School might be Yama Yama

Learning to learn (Part 3)

There’s a problem with the typical school system and the problem is prioritizing the system over the problem the system is meant to solve.

The result is that most people don’t learn, what they do is to acquire an academic degree, and I’m not generalizing, I’m just saying the system is flawed and it is not the best option.

The school system processes people, hoping to make them conformative and fit to be slotted into an existing work system more than it teaches them to learn because the way to learn is not to cram stuff or pass an exam.

The way to learn is to solve problems, to practice, to find better ways of doing things as many times as we can and in many different ways.

Passing an exam is a way to check if a person is fit to undergo a task (originally designed by the pioneers of the industrial revolution) what we now call the work system but here’s the thing — it is not for everyone.

One way forward I believe, is to ask ourselves the question that Seth asked in 2012 — what is school designed for? Do the things we do in school achieve that goal? Do we want it?

Because if we don’t want it… if what we want is to learn, if what we want is a better world, then, something about school has got to change.

By the way ‘yama yama’ is a Nigerian lingua, it means unadmirable.