The Overwhelming Influx of Superfluous Information

[IH8PunkRok]

Today, there is a massive amount of information in the world. So much so that (at least in the US) people spend almost a third of their lives learning. We start school at 4 or 5 and stay in until at least 18 (longer if you want a job and have no experience and longer still if you want a good job). The real issue though lies not in how long we are in school now, but how long the new generations will be learning.

With each generation all the common knowledge has to be taught by the previous generations. With each generation more knowledge is gained and therefore takes longer to teach. There will be a point (arguably we have reached said point) where you can be in school your entire life and still not be completely learned.

This is a problem and threatens our advancement as a people.

Look at how we program computers for example. When someone is writing a program they will not code all the basic things that many many programs share to run. Instead those previously created programs are loaded into the new program. Without this even the most simple programs would be millions of lines of code and would take so long to develop that no one would do it. (Imagine working for 5 years to create the most simple calculator)

Essentially our education system is doing just that, rewriting the old programs for many years before being able to write new ones.

We need to develop a way to load knowledge so that the generations after us can spend their short time adding to the massive pile of knowledge, instead of climbing their way to the top.

The internet is a very rough start, but it is a start. A database of knowledge. When my parents were my age and you asked them to convert sq cm to sq inches they probably wouldn't know how to do it. If you ask me I also don't know how to do it, but because of that database i can tell you that 120 sq cm is 18.6000372 sq in. That knowledge also took a matter of seconds to produce. To learn that in a typical school setting would probably take a class period of introduction to area, how to calculate area, and conversion from metric to standard and then some practice problems and homework. Then on top of that calculating that manually to the level of accuracy I just did (in seconds) would take a few minutes. In other words slow, and even worse I am sure that this was covered in my education, but I do not remember how to do it. Information retention is low without vigorous rehearsal and with the mass of information available one cannot hope to remember any significant number of it.

We need to embrace this wealth of stored knowledge. We need to cease wasting the lives of the youth teaching the things we have all known so well for so long. That being said, we cannot rely on something as feeble as the internet to do so. There needs to be a way to 'load' the basics of human knowledge into our brains.

Is this possible? Is it reasonable? Discuss

[hdorre]

Im truly interested to see where this thread leads to. Im really curious.

[SnowDrifter]

IMO the issue with our schooling system is that it's so segmented. Study a subject, test, move on and never use it again. I can't think of how many times I've forgotten something I learned in a class, only to look it up on a search engine later.

That being said, I don't think it's unreasonable to attend basic schooling through high school until you are 18. Then move onto College where you take specialty classes that are pertinent to your career choice. I don't know of many 14/15/16 year olds that know what they want to do with their life.

If it were up to me, I'd say middle/high schools should start to go after broader subjects like reasoning (does that make sense?) vs. being so focused on book smarts. Also need stuff that's applicable to real world, like how to do taxes, financial management, general life skills. Would be nice if we got the typical college pre-reqs out in high school too. You know what I mean? Yes, there is a minimum level of schooling that I think needs to happen, but it doesn't make sense to try and cover such a broad range of subjects in depth

[Krakin]

I for one live in a pretty sheltered environment, besides the internet, I live with a pretty strong southern baptist family that has a vast knowledge of information. The problem is that they have some of the hardest times trying to rely this knowledge onto me; now this doesn't mean that they don't fully understand the concept, despite the quote from Albert Einstein "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." I can then remember the topics that they were trying to explain to me, go to the amazing google, and then try to find a place or someone that can get me to understand the concept.

I think of the internet not as just a database, but as a hub for social interaction, experience, and much much more that I would not have been able to obtain living my life as grandparents would have at my age. I can get on to this site and look at peoples' build logs to learn from their experiences, YouTube to watch professors, teachers, and specialists explain in great detail anything I could think of.

The internet in itself, while having its obvious attributes taken for granted by some, is a blessing in its self for the transfer of knowledge much faster than in the form of traditional schooling.

[Krakin]

To build off of Snow's comment, I truly love the way in which Project Lead the Way is taking a part in schools, yes there is a bunch of book work, but for me -engineering courses- I actually get to apply the knowledge I have learned, either that week or the week before.

With out this organization I would be no where near as interested in engineering, specifically mechanical and electrical, as I am now.

But the book courses are still extremely vital to education, my AP Chemistry course thought me a new way to look at science, and how everything interacts with each other. Then when I got to the complex projects in my engineering, I had the thought process to be able to "put together" the puzzles laid out in front of me.

Edit: To expand on Project Lead the Way for those whom do not know of it, it is a multi-year class that starts, now, in the middle/junior-high schools, and extends into high school. You are not just learning about a huge subject such as engineering, or medical fields in a single year, many people will be in the classes for 3-4 years or more.

[SnowDrifter]

And IMO the whole no child left behind thing is BS. Limiting everyone to the slowest speed isn't fair.

Fast/normal/slow classes would be fine with me. Everyone would get what they need out of the class at a rate that is comfortable to both themselves and their classmates. I'd always blow up whenever there was a group project and I got paired with the back-row-sleepers who don't do and don't care. Wouldn't happen with divided classes.

Also IMO, think about our teachers and what they get paid. There is a part of people who teach because they like to teach. But also consider this, of you are a smart software engineer or something, would you rather take a 30k/yr job teaching at a high school or 150k/yr working at a software company?

[IH8PunkRok]

That being said, I don't think it's unreasonable to attend basic schooling through high school until you are 18. Then move onto College where you take specialty classes that are pertinent to your career choice. I don't know of many 14/15/16 year olds that know what they want to do with their life.

I want to focus on this. Given that knowledge is ever expanding, the definition of "basic" is ever changing. When my parents were in high school computers and the internet were not really a thing they had to worry about. Calculus was not really even and option. Add 30 years of history and all of a sudden I have to work a lot harder to get the "basics" of knowledge.

There will be a point where you can go to school for 40 years and still not be done learning the "basics"

That is what I want to see fixed. A world where children a mere 10 years old know that the derivative of 2x^3 is 6x^2 and not just 12x12=144.

The problem though is that humans are not getting better at learning. How can we overcome this?

[Krakin]

I can see that further expansion of knowledge will have its limits in traditional schools/colleges/universities, I also see the much more specialized knowledge being taught, but not limited to, at the place of work that the said skill becomes much more relevant. One example of this being used is when my brother-in-law was becoming an operator at the Louisiana Nuclear Power Plant, he spent, IIRC, 3 years or more learning every little tiny detail of every single object that is used inside of their plant. One day when I was at their house, he came home and showed me his binder full of pages to study, the binder must have been at a minimum of 6 inches tall. I can't remember what was in it, but he said it wasn't the only one he has, and that he has to know what to do if any one of the objects in the book fails, or malfunctions.

I see this becoming a large part of the specialized skills, you get hired, the corporation now pays you to catch up your knowledge with the man you will be replacing, and then expect you to learn more than he did, while performing better at your job.

[Azagtoth502]

[SnowDrifter]

When I say basic, I mean the foundational building blocks of knowledge that you need in order to learn more. This will change over time, things will get added and things will get dropped. I mean.... We don't teach how to use slide rules any more. Instead we teach how to use calculators. And I'm sure 30 years from now, things will be different still.

Example: In math, you need to know and be familiar with a base 10 numeric system, order of operations, how to work with addition/subtraction/division/multiplication/exponents/roots/etc. If we become a space race and needing to know how to calculate gravity at a given distance, wind resistance, friction and surface heat, orbital paths, etc becomes "basic" then so be it