Participating in the RGEMW Conference this year had been a great experience. Judging after it's full name, “Rules of Global Engagement: Mentalities at War”, it had the purpose of discussing the main problems of the world today, and coming with solutions. Somehow, we did just so.
Of course, I met some great people and had some very rewarding conversations. I did have an absolutely great time discussing with Professor Hans Gunther Heimbrock from the Goethe University of Frankfurt on philosophy and religion, or with Professor Hoye from Hong-Kong about classical music. All of the guests and invited speakers were great, and the organising team had done everything they could do in order for the conference to go as well as it did.
I spoke in a discussion, with 4 other speakers, and all of them were a lot of fun to work with. Thanks to them, I believe the discussion went great. Still, I did not say everything I had to say on the topic. Of course, being a public talk I couldn't say everything I had in mind, so I find this article a great way to express what I wanted to say. Everything I've said at the conference can be found here, and I think that by reading this one can fully understand my opinion regarding education, especially the educational system, ours, and a universal idealistic one.
The first thing to discuss, I think, is what are the aims of education. But can one exactly say what are the aims of education? Not really, actually. They differ from country to country, from culture to culture, that is a known fact. But here I think I found some universal aims, that apply greatly to the romanian educational system too.
I identified three main goals, which I will further develop: the first is self-development, not in the common sense, but in the sense of developing students as humans, and that can be done in many ways I will later discuss. The second important aim is producing an useful citizen, which is equally important as the first one. The third one, is achieving excellence in a field. Now, after stating the three main goals that I consider of great importance, we should develop them so that in the end we have a full working system.
By following the rational way, you may think that all of these are done by teachers, which is right. That leads us to the profile of the teacher, and the relationship he must have with the students. Some of my ideas may be considered radical and some of the people may consider them offending, and that is one of the reasons I did not say everything at the conference. One of these ideas, and a very important one in my opinion, is that there is no such thing as a bad student, only as a bad teacher, which is one of the key facts for understanding education. The problem of teacher is a huge one around the world, but especially in our own educational system. So what makes a teacher great? What makes a teacher gather tens of students around him and make them want to come to the next class too? Passion. There had been great teachers around the world, and I studied a lot of them. One of my all-time favorites is Richard Feynman, the american physicist from the California Institute of Technology (or more often called Caltech). He was brilliant. There was something in the way he explained physics that made hundreds of teens and students around the world decide that physics is what they want to do for a living, and that physics is worth learning. I believe there is something equally great in all fields and subjects. All we need is teachers that have a real passion in the subject. One of Feynman's students back in 67' once said that if 40 students would show up for one of Feynman's classes, the next day instead of the number of students being smaller, 100 students would show up. So in order to explain it to other people, the teacher needs to deeply understand their subject, and its value, and this is extremely important. Just as Einstein said, if you can't explain it to a 6-year old, it means you did not understand it yourself. The next thing that teachers should do, is being able to provoke the students, in order to develop creativity and to help them discover the subject by themselves.
Some other important point I want to make regards the importance of subjects like history and arts. Music, universal literature, and so on. These subjects have equal value to those of mathematics and physics, because they widen the student's horizons, and keep our minds open. They provide us different views about the world and about humanity itself, and have great importance in our way of being humans. History goes in other category somehow, it is connected to what I said about being an useful citizen. History's importance is great, and I will discuss it in another article. Long story short, with knowing our history comes predicting the future.
The next idea worth discussing regards excellence. What we understand through excellence and defining the term is very important, which was a very useful comment made by Professor Leo Hoye. By excellence I mean developing and focusing on one specific field or subject. Some problems arise with this, like: when should the student start focusing mainly on a single field? And how do we determine that age or time? How could a high-school possibly know what he wants? Now this is a big problem in our educational system, because I met tens of students with amazing potential, not knowing what they like or in what direction should they go (there has also been an equally great number of teenagers who knew what they want, but school did not support them in that). And that is because school does nothing in this direction. School, in 12 years that are vital to the development of students, kill every single bit of their potential. So how should the schooling years go? First of all, during years 5-8 the student needs to be helped to find a field suitable for him. With good teaching, after these 4 years, students should discover their passion. After those years, students need to be encouraged to acquire knowledge in that field and participate into competitions. Engaging in competitions is still a debatable problem, as results in different contests have no actual value in defining a person, but preparing for a competition is not easy, and during preparation period students acquire more than the proper knowledge of the field, but also what it means to work hard for something, to have dedication and to be motivated. Nothing great comes easy, and as cliché as it sounds, it is true, a certain fact. And after all, even losing a competition is a gain for the student. I can say from personal experience that I learned far more from my failure than I would have learned from my success. So should one study in high-school only the preferred subject or field? Of course not. A cultural background is equally important for one's development. As I said before, students need to know history, have a fairly solid knowledge of social and political education, and at the same time develop public-speaking skills and others that proved important for surviving in our times. (short comment: in the case of the romanian system, social education classes exist, but in the early years of school, to be later removed in high-school, which I personally find as an extremely unproductive and idiotic decision). Free-thinking is crucial, and that comes with the skill of raising questions, and the trait of being skeptical. As I said, that needs to be part of the teacher's job in classes. Engaging students in conversations, asking questions, and keeping authority at a low level. By raising authority as the main part of our educational system, fear of asking questions is a normal result. It is a huge problem nowadays that needs to be solved as soon as possible, if we want a change in what regards education in our country.
So is there something else we can do in order to raise the level and quality of the educational system? When choosing teachers, they need to be selected carefully. If I could ask a teacher only one thing when he comes at the interview, I would only ask him to explain something of his field of interest to me. That would be more than enough in determining a teacher's competence. Also, something that went through my head after reading Barack Obama's book “Audacity of Hope” was differentiated salary for teachers. Teachers should be paid based on performance. Why would a teacher raise to the level of (let's say) a great teacher, when he is being paid the same? Of course, this only applies for our educational system, as I am not fully aware of the situation worldwide.
Some other thing that needs to be specified is that is an absolute waste for us to be oriented for what is the trend in the job market, for what will get us money. We should be oriented for how we can use ourselves, how can we use our (discovered in school, hopefully) passion, in order to be useful for the society. In order to do what we like, and also bring something original, new, that will make what we do special. Believe me, money will come. Another thing that school took care of, was losing self-confidence. Believing that you can be useful, that you can bring something special, unique that will matter is essential. So believe that you can do that. And then do something about it. Put passion, dedication, hard-work and motivation into getting where you want to get. You will learn a lot more than what you thought of when you started.
The Questions
The talk had been a success, in my opinion, because of the implication of the public. The organizing team proved again how good they prepared for this, by launching a website for live questions. As I did not have all the time I would have needed to discuss the most intriguing questions, I will state some of them here, and try to give a more complete answer
Question 1. Will AI ever replace teachers in schools?
This has been a question I could have prepared for even before it was asked at the conference. Artificial intelligence has been a very popular subject lately, and with good reason. My answer is no, AI couldn’t possibly replace teachers, because in order to teach the human part is essential. In order to teach, you need to reach your audience first.
Question 2. What is more important in your opinion, creativity or productivity?
A good result requires as much creativity as it does productivity. And creativity is as hard to achieve as productivity is. Still, although you can't have a result without both of them, creativity could be more valuable somehow, because with creativity you can develop productivity. Productivity can be achieved by lots of means, depending on your personality. Knowing yourself, using your creativity in order to boost your concentration, speed, and so on, is very important.
Question 3. What do you think is the most important trait of a teacher?
Passion. Really, I would prefer a passionate teacher instead of a very talented one. Most of the times, the knowledge required for teaching a subject in middle school or high-school doesn't need the teacher to be a genius.
Question 4. How can depression be overcome when it comes to grades and fear of being judged?
You need to know what you want. Grades are absolutely useless. You need to find what you want to work for, and yes, maybe in that case, grades may reflect you progress in studying that subject you wish to know. If depression and anxiety and stress arises when studying what you have chosen as an important subject for your future, it means you have chosen wrong. And in the case of other subjects, depression shouldn't exist, as you need to realize what is important for you, and focus on that.
One of the most important things to remember here, academic success does not guarantee success in life, and that is a statistically proven fact. As Elon Musk said, “I did not go to Harvard, but the people who work for me did.”
Bonus insight
It all comes down to mentality. If we want a change, as it goes with politics or other problems, we need to change our mentality. Which is hard, I admit. Change comes from all of us. People that hold positions in what regards education can do something, parents can do something, teachers can do something, as I said, and, of course, students can do something. Unless we change our mentality, nothing is going to happen.
I became aware of the role of mentality recently, maybe not in the sense I said before, but in the sense of culture. I read “The Problem of China”, a very interesting and intellectually captivating study made by Bertrand Russell. Why are korean, chinese students on the top of every international competition? There are many factors contributing to this, one of them being that they know what they want. But the more interesting factor comes from culture. Both (let's say) american and chinese cultures are interesting, and each of them have things to learn from the other. This goes with every nation and culture on the planet. The problem is that, unlike others, chinese people will actually learn from others, and be excited about it. That is the main reason China is so prosper at the moment.
Special thanks again to the organizers, the people I discussed to, and to the public for listening to us.
