….. Education Stops Educating?
I came across a post recently about Palantir that made me pause.
It quoted its CEO, Alex Karp, as saying that the company is no longer relying entirely on traditional university degrees to identify talent. Instead, young people are being given the opportunity to work on real problems, demonstrate what they can do, and learn by doing.
The post made a provocative observation: “The university had centuries to shape the best minds. Entrepreneurs will do it in a decade.” That stayed with me.. Because it raises a much more uncomfortable question: Have our educational institutions slowly forgotten what education is supposed to accomplish?
We teach children what to think. We rarely teach them how to think. We reward the right answer more than the difficult question. We celebrate memory more than curiosity.
We measure achievement through certificates rather than through the ability to see what others cannot. And then we wonder why so many highly educated people struggle to imagine a different future.
I realised that companies like Palantir are beginning to look beyond degrees. Young people are being given real problems to solve instead of certificates to prove that they are ready to solve them. It reminded me of something we seem to have forgotten. Perhaps education was never meant to manufacture employable people. Perhaps it was meant to create unmanageable minds. Minds that question. Minds that doubt. Minds that refuse to accept “this is how it has always been done.”
Perhaps the real crisis is not that AI will replace education. Perhaps it is that AI will expose how little education was actually about thinking.
As I closed the newspaper, the thought came to me. What if the future doesn’t need better educated children…… but freer minds?
— Rudra Bose, The Last Writer of Kolkata
‘Have our educational institutions slowly forgotten what education is supposed to accomplish?’
You don’t know how often I pondered that question. I’ve watched our university, one of the most brilliant, mind expanding institutions fall apart, time again, due to funding issues.
And my question is always going to be: why in the hell is everything about money? It has no intrinsic value. It is a medium of exchange. And people just commit the most heinous actions, grasping and groping for the grand dollar.
I know we need it to live, I’m not foolish. But our priorities seem to be ridiculously skewed these days.
There is a Native American quote, attributed to Alanis Obomsawin, an Abenaki filmmaker:
When the Last Tree Is Cut Down, the Last Fish Eaten, and the Last Stream Poisoned, You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money.
I think for me that says it all.
We really really need to rethink the importance of education. As you say in so many words or at least I interpreted it that way, we seem to be headed into some dangerous territory. 🙏🌺
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