Personal Adherence
The Deep Thinker: One of Many 'No Child Left Behind' Edge Cases
I comment on education reform as an edge-case that propagates in numerous variants of the current paradigm that in total, collectively defines the failing state of Education.
A system tightly bound to common core curricula, aging inneffective policies, competitive game theory tactics, general intelligence theory, grades and standardized tests, and the business model of the 1880's.
Early in my adolescence, I noticed an apparent void and neglect of curiosity and passion in schools - something I had grown up with living in a family of engineers, hackers, builders.
Both curiosity and passion valued as undoubtably central for problem solving and the greater continuation of human progress.
Leaving formal education, I diverged in my studies toward a playful philosophy of acquring massive tabs of pinned readings.
Contrary to regurgitation learning deployed in my school years, I was afforded boundless time insighted for deeper levels of cognitive thinking embodied in rich, complex thought.
My unmeasured self-learning evolved into a natural appreciation and love to read, ask questions, and try everything.
I was enthused to finally learn with no objective or syllabus.
Podcasts, audiobooks, research journals, textbooks, insightful deep dive articles and videos, I consumed it all.
The more sessions of deep thinking, the more natural beautiful 'woah' moments occurred.
Continuing my growth as a programmer, I needed a new set of thinking strategies derived in formal logic necessary for more effective problem-solving.
Through self-directed learning, I learned to derive insight from empirical research, formal logic, mental models, abstraction, and reason with contradictory schools of thought.
All the while, I noticed there existed a strange dichotomy among learners.
To students, learning meant a syllabus, homework, studying, and testing.
To the curious, learning meant quest through untold journey and learning for the sake of learning.
Interesting Problem
I thought over education reform throughout my time in university — how to divert curious learners away from the diploma delusion.
My initial interest began as a software engineering project during my time in university to improve the usefulness of college transcript data by seeking more rich student data in measuring qualitative soft skills in students.
I soon realized the trajectory the project was heading toward and the finding was clear; quantifying general human intelligence using existing biased metrics to determine opportunty is unethical and could lead to further inequality.
Even more, measuring student cognitive ability among other soft skills could be gamed in the hands of employers and universities.
Having understood the learning dichotomy, why the utility of the education system diverged, and recent socioeconomic changes that constitute solutions to today's education problems, I deduced the American Education System is prime for fundamental change.
Insights Learned
Curiosity is lost when learning is constrained to a beginning, middle, and end.
Curiosity can be found.
Aha! moments necessitate deep uninterrupted thinking for thinking around a problem.
Deep thinking necessitates boundless time in solitude.
The correlative relevance of general intelligence has been found to be inconclusive among the scholars and intellectual groups.
deploying common core, standardized testing, grading on the curve, gamified learning, and artifical competition confines and conditions learning.
The learn-to-work paradigm assumes students graduate with a degree as a market standard for employers to measure an acceptable level of competency so hiring qualified candidates becomes optimally predictable.
A degree conveys a graduate is competent enough to work as an employee of a corporation, but tells little of one's learning.
Unschooling is learning for the sake of curiosity and a desire for insight.
Unschooling is not home schooling; merely opposite to regulated education.
Unschooling is a universal method to become truly educated.
Unschooling opens up opportunies in ways unseen in the learn-to-work education paradigm.
Learning without intention insights wisdom that opportunity is seen and created, not earned or by luck.
Opportunity
Open AccessEdu is an initiative to bring true education back to the land of opportunity and greater world of learners.
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