I recently wrote a blogpost which talked about the future of education. In it, I argued online learning can greatly facilitate personalized learning.
You might think that education is the boundary at which my desire for personilization ends. You'd be wrong. Very wrong. I think personalization can be extended all the way to moral theory. Yep, it's gonna be another philosophy post.
Before I get started, let's do some groundwork.
1) I don't think there is any objective morality at all. I think our concepts of justice and equality are manifestations of instincts we've been programmed with by evolution. I don't think there is anything objectively wrong with murder, slavery or adultery.
2) I think environment and biology slowly and subtlety cause cultural changes. In some cases, these cultural ideas can resonate with our biological instincts and cause a culture spiral in a certain direction. For example, violence in men is much more common than it is in women, and this is originally due to biological reasons. However, if a man is indoctrinated by the army at the age of 5, then the cultural values of the army (kill, punish etc) will resonate with the biological instincts of the man, and the end result will be a killing machine. Likewise, the subjugation of women by men originally has biological roots, and can explain slight behavioral differences between men and women. However, if these men and women are exposed to a misogynistic religion, then these cultural values can resonate with biology and create an end culture where women remain completely house locked or covered up.
3) We don't have free will, and a lot of the moral and philosophical ideas we think we have are actually largely determined by our environment, biology and culture. If you were born in central America in the 1700's you'd probably think sacrifices were moral, if you were born in America in the 1800's you'd probably think slavery is moral, and if you were born in New Zealand in 1998 you'd probably think eating meat is the moral equivalent of murder.
Anyway, what does this have to do with personalization?
Well, if we take the utilitarianism stance and define 'moral' as whatever maximizes well-being, and not arbitrary golden rules like equality and freedom, then, in general, it's moral to treat different people differently. This means if you did the calculus and could prove that giving James 2 puddings for desert and giving Mark 1 pudding for desert maximized well-being, then this unequal treatment is moral.
Ideally, if we had the power to do so, we could custom make laws that relate to the individual. It would be a good thing (by definition) if we could hypothetically analyze the brain states of every human in the world, and create potentially different rules for each person such that wellbeing is maximized.
So far, this is very theoretical. Clearly we're nowhere near doing something like this, and I bet the inner George Orwell in us is screaming. But consider how domesticated dogs are currently treated. Labradors are essentially slaves to their middle class masters; they are told what to eat, when to eat and where to live. The temptation to apply the golden rule of freedom doesn't apply to Labradors because we know their wellbeing is maximized by being domesticated house pillows. I'd argue humans are just a much more complicated, harder to control breed of labrador.
Even though the end goal would be to analyze the brain state of each human flawlessly, we don't need to start there. We can iterate our way there by creating rules for smaller and smaller groups of humans that have similar traits. This is actually a non controversial idea: 1) The drinking rules for teenagers driving is different to the drinking rules for adults driving, 2) People who earn over $80,000/year pay more tax than people who earn less than $20,000. Where it does get understandably controversial is if we apply these rules to races. But if we can hypothetically show that one race of people is biologically determined to become addicted to alcohol and heroin, then making a law forbidding that race to have access to that substance would be moral.
Admittedly, the diversity among humans is remarkably small - we all have the same basic instincts and physical limitations. What I've mentioned above about treating some races differently for being different relies on the assumption that there will be no other uncalculated consequences of such a law. I think history has taught us that identifying difference between people brings out our inner xenophobia which can have disastrous consequences. Since personalization is practically impossible to enforce at this point in time, then equality is definitely the best option for now.
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Future of education
This is going to be a pretty jam packed post so brace yourself.
You probably know that I'm a big fan of online education. In my mind, online educational giants like the Khan Academy and Coursera are so valuable, not because they just produce a lot of free educational content, but because they are the first real innovators in personalized education. What do I mean by that? Well let's consider the traditional classroom. Students are grouped by age (not by ability) into different classes where they are forced to learn the basics; Math, English, History etc. It's only by the end of high school that students have limited control over the classes they can enroll in. Don't get me wrong, I think young students should be exposed to all the core subjects to teach them the fundamentals of physics, math and literacy, but what I don't like is how students are grouped by age and are forced to move at the pace the teacher sets. Faster kids get bored, slower kids get disinterested, and the whole class dynamic is only glued together by social pressure and authority. If implemented correctly, online education can fix all these problems and more. Imagine a school where:
1) The syllabus is an organized on an online Learning Management System (LMS) that is flexible enough to allow students to customize the subjects they're more interested in (eg focus more on African empires in history class), but rigid enough such that students still need to learn the basics.
2) The classroom is flipped. Most of the lecturing content is done entirely online, and physical classrooms are organized by subject, not by age. The purpose of the classroom is to apply the theory through example problems / group projects. The teacher is no longer an authority figure, but a mentor and a motivator. Peer to peer tutoring is encouraged.
Now I know what you're thinking:
1) How can we trust that kids will be self motivated /disciplined enough to watch lectures online and tailor their own learning experience.
This is a big one. At younger ages, kids definitely need more guidance and face to face teaching. Clearly this whole system is for kids that have reached a certain maturity level. For starters, I think each student should have their own mentor and be scheduled to meet regularly. Ideally the mentor will be able to identify and fix red flags through online analytics. Small things like gamifying content can help motivate (especially male) students. But most importantly, the LMS needs to be well implemented, comprehensive and engaging. My high school, Knox, got this step horribly wrong. They were experimenting with the 'laptop program' but had no LMS, homemade educational content, censoring, or even staff that knew enough about computers. Instead laptops were viewed as a supplement to the traditional classroom which inevitably resulted in students playing computer games and watching porn in class.
2) Won't tailored content be a bureaucratic nightmare? What about grading?
It would be a bureaucratic nightmare if we stuck to the old school way of grading. Recording attendance, homework, assignments and projects can be done automatically. Rather than grade the student based almost exclusively on a final exam, a progress report of the student can be generated automatically using multiple inputs including; video watch time, attendance, example problem scores, RATE of learning, peer to peer tutoring etc. Imagine all the useful data that has historically been ignored by only recording a final letter grade! Khan Academy already has a working version of this, but in my mind there is a long way to go.
3) Won't kids get embarrassed studying with younger students?
I don't know a way out of this one. It constantly amazes me how much our ape like instincts leak out in weird ways. It influences how we dress, sleep, work, socially interact, everything. No matter, how much a school is modernized, it will never be able to undo the deeply engraved biological impulses students have been evolutionary programmed with. It's true that if a really talented younger kid wants to 'specialize' in the same subject an older weaker student, then they will be in the same class. And maybe this will be a huge cause of embarrassment that will cause the older kid to disengage. I don't know. However, I suspect that once the expectation is clearly changed from an age based system to a results based system, where there are multiple ways to get a high 'score', perhaps this form of embarrassment won't be so prominent. And even if it is, is it any better than the existing system of having a severely multi talented class which secretly mocks and judges other students?
In summary, online learning is already a huge part of education. Students use YouTube and Wikipedia all the time. At the moment, this content is not utilized fully when treated as an additional supplement of teaching material to the traditional educational system. However, if implemented correctly, I think it can revolutionize the educational system. The old school way of teaching perfectly paralleled the industrial revolution style of working - a 9-5 with fixed outcomes. Now that jobs are becoming more flexible and creative, I think it pays to have an educational system which is based in part on self motivation, flexibility and personalized learning.
You probably know that I'm a big fan of online education. In my mind, online educational giants like the Khan Academy and Coursera are so valuable, not because they just produce a lot of free educational content, but because they are the first real innovators in personalized education. What do I mean by that? Well let's consider the traditional classroom. Students are grouped by age (not by ability) into different classes where they are forced to learn the basics; Math, English, History etc. It's only by the end of high school that students have limited control over the classes they can enroll in. Don't get me wrong, I think young students should be exposed to all the core subjects to teach them the fundamentals of physics, math and literacy, but what I don't like is how students are grouped by age and are forced to move at the pace the teacher sets. Faster kids get bored, slower kids get disinterested, and the whole class dynamic is only glued together by social pressure and authority. If implemented correctly, online education can fix all these problems and more. Imagine a school where:
1) The syllabus is an organized on an online Learning Management System (LMS) that is flexible enough to allow students to customize the subjects they're more interested in (eg focus more on African empires in history class), but rigid enough such that students still need to learn the basics.
2) The classroom is flipped. Most of the lecturing content is done entirely online, and physical classrooms are organized by subject, not by age. The purpose of the classroom is to apply the theory through example problems / group projects. The teacher is no longer an authority figure, but a mentor and a motivator. Peer to peer tutoring is encouraged.
Now I know what you're thinking:
1) How can we trust that kids will be self motivated /disciplined enough to watch lectures online and tailor their own learning experience.
This is a big one. At younger ages, kids definitely need more guidance and face to face teaching. Clearly this whole system is for kids that have reached a certain maturity level. For starters, I think each student should have their own mentor and be scheduled to meet regularly. Ideally the mentor will be able to identify and fix red flags through online analytics. Small things like gamifying content can help motivate (especially male) students. But most importantly, the LMS needs to be well implemented, comprehensive and engaging. My high school, Knox, got this step horribly wrong. They were experimenting with the 'laptop program' but had no LMS, homemade educational content, censoring, or even staff that knew enough about computers. Instead laptops were viewed as a supplement to the traditional classroom which inevitably resulted in students playing computer games and watching porn in class.
2) Won't tailored content be a bureaucratic nightmare? What about grading?
It would be a bureaucratic nightmare if we stuck to the old school way of grading. Recording attendance, homework, assignments and projects can be done automatically. Rather than grade the student based almost exclusively on a final exam, a progress report of the student can be generated automatically using multiple inputs including; video watch time, attendance, example problem scores, RATE of learning, peer to peer tutoring etc. Imagine all the useful data that has historically been ignored by only recording a final letter grade! Khan Academy already has a working version of this, but in my mind there is a long way to go.
3) Won't kids get embarrassed studying with younger students?
I don't know a way out of this one. It constantly amazes me how much our ape like instincts leak out in weird ways. It influences how we dress, sleep, work, socially interact, everything. No matter, how much a school is modernized, it will never be able to undo the deeply engraved biological impulses students have been evolutionary programmed with. It's true that if a really talented younger kid wants to 'specialize' in the same subject an older weaker student, then they will be in the same class. And maybe this will be a huge cause of embarrassment that will cause the older kid to disengage. I don't know. However, I suspect that once the expectation is clearly changed from an age based system to a results based system, where there are multiple ways to get a high 'score', perhaps this form of embarrassment won't be so prominent. And even if it is, is it any better than the existing system of having a severely multi talented class which secretly mocks and judges other students?
In summary, online learning is already a huge part of education. Students use YouTube and Wikipedia all the time. At the moment, this content is not utilized fully when treated as an additional supplement of teaching material to the traditional educational system. However, if implemented correctly, I think it can revolutionize the educational system. The old school way of teaching perfectly paralleled the industrial revolution style of working - a 9-5 with fixed outcomes. Now that jobs are becoming more flexible and creative, I think it pays to have an educational system which is based in part on self motivation, flexibility and personalized learning.
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