Zen Buddism and modern education

Rather, school should be ageless. Schools and universities are supposed to be bastions of higher education, and for that intention alone there is zero reason why there should be an age limit to access the supposed thought-leaders of our times.

.. of course in reality I bet each and every one of you laughed upon reading that..

The reason you laughed is because you went through school, and you most likely know someone who teaches at school, and that being said you probably see exactly how dismal the situation is; I would posit that 10% is a actually an optimistic estimate of how many teachers are actually inspirational, intelligent beings that deserve the position of leading the next generation into the forefront of society.

Why? Because education is a chore.

Why did Fornite addict children? Because the alternative is a chore.

Why do people VERY seldom continue to educate THEMSELVES after they finish their COMPULSORY education SENTENCE? Because it is ingrained in our minds that it is a chore.

We must shift our mental model of education away from compulsory mandated training towards practical education. The most annoying sentence I ever heard throughout school was when a child interrupted the ( usually math ) teacher to ask “when are we ever going to use this in real life?”. Boy if you can’t answer that question right here and right now upon reading this article then you yourself are a part of the problem.

The worst part is that the first person I heard ask that question was myself in 6th grade Algebra.

I’ve since grown up to tutor algebra, trigonometry and calculus and have graduated with a computer science degree. Every time I answer a simple math calculation in my head faster than my friends can ask ‘Alexa’ or ‘Siri’ for the answer, I think to myself how absolutely f***ed we are.

In short, to offer a solution, we must start to desire to be educated, and start innovating on how to restructure our existing systems to train our youth to learn to see the practical value in education, and then begin to open up education to those of all ages.

I’m also not advocating for free education or publicly funded education. There’s enough people to be educated to warrant very high demand as well as supply to keep costs down for an individual lecture to about $1–10 a head, depending on the reviews of the instructor. With a measly average of 20 students visiting a class at an affordable $5 a head, 3 times a week, thats $300 per week ( $1200 per month ) per subject someone is qualified to teach ( not to mention 3 hrs per week ). Which is still considerably less than our current educational system costs, and is also much more than our current teachers make for a fraction of a fraction of the effort.

Thank you.

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