News
Published on 21. January 2020

How we will learn and work in the future – my son and I.

written by max

Everyone should have the right to have their own algorithm!

How could and should we actually learn? Today and in the future! And how to work? What does NewWork mean and how could our life as a whole change? My son Emilio and I have done an experiment together with the educational podcast TabulaRasa. (Links to the podcast – at the bottom please)

We talked about education. But not only from my perspective, but also from my son’s perspective. Who’s in the middle of it. At the time of the podcast he was 17 and in 12th grade at the Evangelische Schule Berlin Zentrum ESCZB in Berlin. Once built by the great education revolutionary Margret Rasfeld, today still a great school. Nevertheless Emilio has a clear view of the whole school system.

Who could say more about education today than a student

He feels, like many other students, that this system is no longer right at the back and front. That there is learning for something that is no longer needed in reality. That teaching methods are being used that are outdated. That material and skills are taught that are based on the needs of the industrial age but have nothing, nothing at all, to do with the requirements of a digital society.

In addition, and this is my part of the story, there will be a lot more changes in the area of technology, social values and required skills, in addition to the changes in society that are already apparent today – and a school system that is already far off the mark. And then the school system of today will hardly make sense anymore.

Children today are “kept” in school far below their talents.

Children today are already “caught” in school. They do not learn to live, but, apart from some basic skills, they learn such incredible nonsense that they will never need it again in their lives. Now in the upper school this becomes particularly clear with Emilio: there it is no longer at all about “learning” competences or contents and their branching out in the head. It is above all about getting a good grade in the Abitur. And that’s why, above all, exercises are held that are relevant to the exam. But only that! So children are trained to have material in their heads that they have to be able to recall once in their lives, namely for the Abitur, in order to get a good grade. In order to get a good grade…

Do we still need a high school diploma in the future?

Honestly: who needs a high school diploma? And for what? In the future, we may not even know a school-leaving certificate as we do today, since we learn all our lives anyway. In the future we will work in projects, in an employee’s market (there will be more work than employees) and between the projects, in coordination with the employer, we will further qualify ourselves for the next project. Because knowledge and the application of knowledge will change.

In the past we have gained knowledge and experience. Today, it is much more important to have basic skills to apply knowledge. Knowledge and experience are much better given by machines. This is already the case in many cases today, and it will increase many times over in the coming years. And we are still working on Humboldt’s basic ideas for an education system?

It is not only about the education system – the whole social system must be adapted.

Yes, we need to change more than the school system. Also the university system, but above all the lifelong education system. We have to get fit again and again. To do this, we will have technological support in a completely new form. We must allow that to happen. We have to recognize where machines can make a valuable contribution to our everyday lives and where we can let them out better, in terms of social ethics. We simply need different skills and a different educational landscape.

Everyone should have the right to their own personal algorithm!

Just as we need our own algorithms! Algorithms that belong to ourselves. Not the big platforms. Just imagine, you own a personal algorithm that has been with you since birth and can advise you … because it knows you. You go with it to a shopping platform. Today you have an algorithm of the provider, who wants to sell you something in any case, tomorrow hopefully your own algorithm, which tells you: “Hey Max, honestly, you’re tired and just want to buy yourself happy – better leave it! We would get honest answers. That would be something.

Only with our own algorithm we have the power to defend ourselves against the global platform algorithms. Because we need them today to keep track of things. How much more would help us to keep track of things ourselves! With our own ideas.

Above all, however, we could also experience individual educational content with our own algorithm. We no longer need a largely equal education, as in industrialization, so that as many people as possible can keep the industrial wheel turning in the same way. Today, we need the most individual forms of talent possible and to solve the diverse and ever new tasks that come our way in the digital world together with others in ever new constellations.

TabulaRasa – The Podcast!

We have to rethink not only education – but our whole life. And this is exactly what the podcast Emilio and I recorded with TabulaRasa is about. First me – then Emilio. First the fundamental basis, then what is already wrong today.

Many thanks to Jenni and Felix from TabulaRasa for the great realisation!

You can easily find the podcast on the web if you search for “TabulaRasa Max and Emilio Thinius” or via one of the following links

Direct contact to Max is via welcome@maxthinius.de

This post is also available in: German