(June 7, 2016)
Education should be available and accessible to every person on earth; making quality education inaccessible or exclusive is immoral. Education belongs in the same category as shelter, clean water, and basic food.
Education should be disconnected from geography. Students should be able to learn anything from anywhere on earth. With few exceptions, tying education to geography is a form of exclusion.
Education should be disconnected from a schedule. The most effective time to learn something is when the student is ready, not when the teacher or institution is available.
Education should not be admission- or permission-based, but freely available upon the asking. The current admission-based system is a vestige of a scarcity model that could only fit a limited number of seats in a classroom. No one should have to be admitted or ask permission to learn a subject.
Education should not have a prescribed completion time. The amount of time it takes to learn something shouldn’t be decided before hand; some students can learn something in minutes that will take others days or years to learn.
Education should not be set to a specific time period in a person’s life; it should be a process like eating, drinking, and exercise: continual, habitual, and evolving. Students should not be categorized or limited by what they have studied or learned to date.
Education should not be competitive or judged by other students’ achievements. Students should only be assessed on whether they have mastered the stated objective or ‘not yet’. Removing competition decreases the incentive for cheating or cutting corners.
Educational records, including learning achievements, grades, transcripts, credentials, and degrees should be owned and managed by the student rather than an institution. Students should be able to move freely among any learning institution or organization at anytime or for any reason.
Educational records should include universally understandable, useful, and verifiable documentation of student mastery of explicit learning objectives, rather than an institutional stamp attesting to completion of a vague curriculum.
Education should not have a prescribed way of teaching. Prevalent teaching approaches are often culturally, gender or socio-economically biased. While clear and explicit learning objectives can be universally agreed upon, the manner in which these are achieved should be as diverse as the student body.
Educational learning paths should be personalized and as varied and diverse as the students pursuing them.
Education should not be at the service of institutions, but at the service of learning. Organizing education around institutional timelines, schedules, expertise, records, and convenience is efficient for institutions, but limits the student, and by extension humanity’s potential.
