Is Wikipedia the Best We’ve Got?
1. Knowing the way we learn has become more important. We no longer live in a world where we would spend more time trying to acquire the information (we, exceedingly, no longer need to go to expensive schools, be born in or travel to a certain (social) place etc.) then we take to understand it (that is, work ourselves through the material).
2. When i went to grade school, the way people learn wasn’t discussed. The assumption was – we give you access to the information, you will deal with it. But now, with internet, we all have access to the information. So the question should be – how do we efficiently present it, making the best use of the medium (this now being a computer with ever-advancing software)
3. We tend to still think in terms of traditional media – we were thought what a pencil can do; but few know how to actually use the advanced tools a computer brings. Sometimes we use the ‘fake’ markers, brushes, animation. But few can actually present something well in an interactive form – something peculiar to the medium.
It is like we did not develop the ‘fine motor skills’ to use the computer. We fiddle with software like young kids do with pencils, we are unsure what to do with the new tools. We write text, we stuff the gadgets in things resembling pencil cases. We look at whether their cover glitters or doesn’t, or looks like it has been blessed by the latest (now geeky) celebrity. We show our friends how our tools – computers, smartphones, look on the outside, never having a real clue about what they do. It is a good thing that the tool is similar enough to our old one that we do not try to eat it, like small children would try to do! Often we never realize that the new functionality we think it has, was really possible in our old one too. We buy them, ‘sharpen’ them, lug them around in bags for awhile, and throw them away when our friends no longer seem impressed by them.
This time, there will be no grown up teacher telling us what to do, and no parent making sure we attend and listen – but still we should all take some time and learn to use the tools we got as best as we can. The computer will always be a bad pencil. We should learn to use it as its own tool, not as an emulator.
4. How do i present what i know if i don’t know how people learn? The science is getting there, but i have this impression that this issue is most often showed off as of inferior importance, mostly of the ‘grade school’ assumption that is still made by the majority of people.
5. Literacy of today is not the literacy of yesterday. A program has substituted the word. We cannot read if we cannot use software, nor can we really write if we cannot program. Today’s new illiterate are tolerated, but this is only so because they are the majority. It is something we, as people and as a society, will have to overcome. How will we teach the use of the new medium? How long will we postpone and reserve it for the ‘blessed’? I wonder, how long the majority will have to ‘work in the fields’, to gain the time (as money is no longer an issue much) for an education?
Leaders, Supply, Demand
It is unlikely that you should ever become rich without opening at least some resemblance of your own company at one time or or another.
Working for someone will nearly always mean you will do tasks the other person does not think worthy of his time to do, and as such needing to pay the worker less then what the employer gets payed.
No matter how ridiculous and low-education the work of what the person above you does, in our world the supply (employers) are not as many as those who want to be employed by them (demand); thus, the work of the employer will most often be worth more as the work of the worker.
–
When a government takes a lot, or makes a lot of demands on employers (most of rich people are actually in the category) – it is even less likely that the average, low-wage person should start their own company. This is because loosing money when you don’t have it is much worse then loosing the money you don’t mind that much about. Thus at the same risk of succession of a new enterprise, the more that is taken from the rich man, the more likely it is to keep the poor man in his situation.
Less employers means less job options for the employed, making for a vicious cycle of poverty for many people, forcing people to work and not be able to go to another place should the situation become adverse. Thus, high taxes are actually a load put on the worker to carry, regardless on who is taxed on paper.
Sometimes, employers will pay a good amount of money to the worker. This is by no means impossible. But it will often happen, that something will go wrong, and a person in the company will be fired; and you should keep a job you like, but you should also keep this understanding in mind.
Occasionally, with such a thing happening, the employer becomes the enemy. “All they are after is money” is often heard, behind it a person devastated by what just happened.
Personally, i have had a hard time understanding this – would you base your livelihood on a job that is most likely to take money from you, instead of earning you money to buy the groceries? Would you work if you knew you would be payed less than you thought your time deserved? The absolute amount doesn’t matter. Either it feels enough or it doesn’t.
The employers thinking is the same.
Sheep may put blame about their situation on the shepherd. You are men (or women), you have the power to be both the leader of the led.
–
Partly, i blame today’s lame education systems. Not following is punished since childhood. By the amount of children that break the rules, you may see that leadership is actually as natural to a man as is being a follower. In a world of physical labor, you want the person to follow the leader (teacher); and let the most persistent people (who still refuse to follow) lead in the future. This would be in a world that requires a lot of work, and little thinking.
The problem is, in this system, the amount of people not wanting to follow is considered too high to such a degree, that it is often even considered acceptable to ridicule the person into submission, even if it means the person will completely give up any productivity because of it – possibly ending in drugs, or even suicide. The absurdity of this is in that in the real world, there is actually a lack of people who are willing to lead and risk for a better future.
It should be understood that most education systems still in use in the world today, are designed to produce large amounts of workers and a small percentage of leaders. The sad thing is, many people take this as the ultimate reality – some people are smart, others work for them. This is ludicrous.
Just looking at the curriculum and compare it to what sells in the real world. The education you got in elementary or high school is random and often worthless, so do not base the value of yourself as a person on it.
In the real world, everyone may open up their own enterprise. How good you were in school is completely independent of that (apart of the perception of people that was just described).
zacione 