Education will become fun because it will bubble up from within and not be forced in from without.
Part of me wants to say “alas, he got it wrong” but maybe less wrong that you would think if you went through public education in the United States (I can’t speak well to education in other countries, although education throughout the Anglo-sphere seems similar along relevant dimensions).
I’m thinking specifically of things like
Wikipedia (and the many more narrowly-focused wikis)
YouTube
Reddit (and to a lesser extent, Quora)
LessWrong (dare I add it to the list?) and other specialty forums
These all present ways in which education and learning is made accessible and can be discovered and used because people are interested, not because somebody told them they had to learn something. The experiences I’m thinking of that back these ideas up:
Spending hours with dozens, if not hundreds, of tabs open exploring related ideas in a wiki and getting lost in the network of related ideas, like a personally constructed episode of Connections.
Watching one video after another about topics of interest. For example, things I’ve gotten into patterns of watching on YouTube (helped along by the algorithm) just because they were interesting: amateur anthropology, literature summaries, science explainers, in-depth news reporting, and, of course, applied engineering.
Seeing people talk about and explore their personal experiences and learn from each out about how other people experience life differently from each other. Basically I think of Reddit like civics class if the only topic was “what universal human experiences are you missing”.
Having a place to read and write with people with similar interests, especially since once you’re in you’ll easily get pointed to stuff nearby you’ll likely be interested in learning more about.
It seems like if you ignore formal educational systems and look for places where people are genuinely interested in learning and sharing what they’ve learned, there’s never been a better time to be alive if you enjoy learning things, no matter what you enjoy learning.
Part of me wants to say “alas, he got it wrong” but maybe less wrong that you would think if you went through public education in the United States (I can’t speak well to education in other countries, although education throughout the Anglo-sphere seems similar along relevant dimensions).
I’m thinking specifically of things like
Wikipedia (and the many more narrowly-focused wikis)
YouTube
Reddit (and to a lesser extent, Quora)
LessWrong (dare I add it to the list?) and other specialty forums
These all present ways in which education and learning is made accessible and can be discovered and used because people are interested, not because somebody told them they had to learn something. The experiences I’m thinking of that back these ideas up:
Spending hours with dozens, if not hundreds, of tabs open exploring related ideas in a wiki and getting lost in the network of related ideas, like a personally constructed episode of Connections.
Watching one video after another about topics of interest. For example, things I’ve gotten into patterns of watching on YouTube (helped along by the algorithm) just because they were interesting: amateur anthropology, literature summaries, science explainers, in-depth news reporting, and, of course, applied engineering.
Seeing people talk about and explore their personal experiences and learn from each out about how other people experience life differently from each other. Basically I think of Reddit like civics class if the only topic was “what universal human experiences are you missing”.
Having a place to read and write with people with similar interests, especially since once you’re in you’ll easily get pointed to stuff nearby you’ll likely be interested in learning more about.
It seems like if you ignore formal educational systems and look for places where people are genuinely interested in learning and sharing what they’ve learned, there’s never been a better time to be alive if you enjoy learning things, no matter what you enjoy learning.