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The Education System is Broken

Posted By: Randy GageSeptember 13, 2018

August 13, 2024

“Sandy, I just got your progress update, and you’re failing your nine-month online certification!”

“It’s no big deal, Mom.  I’m sure I’ll improve before the final certifications are issued.”

“It is a big deal.  If you don’t pass this, you’re going to have to go to college and get an MBA degree.  If you have to settle for a college degree, you’ll never get a good job, and you’ll make less money for the rest of your life.”

If you read my Mad Genius book, then you’ll recognize the excerpt above.  Education may be the most critical issue we have to deal with: relearning how to learn.  If we actually were able to jump into a DeLorean DMC-12, travel back to the 18th century, and bring back Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson, or Adam Smith, there is one thing they would immediately recognize: our education system.

Three centuries later, we’re still following the same educational model they used back then, one that was designed to train people to work in factories or on farms.

Other than faint flickers of creativity in the movement toward online learning, education is still stuck in thinking that’s three centuries old.  Is it any wonder that the executives who were trained in our business schools exhibit such derivative, herd-mentality, corporate thinking today?

Simply making the leap from training knowledge workers instead of factory workers would be huge, but that’s still not enough.  We have to (get to) rethink the role and value of acquiring knowledge.  And if you’re serious about manifesting prosperity in your life, you’ll stop waiting for institutions to provide for you, and take charge of your own learning.

Will the time really come when a college degree is a fallback option for people who couldn’t cut it in some kind of specific online vocational certification?  Will we reach a point when a six- or nine-month certification in some area from some entity (might be a university, might not be) will be infinitely more valuable than an MBA or even a PhD?

I believe so.

These questions will require thinking much bigger than debating campus versus online learning.  The discussion needs to be on issues such as the definition of learning, how we learn, and what learning is actually useful and necessary.

Colleges as we know them, will go extinct...

And the disruption is spreading beyond higher education.  People are demanding more learning options, and that means online courses offered by experts and professionals are going to become way more than a trend.

They're the future of education.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I found out my friend Danny Iny was writing a new book all about the disruption of education and why that’s a good thing.  Danny’s a smart guy, and more importantly, a critical thinker.  The book is Leveraged Learning: How The Disruption Of Education Helps Lifelong Learners And Experts With Something To Teach.

If you're involved in education in any way, as a student, parent, educator, business leader, expert, and especially as an entrepreneur with something to share...

Then you’ve got to read Danny's book.  He's posting the entire book online for free, and you can go read it now here.

The education model is broken.  It’s time we take it back.

-RG

 

11 comments on “The Education System is Broken”

  1. I couldn't agree more!! I pulled my son half way through his senior year of high school and home schooled him. He was always an eager learner but needed extra help with reading. He soon found himself failing every class because of the inability of teachers to think for themselves.

  2. As I have always stated, our education system doesn't teach you how to think, only what to think. Independent and critical thinking are often squelched especially in parochial schools. Most teachers follow a cookie-cutter curriculum and the only concern they have is to move you from one grade to another, especially if they consider you a troublemaker. Pink Floyd was spot on in their song Another Brick in the Wall.

  3. I confess that I say/listen to prayers and meditate. I currently do not attend religious services. I think if there were services that I agree with, I would attend.

    Different studies show the benefits of prayer, meditation, and religious services. I also think you have to look at the results: Are they getting you where you want to go?

    I think we can learn from what works and what doesn’t. For example, a recent article talks about the positive benefits of prayer, meditation, and services on teens.

    From my own experiences, daily negative confessions have changed my beliefs and behavior. For example:

    “I did not fornicate.”

    This is in the past tense. It also is different from confessions where you say you did something bad, are punished, and continue doing it ( or some other alternative behavior to cope with the pain).

    A big issue is life/eternity and taking responsibility for yours. I put my name in the book of Life/going forth/eternity. I put my name in my prayers. I don’t believe making someone suffer and then killing them will save me. I have to take responsibility for my own beliefs and actions.

    I think the Earth is home to many people and we have to work together to save our home. We have to take care of the planet and others. We have to help others by empowering people.

  4. Thanks Randy. My sister is a college professor and she has been telling me for years how broken the system is. Colleges are country clubs. They lure the students with amenities more than necessities. It blows my mind that so few can see how antiquated the educational model is. Or do they see it? I surely hope not. Or is society so fixated on the outward appearance of things, that they can no longer see the sense or logic of the inevitable outcomes.

  5. My husband is a physical therapist. He's doing what he's wanted to do since high school. It used to be you could practice with just a Bachelors degree. Now you must have a Doctorate and then spend your own money to get licensed. The final year of his Grad School program consisted of two unpaid full-time placements. He didn't even get a free lunch! He now has a very large student loan debt, but physical therapists don't make as much as people think It's a crazy situation. Many people go to university just because, but others go because it's a requirement of their dream job. Something needs to be done, but I've no idea what.

  6. "l did not sin."
    Actually creates the habit of not sinning.
    (Instead of the continuous cycle is of sinning and being sorry.)

    Did you know domestic violence is also a cycle?

    This can change relationships and the world.

    1. Sin is an artificial construct of religion that was used to control the masses. There is no place for using guilt to attempt to control people in the 21st century. Another example of how our education system is broken is that it still teaches religion, as opposed to spirituality.

  7. The toughest challenge will be from the "inflexibles" (in their paradigms). Tree huggers bigtime! They won't be "early adapters", and probably haven't read a book since public school.

  8. What are we learning? Belief.
    We learn beliefs by repetitive listening. Beliefs can be good or bad, just like the stuff we are reading and listening to.

    Here is an example of a video creating beliefs:

    https://youtu.be/gbsZohEMn38

    I actually laughed when a saw it. Laughter can be good for you (there have been research studies on laughter). Laughter can be positive or negative though. Don’t harm or hurt others with laughter.

    You may recognize some unhealthy beliefs. Then you have to change them. You do this with repetitive listening.

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  • 11 comments on “The Education System is Broken”

    1. I couldn't agree more!! I pulled my son half way through his senior year of high school and home schooled him. He was always an eager learner but needed extra help with reading. He soon found himself failing every class because of the inability of teachers to think for themselves.

    2. As I have always stated, our education system doesn't teach you how to think, only what to think. Independent and critical thinking are often squelched especially in parochial schools. Most teachers follow a cookie-cutter curriculum and the only concern they have is to move you from one grade to another, especially if they consider you a troublemaker. Pink Floyd was spot on in their song Another Brick in the Wall.

    3. I confess that I say/listen to prayers and meditate. I currently do not attend religious services. I think if there were services that I agree with, I would attend.

      Different studies show the benefits of prayer, meditation, and religious services. I also think you have to look at the results: Are they getting you where you want to go?

      I think we can learn from what works and what doesn’t. For example, a recent article talks about the positive benefits of prayer, meditation, and services on teens.

      From my own experiences, daily negative confessions have changed my beliefs and behavior. For example:

      “I did not fornicate.”

      This is in the past tense. It also is different from confessions where you say you did something bad, are punished, and continue doing it ( or some other alternative behavior to cope with the pain).

      A big issue is life/eternity and taking responsibility for yours. I put my name in the book of Life/going forth/eternity. I put my name in my prayers. I don’t believe making someone suffer and then killing them will save me. I have to take responsibility for my own beliefs and actions.

      I think the Earth is home to many people and we have to work together to save our home. We have to take care of the planet and others. We have to help others by empowering people.

    4. Thanks Randy. My sister is a college professor and she has been telling me for years how broken the system is. Colleges are country clubs. They lure the students with amenities more than necessities. It blows my mind that so few can see how antiquated the educational model is. Or do they see it? I surely hope not. Or is society so fixated on the outward appearance of things, that they can no longer see the sense or logic of the inevitable outcomes.

    5. My husband is a physical therapist. He's doing what he's wanted to do since high school. It used to be you could practice with just a Bachelors degree. Now you must have a Doctorate and then spend your own money to get licensed. The final year of his Grad School program consisted of two unpaid full-time placements. He didn't even get a free lunch! He now has a very large student loan debt, but physical therapists don't make as much as people think It's a crazy situation. Many people go to university just because, but others go because it's a requirement of their dream job. Something needs to be done, but I've no idea what.

    6. "l did not sin."
      Actually creates the habit of not sinning.
      (Instead of the continuous cycle is of sinning and being sorry.)

      Did you know domestic violence is also a cycle?

      This can change relationships and the world.

      1. Sin is an artificial construct of religion that was used to control the masses. There is no place for using guilt to attempt to control people in the 21st century. Another example of how our education system is broken is that it still teaches religion, as opposed to spirituality.

    7. The toughest challenge will be from the "inflexibles" (in their paradigms). Tree huggers bigtime! They won't be "early adapters", and probably haven't read a book since public school.

    8. What are we learning? Belief.
      We learn beliefs by repetitive listening. Beliefs can be good or bad, just like the stuff we are reading and listening to.

      Here is an example of a video creating beliefs:

      https://youtu.be/gbsZohEMn38

      I actually laughed when a saw it. Laughter can be good for you (there have been research studies on laughter). Laughter can be positive or negative though. Don’t harm or hurt others with laughter.

      You may recognize some unhealthy beliefs. Then you have to change them. You do this with repetitive listening.

    Leave a Reply to Sally M Cancel reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


    Warning: Undefined variable $key in /nas/content/live/randygagedev/wp-content/plugins/honeypot-comments/honeypot-comments.php on line 63

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