One of my favourite pieces of work on the theory behind happiness is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The big ticket issues in the world are slowly being ticked off. The Industrial Revolution and the massive reduction in violence (amongst other causes) have led to an exponential reduction in poverty. What excites me is the top three parts. The Industrial Revolution and Capitalism showed the advantages of specialisation. Specialising helped us collectively achieve much more than we could alone. The next step though is recognising where our real strength lies.
In order to make the massive progress we have made and are making, we had to put aside aspiring to some of the pudding of self-actualisation. You can't worry much about creativity when you are cold, hungry, sick, or scared. At some stage, you do get to deal with first world problems. When it comes to the information age, when computers can specialise and do repetitive tasks far better than us - we have to shift towards the things computers can't do. To work with computers to achieve more than we or they can do. Education was designed for the Industrial Age. We chose a profession and trained for it.
I think the next couple of decades are going to be very exciting for education. We don't know what the world is going to look like, and we are going to need to be more flexible. We have a blank canvas to think about how to design education for the top of the triangle. We know how to make stuff efficiently and we are getting better. The biggest problems remaining before we get to the pudding aren't rational. Our problems where a computer would look at us with confusion. The Middle East seems like this sort of problem to me. We aren't going to be able to just think our way out of it. We need to be creative.
In order to make the massive progress we have made and are making, we had to put aside aspiring to some of the pudding of self-actualisation. You can't worry much about creativity when you are cold, hungry, sick, or scared. At some stage, you do get to deal with first world problems. When it comes to the information age, when computers can specialise and do repetitive tasks far better than us - we have to shift towards the things computers can't do. To work with computers to achieve more than we or they can do. Education was designed for the Industrial Age. We chose a profession and trained for it.
I think the next couple of decades are going to be very exciting for education. We don't know what the world is going to look like, and we are going to need to be more flexible. We have a blank canvas to think about how to design education for the top of the triangle. We know how to make stuff efficiently and we are getting better. The biggest problems remaining before we get to the pudding aren't rational. Our problems where a computer would look at us with confusion. The Middle East seems like this sort of problem to me. We aren't going to be able to just think our way out of it. We need to be creative.
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