This is an analysis of the current education system. The information in this editorial relates to education systems in the Middle East and the West. The bulk of the analysis presented is based on multiple personal interviews I have conducted over the past few years and direct observation over the past six as a product of this system.
Background
The current system of education around the world is outdated. Fact of the matter is, landline phones disappeared for a reason: wireless communication. Similarly, the methods we have for education are the equivalent of landline phones, doomed to either hold us back, or become obsolete when a new wave of education takes the world by storm. The technological revolution brought by programming and the internet has completely changed the way the world operates.
Historically, we observe two shifts in the methods of education. The first method of education that we know of is mentorship. Impractical for the masses, but highly effective for individuals, this method of education then evolved into schools and universities. As this form of education evolved, it gained more structure, giving the most effective form of education for the zeitgeist. To this day, top universities continue to be highly successful in creating technological innovations that lead the world towards the next step in each respective field.
In comes the Industrial Revolution, the game changes. Create, replicate, and optimize becomes the most effective way to push the world forward. As a result, humans structure education around factories and companies, creating a one-size-fits-all system of education and work that does marvels for the industries in the 20th century.
Next comes the technological revolution, the game changes again. The system however, does not. As a result, we see large numbers of bright young men and women who, to the naked eye, seem lazy and entitled. The first victim of these new outputs are corporations, who now have to figure out a way to utilize these unmotivated, distracted individuals and make them productive. "For some reason, they do not have the same work ethic we did. We were not like this when we were their age," is a statement I have heard from multiple senior level managers. What is the underlying reason behind this effect and whose fault is it? This generation has been trained for a system and a way of life that is now obsolete. The world changed too much too quickly during the internet revolution, it fundamentally changed the driving forces of the younger generation. And what got hurt the most during this change? The learning and education system.
Analysis
Most students who underperform, underperform due to three main reasons:
1) The student does not care.
2) The student does not believe they can learn the subject as well as others.
3) The student does not know how to learn.
Substitute the word student with employee, and you now see the plight of many of today's managers and CEOs.
I remember a lesson we were taught in school, about how flexible a new tree sprout is. If the sprout is not bound to a stick, it will not grow straight, and it will be extremely difficult to achieve its proper form when it matures. It is ironic, I believe, that the ones who have the power to point the tree sprouts in the right direction, end up tying the sticks to face all the wrong directions. Our teachers, through no fault of their own, raised us with a result-based system that had structure in everything except the two quintessential aspects of any educational institution: learning and motivation.
There is no learning without motivation
So what is learning how to learn? Learning how to learn is teaching all students multiple tools and techniques developed specifically to expedite and instill the information being absorbed by the student. Education is driven by industry. The cookie cutter, one fits all approach was perfect for the growth of the industrial revolution and late 20th century industries. However, it would be naïve to assume that the same system would work post the information revolution that we are living in today. You cannot kick a ball when the wind is blowing east, then expect it to produce the same result when the wind blows west. The internet revolution is the wind blowing west.
What now?
Around 96 percent of all fortune 500 companies lost market share in the past year. Why? They approached 2017 with a 2005 plan of action. Over the past 15 years a sprout of new learning has taken over the modern industry in the west. Multi-million dollar companies are now learning that in order to make the post baby-boomer generation productive, they must invest in the person in addition to the person's finances.
This has come hand-in-hand with expedited personal growth and learning, pioneered by the likes of the following: Tony Robbins, Simon Sinek, Jim Kwik, Tom Bilyeu, Timothy Ferris, Gary Vaynerchuck, and countless others. These individuals, through research and trial, invented methods of teaching and learning that can literally compress six to 10 months of standard education into less than a week, without exaggeration. Through the understanding and use of practical psychology and scientific research, they are now creating the bedrock of the 'millennial' citizen/worker. The American government education system (for higher education) is slowly catching on, but at a painstakingly slow pace. American industries are slowly being revolutionized as they realize that these methods are more effective to produce more wealth, financial and educational.
In regards to Kuwait
Returning to our current education system, I must be fair and state that we do know of some methods that work better than others for teaching. For example, we know that given a small enough group, projects teach better than exams.
If you ask students whether they would prefer a project over an exam, they will always choose a project given that the material has been taught well. Otherwise, students will choose an exam because it is easier to cheat. Cheating is a symptom, not a disease. Students prefer projects over written exams because they are a merit based challenge, not a memory based one. Stress in our current exam weeks is a result of merit based tests for memory based subjects, or vice-versa.
If you are not convinced, try teaching a class of young boys or young girls about soccer using a whiteboard inside a classroom, and then test them without allowing them to play the game. And yet, in our current school system in Kuwait, we are expected to learn and appreciate Arabic poetry without being instructed to create our own?
This disconnect creates a disease in the system. A symptom of this disease is the tutoring epidemic we see every finals period. Kuwaiti students who had months to learn the subject hire a tutor a week or two before the exam to learn the entire course material in that short time period. Surprisingly, or maybe rather unsurprisingly, they are able to do it. What does it mean when four months of instructing is compressed into two weeks?
This indicates an immense issue with motivation, which points toward instructors/teachers who are untrained in motivating their students to learn, or even worse, are unmotivated themselves. I personally know of many students, some of which are close friends, who do not pay attention in class because they know that during the year they can hire a tutor that will explain to them a week's worth of material in one hour!
Why does this work? The reason lies within understanding the student and the teacher:
1) Motivation: the student is afraid of failure and is motivated to learn. They start caring. The teacher is motivated by the quick cash and reputation, they start caring. A good reputation means more money.
2) Belief they can learn: the student deludes him or herself into thinking that the tutor is the savior, because the tutor was able to "save" my friend "Najla" or "Aziz" from failing. And Najla and Aziz "were both able to do well on the exam, therefore I must be able to do well on the exam".
But what about the students who find a tutor, yet still fail? This brings me to point #3: they do not know how to learn.
I spent my first year in college taking foundational engineering subjects. My best friend Ibrahim and I would spend one hour studying for a calculus class, which took three hours for others to do. We all got the same grades, approximately. Why? Because, in the case of mathematics, Ibrahim and I had figured out by ourselves which tools to use to get the most effective outcome with the shortest amount of time, namely, ignoring the professor during class and using that time to watch a 10 minute video on how to solve exactly what it took the professor two days to explain. Those who paid attention in class had a harder time studying, because the professor was inefficient, and the book mediocre. They did not know they could find great examples online, or even worse, they knew, but wholeheartedly believed that tutoring was their savior (from their habits in Kuwait) that they opted for tutoring all throughout college.
So what is the solution? From my experience as a new-er generation student -who is currently ignoring most of his master's degree professor's lecture- that the solution is twofold: top-down and bottom up.
Top down: a complete restructuring of the educational syllabi of the subjects taught in school, with a focus on practical and applied methods, coupled with the important theories that they are based on. This restructuring must be created by only the best in the world in their respective fields. To clarify, I do not state this as a flowery solution. I mean it, through and through. The people in charge of the curriculums must consult the best educators in the world find the best and most effective methods, and not waste the energy of students and teachers in non-effective endeavors. The advantage of consulting the best in the world is the ability to utilize their foresight to build a dynamic system.
Bottom-up: a complete training program for instructors (in addition to the current system) focused solely on using practical psychology, neurolinguistics programming, and memory optimizing methods. Teach the teachers how to learn, teach them how to recognize what is missing using proven scientific methods that are universal to every culture and ethnicity, teach them how to convince students who are convinced that they cannot learn this subject that they are wrong. Again, this is not flower petal talk, these methods exist and are being employed by new-age US corporations and entertainers. If you think back to any instructor you admire, you will notice three traits that made him or her that way: credibility, certainty, and mastery. These traits can be instilled in our teachers, but they must be trained by the best or it will not work. To ensure a positive reaction from teachers, an increase in pay must be in order, coupled with more difficult acceptance requirements for those who seek a teaching profession. There is no doubt that the current benefits and easier application requirements (compared to STEM majors) has allowed many unqualified individuals into the educational system.
So where is the education system now? Government schools teach mathematics using Indian numerals, yet Kuwait university teaches mathematics in Arabic numerals. We have work to do.
Next article, effective vs non effective teachers: motivation, credibility, and certainty.
By Salman Al-Mutawa