Revisiting Education

Most people think of  Elon Musk as a weird but a genius and a super creative guy. I love him more for his creativity and innovativeness. From creating PayPal to Tesla and now Space X.
Before I continue let me say this that Elon Musk has created his own school to educate his own children.
Here is a background to why he has decided to do that.  Our education system is built on a model that divides knowledge into different subjects for us to specialise in - math, science, history, economics, English and many more.
We are told from an early age in kindergarten that these subjects are the best to learn to help us get a good steady income and a successful career path in the future.

These days,  we have even gone further to break down these subjects into other sub subjects. For example, in the field of economics,  you can find microeconomics (a branch of  economics that explains the decision making process of people and their behaviour on why they buy things) and

macroeconomics (a branch of economics that explains the impact of general business cycles,  the economy and the financial system, and how they all come together to affect our everyday lives).
 
Looks a bit confusing and frustrating for you to understand first time right??
  Well, don't worry because I get confused too about all these terms and academic "English" sometimes. Trust me.

One of my other favourite mentors, Michael Simmons calls these little academic separations as Reductionism.

Reductionism means breaking a bigger unit of something into several  smaller units.
Early educationists and the wealthy people in the 1900's  like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan, The Rothschild Family, Thomas Edison etc.. brought about Reductionism in education  during the first industrial revolution age.

Those were the the times  machines began replacing the natural ways we used to work with our hands. So for example,  it meant that when a machine like the combined harvester was invented  and introduced in the field of Agriculture,  all those millions or thousands of people who used to work on large farmlands harvesting large amounts of rice or maize had to be laid off and be out of work.
Why??? Because the combined harvester has arrived.
  It can harvest all the rice or maize on the farm  in a day and even faster than all those thousands of people used to do.
 
So to understand and relate to our new-found machine friend better, subjects like mathematics and science were financed and introduced in our schools and the global education system  by these wealthy people who owned and could also afford these machines.
  So it can help train school children and the next generation how to work better and be more productive.
It's been about a 100 years since the first industrial (machine) age came. And yet in this modern 21st century world,  still prioritise the machine related subjects like science and mathematics, engineering and economics and all its related professions as the go-ahead successful subjects to study for a better life.

So back to Elon Musk, why is he important to this discussion of modern education and its innovative Idea and training.
He believes reductionist education which was practiced (even we still practice them today) in the first industrial revolution or the machine age only helps students and workers    trained in such way to become "bookish" students and workers who rely heavily on always learning from books to solve a problem we  face  in real life.

Take for example,  someone who has been educated as a mechanical or automobile engineer relies on past and present engineering books others have written extensively on car manufacturing to learn to produce another car or improve on it.

We over here in Ghana call it "booklong" (meaning too much knowledge of books).  He believes  that first of all, education should be practical and the knowledge should be experienced in the form of  transferable knowledge instead of a consumed - into the brain kind of knowledge.

In other words, he believes in learning by applying to understand rather than learning or studying the knowledge for just learning sake. Without application, he believes what we  learn is useless basically.

He says;
" It is very important to teach  the problem, not to the tools. Let's say for example, you are trying to teach people how engines work.
The traditional approach was like we are going to teach you about screwdrivers and wrenches first. So we will have courses and programs on wrenches and screwdrivers for students to study.
That's going to be very difficult for the student to understand and do. If you ask me.

A much better way that helps would be say.... guys, here is the engine Infront of us. But we need to take it apart to find out how it works.
1. How are we going to break it apart?
2. For us to break it apart, we need screwdrivers and wrenches to break it apart so we can fix it. Now that is what actually a screwdriver and a wrench is used for. (to break down engines)"

Because the engine is right there Infront of the students,  and not drawn in some textbook or board, the students get hands on experience with the engine by himself with the teacher and they all figure out everything together. Until they can fix it and put it back again together. This is what Elon Musk really calls as  education.

Personally, if you ask me Kwame Sarpong, i will say education is a universal language. Just like music. Once you learn it no matter how different or your lack of knowledge of it, you should be able to understand it,  apply and transfer it or share your understanding easily to non academics too.

For Instance, neuroscientists  should be able to explain Neuroscience (brain science) to  ordinary people like you and me to understand how our own brain works and apply healthy ways to protect it or take good care of it. They shouldn't say... Oh  it's complicated or very scientific to explain and  only the educated or only those knowledgeable in science or medicine  can understand and apply.

That is the wrong from of education.

Like I always say, if you can't explain something simply enough, then you don't understand it.

Kwame Sarpong |  Freelance Writer: 
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