But the second skill, and this is a tough one, is to be very good at teaching yourself new things. Right now, our schools are not so good at teaching this skill. The changes we’ve seen so far are just the beginning; 20-30 years from now, we’ll all be doing different things. So people who are very good at teaching themselves, regardless of what their formal background is, will be the big winners. People who do start-ups already face this. They’ve learned some things in school, but most of what they do they’ve had to learn along the way; and that, I think, is the future of education. I’m not convinced that our schools will or can keep pace with that; people will do it on their own.
Several months ago, I had this odd desire to recover some of the gymnastic skills of my youth. I soon developed rib-cage muscle problems, which I never had way back when. I ended up reaching out on Facebook for advice and going to YouTube for instructions on exercises that would help. Note that I could have taken a Yoga class, but that is not the direction I went. That may tell you something about the future of learning.
Possibly related: Gary Vaynerchuk on entrepreneurship. Right off the bat, he says he does not think that it can be taught. He says that the most important thing is to know yourself. It reminds me of what ‘Adam Smith’ (George Goodman) wrote in The Money Game about the stock market:
If you don’t know who you are, this can be an expensive place to find out
Vaynerchuk reminds me of my main former business partner. Lots of smarts (with zero educational credentials), lots of passion, lots of testosterone. Our partnership clicked because we aligned in terms of intuition and competitive drive, but it was a good thing that we were separated by thousands of miles. If you watch the video, let me know what you think, and see if you can identify/articulate what I find off-putting.
I know what you mean and I didn’t even remember that name at first and haven’t even watched the video but remember the feeling from hearing one interview probably 5 years ago.
(A lor of people aren’t like us on that dimension and they eat this stuff up- so they can be good to have around)
‘Unschooling’ arguably aims to address exactly this issue.
http://www.outsideonline.com/1928266/we-dont-need-no-education
Unschooling was briefly big among the 60s left, but now it’s a libertarian thing. Probably because the former sees it as a vehicle for letting the brightest self-starters pull away even further from the rabble.
I see the Youtube affect in tennis. All the new tennis players I meet learn how to play from Youtube, and so do I. But the thing is, they still need a tennis coach. You need somebody to look at what you’re doing because you can’t look at yourself, and they also suffer from the “don’t know what don’t know” problem, which a coach can help with. So I don’t think one will replace the other.
Wow, Gary Vee is a smart guy. Thanks for the link.
Tennis is one of my go-to illustrations on what education is versus what people think it is. I had many lessons, played on the high school team. Nobody ever showed me how to hold the racket.
That is why one of my aphorisms is “teaching = feedback” At some point, somebody is going to figure out ways to deliver feedback effectively using artificial intelligence.
I think that will be the first time that feedback is delivered effectively.
How does this concept of “teach yourself” differ from the precept of the University of my youth (pre WW II) “First, learn how to learn” ?
And after that at Law School (10 years later) “Learn how to distinguish what is essential to learn.” ?
Formal schooling has long been known to be detrimental to not only the self-learning habit, but also to innovative thinking. Students are conditioned by 3rd grade and most lose or limit their ability to think outside the box. “School helplessness” as F.M. McMurry called it in ‘How to Study and Teaching How to Study’. The earliest I’ve seen reference to the fact schools trended toward memorization rather than thinking was in a book published in 1886 (‘Mind and Hand, manual training, the chief factor in education ‘, Charles H. Ham). The best excerpt from the passage is below:
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., remarks that the com-
mon schools of Massachusetts cost $4,000,000 a year;
and adds, “The imitative or memorizing faculties only
are cultivated, and little or no attention is paid to the
thinking or reflective powers. Indeed it may almost be
said that a child of any originality or with individual
characteristics is looked upon as wholly out of place in a
public school. … To skate is as difficult as to write ;
probably more difficult. Yet in spite of hard teaching
in the one case and no teaching in the other, the boy can
skate -beautifully, and he cannot write his native tongue
at all.”*
* “Scientific Common-school Education.” Harper’s Magazine,
November, 1880
Sir Ken Robinson has indicated a similar theme in his TED talks regarding the loss of creative thinking as children are exposed to formal schooling.
The problem, even at graduate school level, is related in this anecdote by Joseph Epstein about his cousin, Sherman Rosen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=JF2eJSHKKd0#t=1048
Schooling is about gameshow knowledge, but real learning is brooding, thinking, etc. The only hope is some become educated in spite of their schooling, as Winston Churchill claimed regarding the interference of his education by his schooling.
Has not a major portion of “schooling” become principally concerned with establishing relative status?