A smarter way to do education

I don't expect that education is ever going to be an exact science, but something like this turns it into more of a science than in was in the past. I particularly like the inversion of labour, where what would have been homework becomes classwork - that makes a lot of sense to me. The inversion means that you can not only do things such as pause the video and look something up, but it also means that you've got more time to think up any relevant questions which might not be adequately resolved by web searches.

I also think he's right about timing, and that chance events, such as trouble with parents or a temporary illness, can make the difference between getting a good education or not under the traditional model of teaching.



There's no reason why this method couldn't also be applied to higher education. As I've mentioned before I think we're probably facing a crisis in higher education as costs escalate out of control, which may mean that the traditional university experience is not something which is realistically affordable to the majority. Making teaching more internet based, and perhaps using libraries for things such as exams, might provide a way to deliver higher education in a smarter and cheaper way. I also like the idea of students mentoring each other. When I was a kid although I learned a lot of stuff about computers through individual experimentation I also learned some of the basics from other children with similar interests, and I'd describe this process as being a semi-competitive one which acts as a virtuous cycle.

Also from a wider perspective, why does education have to be something crammed into the first couple of decades of your life? There probably are good physiological reasons to have such a front-loaded arrangement, but perhaps the more advanced aspects of education could be more flexibly spread out over a lifetime.