Better Schooling

Of course education can solve so much in the journey of creating a brighter future, but it’s no surprise that how we’re doing it now is terrible. I’m not going to talk about how public schooling is inadequate, because frankly I think it is obvious. I’m sure teachers or faculty can explain it better than me. What I want to show are a set of ideas which I believe have the power to change the world

Utilizing the Best

I believe a digital education system is the way to go. We have teachers all over the world who are re-inventing the wheel in each classroom every year. They are not aggregating their knowledge, and to be frank again, some shouldn’t be teachers in the first place. However, a digital system could be improved on year-over-year to produce higher success in all educational subjects. Research in psychology regarding memory and learning have produced incredible results in the field of language-learning. There are things such as the optimal learning curve, which can be used to improve learning rate drastically

Examination Methodology

This system would not have quizzes, tests, or exams, but instead would constantly be evaluating your knowledge using a Selective Repetition System (SRS). This system would always give you a set of scores to determine how well you understand a given class or subject. The most important score would be the “burndown” percentage, which shows which concepts has the learner progressed through and demonstrated long term memory retention on. This score would be used as the prerequisite for eligibility into further more advanced classes, or as proof that what was learned is really learned

Course Graph

Khan Academy has shown this well, and I think the system is brilliant. You begin with the basics, and form a gigantic graph with all the knowledge that the education system can offer. Students can go through it at whatever pace they like, but with the understanding that the SRS will limit their minimum possible time to progress. As you go farther in your completion journey of the graph, you begin to fulfil the requirements for diplomas, degrees, and certifications

Dream Big

Some people learn better with visual aids, videos, some with audio, some by reading themselves, some take longer, some prefer to see many examples. A digital system of this type could and should be able to present the material in many different forms. All that matters is that when you are evaluated at the end-period for the SRS, you can answer the questions correctly

With this setup, each pain-point or shortcoming can be improved upon (you know, since it’s software and not peopleware) to make the next iteration better than the previous. I believe that if you code all these things, you can achieve something so powerful it could make the entire time to go from 4 -> University Undergraduate by as much as 50%

I understand the most important thing learned in school is not education itself, but social skills. A system designed for learning would not replace social interactions, sports, games, whatever, and education would still need to facilitate these needs and require hands-on real people on the job

Rollout-plan

But how, one should ask, is it possible to take over decades of education institution? Who would risk their kids on a system that might fail? Yes, of course, the best place to begin would be with mathematics, because they are the easiest to code. I believe that by offering this system alongside regular course material and working alongside a teacher brave enough to bring software into the classroom is the way to go. Once the software is working better, and the functionality is endorsed, then further subjects can be coded into it and further endorsements can be made, until it eventually becomes sought after, possibly in private schools

Commitment

I believe in this mission so fully, that if you would be interested in working on it together with me, send me an email and I will set up a meeting to discuss the topic further