Breaking the Chains of the Old Educational System

Before the rise of the Industrial Revolution, education was passed down from one generation to another in a variety of ways. The most notable ways were learning by observing, learning through imitating, and learning by being instructed directly.

Learning through observation is still widely used by most people in the creative and art industry. There is a very good friend of mine who is a brilliant dancer, and she tends to do it effortlessly. She was getting a significant amount of recognition for her talent. So one day I asked her how she managed to get so good at dancing. And I was taken aback by her response. She said she used to be very terrible at dancing, but she learned to dance just by watching other people dance.

Every day, she spent countless hours on TikTok and other social media platforms watching the best Afrobeat dancers and copying their moves to perfect her dancing skills. Today, she has over two hundred thousand followers if you combine her followers across all her social media platforms. She has been featured in a lot of music videos and is earning passive income from across her social media platforms. Using this method to learn works well in this scenario, but imagine waking up in the morning and going to school with the hope of observing your teacher to learn a key mathematical concept. Do you think you would learn it just by observing? Of course not. It will take something more than that, especially now that we live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with distractions in the form of ads daily, to the point where focusing or observing has become a daunting task.

Imitation was more prevalent as a method of passing down knowledge when the focus of mankind was on survival. Fathers taught their sons how to tiptoe like them to get within the reach of a gazelle without it noticing, and sons were constantly imitating their fathers, but you cannot imitate a Harvard professor and inherit his intellect. You may imitate his way of walking and his awkward fashion sense, but that is not going to give you the kind of status and influence he has. Imitation can sometimes come across as mimicry, and it should be used for comedic or performance purposes. 

The means of passing down knowledge by giving direct instructions has been regarded as an efficient, consistent, scalable, and controlled way of transferring knowledge. Barak Rosenshine, an American educator who is famously known for his Principles of Instruction, argued that explicit teaching and clear instruction improve retention for novice learners. However, in the current digital age, students, including novice learners who are just looking to learn a new skill from the comfort of their home, have unlimited access to information through powerful search engines, AI tools, and online resources, which reduces the need for a constant step-by-step teacher-led instruction style of learning. I became a full-stack web developer after I dropped out of college because I couldn’t afford the tuition. I perfected my skills using the W3Schools online learning platform. This shows that even a novice in coding can get a tutorial online and test their skills by doing a real-world project—something Rosenshine’s framework underplays. He presented his theory as “universally applicable,” but it downplays learner diversity, cultural context, and developmental stages. The digital age has amplified student diversity with the use of online classrooms and access to various learning pathways. His method ignores the fact that students now learn in different modes (videos, podcasts, apps like Duolingo, and gamified learning). Today’s learners also value choice in how they learn, which is disproportionate to the standardized, teacher-centered learning.

A creative writer somewhere in Africa, Europe, Asia, or South America might learn better by publishing their blogs online and engaging in an online writing community, which will give them access to much feedback and reviews from people from all walks of life, rather than through a structured review from one person.

This method of passing down knowledge is what the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire describes as “banking education,” where teachers deposit knowledge directly into passive learners. The world has outgrown this mode of learning, where education is simply the transference of knowledge from teacher to student, because the knowledge that is being transferred is information that is freely available to anyone who has access to the internet.

During the 17th to 19th centuries, the compulsory educational system emerged. In 1524, the leader of the Protestant Reformation and a German theologian, Martin Luther, wrote a “carta” to the councilmen of all cities in Germany, urging them to establish schools so that all children could read the Bible. This act prompted many Protestant regions to create parish schools, which laid the foundation for state involvement in the educational system. During this time, school was only for the elite, clergy, and future professionals. His message framed school as essential to the social and moral order and not optional or reserved for the select few. Other reformers, like the Czech philosopher and educator John Amos Comenius, who is referred to as the “Father of Modern Education,” picked up on Luther’s idea of universal access to education but extended it beyond religious lines to all knowledge. The purpose of this book is not to provide a history lesson on the educational system, but it is important to bring the readers to it so they can fully understand the root of the system that most rely on as the ultimate path to the success they desire.

After months of deep diving into this subject matter, I concluded that the educational model that many of us look to as a sure ticket to our success was built on the need for social and political control and economic necessity for the Industrial Revolution. Why, it is true that Luther's and Comenius' intent was to make the system accessible to all; the shift happened when the state got involved. After decades of unrest and war, and drastic political change, more modern and sophisticated nations began to emerge, and the religious and monarchical rule of the people started to take a downward trend. People needed to foster a new sense of national identity and loyalty to replace the unshakable allegiance people had to their monarchy and religious leaders. The government started using schools and curriculum to teach common history, instill a specific set of civic values and obedience, and also propagate certain ideologies. The intent was to condition law-abiding citizens who would not think of questioning the authority of the state, so the school taught them how to respect people in authority and the laws they were given, and to also respect state institutions. When they realized that this approach was working perfectly, they began to intentionally craft the textbook and lessons in a way that would promote a specific narrative to keep the people under their control. 

From an economic standpoint, it was a necessity for the Industrial Revolution to have a compliant and disciplined workforce to keep up with the growing demand of new jobs that were being created as a result of the revolution. Factories and industrial owners join forces with the government to create a curriculum that completely serves the best interests of the two.

The concept was later refined during the second industrial revolution to be more towards the interest of the people since the people had already been conditioned to respect the laws, authority, and state institutions. It became a system to equip people for the workforce and to contribute to society; it became a means to level the playing field and bridge the gap between the elite and the commoner. The schools became a place to reduce social division by bringing people together from diverse backgrounds and a place that prepares people to compete and participate in a democratic society. For these reasons, people saw education or going to school as a means of gaining financial freedom and rising to the level of the elite, and for a few centuries, it worked like a charm for some people, at least.

The reality is that we are no longer living in the first or second industrial revolution; we are now in the fourth industrial revolution, which is defined by so many unbelievable technologies that people in the first and second industrial revolutions never had. The world is now interconnected, and we have cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, renewable energy, and other advanced digital systems. So the question is, do you think we should still be thinking like people from the first and second revolutions and turn a blind eye to all of the endless possibilities these technologies have presented to us?