of society look like? We live in a truly epic time in history, new knowledge is being generated at an unprecedented rate. Couple hundred years ago it may have been possible to know all there was to know but now it is absolutely impossible. The exponential rate of information generation has dawned a new age of civilization, many call it the "information age".
The consequences of such rapid progress are that the slower moving giants of the world fall behind. Governments, large corporations that were once at the forefront of technology and information are now tied down by bureaucracy and politics - they simply can't keep up due to their large size. As a result of this phenomenon, governments around the world have been outsourcing jobs to private companies, anything from data analytics, space travel, even military personnel are being outsourced to private entities. So it seems that we can't rely on governments to call the shots anymore.
If you want to create real social change you can't become a politician or wait around and pray for Joe Biden to do something. You want something done you have to do it yourself. Privately. Obviously private companies are still subject to bureaucratic BS but it is by far the lesser of two evils.
Why have I mention all this shit? It's because one of the most important aspect of a human's life is being stifled precisely in this manner. Education.
In the past hundred years the education system hasn't changed much at all it's sort of been frozen in time while everything else in the world has progressed. But how could things progress if the system education system is as bad as you say? Well if there are people out there willing to do push technology further they will do it in spite of anything. It's more like technology has progressed in spite of the current education system rather than because of it; it's like sailing into a fucking headwind but we control the weather, yeah it's doable but why can't we make it a tailwind instead.
We are at a dramatic turning point in history, technology, automation, artificial intelligence has dramatic affected the way we live by making everything more efficient than ever before. There's a common belief among educators that we're preparing students for jobs that don't exist yet but how do you have the audacity to say something like that when all conventional education does is teach students to repeat and regurgitate what has already been done before.
A Student's Proposal is first and foremost a plan. A plan to change the education system. It might be a shit plan but that's where you guys come in. I know that there is so much I don't know, so much that I've overlooked, I don't know what I've missed but I think trying to get things perfectly the first time is one of the greatest obstacles to progress, we only need to try to make things better, because I believe if we sincerely, authetically and whole-heartedly commit ourselves to the task, we can make the first step in bringing about change in education, something that hasn't really happened in 200 years.
