The New School; Or, Building The First Imperfect School That Is Worthy Of All The Future Generations
What if the new school format is right in front of us,
we don't need tests that are secure and vicious, because we are not forcing anything.
We are simply creating a new school full of knowledge,
guidance on the left pane, the machine that must be manipulated in the right pane.
And all the way down on the bottom of all instructions,
a next button disabled until the machine is correctly manipulated.
There is no need for security, enabling that button by force,
would prevent the student from progressing in the panes that follow.
And listen to this, the student is not timed, there is no graduation,
there are no grades, there is no punishment.
Students are encouraged to gather at libraries,
where they can be treated with respect.
Some of the tutorials will result in products that can make money,
it can be as simple as building a new website theme.
Where the student would pay attention to color, clip art,
documentation, new components, white-space and integrity of the design.
Or as challenging as creating new phone applications,
that do useful and interesting things while protecting privacy for example.
There is no graduation, there is no diploma,
but there is a path they have traveled through this tree of knowledge.
It is not necessarily true that longest or most branching paths are best,
student activity it self is a good indicator of health and success.
I want students to be paid for grades,
and to be paid for each hour of instruction about five times the minimum wage.
But I think that is something Humanity will be ready for in,
900 years - today Humanity is too far behind.
Until then, we have to help the students to learn,
how to create products for sale.
That will be the reward that this school offers,
not only do they sell a products while taking these courses.
But they of course gain the ability,
to create non-tutorialized products.
The question here is how unique are these products,
they are perfectly unique.
The school marketplace has a posting board,
where customers can request program components.
The component breakdown ensures that the poster,
defines a well thought out request.
Imagine that they can post a bounty between $100 and $1,000 dollars,
here they will want their component to fit that budget.
They will also be tasked with creating a unit test,
that tests if their component works as requested.
Now imagine that eleven students apply to fulfill that request,
as part of their education.
When the due date is reached,
the test will reject those entries that fail the test.
The students can see the failing tests as they program,
so for a well defined request it will be rare to fail.
Lets assume all eleven students pass the automated unit test,
now the original poster will have to pick the best work.
All eleven students receive the experience, the education, and portfolio entry,
but the one winner gets the big monetary payout.
They will take home, $900.00 dollars 90% percent of what the poster will pay,
the other 10% percent goes to the other students as a symbolic reward.
There maybe a reasonable fee for making that post,
which will go to the school it self, but the school is an Open Company that publishes where the money goes, and where all the other money comes from.
They each receive $10 dollars, and proceeded to make fun of the whole ordeal,
and greatly though in good spirits complain; how terribly unfair this school is.
There is always that one student that is not happy her work didn't win,
and I agree that it is extremely ------------- unfair, and that she should be enraged.
Now what you don't realize, is that this imaginary young lady,
holds the keys to the upgraded version of this school.
Her magnificent rage will not go to waste,
she will make it better.
All we need to do, is to build this first imperfect and unfair version,
and she'll take it from there.
The question that we are left here with,
can students learn mathematics, physics, chemistry and art from this school?
I think the answer is yes,
so as long as the right hand pane is a powerful interactive application.
And the creators of these applications,
will be other students.
I think these applications represent contributions to humanity,
as great as landing a human on the moon.
Their names will be proudly,
attached to the applications they help to create and update.
I will close with an example of learning about music this way,
they are almost perfect examples of what this school would feel like.
The first and richest of the two is Learning Music at Ableton,
and the second more technical is Learning Synths, also at Ableton.
3Blue1Brown Educational Chanel shows the power of visualization,
in regard to mathematics, however there is a subtle problem here.
Because approaching mathematics with the standard language pf mathematics,
creates an extra translation step, at least at first.
Initially mathematical notation must be converted to a programming language,
where it is much more useful.
This will grant the students the power to create interactive visualizations,
on par with 3Blue1Brown.
An advanced class, will present the students with Blender Tutorials here,
they will be able to upload their geometry and sell it in the school marketplace.
I think the most valuable asset for sale are tutorial videos,
and live support, or tutoring.
There is enough here to help students out of poverty,
may this school be always be open, and always free.