Death is a pretty morbid subject, but I am going to try and put a positive spin on it. Death is inevitable, so almost everyone has likely had the misfortune of losing someone close to them. I have been very fortunate to have not lost too many loved ones (knock on wood) but those I have lost definitely had an impact on me. For instance, my grandfather passed away a few years ago who is one of the most gentle and kind people I have come to know. Seeing him in an open casket was nice in that I got to see him one last time, but obviously difficult for the mind to consume. We often take those around us for granted, but during funerals we are all reminded how fragile life is and how important it is to appreciate those around us.
At work, we lost an executive who was deeply loved and appreciated a few months ago that I had met at a restaurant about a year prior to his passing. I remember hearing everyone talk about him the day everyone learned of his passing and how many people said they would miss him and how genuinely nice he was to others, which leads me to the reason I am writing this post. I recently heard a quote which basically said those we will miss upon death are people who came into the world crying when everyone around them were smiling, but when they leave the world they will be smiling when everyone around them is crying.
As I have mentioned in past posts, I was at a Communications Media Managers Association (CMMA) event last week in Arizona. Before I was a manager I always hated not getting any information about what my bosses got to learn at the events they attended so I vowed when I became a manager I would communicate everything (as much as possible anyway) that I learned.
CMMA brought a speaker in to talk about the differences of the generations in the workforce which I thought was interesting being a person from the Generation “X” era. She said her son wears flip flops to work and she gives him a hard time for doing so but he says “oh mom people don’t care what I wear to work”. Each generation is bringing their own style and way of thinking to the workforce. As older genreations retire newer generations are going to greatly change the way we manage people, think, and work.
I’ve been writing down a few topics in draft form and adding to them as I have time. That may be good news or bad news, depending on if you like to read long posts. Please know with all blog posts that my ideas are just that, ideas. Society tends to want to think the way it has always been taught, but change is inevitable. Bruce Barton said it best with his quote: “when you are through changing, you are through”.
“When you are through changing, you are through.”
– Bruce Barton
My Educational Experiences
It is no secret I love technology, and sometimes you can’t help but wonder how it will continue to change our lives (for better or worse). I look back at my education and the teachers who had the daunting task of trying to teach a dunce like me a thing or two. I never really enjoyed school, in fact, the day I graduated from high school has to be one of the best days of my life.
My wife and I have a son who is fifteen months old at the time of this writing. After talking with a coworker who asked if I had started saving for his college, yet I replied I hadn’t but in the back of my mind I get a “spidey sense” I should. Part of the reason I haven’t saved for my son’s college is because we have other financial priorities at the moment, but part of me also wonders what college will be like for him in another 17 years. By not saving for his education, I am taking a calculated risk that in the future, education will be nothing like it is today. After going through 12 years of public education in 7 schools, I hope it will be very different!
Tuition
Private 4-Year College
$23,712
Average Annual Tuition
Public 4-Year College
$6,185
Average Annual Tuition
As I am writing this post, the average cost of tuition for a private 4-year college is $23,712 and $6,185 for public colleges. I can’t help but think that when my son is ready for college everything will be mostly virtual, which many colleges have already starting to embrace today. Even when I was going to college 8–10 years ago, there were some online courses offered.
My thinking is if households obtain broadband access, what is really stopping the world from offering free admission to any course? Isn’t it just a matter of time before technology completely levels the playing field for developing nations to better compete and have access to the same resources? The US was founded on the premise that we wanted the world to “give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”. If the US has always been the pioneer in driving change and helping the willing, should we be leading by example to help provide the world free (or at least very cost affective) education?
Education Should be Free
I am an open-source advocate, so it is probably not a big surprise for you to hear that it is wrong to charge for education. Education should be free to all who are willing to learn. I’d like to see a huge company like Google provide a grassroots effort to have the best professors in the world teach online. The beauty of online lessons is it scales, and traditional institutions are limited to how many students can fit into a classroom or auditorium.
Furthermore, when a professor is finished teaching his/her lecture, why do they teach it time and time again during the day? Additionally, year after year they teach the same thing over the years. With technology, professors should give their best lecture on a topic and have that lecture live on forever for all to consume. TED is a great example of just that, they bring together the brightest and best who can share with the world what they have learned.
Students should never have a “burned out” teacher in the future because just like a machine, the Internet can play their best lecture for all to view billions of times. If a teacher provides a lecture which is used extensively, they can be compensated like how Google AdSense works today.
The Internet is the Modern-Day Calculator
I’m almost wondering if the Internet is the modern-day calculator. For instance, should we teach our students to cram as much knowledge into their heads as possible or teach them how to find the answers using the Internet? Technology, knowledge and the world is constantly changing, so is it better to memorize data or just know where to find it if you need it?
I remember in school wondering why on some tests they wouldn’t let us use our calculators. The teachers would say things like, “well, what if your calculator battery died?” We, of course, replied “I have a solar calculator” which the teacher, of course, replied “what if it is a rainy day” which we replied “turn on a light”. With mobile devices giving us the Internet anywhere we travel, isn’t the Internet really a child’s modern-day tool to leverage, like the calculator (or encyclopedia) was to us?
Textbooks
Textbooks are expensive, heavy, and are outdated as soon as they are published. It seems inevitable that in the very near future textbooks will be electronic documents which are constantly updated by the brightest, the best and the world on a given subject matter. Amazon.com has recently released the Kindle, and paper books just seem to be on their way out.
Teachers of the Future
We will always need teachers, but are they being fully utilized today? For instance, with computers we can now let students take tests on computers and the results can be instantly calculated and rolled up for the teacher in his/her “grade book”.
Let me be very clear I’m not saying teachers are not valuable, but I think everyone should be able to teach the world, not just those who are certified to teach. For instance, you can learn something from a homeless man/woman, a retail clerk, a CEO, a construction worker, a sanitation worker, a President, a CIO.
At the end of the day, we all need to learn to embrace technology and harness its power to communicate to the world. I would want teachers to be moderators of a technology where knowledge is validated. Let the world teach, and let teachers help validate what is taught. I realize it is no easy task, but teachers don’t scale and in my opinion they are not being fully utilized.
Traditional Education Needs to Change, How Can You Help?
As Forrest Gump famously said: “that is all I have to say about that”.
What do you think?
What did I get right?
What did I get wrong?
What do you think the future holds for the world’s education?
