Are Schools Worth the Cost?

Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves

Indian Children Teach Themselves

Children Teach Themselves to Read

Kids Learn Math Easily When They Control Their Own Learning

Recommended Reading 2

Here are some more thought-provoking websites concerned with education and learning:

Freedom to Learn MindShift UnCollege

Edupunks' Guide Casting Out Nines Computing Education Blog

Featured Quote

“What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.”

-Voltaire

DOES THE BRAIN USE PROCEDURAL GENERATION?

Have you ever been surprised by a scent that suddenly brings back a long lost memory? It can be astounding how detailed memories are recalled just because of a single stimulus. The fragrance of a home-cooked meal can trigger a barrage of childhood memories. Looking at an apple, you can imagine what it tastes and smells like, perhaps remembering cold cider quenching your thirst on a summer afternoon. Someone recovering from mental trauma might hear a loud noise and be instantly returned to whatever calamity they suffered in the past. How does this process of remembering past events and scenes work? Nobody knows for sure. The brain is a complicated organ, and it is possible we may never fully understand its inner workings. But the process is reminiscent of procedural generation.

In case you have never heard of it before, procedural generation is a way of creating lots of detail in a virtual object without taking up a lot of computer memory. Fractals are good examples of this. Take a look at the “Koch snowflake” at right for a rough understanding of this concept. First, you start with a triangle. You might call this starting point the “seed” or “input.” The “procedure,” or “algorithm,” involves adding smaller triangles to the sides of the original one. Once you have repeated the procedure an infinite number of times, you have then “generated” the Koch snowflake. In its finished form, the snowflake has infinite detail and a perimeter of infinite length. Now imagine trying to save a perfect Koch snowflake in JPEG format. Since the perimeter is infinitely long, it would take an infinite number of pixels to represent the outline alone. But computers have finite/limited memory capacity. However, if you write some computer code to generate an image of the snowflake in real time, as you are viewing it, that code can be saved on a hard drive. You can zoom in as much as you want, and the code could keep generating just enough detail to fit on the screen.

Perhaps human memory works in a similar manner. Try as we might, the majority of humans cannot recall scenes with perfect detail. If you create a mental image of your kitchen, and focus on it, the level of detail is pitiful when compared to a high-resolution photograph of the same room. You can focus on smaller areas of the mental image, but the resolution of the overall picture is quite limited. This is quite similar to the fractal situation mentioned above. The brain only remembers detail in parts of a picture on which it is focusing. Humans (at least, most of us) cannot store the same amount of information with the same reliability that a computer can. It seems unlikely that we would store images pixel by pixel like digital photos. Maybe the brain takes in simple stimuli, such as smells or symbols, performs some complex procedure, and generates rich memories on the fly.

On this framework, memories are not stored data, but rather impromptu experiences generated when stimuli are processed through intricate neural pathways. The brain might only store basic building blocks of experience that constitute any and all memories. For instance, the colors we remember might be stored for future use like a painter's pallet. While flavors, aromas, sensations, and words might be kept for instant access within the brain, their combinations only exist in the transient experience of remembering a scene from one's life. When someone mentions “sunset,” you can instantly imagine a red and pink horizon with the orange sun sinking beyond the edge of the world. Maybe such a picture only exists in your brain for the few seconds that you imagine it. What the brain actually stores is some algorithm for recognizing the word “sunset” and pulling together the right colors and shapes to recreate a familiar picture.

Neuroplasticity is a well-known phenomena in which the brain “rewires” itself as part of the learning process and in reaction to incoming stimuli. Around the clock, your brain's neurons are changing their connections to one another: strengthening some connections, cutting off others, generally improving the neural network to perform whatever functions are needed. If you practice pitching a baseball often and long enough, your brain will organize itself to control your arms better for the purpose of throwing the ball. As you learn a second language, your brain is changing its own microscopic structure to process the additional vocabulary. What if this rewiring is a way of tweaking the algorithms that generate memories? Say an aviation enthusiast takes a flight that goes horribly wrong. The plane crashes and the enthusiast barely survives. Before the flight, the individual associated planes with positive emotions and aspirations of soaring like a bird. Saying “airplane” to this person before the accident might have triggered memories of the Wright brothers or looking at the ground from high up. After the crash, the individual's brain has rewired itself. Now, saying “airplane” might trigger memories of the crash and struggling to stay alive, accompanied by negative emotions like fear. Did the individual forget about the Wright brothers? Certainly not. The “algorithm” (that is, the pathways in the brain) has been altered so that the same stimulus,or “seed” (the word “airplane”), is processed differently than before, generating different memories.

WHAT THE INTERNET DOES TO YOUR BRAIN

Have you ever thought about it? Surfing the web is a new and unique experience in humanity's history. Never before have we been given access to so much information and at such speed as today. The internet is fundamentally changing how we interact with each other and the world around us. What, specifically, does this mean for our brains, our thought patterns, and our culture?

The internet is perhaps the most influential invention ever contrived. The spread of ideas has long been the source of change in the world. Throughout history people have killed and been killed for the sake of spreading or halting information. The old sayings, “the pen is mightier than the sword,” and “loose lips sink ships,” are testament to the power of ideas. A connection to the internet allows people to share and find ideas almost instantaneously. This means a lot of change can happen to societies very quickly. Political alliances can be forged through social networking. Scientists can share theories and data with each other very easily. Money can be exchanged and earned in new ways. Children in poor countries can benefit from the academic resources of wealthy nations. These are macroscopic effects, but changes to a single brain are microscopic in scope.

The brain is marvelously able to change its “wiring” in order to adapt to different environments. This plasticity allows people to adjust to new careers, learn to read, cope with blindness, and much more. As a person gets accustomed to using the internet, that person's brain “rewires” itself to interact more effectively with cyberspace. The internet is full of distractions, namely links and advertisements. It also makes being distracted very pleasing. Stray thoughts are easily pursued by opening additional browser tabs and using search engines. You could be right in the middle of reading a news article when you think about what tomorrow's weather will be like. A couple clicks later and you are dreading the impending snow storm. Then you go back to the article and try to remember where you left off. A few minutes later you think about checking your email and promptly do so. All along you might have been receiving and responding to text messages on your phone. From your perspective this may seem like harmless multitasking, but your brain is being spoiled by instant gratification. Over long periods of time, excessive internet use can make people generally impatient and prone to distraction. The brain learns that distractions are okay and interruptions are enjoyable. We like constant updates nowadays, but previous generations were accustomed to longer periods of sustained attention—focusing on each task until it was finished. For them, mail was received once a day or even less often. They read about topics one at a time and usually in some logical order. Today, reading on the internet is directed by the stream of consciousness, and topics can be quite random. Switching between multiple webpages will break a reader's concentration and increase the cognitive load. That means your brain must work harder to keep track of what you are reading, and less mental energy is used to absorb and process the information on those pages. In accordance with that change in behavior, the brain becomes better at managing multiple tasks and worse at reading comprehension.

Slow reading is good for maximizing the intellectual benefit of textual information. But information is no longer a scarce commodity. Rather than straining to get new information, we are now striving to contend with an overabundance of content. People are finding new ways to organize, search, and analyze the vast amounts of data provided by the internet. On a personal level, people tend to forgo slow reading and adopt skimming as their primary reading method. With so much content to absorb, it is difficult to slow down one's reading for fear of missing out on something. People learn about more varied topics, but they have only a passable understanding of each one. In this way, the internet makes more people “well-rounded,” but it subtly hinders any achievement of expertise by overfeeding us with content. Where does this copious content come from, anyway?

The internet creates a two-way stream of information. Not only can data be downloaded, but it can be uploaded, too. Every time someone sends a tweet, uploads a video, creates a blog post, edits a Wikipedia page, or updates a social networking profile, that person is contributing to internet content. Try to imagine one million YouTube users, and each one uploads a one minute video on the same day. In just one day, YouTube would have acquired one million minutes of video content. Without any interruptions (eating, sleeping, etc.), it would take someone almost two years to watch all those videos. Think about that!

All this exchange of content makes people dependent and addicted to internet use. The anguish some people experience when their internet connections fail, or when their cellphones are missing, is evidence of this. GPS devices in cars are great, but, when they do not work properly, many people can find themselves distressingly lost. Texting for some people has become so important that interrupting conversations and work is acceptable and commonplace. When the phone beckons, all must pause for a couple lines of text to be read and then answered. Such behavior would have been considered deplorable in the twentieth century, but nowadays it is rather normal.

For good or bad, the internet is helping extinguish many aspects of life from the last century. One of the most precious things would be free time for deep thinking. The Industrial Revolution made us more productive and efficient so we could have more time to spend on family, hobbies, etc. Now we cannot get enough work-hours to earn all the money we want. And when we are not at work, the internet tempts us with countless new things—videos, articles, games, messages. Sooner or later we have to squeeze in time for sleeping, although not enough for most of us. Where is the time for thinking? For daydreaming, meditating, getting a perspective on our lives? We are losing that time to the internet, much like earlier generations lost it to watching television. When there is time to just sit and think, many of us cannot stand it and languish for access to a computer. Spending time face-to-face with family members and friends is diminishing as well. Video on demand, texting, and other forms of personalized content use eliminate the need for shared experiences. Why watch television with your family when you can watch your shows any time you want on the internet. You no longer have to be in the same room with someone for conversation if you can text or video-conference with them. MP3 players make listening to radios and jukeboxes unnecessary.

What will future internet users be like? Without self-restraint, they will be even more impatient and easily distracted than today. Their writing will be painfully concise. Perhaps the average book's word count will go down. Textbooks, or curricula in general, will be customized excerpts from the online collection of all human knowledge. Nearly all of people's education will come from the internet, not parents and teachers. They will appear to live in separate worlds from an external observer. As they navigate physical environments, earphones let them listen to anything they want. Tiny screens let them see anything they want. And the internet gives them any information they might need in daily tasks. Using the internet as a second brain, they will appear much more knowledgeable and capable than us. They will be more productive because of their connection to cyberspace, but this augmentation will come at a cost. Future users will feel anxious whenever they are disconnected. Sleep deprivation will be a major health concern. The physical world will seem less real than the digital one. Take the internet away, and its users might struggle to cope even with mundane situations. With the internet, they may eventually seem omniscient.

Too much internet use reduces our ability to concentrate, and its distractions hinder the learning process. Depending on your point of view, that is okay because the internet holds more information than we could ever hope to absorb. We just need to make sure that relevant information is available whenever it is needed. Some old-fashioned moderation would protect our mental focus from significantly deteriorating. If we take the time to contemplate what we learn once in a while, then our brains should experience intellectual prosperity. So far we have seen a net benefit from the internet, and, hopefully, we will continue to adapt to our technologies without losing ourselves in the process.

COMPUTERS CAN IMPROVE EDUCATION!

Computers have become ubiquitous in modern life. We get news updates, find driving directions, communicate with one another, write papers, make calculations, and perform countless other tasks with the aid of various computers. Yet, as these fabulous tools increasingly permeate our lives, they remain undercapitalized in most classroom settings. Many kids learn to text with their cellphones years before they learn to type on keyboards. Why?

Public schools seem to be built for intellectual stagnation. The most apparent academic goal in most students' minds is surviving the next test or exam. Grades are everything. Is there any consideration for the interests and talents of the students? No. You must learn these subjects, by this date, or you are a failure. If you excel linguistically and are passionate about history but have trouble with math, then your education will be plagued by a spotty record and perhaps impressions of inadequacy. Math adepts who are uninterested and unskilled in other classes will experience the same problems. The often uncompromising attitude of school authority “kills creativity” and subdues individual excellence. People's abilities shine most when they have the freedom to follow their passions.

What does that have to do with technology, especially computers? Computers allow us to exceed the academic limits of previous generations. Why memorize lists and tables of numerous facts when you can access them at will with a search query? Hard drives store raw information so that we can focus on interpreting and utilizing data instead of memorizing it. Email and satellite transmissions make long-distance communication nearly instantaneous. Software plots data faster, more accurately, and in more ways than a single human ever could by hand. People can do so much more with the aid of technology, and we are constantly finding new ways to exploit it. Government officials do not appear to care about a potential leap in human-computer capability. They just want test scores so they can rank with other countries. The quantification of students eases the task of assigning value to them and their schools. Much of the time schools are focused on improving standardized test scores and fail to devote energy towards exploring how students learn—much less how to improve their learning experience.

One problem that schools face is a shortage of teachers and a surplus of students. Standardization and mass production are themes that seem natural for dealing with this dilemma. Working out standardized problems with pencil and paper, in addition to reading standardized texts, is the classic approach that has emerged for cramming information and skills into students' brains. Is this still a valid method of learning, considering today's technology? With computers and the internet, a student can find countless sources of information regarding any topic in class. The versatility of computers enables any student to express their knowledge in myriad ways—slide-show presentations, animations, typed essays, etc. In light of this, the dull exams of today seem unnecessary. A common complaint for schools is the infrequent buying of new textbooks. The internet allows access to free, legal, easily updated textbooks written by qualified experts who value education above profit. Using digital textbooks and unconventional methods of assessing academic progress reduce the use of physical resources like paper. In this way, going digital is also going green.

Many schools seem to be in denial about the ubiquity of computers. Computer skills are more important than ever and can be very lucrative. But some schools do not even teach their students how to touch-type. Why is programming—or, at the very least, computer literacy—not a major subject alongside social studies and math? Programming develops language and logic skills while empowering individuals to innovate with software. Knowing how to use computers is necessary for countless careers, but that importance is overlooked by many teachers and administrators. The internet gives people access to vast amounts of knowledge, but students are severely limited in time that is allowed to explore it.

America's ideal economic model is one that provides individual freedom and allows personal experimentation. Ideally, citizens are free to buy what they want and start businesses selling what they want. This results in net economic growth because people will learn how to make a profit and provide for the needs and wants of customers. Such freedom is expected in virtually every facet of life except, it seems, in schooling. Unless you want to change your address, you cannot choose which public school your kids attend. Students have very little choice about what subjects they study until they get to the college level. Students must study the same subjects and devote the same amount of time to each one, and they have no say in the curriculum of those subjects. The administrators get to make all the decisions. This power structure is analogous to a communist state. Everybody gets equal pay, and the people in charge manage all the resources. With this you get low productivity and little innovation. If students had more freedom to choose what subjects they study and how to manage their time, then they would be more productive and creative. They have more freedom outside of school, and they quickly learn how to use cellphones, personal computers, game consoles, etc. as long as their families can afford such things. Once connected to the World Wide Web, a person is free to learn about any topic imaginable. The internet holds much more information than a room full of textbooks, but school systems are too rigid to take advantage of it.

There are some people who are trying to bring public education into the twenty-first century and use technology for academic benefit, but they cannot do it alone. School administrators need to be more open-minded. Teachers need to be willing to learn as much as their students. Parents need to speak up about the quality of their children's education. Students need to care about their education. Today's technology is just too powerful to be wasted.

RECOMMENDED READING

If you are open-minded and interested about education, then I would recommend taking a look at the following:

2¢ Worth by David Warlick

Dangerously Irrelevant by Scott McLeod

EDTE.CH by Tom Barrett

edu.blogs.com by Ewan McIntosh

OLDaily & articles by Stephen Downes

"Where gaming and education converge." by Lucas Gillispie
 

INNOVATORS PITCH THEIR IDEAS TO THE WORLD

The free exchange of ideas is arguably the greatest function of the internet. Millions of people are online every second, and they are accessing one of mankind's greatest resources. One source where you are likely to get a premium selection of ideas is TED. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an organization that hosts conferences with businessmen, inventors, scientists, artists, politicians, and others as both presenters and audience. These presentations, or TED Talks, are opportunities for speakers to share their ideas with an audience of influential and appreciative listeners. The presentations are later uploaded to the internet to be watched by the biggest audience in the world, free of charge. The ideas vary from new ways of interfacing with computers to getting clean water for those in need. Any video is sure to inspire and challenge open minds; below are a few examples.

TED Talks

Sir Ken Robinson finds faults in public schooling

Prof. Sugata Mitra finds kids can teach themselves

Stewart Brand and Mark Z. Jacobson debate nuclear fission power