The Simple Architecture Of Real Schools
Let me just open by hypothesizing why schools are not teaching,
it is because they don't actually know how, and since everyone gets paid anyway, they see no reason to fix it.
Let us use, learning a photo editing program, as an example,
today schools use multiple choice tests to asses the knowledge of a subject.
Instead of evaluating the students by for example asking them to create a fake photo,
hide it among real photographs and let the class try to guess which is the fake one.
Schools use questions like, what is the purpose of image desaturation?
A) making it sharper, B) making it lighter, C) all of the above, D) we're pretending to teach to take a paycheck home.
I know that in a real image editing class, an actual program is used,
but the photo editing program we are using here, is an analogy for mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology.
It is meant to demonstrate fake lectures,
and matching ineffective tests, in serious subject.
But even in a real photo editing class, the teachers still end up failing the students,
because the real grade would have to be opening a successful photography business and making $100.
This could be signing up with Unsplash, and using the site to become a Droneographer or a wedding photographer,
see, just learning how to use a photo editing program is useless.
The class must begin with photography, center around image editing,
and passing all the students that now have a functional business.
Schools can't do this, because it would reveal them as ineffective,
so as long as we are OK, with them being already ineffective, we are wasting our time, and the time of all the children.
Oh and by the, your kid is not supposed work Fast Food, or Retail,
those are not jobs for the children that represent the Future of Human Kind.
Schools, actually could provide the students with 3 to 10 "side projects",
a side project is a miniature business, that makes about a $100 a month.
To return to our analogy for mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology,
these subjects are not being tested, the only thing that is tested here is the students ability to temporary memorize.
This is fraud, math is actually quite testable,
but since schools are not teaching, all the children would fail math on a real test.
The math nerds, are not a vote for things working out sometimes,
they are self taught, they learn about math, math history, and the underlying concepts on their own, they learn for real.
The lectures are ineffective, the tests only test memorization and lying,
and all the class really teaches is how to cram before a test, which works great for a factory job as well.
Imagine a factory, that would give its employees surprise college entry exams,
about every month on average - what would that reveal about the employees, would they all continue passing the surprise tests?
I would guess,
they would all fail with a low score.
That is because they only retain what they learned for a few days,
they aren't actually educated, they are memorizing.
Now, that I painted a certain picture for you,
and let you make your own conclusions, lets fix this up.
Unfortunately I have to mention every step that led me to this architecture,
and the first one is a little creepy, so lets just get it out of the way.
In 1985 Orson Scott Card introduced the idea of a game like intelligence test,
for Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, in his si-fi book Ender's Game.
When I read the book, I already suspected that creating a game like educational experience,
could be useful in real education.
About a decade back, one of the science popularized released a game that dealt with space,
and currently there is an a game entitled Kerbal Space Program that teachers Orbital Dynamics, this is by a different publisher.
About eight years ago I came across the concept of Gamemification, making serious things game like,
wikipedia describes it as:
"Gamemification strategic attempt to enhance systems, services, organisations and activities,
in order to create similar experiences to those experienced when playing games,
in order to motivate and engage users."
Let us pause here for a moment, and note that Kerbal Space Program like game,
is a good example of a real test of knowledge of Mathematics, Physics, and Orbital Dynamics.
The student fails an Orbital Dynamics lecture, if they are unable to put a simulated shuttle in earths orbit,
this is a real test of real knowledge.
The precise scenario the student will be presented will be random, it could be the sun's orbit,
geo stationary orbit, or get a ship nearing mars into the martian orbit.
There will be a series of tests and paid internships,
that ends in working for NASA or ESA, or some private company.
These organizations have a say in the tests that they require,
the school will be influenced by industry seeking talent, and not politicians seeking re-elections.
The student will see employment statistics,
they will be able to make an informed decision about this particular job market.
Not everyone likes space things,
space is a cold and dangerous place.
We all had music class at some point,
and many of us didn't realize that we could have a side job as a DJ, as a musician.
Music composition takes just a couple of days, if not hours,
when taught right.
The children can't be taught musical notation, they have to be taught how to use lmms,
teaching children musical notation is fraud, musical notation is for people who are ready to study existing music.
Kids just want to compose at first, and they don't actually know the full picture of what they want,
because their songs can make them money, just about all it takes is thinking of a song as six little songs ov varying complexity and instruments, they can upload that to bandcamp.com or similar.
There would need to exist a music label for students, so that their music can get on spotify and the radio,
I am sure there are many companies that would love to do that for free, passing on all the profits on students, if not one would be created for that purpose.
Of course in the music class of today,
we are taught nonsense, and pushed along to memorize for the final and put it all behind us, in preparations for poverty resulting from unforgivable student loans.
Finally, before I looked at schools, I realized that Audio Books can help prison inmates a great deal,
it is not possible to describe the importance of easy access to beautiful narrated books in prisons.
I would ask celebrities, to specifically create a prison version of a narration,
a separate narration from what is given to school students.
Some people aren't willing to read for high school kids,
but would be greatly honored, and in fact greatly appreciated, if they narrated great books for inmates.
This is so important,
history will not look kindly at mass incarceration and legal slavery, they will not look kindly at our ignorance and arrogance, and failure to prevent children from becoming criminals.
And here we arrive at an explanation of the very architecture,
of the new school.
There is no building, no rent, and no fraudulent moochers, or big fat white lice, not to mention spoiled lemons,
that pretend to teach children.
Parent's don't get to use school as a convenient baby sitter,
actually the stress of High School and College, exposes children to drugs, school is a pretty nasty baby sitter.
A tablet, large, free to replace, open source Linux Tablet similar to the PINETAB,
it presented to each student, there is a strong emphasis on socializing, and making friend in real life.
But not behind the brick wall of a class room (trigger warning),
On the tablet there will be a series of programs, similar to the applications on the OLPC XO,
but there will be one web application that will present a game like educational experience.
The students will still have stats, points or grades, this is somewhat kind of, similar to the Dark Souls Player Status,
but here we will see things related to education.
So passing and re-testing the Orbital Dynamics class,
will increase different stats, like math, physics, astrophysics.
The student while still in school, will be asked to re-play the challenges,
or games, that are used to refresh and refine their knowledge.
To mention Kerbal Space Program again,
students only need to learn how to get into the orbit once, the test are only there to help retain knowledge.
This is a real school and a real education,
that is architected in such a way that the students end up getting contracts for well paying jobs, when their stats are high enough to qualify.
This is Real Education,
and because the student chooses their own path, it also becomes really fun and respectful of their existing predispositions.
The kids that get stuck with making music,
are my favorite example.
Each school district will have a community of music makers,
who don't want to get a job, because they already make a lot of money.
The orbital dynamics class example I give here, requires a little bit more explanation,
not all students that end up in the aerospace industry will begin with love for NASA.
Orbital Dynamics, is needed for several things, Generative Art Classes, Animation Classes, Computer Game Classes,
whatever requires a decent knowledge of Netwon's calculus.
So it is not just this Orbital Dynamics class,
that pops up in a class list on their tablet.
It is used by many courses,
and what makes a course outstanding, is that it helps the student with making money.
Due to money being misunderstood,
the world is cutting off the oxygen to its collective brain.
The classes presented to the students have to help the out of poverty,
Generative Art is about selling large beautiful canvas, with intricate high resolution computer art.
Some of those graphics, will be created by trails of objects that use Newton's Calculus,
animation classes lead to a job in graphic arts, providing videos for advertising purposes, or as background to long winded poetry.
And computer game classes, help the students sell apps, and games,
here lmms is a good example, it helps a person compose in less than an hour, and there are game engines that won't require years of programming.
Level design can be a big subject,
but a lot of players are a lot better at level design than they assume.
The tools that are used for building the levels,
are often part of the game, it just makes sense to be within the walls of the game to make the levels more intricate.
Some programming will be required, and that is the area that would call for Orbital Dynamics and Calculus,
in a first person shooter the math would be related to animations, in a game like asteroids larger asteroids would attract the smaller ones with the force of gravity.
Graduation is about successfully learning something that results in pushing away poverty,
in a perfect world education would be more pure, but in a world that misunderstood how to use money, money making must be taught in school.
Jut to repeat my opening remarks,
schools shy away from real results and noble aims, because they don't know how to educate, they are a place where adults go to make money under the protection of a union and an ineffective cirricula.
Real school is a much more personal experience,
and the access point is a computer tablet with Open Source software, where companies can't trick students into paying for what should be free.
The removal of stress that students experience when they realize they are being forced to pretend to learn by memorization or fail the class,
will already make a big difference.
Letting the students choose their own path,
and creating paths that help students become financially independent, will take care of the rest.