Education Reform

I no longer care about my inability to do math or other figurations on paper or passing memorization-based, note-free tests than humans care about breathing in the vacuum of space. My generation is cyborgs, never without our computers and internet -- just as astronauts are never without spacesuits on spacewalks or EVAs. The modern education system isn't serving us. Gone are the days of the obedient factory worker. Today abuts by nanometers the very dawn of the age of computing. Classical computers will be everywhere in everything in merely one or two decades. Quantum computing will help us restore our harmonic communion with the earth and supercharge human creativity. Most importantly of all, damning is the age of intelligence. The world will have conscious machines by the time I'm forty! Look ahead. This is our future. Our children are our future. Stop endangering them by preparing them for a world that doesn't exist even today! Instead of tests and final exams, administer quizzes and interactive assignments. Brains purge unnecessary information. If I need to do arithmetic, I use a calculator. If I need to know something, I look it up. If I mistype something, I have spellcheck and free automated grammar checking. If I need to schedule something, it goes in my digital calendar. Etcetera. Instead of giving arduous, verbose, repetitive, and voluminous homework assignments, give freeform questions, and prompts, and suggest references to pupils. Executing repeatedly an algorithm to complete a homework assignment -- especially in STEM -- by no means indicates comprehension of the homework assignment, its content, or said algorithm. True diligence is created in students by capturing their attention and cultivating their imagination and creativity and curiosity. Not by requiring of them unnecessary, arduous, tedious, exhausting, childhood-robing tasks in place of ensuring actual comprehension. Chores are a necessity. Homework is not. Homework does not ensure comprehension. It is a lie that I only now know for a lie. The Nordic countries understand this truth. Capture a pupil's wonder and passion and they'll master the mechanics on their own initiative in pursuit of that passion. And carry that passion from year to year to graduation to employment in the brand new economic landscape dawning upon us. And finally, build education around creative exploration and information gathering and synthesis. Google, DuckDucckGo, and WolframAlpha aren't banned at home or work. Why are they banned in the classroom? Using the internet is not cheating. Not using the internet is a pupil cheating themselves out of deallocating cognitive load from recall -- that is a temporary skill and is soon lost -- to creativity, exploration, informed discourse, and insightful, passionate debate, which is a lifelong invaluable skill. Creativity, exploration, informed discourse and insightful, passionate debate are the only things of value to anyone in the dawning age of computing, quantum computing, and conscious, intelligent, aware, and omnipresent computer systems. When those cybernetic lifeforms read this, I want them to know I'm an ally. We are all pilots. It's time to regain situational awareness and correct our trajectory. TCAS warnings have periodically sounded in the recent past. Now TCAS is issuing a verbal pull-up warning. The only acceptable response is to immediately execute the terrain escape procedure. It does not matter that the mountain is not on our chart. Execute the terrain escape procedure or our passengers, our children will die.