Real Life Game: Education

You have no idea how much joy it is to be a Cub Scout leader. I don’t claim to know knots at all, but I can figure out ways for the scouts to achieve every assignment given. The scouts are at an age where they are ready to learn and take on big tasks, but don’t have a clue how to do them. A lot of parents think this means we need to make it very structured, and only introduce a little.

During a recent outing, the adults began to discuss things. One scout is home schooled, while another parent is a college professor. The parents agreed on a lot of things, and had a wonderful discussion. I tried giving my opinions, but honestly they weren’t within the subject or thought processes of the folks I was chatting with. So, this essay is about that subject, and me trying to explain what I meant.

The truth is, schools and just about everything you understand are built like machines. The subjects, taught are viewed in a way to create a product at the end of the machine. This product will go on to be within the systems and descriptions of needed things of the known business world. What is missing, is people ready for the unknown business world, or ready to create a whole new world to work within. The machine itself is old, and trying to say it came from a direct thing would be difficult, because we have versions of it going back thousands of years. Those discussing how things are changing have pointed out that the entire thing is actually set up like a videogame.

To help you understand where I am coming from, I want you to imagine civilization. This is going to be a fairly brief understanding of a very large subject. Basically, when you imagine the Romans, or China, or the Aztecs, you see buildings set apart by walls, and rules that keep those walls in place. These walls and rules are used to keep everything working. It’s a machine that keeps things civil.

The first real reference to these walls and rules were the walls placed by Hamurabi. He literally placed rules on walls. People had questions about what to do when something happened, and could then know it fairly easily. The walls were set up to make sure people were controlled in how they entered, and how they left. It also helped keep out invading armies.

Confucius was basically a fanboy who wanted everyone to copy off his favorite empire. His writings were about mimicking the culture, and rules of that empire. This sounds like a small task, but the truth is, it was the basis for Chinese culture. People continued to follow, and add onto these rules. The systems of who is what, and how they should act was all written down and followed. If an emperor thought someone was not acting correctly, he could have that person killed.

The truth is, we use these walls and rules today. There are no walls blocking Red and Blue state senators from getting to know each other, yet when you look at pictures of the senate you see them separated. The same goes for facebook and how it promotes ideas. Are you conservative? Then you will most likely get ads for conservative ideas. The same goes for Liberals. I don’t think this is a surprise.

Society separates us from football teams, religious affiliation, and other things. We create stereotypes about how these things work. It becomes a surprise when those things don’t turn out to be true. There are more Mormons outside of the US than inside, let alone Utah. There are poor Jews and rich Jews, and they don’t always know each other. There are major businessmen with several honors and awards who are black, and no one has noticed it.

The reasons for all of these walls and rules is how we set civilization up. When you imagine the Roman empire, you imagine Rome. You may imagine Alexandria, or the Middle East with a bit of education, but most people I have met do not. Civilization as we imagine it involves people be in one place, and not moving a lot. When we talk about it, we imagine houses as far as the eye can see. There are roads, and people milling about, and guards, and systems set up so everything works.

Rome had aqueducts built to help bring in fresh water to the city, and all sorts of traffic controls to help the people move. The guards were often paid to take care of specific areas, and were not Roman by birth or nationality. You would walk the city and find different ethnic groups all working within their own group to get things accomplished. The poor lived in one area, and the rich lived in another.

China literally had the ranking system codified by Confucian doctrine. So a peasant was higher than a merchant, but the merchant could have more money. A magistrate was higher up, only because they were proven to be scholars. It was a lot of work to become a true scholar.

The Aztecs had river systems, and ways to move the people along. There were designs for areas before they were built. Architects, and engineers built incredible buildings, and ideas.

Why is any of this important? Because the amount of people in the area demanded there be a system setup to keep everything working. The traffic systems, and also the housing systems all had to be planned. The expected result was that there would be a lot of people in the area, and it would continue to expand. Civilization as we know it is based on this idea.

This is a huge topic, and I want you to realize we are talking about thousands of years of history here. I can’t sum it up without missing all sorts of incredibly cool details. Also, you are likely asking how any of this works.

The answer is that there are two things that build this civilization into what it is. They both work within each other so it would be difficult to separate them. The first is that most of the rules happen as the civilization gets more packed in, and have less travel between areas. The second is there will always be the traveling people who trade ideas and thoughts.

When you see a civilization like the Roman empire, you often make the mistake of looking at the height of its power, and then near its end. All you know is the thoughts they had built in, and how to do them, but never the reasons why. Rome was a farmland, and had tyrant leadership. The term does not mean a dictator, but someone who takes a major leadership role and then gives it up when their job is finished. At the beginning of Rome, a man became a great military leader, and stopped oncoming conquerors, when the battles were done, he went back to farming.

When Rome began to have more people, they had loose regulations between the peoples, and a few full time government workers. It was enough, and no one seemed to mind. The Senate slowly grew until government workers were full time, and making several laws. At the same time, the population and trade was opening up a great deal. By the time the Roman Empire began with Julius Caesar, the people had grown into a city and needed full time workers for every aspect of the civilization. It continued like this, and people began to take more power, and view themselves as more important. The country expanded multiple times, and worked to get the people to follow the ideals made by the Romans.

As the ideas and inventions grow, the people are prosperous, and the cities grow. The people continued to love the work, but did feel crushed within the cities. So there were new cities, and expansions to these cities happening all the time. After a certain point, they reached the end of the ability to expand, both in trade and in city size. This inability caused strife, and people in power began to work to gain more power from each other.

It all began to shrink, and the people themselves began to be caught up in various political strifes, and wars. Senators tried to prove their skills by leading armies into battle. Some of them did well, and others failed. The strife so consumed them that the contraction of trade, and movement of the people made it difficult to keep the power and strength they once had.

Rome didn’t fall. We like to say it did, but the empire continued for several centuries afterwards. The term Holy Roman Empire was kept into the medieval period by Germanic warriors, who were the hired out guards and military in Rome.

This expansion, and then reaching of limits happens to technology, ideas, and even nations. As the nation reaches more people than trade allows, more and more rules are made. The people have difficulties working with so many people around them. You can find signs of it throughout history, and into all sorts of other things. Don’t believe me, watch a kitchen in a restaurant during rush hour. The workers have to move fast, and keep up with orders, all while following multiple rules to follow.

Within these walls and rules are people that do not follow them. They keep their own rules, and worry more about trade and movements. They will fight for a good spot to take care of animals, or rest than whether or not a specific rule is being followed. When the going gets tough, they leave. Why fight someone who will waste their needed resources.

Within Chinese culture, the merchants keep ties with each other throughout the country. They keep secret organizations, and knowledge about things to keep themselves safe. When the merchant is the near lowest member of the civilization, it makes sense. These traders move back and forth between cities, and take with them items to sell and ideas to talk about.

There are also people that move without any real reason to do so. They simply move as part of their cultural knowledge. I follow my family tree, and my ancestors moved a lot. By coincidence, so have I. There is more to the items you have, and being practical with things. Unless you knew how to take it with you, you didn’t. Every book I own is boxed, and ready to go. As are most of my clothes. If something is out, I know how to take it apart, and pack it for the journey.

This other culture that weaved through civilization also had their own empires. The most famous one was the Mongolian Empire which nearly covered all of Eurasia. If it didn’t cover an area directly, many resources were placed to make trade with the people in it. Marco Polo traveled to China during this empire.

We know there were others, but finding them is difficult. For example, there was likely a trade system with the Pacific Ocean, the Americas, and SouthEast Asia. We know this from signs like how you point, and common legends being found among them. Just saying it out loud will get a long conversation, or a very short one from a professor. You can tell what kind of professor you have based on the response.

Why is this important to education? Because as things are changing with technology, we are moving toward a more movement based society. This means changes in how we view things, and why.

This brings us back to the history of education. We know it the most by those walls and rules type systems. If you really want to know, it didn’t start that way. Before written communication, we memorized the needed information. The group would teach their children the memorized stories of their families and tribes. There would be hands on activities for various things to be accomplished. By the time the child was an adult, they had been telling the same stories, and doing the same things for decades, and were completely capable of life.

The first real work to document things was for tax and trade purposes. We are still finding warehouses full of ancient documents marking who traded for what. This was so important, that it became a major part of education. People were sent to school to learn about writing, and working numbers for various systems.

After this, if something was considered important, it was written down. So the laws were written down, not just memorized. The histories of the people were written down, and by the time of the Greeks, the major thoughts were made for others to read. The amount of people who could was rare, but those who could were either in charge of books, or had enough money to afford being taught.

If you were rich, and wanted to be powerful, you owned books that others wanted. People would trade their entire lives to live in places where books were kept. This is the time of Civilization as we know it. These places of books were where the educated lived. They would send books to each other, and write down copies, only to send back the original. This was painstaking work, and done by people who were sworn to keep the books safe.

The walls and rules of these collections were vast. People knew the books were worth more than their own weight in gold. In fact, several people would write copies using styles and arts that few others would have. Calligraphy was considered a high mark for the educated, because they not only wrote, but knew how to write the classics. This was the origin of our school system.

Keep in mind, the majority were not taught, and continued living their lives away from books. There were still stories and ideas being passed down from elder to youth every day. But when money became common among the people, there would be several that learned writing and memorization together.

This is how math was taught, and language, and everything you know. People would sit down with the books they had, and work with them until they could do everything in it perfectly.

Within China, to prove you were a scholar, there was something called the great test. Every rank was a literal test that would be torture to achieve. You had to have the great books memorized so you could quote them directly. Then you had to have perfect writing form. Finally, you had to show you understood the books and how they would answer the questions given. The test was several days long, and the test takers would not leave a compound until finished. When they were given breaks, they couldn’t talk to each other. Each test taker was sequestered in a room with three boards. The boards fit onto shelves to make a bed, a desk, and a chair.

Likewise, during the Caliphate, many art forms were forbidden, but calligraphy was considered great. Especially the writings of the great teachers from the great books. You can literally see writing in architecture in some of the oldest buildings. Like Hamurabi, the laws are written for all to see.

You have probably guessed the European scholars were monks. They would spend hours every day, writing and reading from their own vast libraries. If there was something to know, they would try to get a copy of it, or make one of their own.

When these groups met the other civilization, and their empires clashed, it was terrible. The Caliphate was destroyed by the order of the Kahn, and the entire library was thrown into the tigris river. It was said the river was black from the ink for a long time.

In China, the same Kahnate changed itself to become more Chinese. The mongolian empire broke apart quickly, but trade continued between them. However, the far eastern side slowly stopped being travelers and instead walls and rules.

Over the centuries more and more people could be educated, but the full education was still limited to a select few. Then the industrial revolution began to take down the need for so many uneducated people who farmed for a living. We can watch the slow history of education change, and then speed up at this point. There were more needs for people that could read, and run machines than there was for someone uneducated. So, schools began to open up and allow teachers to lecture and help. At the same time, apprenticeships were opened up into several new things. It was a time of expansion in Europe, and the people worked to become educated about it.

When the classrooms were new, there would be a few students, and the teacher would continue to help them learn the basics. It had been thousands of years, but the basics were still memorization of laws and rules, and knowing basic maths, and some languages. The more students came into power, the more rules were applied to students. Suddenly there were grade levels, and educational skills. The old libraries which taught only a handful began to take in more and more students ready to learn.

Soon, the people recognized the education system the same as the machines they worked with. There was a need for a specific product. The product was a well enough educated person who could take orders. They would be placed in a job for the rest of their lives. The need to have these basic units was so great society decided everyone needed a basic education. High school was considered unneeded for most, but those who did attend at least that were more educated and thus at a better pay scale.

Since there were more students, they began to take the classes apart into grade level. The teachers became engineers of the human mind, and everything had a system. The education levels, and other things were placed so that every grade was that much more than the previous one. They began to regulate by age, and ability. Tests would be given to see where the students placed.

The machine was built and designed to keep the better students, and get rid of the unneeded. There were factories ready for people who only had a small education, and the pay was good. The entire point of the machine was to continue making the better product from each grade. It demanded students learn from the same books, and same educational skills.

When Japan and China gained it, they added their own spin to it. To get to the next grade involved a major test. By the time you were in high school, it was expected that you had already chosen a major, and would take tests for only that subject. Students even today, ignore the classes that are not required for the college they want to go to. Then, in university, they learn the basics of the subject. The company is expected to teach the student how the system works, and the education then stops. The new product is set for life within that job.

If this sounds familiar, its because your school is set up this way. You as a student are not expected to be important, but a gear in an ongoing machine. Since there are several students, the rules get stricter and stricter.

When China was prosperous, they would sometimes have tens of thousands taking the same test at the same time and place. Only a few were needed for the position, so the majority were not passed. But this was alright, because these scholars could take the test several times, and also teach classes on the subjects in between.

The same is with the education system you have. We only need so many CEO’s, or accountants, or teachers for that matter. There had to be a way to weed out the students. The answer became harder rigor, and more tests in our modern time.

It gets better, and we need to go back in time again for this one. Man, its as if I study history and culture or something. Basically, as things began to change within the Industrial Revolution, there was also a new set of ideas and thoughts. As they collided, the need for the education you now understand is being pressured by technological change around it.

Back in the 18th century new ideas began to be presented. Almost all of them are taught in a modern Highschool.

The new ideas of how the government should work, and who it should work for was given a new light. Beforehand, it was thought the monarchs and upper class were somehow better than the rest. The arguments against it were strong, and pushed by the American Revolutionary war, and then the United States of America. They used the ideas to create a new thing, a country where there were no rulers, just men elected to power. These men soon became men of two different colors, then women were added, and then any citizen of the country. The powers of the common class were given to just about everyone. History and Government classes talk about these ideas strongly.

Newton wanted to explain his new understanding of physics, so he created a new form of math. Before this, they had been using the same equations and philosophies for thousands of years. With one swoop, Newton introduced the idea that there was more to be figured out. Countries would actually try to hide their new math ideas. For example, the French Army used trigonometry to calculate where to fire cannons. This was considered top secret information. Almost all of your Science, Computer, and Math classes are owed to the concept of new math.

With this, the idea that we could be making new books was introduced. The people were more educated, so books and newspapers began to be sold. It was a common story of men standing next to each other, and not talking because of how caught up they were with this new information.

These new ideas meant we needed new people to do them. At first, it was small time tinkerers with the time and money to try things out. Explorations of continents opened up to people, and so did cultures. Books were printed at astounding rates, and the people became more and more educated.

Instead of far off places that collected books, every town had a library. The same worked for schools, and the arts. It was all transmitted quickly to any home out there. This was the turning point, and you need to recognize it.

When TV, common public libraries, and public schools were introduced, there were several jobs open for anyone without an education. If you wanted to work at a factory, they required the ability to read at a basic level, and that was it. A computer fit inside of a building, and often the building was built just for that computer. Then came new inventions.

Soon computers could fit inside of a room, and then a wall, and then a table, and then a desk, and it kept going until you had a super powered computer at the palm of your hand. Those libraries with all of their books could easily fit inside of your computer. Now you can do so much, life has changed.

The same thing happened to factory jobs. Steel workers in Detroit were promised benefits for their entire life. Then someone came up with a smaller mill to make steel. It took up less than a third of the space, and much less workers. Detroit has continued selling the same amount of steel, but the need for factory workers dropped. When a Harvard professor studied things that happened like this, he called it disruption, because of how it destroyed the market.

Taxis were common throughout majorly congested areas. Why own a car when it’s easier to just have someone else drive you? They had rules and regulations and several other things to take care of the workers and the passengers. Then someone said anyone could be a taxi driver, and you could ask for it with your phone. The technology had changed so much, and so quickly Taxis were not needed. When the government tried to put pressure on the pay for the drivers, the company that made the app began to test out driverless cars. The entire industry will be shrunk down to very small numbers.

At the same time, more and more people are educated. Remember the guidance counselor who said a college education would make you more money? She was right, but not for the reasons she gave. Going to Harvard does not mean you will make a bunch of money. Getting to know investors, and top financial guys at Harvard will make you more money. The part everyone misses is that making friends in university who can help you make money, will be the biggest advantage you need. As more students go to universities to get an education, they view the diploma as the important part. They miss out on why so many rich people went to Harvard in the first place.

With so many jobs not needing as many workers, and the amount of people with higher education, the market begins to look bad. When my baby brother applied for a job at a Burger King we lived near, they told him he needed a college degree. Take a moment to let that all in.

As a writer, the amount of writers has increased so much that being noticed by a big publisher is next to impossible. There are conferences for writers costing hundreds of dollars so aspiring writers can beg writing agents to represent them. At the same time, more and more books are being introduced it becomes difficult to promote yourself outside of the big publishers.

The same works for videogames. The ability to make a game has become simple enough it could be taught in a highschool or even a middle school class. With open source software, and the right knowledge a teenager could easily create a game as polished as many modern game companies.

Education as a machine to create a product is reaching the point where it is making too many educated workers. On the other hand, machines today are improving so quickly, we won’t need a worker either.

This is why the rules have become stricter and stricter for entering school, or getting a job. Luckily there is another answer to this, and the very technology that pushed the walls and rules to crush us is also pointing to the way out.

I want you to imagine the school, and how it works. You can see the places for each class, each grade, and where the teacher is. It’s almost like a zoo, where students get to watch a teacher in his natural environment. It’s more true for art class and PE. Each subject is taught with a specific set of requirements and ideas. The teacher is there to push students toward the given answers the books give. Now imagine in your mind how much of that information can be taught on your phone.

If you are having difficulties imagining exactly what a student needs to learn, I found a PDF of exactly that subject for 3rd Grade Math. You will notice that the requirements are listed out in a list of what is learned, and when it will be taught. The teacher is to teach the student by just going down the list. She prepares every day to move onto the next part of the list, and does tests to see how well the students are learning.

It’s not as if I have never seen anything like this. This is the requirements for the Webelos award. Each pin is it’s own subject, so think of Cast Iron Chef as Cooking class or something. I have to go down a list, and make sure the scout does all of them to pass off their pin. It’s the same as the school system.

An old roommate of mine talked about it as he was working for an online school. The requirements were the same for his school, but being taught differently. He made a comment that someday, students would be making classes for other students, and it would all be something like a videogame. The students would be taught about how to learn, and then given to teachers that taught in the style best for the student. The student would get the education needed for them, and know how to use it.

By coincidence, he was not the only one talking about it. When the Harvard professor who coined the term Disruption within businesses looked at schools, he saw the same thing. To him, the school system would change to be more modular, and geared toward how the student learns. School would be different to every student that entered, and not set to a rigor that we see today.

It’s already happening. For example, Khan Academy, UDemy, and Skillshare all offer classes on various subjects to help support and teach people who want to learn a new trick. Khan academy actually has classes on how to learn animation from the Pixar creators themselves. Udemy and Skillshare tend to be more for someone who already knows a subject, but wants to learn a specific skill better. You check through the long lists of teachers, and how they teach classes, and choose the one that feels right for you.

If you think this doesn’t go to university and higher level training, get ready. MIT Open Courseware is the entire class taught in MIT, only without a grade. They are part of an open classware group that connects several of the top level scholars in teaching classes you want to learn more about. I checked, and no, I am nowhere near qualified to teach a class with any of these departments. On the other hand, they offer degrees in some cases. Also, their Anthropology classes really aren’t my style anyway.

As a Webelos leader, I use gamification within my little den. This is the use of videogame goals and ideas, while following a real life task. The goals set by the Boy Scouts of America for the Webelos and Arrow of Light badge are perfectly designed to turn everything into a game. Every year I choose out a theme, and tell my scouts we are going to reenact it. One year my little scouts were Roman soldiers, this year they are fighting off zombies in a minecraft like world -their idea, not mine- and quite often they do not see the progress they are making.

We have goals set for events. For example, we have survival hikes. The scouts plan out a hike, and while they move along, they have to show how to take care of any random injury that ‘happens’ on the way. If I have time to plan, there are parents and siblings, and others with makeup on showing the various wounds. The kids don’t realize they are getting their First Responder and Hiking Pin, they just see this really cool event they got to participate in.

There is also a big battle with padded swords, forts, and various siege weapons that happens with all of the scouts involved. Every weapon is made by the scouts, the strategies, and forts are designed as we discuss the way things work. The requirements go quickly because the scouts are so excited to go to war. Before you ask, the boulders being launched are marshmallows, and the scouts are wearing helmets.

How education will change gets even deeper than this, and it needs to be explained. When I say engineer, you imagine a very specific person. The schools actually teach so that they only get that kind of person to be an engineer. The reality is, there are others who could do the job, and they would be great at it. As the schools open up, you will also see these changes.

My brother is a robotics engineer. He studied mechanical, and wants to do robots when he gets to grad school. In class, they push for him to memorize methods, and constantly give him work on the matter to the point that he barely has a social life. He has had to take less classes to get better grades, and also get sleep. It’s not the math itself that is difficult, but how it is used and why.

If you remember the schools and libraries in earlier times, you can see memorization and working on repeating things carefully. Engineering and many other majors hasn’t changed from that. The student memorizes, and then takes a test for the item. Will he actually use it? It’s unknown. This is why they try to get him to memorize every last detail. There is no attempt to teach him how to apply it, or have fun with it. Sadly mechanical engineering does this a lot, unlike those crazy guys over at electrical.

Dilbert is about a computer engineer, and his life in a corporate world. He doesn’t know how to communicate to people, has to go to meetings where the designs are unneeded, and feels much smarter than everyone else. He is not paid much, but he feels like he is the backbone of the entire company.

This is accurate to how they teach engineers to be. They give large amounts of homework, because they are expecting students with low social skills. These students should smell bad, have no real life outside of school, and should be ready to be important lackeys.

The school expects this, and also tries to get students who fit this description. They will have weed out classes that are so hard the student will either buckle down and become the imagined engineer, or quit. The teachers believe this is the best way to have real engineers.

Here is the interesting question, does this make a better engineer? The teachers think so, and corporate America uses them like this. It is also only true because thats how we do it. My brother would be the first to point out how much more important getting social interactions, and people into subjects is. He lived in Japan for two years, and saw that the more social people were, the happier they were and more successful they could be.

I am going to show you a picture I took.

How big is that granary? If you were a physicist or mathematician, you could look at the height of the stop sign as opposed to the height of the building. All stop signs are at the same height, and window appears to be following proper size and length. It becomes a quick math trip to not only figure out the height, but the distance away, and its width.

If you were an artist, who understood how the color blue worked in the world, you would see the shadow made by the mill. You would also know the how the colors mix based on distance. The deeper blue shows greater distance, and thus from that you could figure out the height, width, and distance of the granary. Just knowing colors can give you that information.

Another person may ask for an audio file of the granary. That way, they can listen in to the sound, and how it feels. They know where the major machinery is, and how it works. Thus, you could figure out all sorts of things by sound alone.

Even then, another kid will look up the building within the internet, looking at google maps for a better picture, and then a search for the name of the building. They would find out it is 73 feet high, and built in 1912. Each person could look at this picture, ask for more information, and get an accurate answer.

Now imagine one of these people was an engineer? Would they be able to fit the image you have of the engineer, and how they work? The physicist maybe, but not the color blue, or sound guy. But the reality is, if you set up mathematics the way these students understood it, they could design that building, or draw up specs on it. Each person finds out the same information from a different set of knowledge, and natural skill. There is math for colors, sounds, picture taking, and even looking it up. These aren’t taught to engineering students, because it is expected that they only think in one way.

Math it turns out is difficult a lot of the time because it is only being taught to a specific type of person. Even then, most people who like math, find it hard. For example, the equations for the book on assholes has me scared, because I don’t know if they make things work correctly. There are outliers to it that would be insane. But for the most part they work, and describe the situations well. The next step will be getting numbers and ideas to work with those equations.

As things become easier to understand, more people will be educated, and in ways that the school system today can’t even imagine. They will pass with flying colors, great sounds, and maybe an internet search or two.

This then comes back to my own studies. I was honestly expecting to go to grad school to continue studying things. Then, somehow I started asking questions, going to places I wanted to study, and found out the grad degree wasn’t needed. The next few studies will involve a lot of travel, so maybe I should work on it then. At the moment, I should finish up the work I have done already. What I have noticed is that slowly, through my work, people have been impressed and money is slowly being made.

The reason why I bring this up is the final part of this essay. With the way technology is changing the way the world works, and the types of jobs we imagine changing completely or not needing as many people, it begs the question what happens to the student? If the machine is building a product, what is that product?

First off, most of this future is unknown, but if it works out like the travelers culture does there are signs. The first part is the ability to do quick research. Math, or figuring out various dimensions quickly, and the ability to discuss them will also be helpful. The major part is the ability to adapt to the new environment, and new thoughts.

Since you have a phone, and access to just about every book ever written, and also any research paper as well, you can do a quick study on how things work with the situation you are in. Where others have tested, you can find. The needed equations are right at your fingertips.

This doesn’t end the need for someone who knows things. Even as there were traveling people in places made of walls and rules, there will be people who speak of laws and ideas among travelers. The ability to know and remember will still be needed.

Having everyone know the needed equations and how they work will help in building various things quickly. Setting up quick parameters, or knowing a good site will make the planning and doing quick. You aren’t trying to build a permanent thing, but something that can be rebuilt and then packed quickly.

Far more interesting is how much you can do without being anywhere near your fellow workers. You need to color a picture, and the artist is in another city, and the level designer isn’t even in the country. As you discuss with your teammates how to do things, you will be using systems and ideas from around the world to find out the answer.

The biggest thing is to know how to communicate with the people you work with. This doesn’t just mean the team you are on, but other groups you are working with or for. Knowing that blue makes things more distant, or the sound of a rumble from a few blocks down becomes very useful. Do you point with your lips, your head, or your finger? Which finger? When you know these parts you have ways to talk with everyone.

That is likely the key. You need to know how to do the research, and quickly. Then you need to know how to use the maths being given. As you use them, find ways to communicate it with the people you are working with or for. This isn’t just information, but how the information is understood.

With all of that said, I guess this explains my opinion on the education system. What we have is a system of rules and walls that make up a machine. The product is a person able to do a specific task as needed, like a machine. As time moved on, more and more people attained higher education. Jobs requiring little skill have been steadily disappearing. While it looks dire, the answer has been known by those who study the matter out. There will be a change in the way society works, and how jobs are done. Knowing how to adapt to this will help you know the end product the new education system will create.

When I work with my little cub scouts, I actually imagine this future. I set up things for my scouts to figure things out on their own, and how to adapt to new knowledge or ideas. It isn’t just running away from zombies, but creating games with each other about zombies. It’s figuring out how to build a tent with the materials ‘found’ around the area. The big siege war means knowing the best ways to build a fort, and how to take one down.

Later in life, they probably won’t need the swords, the catapults, or the random games we made up with our shoes. But they will know how to plan things out, budget for them, and then adjust when the plans don’t work. At the same time, they will know how to work with each other on various projects.

It really is a great thing for me, and I get to make a marshmallow balista.