"The whole project of formal education has been based
on the idea of society transmitting its ideas, values, and technologies from
one generation to the next, and from dominant civilizations and cultures to backward
or primitive ones. In the modern era we added the task of making and
incorporating new discoveries into the curriculum year after year. As our
society got more complex, we developed bigger and bigger institutions to teach
more and more people more and more things.
Well, now the world is changing too fast, and the need
is growing too much, for institutions to keep up. Scientists say we have less
than ten years to reinvent how we get energy, how we get around, and how we
make things if we don’t want our civilization to collapse from the effects of
global warming. And to do that, we as a species also have to find better ways
of communicating, making decisions, and understanding and weighing each others’
needs.
No one person knows how to do this; it requires a new
synthesis of the wisdom of the ancients and cutting-edge discoveries. Our best
hope is to get better at empowering individuals to find answers for themselves.
In other words, forget about giving the guy a fish, or teaching him how to
fish, either. Teach him how to teach himself, and he’ll always be able to
acquire the skills he needs to find food, skills, you haven’t even thought of
yet for things you didn’t know you could eat. Fishing itself, it happens, is a
great example of this. Today, 90 percent of fish species are over-exploited.
Fish farming is people’s fastest-growing source of food and will probably remain
so through 2025. The world needs people who can figure out new ways to repair
the oceans and to find or grow renewable sources of food."
Quote from the book "DIY U - Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education"
by Anya Kamenetz
