On education

You heard it all the time, probably. And that makes it even more sad, but there’s a problem with our education system. And by “our” I mean - globally, which is even more more sad. It seems that giving the correct answer is more important than ever, not learning the actual subject or the lesson.

And I sort of get it - it didn’t necessarily start that way. Tests were a way to verify that you learned what you were supposed to. It was sort of efficient way to do it. But I think we stopped trying to make it better. We invented different types of tests: oral, on paper, on a computer, multiple answers, etc. But essentially it was circling around the same thing, nothing new, nothing better. You either know the answer or not. And I think we got to a point of molding reality to that assumption, where it’s not that simple, really. There aren’t always right answers (which we’ll get to in a moment), and it’s arguably more important to know the route, than to know the destination.

I think I remember it being a little bit better. Can’t say where exactly in my education it was, but math problems would be a good example of that. There seem to be a time when you’d have to do all the calculations on paper and then give the final answer. If the teacher was wiser, they’d not only check the answer, but also the steps you’d take to get there. It wasn’t perfect, because I’m pretty sure they only did that for the wrong final answers. So if your result was correct they probably just gave you a point and moved on, but it was something. I remember doing all the right things, and making a small mistake at the end. A result being the wrong answer of something like the final division, and getting like half a point for that. Not ideal - I think you should get something like between 90% or 100%, cause the point of those classes weren’t that final division, it was the steps before that I applied correctly, but it was something. But we pushed to standardized testing, where only the answer is important, not how you got there. That’s not education, that’s not learning, at least not in a sense I think it should be. If it teaches you anything, to be a bit cynical, it is that you should give the right answer, no matter how you get there, even if it’s guessing or cheating.

And sometimes there isn‘t even the one right answer. You see, around probably early 2000s, when the internet looked very different I found a Mensa site. They had a test online and I took it. At the end I got a wonderful message, with something like “Your score is very high, please contact one of our local offices to take the test in person and join Mensa”. A nice tickle to the ego, especially since then websites on the internet didn’t try to scam you on IQ tests and such. Never took the test offline, partially because the website was for the US Mensa, and I was not in US. But as I was getting older, I realized few things about those IQ tests. One was that they are limited by the IQ of the person creating them. Second one, that sort of is a result of the first, is that there may be more than one right answer. I thought - as long as you can explain to me how you arrived at the answer, and I can’t poke a hole in your thinking, then that is the right answer.

Say, for not a great example, you have one of the questions of:

You give your answer of 7, and the person says “Oh, sorry it was actually 8”. The logic of the person writing this question was - you take two first numbers, add them together, and you get the third, one. Then you add second and third to get the fourth, and so on. Therefore, 3 + 5 = 8. But you can also argue that 2, 3, and 5 are prime numbers, therefore the next prime would be 7. That’s also a valid pattern, therefore it’s a right answer as well. But in the world of testing, you may not get to the point of explaining, let alone convincing someone to give you a point for it.

The educating lack the art of teaching, if the result is memorizing the right answer. I don’t think it’s the kids (or teenagers, or adults) that fail the tests. Or at least that’s not the right answer to the problem of education - different tests, pushing students in a different way. I think it’s the education and often educators that are failing, in some way at least. Not as individuals (although I had my fair share of those as well), but as a collective. From the teachers themselves, to the ministers of education deciding one way or another what are the programs and requirements that those teachers need to push on their students.

There’s this story about Steve Jobs. He attended Reed College and dropped out after one semester, but kept going to calligraphy classes. The credits the success of Macintosh, especially its graphical interface, to those classes. For him, it’s a story of the importance of art and humanities in computers and their design. To me, it’s a story of someone going to classes because he wanted to learn that thing, without the obligations and burdens that came from being a student. I often dreamed of learning like that, even before I heard that story. To go to a university and classes, because I wanted to learn those subjects. Don’t care about grades and tests - whatever I learn, whatever I’ll remember, and it will stay with me. But that‘s not how education works, at least not for most of us. The tests, the grades, the paper you get at the end that you jumped (mostly correctly) though all of the hoops are way important. Even if I don’t remember the vast majority of the subjects and topics I was taught.

When I was at school hated history - the dates, the names, the places. Now I can watch a historical video on some subject and be fascinated. I hated books and reading, when I was forced to read them. All of them being very important, historically or otherwise. But then I started to read books that I liked, and I like to read to this day, for pleasure. I almost didn’t go to uni for computer science, because I was convinced I hated math and was not good at it. I finally graduated, being first person (according to my knowledge back then) who wrote his dissertation in English and got an award from the uni’s rector. I still think I suck at math, but I was kind of proud of myself (I am capable of only being “kind of” proud) for using equations with multiple unknowns, on paper, to solve a puzzle for a safe in a Bond game last week.

That’s what education should be, I think. Search for what’s interesting, what you want to learn, what fascinates you. What stays with you stays, and you’ll use it later in life (or not). Rarely if ever something forced stays. It’s unknown, it’s chaotic, likely not possible to standardize in any meaningful way, but so are humans who learn things. Even if it’s impossible, it should be our goal, our azimuth. We may not get it right, we’ll make mistakes, we won’t get “the right” answer, but there will be good methods along the way, and we should give ourselves for it.