Moore’s law in education
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By: Christine Wang
Gordon E. Moore, the founder of Intel, proposed a law that the computing power behind modern technology would double every two years. For the past 50 years, his law has more or less held true. If it continues to do so, nano-bots will overtake current medical technology in ten years. Five years after that we will be able link our neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud. The cumulative advances of the past century are building momentum, and will soon begin to tip.
It is more crucial than ever to turn attention towards the future’s most essential pillar: the education system. We are obligated to ask whether the globe’s learning population will be ready. Unfortunately, for a world that is moving forward at an exponential rate, the education system has barely budged.
In an age of innovation, the archaic multiple-choice test remains widely used. A little paper slip is fed into a machine and spat back out with a number indicating how many points the student falls short of perfection. It does not matter whether you are a dancer, a leader, or heaven forbid, an innovator. Nearly all the doors to the future slam shut if you cannot agree with the little dots on those multiple choice cards. The rigid, quantified nature of today’s education continues to give students the impression that the world, like a GPA scale, is a ladder to be climbed.
Time after time we have been shown that those who make history are the very people who break boundaries and redefine standards. Claude Monet and Martin Luther King did not read and recite the status quo; they created it. The quality of one’s contributions and the height of one’s success will depend on anything but an ability to adhere to someone else’s criteria, standards, and restrictions, yet these are the very tasks we emphasize in our education.
Our system is inadequate and counterintuitive to society’s needs. How should we be preparing the minds of our future instead? The answer lies in big thinking. Big thinking is comprised of two components. The first is to approach problems originally and unconventionally. The second is to consider our actions as part of an inter-connected whole with ripple effects that impact not only other people but also other generations.
Imagine a recent graduate is assigned the task of coordinating resources to ensure that all children in a given school district are properly immunized. A graduate of the current education system will complete the task the way he thinks his predecessors did it, and pack up his bag at 5 p.m. If something goes wrong in the future, it won’t be his fault because he isn’t responsible for every last piece of the project.
A big thinker, however, will do all of this and much more. He will be the person who understands that traditional protocols are outdated and inefficient. He will move the immunization records online and build software that plots the amount of vaccines, nurses, and bandages required at each location. This would lend extra time to do things like compile data about the flaws of the system to identify and fix their root causes. A big thinker’s ultimate goal is not simply to complete the project but to solve larger issues and to leave behind a legacy.
The difference comes from perspective. If you wake up in the morning and think of nothing but your life and your assets, then nothing else will ever matter. If you wake up and think about the future of your community, your country, and the world as a whole, then something like whether the correct vaccines get into every last child will matter very deeply to you. A bigger perspective gives students reason to care about causes that are greater than themselves.
This way of thinking also has personal benefits. Someone who sees the entire picture will be less emotionally afflicted by personal pities and hardships. A big thinker will seldom feel bored or lonely because she is too busy being an interested observer and enthusiastic participant of the world around her.
To grow up in a world that moves forward exponentially means that the only permanence we can truly count on is ourselves, our creativity, and our drive to make positive contributions. It is time that education, too, falls into step with the accelerating pace of our changing world.
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