Education is the MOST important problem for humanity to solve.

I graduated from Cal Poly Pomona in December 2023. I plan to pursue my master's as it makes it easier for me to teach at an accredited institution. I want to teach at a reputable institution and extend my credibility to build more accessible programs that anyone can watch to learn.

The Core Problem in Education: Storytelling

I firmly believe the education system is not innovating optimally. With a lot of hubris, I believe I can do a better job teaching than most of the instructors throughout my K to college life.

The core problem with teaching is that most educators don’t know how to properly tell a story. Peak education happens when an educator inspires students so much that they are willing to expand on what is taught in their own time. Most subjects can be inspiring, but students are less and less inspired. It was depressing to learn that Lego conducted a survey on the dream jobs of children, and the majority in the US said they want to become influencers. Education’s biggest competitor is entertainment, not itself. Even traditional media is struggling, with Netflix and YouTube's biggest competitor being TikTok.

This is the root problem: if students are unengaged, they don’t want to learn. When you learn something you don’t want to know, you definitely will not retain it.

Suboptimal Solutions and the Need for Change

I believe our leadership agrees this is an issue and is trying to improve, but it’s done sub optimally. Our national government believes increasing access to higher-level education is a better focus than emphasizing that budget on core required education. Making community college more accessible is a dumb solution. It’s like stacking tape over a cracking hole. Common Core is another program that could have been good, but the implementation was horrible. Standardized testing does not work without standardized teaching. How do you expect everyone to test on the same core things when the curriculum is neither standardized nor optimized?

Why This Matters to Me

Why is this an important problem to me? I believe the best way to live life is to aim to figure out how to extend humanity. To make us live longer, live better, and hedge against extinction. Elon Musk primarily believes in Mars. I firmly believe the best way to solve problems is to create more and better problem solvers. That comes with optimizing education. There will never be an absolute zero in fixing education, but every step taken will create better results. Many societal problems can be combated by proper education.

I also grew up hating school, but ironically loved to learn. I have still yet to meet a person who disliked school more than me. But my personality natively makes me try to figure out solutions to problems and pretend like I am actually solving it. It is much more efficient than just sitting, complaining, and screaming at a wall. Hopefully the pretend solutions actually get implemented by me or someone else.

The future of education

In future posts, I will definitely go into more detail as this is one of my core life passions. I have a lot of beliefs that could be true solutions, but nothing will be proven until it is tried. My ideal educational program for high-level information sharing is a hybrid program. I believe a lot of time can be saved with instructors sharing pre-recorded courses. Instructors should work together to build pre-recorded courses and work with a team to make the best quality recording possible. It should be modular so that if there are quality problems in the way information is presented, you don’t need to record everything again. However, there is definitely a different experience you gain by being in a classroom and interacting with others. It’s also harder to cheat in person. There needs to be both for situations to be ideal. I also believe top students shouldn’t waste time with redundancy. The fact that schools make it difficult for students to self-study and test out of subjects is ridiculous.

There is so much potential in the future of the education industry. Playing Assassin’s Creed 3 in elementary school opened up my mind to this. I honestly found history boring and uninteresting, especially the American Revolution. I had difficulty wanting to study the subject. What inspired me was playing Assassin’s Creed as it allowed me to visualize the environment and people in a fictional way. It made it interesting. This led me to go down a rabbit hole and learn about that time period by myself. There are so many possibilities. Whether it is putting on a VR headset and entering a virtual recreation of Ancient Athens and talking to an AI recreation of Socrates.

It’s one thing to read the “I Have a Dream” speech; it’s another to listen to or watch it. But imagine being immersed in the actual room, feeling the power of the crowd, seeing the environment, and witnessing the true historical significance of the event.