Obsolescence of the current education system

Any kind of system, whether governmental, educational, social, or economic; is tightly connected to the evolution of technology — which here is the sum of skills and methods needed to produce goods and services —.

Technology influences human behavior, impacts societal standards, and redefines professions. That is why “systems” are subject to upgrades and downgrades, which is a way to constantly reduce “waste” and adapt to change.

One thing to keep in mind though; the deeper the roots of a system in society (effect of an extended period of time), the longer it will take for change to happen. The banking system and the education system are two great examples.

To give you an idea about the seniority of the current education system, its origin goes back about a thousand years! The Sorbonne University in Paris was operational in 1150, the University of Oxford was established in ~1096, and Cambridge University in 1209.

Over the centuries, the education system in question aged well; it got bigger facilities, more professors, more students, more scientific fields, and more research, to finally reach a point where going to school and attending university was a mandatory step for anyone who wanted to apply for a job.

The education system as we know it had its fair share of improvement until it plateaued at the end of the 20th century and began its obsolescence in early 2000 with the rise of the internet mass adoption.

In the following paragraphs, I will first explain the pros of the actual education system and how it evolved over the years, then I will finish up by supporting the idea that a paradigm shift in education is finally happening (the final initiator being no other than the Covid pandemic).

It was good?before…

From the high middle ages to the early 18th century, education’s main focus was to train kids to be more literate — by teaching them grammar, logic, and rhetoric — and more religious for the sake of discipline and thoughtfulness.

The schools' curriculums made sense at the time for 2 main reasons: the first was that the level of illiteracy was really high ( the majority of professions required hands-on jobs ), and the second was the need for good morals and strong values (which was religion’s aim to build better Men, and rightfully so).

Then happened what would naturally happen… Beginning mid-18th century onwards; the illiteracy curve declined, the number of students rose tremendously, training and certifications were provided for teachers, education ministries began forming, and primary and secondary schooling became compulsory.

And so, the knowledge that was once available for the nobility and upper strata of society, spread down reaching workers and peasants. Basic schooling was, thus, available to all regardless of status and wealth.

I am talking about basic schooling here, and not higher knowledge provided by universities where upper-class families still had an advantage over poorer families. But this gets us to the intrinsic nature of socio-economics; services that require more time, experience, and efforts are by default more expensive.

At a macro-scale, the educational system as we know it was inherently good in the sense that it educated people at a massive scale. Since no internet was available at the time — which means no alternative way to seek information —, the initiative to make primary and secondary schools “compulsory” was the best way to enforce knowledge, and prepare the young for his/her university years.

And then evolution took its natural course; the generations that followed got more knowledgeable and literate, which lessened the latitude of religion and enhanced scientific research and reasoning. Consequently, the world saw itself as subject to the fastest technological advancement in human history.

Regardless if we approve of it or not, the education system that took centuries to develop culminated in bringing great intellectual and financial wealth for nations — first in Europe, and then spread over other continents —.

… But not?anymore!

The internet and its mainstream adoption marked the beginning of the end for the education system as we know it.

In fact, the internet as a medium of communication changed the fundamentals on which the long-lasting education system was built.

• Before, the focus for schools was to install general knowledge as a way to reduce illiteracy. Now, not only has “illiteracy” gone down drastically but general knowledge can be accessed at the tip of a teenager’s fingertips.

• Before, “generalization” was prevalent because professions were expansive. Now, professions are more specific and targeted which calls for “personalization”.
• Before, being physically present was a must, and so a big portion of schools' and universities' investments went into real estate. Now, “digitalization” made it available for students to attend courses from the comfort of their homes, which forces schools/universities to make an investment shift regarding infrastructure.

The internet effect in more?details

1. Information Accessibility

For a thousand years until the post-dot-com bubble in the early 2000s, the prime way for school and university students to learn and gather knowledge was via books. And as you can imagine, accessing information from books wasn’t convenient enough considering their tangible nature, their size, and the hundreds if not thousands of words embedded within.

Therefore, the academic tendency was to train the students to hold the content in their internal memory, or in other words, use brute force to memorize all and everything so they can access it whenever they need it.

This time is no more my friend… because search engines completely changed the way we process information.

Search engines such as Google or Yahoo — available on all devices, at any given moment — provided students with an extension of their memory or external memory.

It is close to saying that the student’s external memory works the same way as a computer using an external hard drive. All the data needed can be accessed 24/7 without the need to load, encumber and slow down the original memory.

So if we agree that the internet made information all-inclusive, all the time, for all the generations to come, suffice to say that modern teachings shouldn’t focus on brute force memorizing anymore but on information searching and pattern recognition skills.

2. “Personalization” over “generalization”

As you can imagine, the rise of the internet suppressed and deconstructed a lot of traditional jobs. What once needed a general view of things, a rough set of skills, and a propensity toward “multi-tasking”, now requires targeted technical knowledge and specific competencies. Let me give you an example:

Let's consider the job of a travel agent.

His or her usual day would begin by conversing with clients to understand their wants and needs, then research is done to come up with a set of best possible travel destinations, calls are made to set up transportation arrangements and emails are sent to check and book accommodations.

The Internet came and disrupted the travel agent profession by adding “automation” to the equation, hence the apparition of booking platforms such as Tripadvisor and Booking.com.

My point is, you don't need to know everything about travel to work in the travel business, you don't need to shift from marketing to sales to management anymore. All you need to know is how to code using a specific language, focus on SEO strategies, or even spend your days only analyzing data.

What once required a sole travel agent is now subdivided into needing data security engineers, data scientists, core infrastructure engineers, programmatic media specialists, policy moderators, quality leads, and the list goes on and on…

See where I'm getting at? The current education system is still too generalized, and is wasting precious time teaching students things they will never use! Especially primary and secondary education where the ability of a person to learn is at its highest (4 y.o -18 y.o).

Both graphs shown below are some of many exhibiting that forming and strengthening brain circuits (learning a new skill, a new language,…) is optimal at a younger age.

Specialization and personalization of content need to begin at school — of course using gamification methods or other kid-friendly/teenage-engaging processes — which is, I believe, the best way to prepare the young to excel in university and then in the modern professional world.

3. Digitalization shifting investment focus

Here when I talk about digitalization, what I am really focusing on is the change in the medium used to communicate information. For a long time, school and university facilities were the “medium” where students and teachers would gather and exchange information. This explains and justifies the investment tendencies of searching for larger lands to build bigger schools in order to welcome more students, or the tendency to purchase, replace and innovate furniture and classes to make the schooling environment more appealing, and more convenient…

…Until Internet coupled with technology provided new channels of communication: Online videos, online chat services and videotelephony.

Slowly but surely, the transition from traditional education to educational technology (or Edtech) began its development phase. Over time, more and more schools and universities began welcoming high-tech companies as B2B partners, in view of expanding their reach targeting distance learners — the 8 Ivy League schools in the US have introduced remote learning even before the pandemic —.

In parallel to physical learning institutions inviting e-learning technologies, the online market saw the rise of new players who — given more time — will affect the traditional educational system the same way Netflix disrupted the Blockbuster era.

Some of the best examples are open online course providers such as Coursera and Udemy having users amounting to 77 million and 35 million in 2020 respectively (not all their users are school/university students but the stats given are a representation of the growing technology adoption), and companies offering videotelephony tools such as Zoom, Google meet and Microsoft teams who saw their usage grow exponentially.

With that being said, the Edtech scene is still in its infancy stage when measured against the overall education system: In the US alone, the overall education market in 2018 was at $1,411.03 billion and expected to reach $1,949.99 billion in 2025, in comparison, the global online education market was at $187.877 billion in 2019 expected to reach $319.167 billion in 2025.

Those numbers are normal considering that — as mentioned earlier — the traditional education system took many centuries to form, in contrast to the e-learning market who’s just 22 years old.

Then the pandemic?happened

The pandemic?effect

Normally speaking and per the theories of sociocultural evolution; the social and behavioral actions of Men get polished and reshaped over time due to small and incremental changes that happen in a system. And so, the transition from the traditional education system to an upgraded version was taking its natural course, slowly but surely.

But then in 2019, the world got hit with the Covid pandemic, or — what the great Nassim Nicholas Taleb would call — a “white Swan”.

The same way a kid is forced to mature ahead of time after experiencing a traumatic event, the pandemic shocked the online education market into adopting an over-accelerated growth.

The aftermath of such a situation is common sense:

• Schools and universities that went proactive and invested in e-learning technologies prior to the pandemic are either surviving or thriving (depending on the precociousness of their tech investment).
• Schools and universities that went reactive and didn't invest are heading toward permanent closure unless helped by government relief funds and/or donations.
• Companies offering videoconferencing and online chat services grew exponentially due to the sudden, and required use of their software ( Zoom alone welcomed 90,000 schools from 20 different countries as new users in 2020, and raised their daily meeting participants from 10 million in December 2019 to 300 million in April 2020).
• Learning practices are being redefined by acknowledging the impact Edtech (video, audio…) has on behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism.
• Finally, due to social distancing and the seclusion aspect the Covid pandemic has enforced on students globally; technologies such as AR and VR have seen a major boost in their pace of development toward mainstream adoption in the education sector.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, we as “Humans” are social creatures; social interactions have a big influence on the way we evolve and mature — even more so during our school and university years —. This gets me to approve of the fact that educational facilities need to have compulsory attendance, for the sake of forming relationships and promoting interactivity.

What I am saying is that students need to see and talk to each other, what I am not saying is that they need to be present physically.

I believe that if the traditional way requires students to meet in class, the modern and upgraded way will require students to put VR headsets on and meet their classmates virtually. In the meantime, videotelephony tools are here to help with the transition…

Published on April 19, 2021 on Medium