The Education System

I just realized why everyone hates school and learning.

Learning using school approved methods is BORING.

All the stuff I'm learning now I've had to learn through practical application.  When doing it there, what I learned had an immediate impact and I developed an understanding of what I was doing.  I went from basic understanding to crash course learning to extended knowledge.  I learned implications and troubleshooting methods that would lead me to success.  Going through the training courses on the same subject puts me to sleep.  And this is stuff I have taught others.

The difference, I suppose, is the training methods.  I learned facts slowly, as they became relevant and important.  As such, the facts had some context for my brain to attach to.  I can read information all day long, but it might be two or three weeks down the road before my brain has processed the information and started looking at implications and reasoning.  It doesn't happen immediately. 

But that receptive feedback we are used to is not conducive to getting people to learn.  Answers are expected to be forced out within minutes of learning the material.  There is no thought put into any of it.  It's just a matter of peer pressure and the desire to not fail.

Technology has not changed the methods of teaching in the least.  It's still instant feedback / sit in silence / I want answers ten minutes after I teach you.  If you want to blame the attention span problem, blame our education system.  There is never any thought of the implications.  It's a matter of learning, remembering long enough to pass the test, and forgetting.  Maybe the problem isn't our education, it's our brains.  Our bodies have adapted to our shoddy teaching methods after years of staring at someone drone on about something that has no use in our current mental state. 

I've spent a lot of time in meetings.  You learn a lot of stuff in those meetings.  But you aren't ever expected to recite those facts minutes after.  You are generally given days to look and examine what needs to be done before fixing the problem.  It's so weird that I had one meeting where a solution was needed that day, but the people I was talking to were selling something three weeks down the road.  "I want this fixed TODAY" became a running joke.  But I think they got the point.  It gets kind of serious when you're missing 1.666 of me in money.  That's a lot of money.   And I was the lowest paid guy in the room.

Technology is the key.  But the entrenched system doesn't want to give up its hold.  The CD industry was much the same way until it was forced to change.  Now, businesses that used to make a killing selling CDs are vacating their mall slots and moving to different businesses.  Technology is the game changer.  CPU power and memory are finally at a point where things can be accomplished, and bandwidth and network communication have changed everything.   The platform and the groundwork has been laid.  Now, it's time for someone to come in and wipe out the aging education industry.