One day, they'll download those lessons
Published: Friday, October 12, 2012 at 4:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 at 6:08 p.m.
While looking at a large number of teachers out on strike at a school where the first day of the fall semester was supposed to start, it made me think about my own school days.
All of my school days during the first six grades were absolutely boring to me. Starting to notice how pretty girls became about the sixth grade did help liven things up, but it was still a lot of repeating stuff over and over and still boring. High school did liven things up, and college was a blast.
I think one of the things that makes schooling in the early grades so blah is that people are teaching kids the same way they were taught back when teaching first began, by using the senses. When you learn music, most of your learning comes from a sense of touch by feeling the beat of the music and hearing it. Most learning comes through sight and hearing.
Now most of you reading this column will probably react by saying, how else can anyone learn anything except through the senses?
Well, right now you can’t, but I will be willing to bet (but not much) that in the future it will improve a lot.
Having spent half of my life working in the science area, and knowing how much the people in that arena like a challenge, I would like to offer one for them to tackle.
I may already be too late, but if someone hasn’t thought of transmitting a signal of one of the senses directly to brain cells for storage, then why not?
What I am suggesting is without making a sound or touching a person, give someone either of those sensations by downloading that sense to the brain much like downloading a file into a computer. Be sure to have someone say something dramatic, like the first landing on the moon: “One small touch or sound for a person. One giant leap for education.”
If that small step can be achieved, it will open the door to instant learning of any skill on Earth.
It would mean the end of erecting huge school buildings and years of sedentary confinement for children.
New jobs for teachers would have to be found. Perhaps in the manufacture of the learning machines or the use of the machines.
With the arrival of any new system, there will be a downside. This will open the door for a new kind of “brainwashing” that would be hard to control. Government intervention and control would probably cause problems but would be necessary.
The positive aspects would be earthshaking, to say the least.
If you are a businessman, need to travel to Asia on business and want to be able to speak and read and write local languages, then have them downloaded into you and take off.
What I am suggesting is a long way off from any practical use, but the sooner it gets started the closer the reality of it happening gets here.
Look around the world and see all the new inventions and how much they are making the world more accessible and understanding to us.
We will have difficulties arising with the new learning systems, just as happens with any innovation, but this would be worth it.
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