The Topic
Fundamental of a school. Learning the fundamental of how school works is important for what I am doing now. Establishing an online learning platform to encourage and enable people to learn creativity is not the typical school we had in mind. It is a new form of school which is accessible, affordable, and challenge-based. The 3 fundamentals that are listed in the sharing are teaching skills, issuing credibility, and forming community.
The Learning Points
School in the past
The school format of learning in a classroom with a teacher in the front and tens of students sitting facing the teacher, learning in different modules and syllabus are the learning format originated from German. Such a format is created in order to produce standardized talents to fill up the demand for skilled workers during the industrial era.
Learning in such a setting is just like how we get training in a military camp or worse, prison. We can see the similarity from the characteristics like:
- Fenced compound and with individual buildings for a specific purpose like classrooms, canteens, staff offices
- The rigid syllabus that needs to be delivered no matter what
- Fixed time for learning and rest
- Merit to those obeying by the rules and punish the vice versa with the demerit system
- Teachers are trained in institutions just like how officers are trained
- The bureaucratic structure where schools have to follow the central's arrangement
I was also shocked when finding out that the school that I went to have so many similarities and it is normal that the new generations nowadays have such reluctance in attending the school that we had before.
How are we learning now?
The first thing I can think of is I will be Googling about anything that I want to learn about. Getting the keywords or questions right are the two most important skills that we need to have to learn anywhere and anytime in the 21st century. Personally, I would categorize learning methods that we have now into virtual and physical:
- Virtual learning (online search, webinar, live courses, recorded classes, youtube, Wikipedia)
- Physical learning (conventional schools including primary, secondary, tertiary institution, skill-based courses ranging from small to big groups)
Now, information is very accessible to us but the new challenge for us in learning is about asking the right question and taking action to try it out. Sadly, I do see a trend where new generation students are used to be spoon-fed that they do not even have the initiative to Google something that they do not know about. They will just blame the teachers that the information is not given. This is something terrible that we must fix immediately.
In this new era, there are two groups of people in the learning process. One is the creators and the other one is the consumers. Frankly speaking, we are all creators and consumers at the same time just that at times, most of us have a higher ratio of being a consumer than a creator. In fact, to be a good learner, we need to be a creator more than a consumer. By creating, in other words taking action and applying our knowledge into our daily life, this would really challenge ourselves to really understand what we had learned from the consumed content.
Teaching skill
The first fundamental of a school is it is a place where we can learn skills. Therefore, a school can be anywhere and anytime! We should not be limited by the compound of a school to learn but learning is a process that should happen anywhere and anytime as long as we have the curiosity and desire to find out more about something.
Take note that it is not about teaching information in a syllabus approved by the ministry. A school should not be limited that way but it can be teaching anything useful to someone. For example, our home can be a school whereby parents teach their children about house chores, manners and courtesy, and other skills that the parents are good at. Children can also learn something from a park about different games, nature, and even people. Even when we are traveling and having fun, we learn through the fun we had like learning the language of a foreign country, picking up different information like local hot spots, food and also understand how the place's infrastructure works so that we can commute better.
Issuing credibility
The second fundamental of a school is that it can issue a credit to a person. For example, a culinary school which has a good reputation in producing top-notch chef for the industry, all the graduates will have this credibility from the school to the industry that they are in good hands and have a high benchmark when it comes to cooking. Therefore, the graduates would have a better chance to land on a good offer. This is the same for even a district like Silicon Valley where it is a place where all the brilliant minds gathered and start their tech business in. So anyone coming out from Silicon Valley will have better credibility than people from secondary or tertiary cities.
Forming community
The last fundamental of a school is that it can form a community or a network that connects like-minded people together. Value can only be created when people work together and serve the community with their skills and knowledge. It is normal for a young person who just graduated from conventional school and feel lost. However, if there is a strong community like the alumni network, that would really help the new generation to adapt and survive in society.
A community does not necessarily have to be built by the schools. However, it should be led by the people that had learned together and share some similar values or beliefs. This would make the community strong and create a positive loop that would attract more like-minded people to join. Even like hobby groups are a great community that shares different tips and skills about the specific hobby and everyone can benefit from it.
Inspiration
By learning about the fundamentals, it is easier for me to set the KPI for my business to grow sustainably. Without such knowledge, it is hard for me to know which direction I should be putting more effort into and I had to go through many rounds of tests and error before knowing the right direction to go for. By reading up and learn from mentors, I can take a faster route and know which route is suitable for me and prevent the obstacles that could have dragged me.
Reference
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Daily Inspired #00 - My Beginning
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