School and education

[mattcantstop]

• Current paradigm tries to educate kids about topics they do not care about, package those kids and all the learnings up, and then send them off into the world.
• But the real thing we want is for people to be curious, and to be problem solvers, and learning things you don't yet care about is a surefire way to ensure that people will not retain that information.
• Example: I wanted to get better at understanding how payments are calculated for an app I was building. I had taken math courses, but I cannot tell you any functions because when I was learning them I didn't see any application for them. So they went in my brain temporarily, and then out. When I wanted to learn to solve a specific problem I consumed many videos about how these payments are calculated, I truly learned the subject matter, and created the app with that functionality.
• We should give kids a foundation of knowledge, but then educate them as the needs arise for a specific thing they are trying to accomplish. We should shorten formal schooling and enable kids to jump into topics that interest them.
• I have four kids. Right now one is creating an Etsy shop. Another is trying to start a bicycle repair shop. They are learning a lot of topics as they investigate these things, and they are incredibly motivated in these pursuits. But they hate school.