jan 24, 2018)
$1.48 trillion in total U.S. student loan debt
44.2 million Americans with student loan debt
Student loan delinquency rate of 11.2% (90+ days delinquent or in default)
It’s not all doom and gloom… There’s a snowballing number of start-ups, foundations and small banks that are trying to solve the student debt crisis.
Throwing Money at the Academic Problem
I’m from Kuwait, an oil rich welfare state that offers free education and scholarship opportunities to some of the best universities in the world. But money does not solve the education problem. Kuwait is notoriously corrupt, with unprecedented amounts of money being stolen from the Ministry of Education via ‘tenders’. Top-down government has degenerated into top-down corruption and the kids are the ones who are paying the price. Kuwait was once a bright cultural beacon for the Middle East but its light has been dimmed by the greedy and crooked.
The solution is education reform—updated curricula, rigorous screening for teachers, refurbished schools and facilities—under the umbrella of better ministerial money management. For things to improve, there has to be a sense of responsibility from the pseudo-parliament. Education reform can be achieved by following strategic guidelines:
- A vision and roadmap for a knowledge based economy: the world is gearing towards a knowledge based economy and it’s every nation’s responsibility to contribute to the web of collective knowledge.
- Revision of outdated scholarship majors: with automation, digitization and the speed of technological progress many scholarship recipients will be obsolete by the time they are plugged into a government data processing job. This affects employee morale, team effectiveness, the performance of the organization and the overall economic output.
- Operational transparency: mandatory transparency will inject accountability back into the tender process.
- A thoroughly studied budget: will reduce wastefulness and unnecessary spending.
- Sustainable governance: all governments should aim towards the Paris Agreement and UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS). You can track your government’s progress with sustainable government indicators.
Rise of the MOOCs
The current education system is not serving the majority of students and keeping a lot of talent outside the circle of graduate and higher learning consideration. How you score on your freshman year, Spanish 101 class should not affect your ambitions for graduate studies 10 years later when your brain is literarily not the same and has rewired and relearned half a lifetime worth of knowledge and experience. Entrance tests, costly tuition, bureaucratic milieu, and mandatory physical attendance are all unjustified.
Many learners have moved towards MOOCs, which can mostly be accessed for free, and have both industrial and academic knowledge linked to articles, e-books, and real cases on the platform. Some courses are in association with leading schools and some are powered by fortune 500 companies—taking into consideration the most recent common practices. Completing an online course opens doors to many different ways of thinking and accessing new information, which is why the current outdated way of teaching must and will change.
There are different opportunities available that will shape the role which can be undertaken by higher education in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Combining the strength of the traditional higher education with the increasing trend of MOOCs represents necessary steps to scale qulity education.
At times where the boundaries between the internet, physical world and people are becoming more blurred by each passing day, the need for education in general and higher education in particular to be “Place-based” is diminishing. Currently, education is being connected to mobile devices through applications in the cloud and is no longer limited to knowledge but extended to skills acquisition. With the expansion in networking services nationally and globally, physical boundaries are no longer barriers to education.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a potentially disruptive innovation. The number is increasing exponentially across the globe, making learning more accessible to people. According to By the Numbers: MOOCS in 2017, the number of participants has reached 81 million students across all MOOC providers; even universities are digitizing some of their courses. However, one can’t overlook the importance of direct and face-to-face interaction between the learners and teachers as an influential part of a quality education. Therefore, a mix between MOOCs, which are gaining more and more popularity, and traditional ways of delivering education is extremely vital for meeting the global job markets’ needs.
One of the main issues facing MOOCs is related to accreditation and trust in the associated credential. On the other hand, higher education institutions are trusted and have had a long experience in accreditation. The future mix between MOOCs and traditional education can provide higher education institutes the opportunity to expand services to offer credentials using the experiences of the lecturers and teachers. One of the main services universities offer is the provision of certification for students upon the completion of their studies. Nonetheless, there are many students whose education is disrupted whether because of war, conflicts, or a lack of financial resources. The higher education community might address this great challenge by creating micro certificates recognizing the level of knowledge or skills acquired by the sum of a person’s education until the moment of its interruption. (source)
Neuroplasticity, Neurogenesis and Whole Brain Emulation
The old adage of left or right brain thinking has been debunked, yet some academic institutions still force children to choose between the sciences and the arts early in their schooling. How can a left or right turn decision made in their early teens determine the outcome of the rest of their lives? This is an ignorant, one-dimensional way to approach education.
The most complex instrument known to man cannot be simply dual in nature. Just as we thought the earth was once flat, many have grown up internalizing the idea that the brain is two-dimensional—physically separated by cerebral hemispheres.
The brain is extremely malleable which makes it is possible for you to rewire your cerebral matter. This neuroplasticity means the highly adaptable brain can change shape depending on how we use it. Our brain can grow complex neural networks and can regenerate damaged brain tissue through neurogenesis. It’s shocking that the ‘we only lose neurons in adulthood’ dogma still exists today. In fact, our brain grows neurons in different regions everyday.
The brain is one of the main sources of inspiration for AI researchers. Scientists and software engineers are now trying to emulate the brain’s natural way of processing thoughts, identifying images, analyzing sensory input, planning and taking action. The brain has been a building block and reference point for many innovations in the field of AI, such as machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP). Future breakthroughs in AI will have the human brain at the ideation epicenter.
It’s very limiting to ‘specialize’ a brain and label it as an engineer’s brain or an artist’s brain. We need to remind ourselves that the brain is a powerful toolkit and we are only using the toothpick of our mental Swiss Knife.
The Neo-Polymath
What do Aristotle, Avicenna, al-Khwarizmi, da Vinci, Galileo, Newton, Tesla and Musk all have in common? They are all polymaths.
Polymaths are thinkers, makers and risk takers, with encyclopedic knowledge. A polymath is a person with deep knowledge in several areas and is active in different fields. Most designers, engineers and scientists enter into deep specialization if they want to be successful. A polymath has both depth and breadth in knowledge, driven by curiosity about the world. The polymath mind skillfully combines aesthetics and intellectual creativity but this doesn’t mean economic prosperity by default. Notable great thinkers and inventors died penniless and had their inventions stolen and scaled by industrialists, governments and suppressive regimes.
Titans of industry understand the importance of having a polymath in the organization—that’s why they headhunt them straight out of university. In today’s context a polymath would be an individual learned in several computer programming languages, a data scientist, a public speaker, an active environmentalist well-versed in the art of diplomacy, a mixologist, a DJ that crafts sets using neuroscience, a VR architect and a biomedical engineer with a deep interest in quantum entanglement. If identified early, gifted creatives can be molded in the spirit of Apollo.
Curiosity & Creativity
When you engage your natural curiosity, your brain starts to flow in a frictionless way and complex learning becomes easy to digest. Allowing your inner child’s inclinations and interests to guide your mind can take you out of your comfort zone and to new perspective discoveries. Engaging in new topics of interest refreshes your thoughts and allows your mind to connect related knowledge.
Organic learning through new experiences can transfer acquired skills and mental models to complimentary areas you might have not considered before. I like to think of this as the mind’s built-in innovation engine; able to slot in old data to new situations by instantly sifting through a lifetime of mentally archived knowledge on demand.
The more we learn, the more we discover new ways of thinking. We build these new ways of thinking on layers of understanding that we use to make sense of the world. When this understanding of how the world as we see it gets old, we need to update ourselves. These updates should be chosen wisely, as our mental diets affect how we think and interpret what is external to our minds.
La vie en rose can easily be la vie en gris or la vie en bleu. It’s all subjective to what mind lenses we have access to and what mind lenses we use to see the situations in front of us. Some of us can switch our view consciously but most are unconsciously swayed to see things as the majority or most influential want us to see. How do you see the world? Are you specialized because you want to be or are you specialized because of a calculated predisposition?
Over-specialization will paralyze you in the wheelchair of markets. Don’t narrow your vision by getting attached to dated ideas from ridged institutions that are in the business of selling you overpriced ‘education’—markets are always changing and so must your mind and lens you view the world from.
