You are a genius!
You are a genius, don’t let “them” take it away from you.
“
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey, teachers, leave them kids alone
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
“ — Pink Floyd
I am the founder of Giganoto. All views expressed in this blog are solely mine. These thoughts are amalgamations of my own experiences, experiences shared by the Giganoto founding team, and research about the present and future learning systems.
Most people miss their school or college days, but when asked, what do they miss or still remember about their school or college? The most common answers we get are -
Friends, dorms, classroom chats, and maybe some other fun things, but too rarely say they miss learning or the teaching style.
Have you ever wondered why?
I personally believe that “the current education system is broken globally.” This writing is my attempt to make you understand why I say so.
Part 1 — The problem
It is of paramount importance to differentiate a herd of 50 students from a collection of 50 unique individuals.
Every student has their pace to learn a particular thing. Education institutes are mostly trying to control learners in the name of discipline. These farm-like education systems use the same techniques to teach a bunch of 50 odd students.
This century-old system is still trying to solve the early 1900s deficit in the workplace when the world was going through a significant industrialization phase. Sadly these education institutes are the majority. Their focus is more on testing than learning. Instead of appreciating individuality, this machine-like system believes in conformity.
Tools and processes exist to label “good quality” meat from the bad quality in this farm of students. Students are ranked based on a limited number of skills, which mostly involve only the brains’ left side. While Mathematics, Science, and other forms of rote memorization get the utmost importance, Arts and physical education are ignored as just the medium for a syllabus to look diverse enough.
“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” — Animal Farm by George Orwell.
Most education systems are broken, but the university level education is more broken/dysfunctional.
Universities education supposedly helps you become or at least move in the direction of becoming an expert on the subject, whatever one chooses that subject to be.
But they too inherit the old system like school education where memorization and testing are considered more important than actual learning.
Every child is born genius, creative, and curious. It’s the environment from parents to the education system that tells them that being wrong is unacceptable. It’s a shameful thing to be incorrect.
In adulthood, we are frightened to be wrong because of this continuous conditioning and yet crave to be unique and creative.
Part 2 — Part of the solution.
At Giganoto, we believe that there is an underlying assumption about adult learners, which we feel is baseless, and this feeling is not just intuitive but research-based.
Assumption: Leaning is inherently tricky and boring/tiresome. People who are average at something will remain average at it because of their habits.
We believe learning can be fun, and tools like AI and gamification helps you achieve that. We at Giganoto delve ourselves into a lot of cognitive research about learning and learning systems.
The Beta version of Giganoto was launched in Nov 2020.
Currently, we are taking baby steps to reach a mature system.
Giganoto helps current and future software developers learn computer science and other subjects in a fun, gamified way.
Part 3 — The global solution
I believe the current education system needs to be replaced, not changed but replaced. The world needs new players, and in the era of digital, degrees are redundant.
We do not need the corrupt hierarchy of control responsible for creating the herd mentality, ruthless machines accountable for killing the individual genius of generations globally.
The world needs learning systems that are democratic and empathetic by design, which embraces individuality, where your haircut has nothing to do with your impact on society.
I don’t think it’s too much to ask for, what do you think?
