As you may have noticed, I have always tried to learn various things throughout my life, and based on my accumulated experience, I want to share a simple conclusion: 1) you need to invest first and foremost in skills and abilities, and knowledge will follow 2) knowledge should be free, but acquiring skills, especially practical ones, is worth paying for.
The chess course by Kasparov on masterclass gave me almost nothing, although I still recommend it; it’s cool. The drawing course on Domestika also gave me almost nothing. About 200 hours of microbiology lectures couldn’t possibly give me nothing, but ask me about something complex from those lectures, and I can’t recount it. However, I could at least Google it and share the source. Reading history books left me with maybe 10% in memory after a year. At best, after reading a book, I know how to Google the topic, and quickly understand it when I find the answers. But all this does not stay in memory.
At the same time, music school—gave me something. Hundreds of hours of drawing—gave me something. Various experiments with electronics gave me something. English lessons—gave me something. When comparing the efficiency of investing an hour of my time, investing in skills is significantly more important and effective.
In Russia, education is historically built “from theory”. Partly because providing practical experience for hundreds of thousands of students is unrealistic. Therefore, not everyone reaches practical experience, or if they do, it is superficial. We learn languages by starting with grammar.
But almost any topic can be shifted from “acquiring knowledge” to “acquiring skills and abilities”. Yes, this would require somewhat more complex automation in the case of distance learning courses, but it would bring more benefits.
Online education should somehow move in this direction.
For example, today I am taking a course on GIT, which is a version control system. I know about 80-95% of it, but I’d like to improve on the remaining 10%, and I know the specific topics I need to brush up on. I could read the documentation, and even once read everything from ProGIT and understood it, but since I already have a subscription to educative, why not try there. The course there is excellently constructed—the terminal is integrated into the webpage and configured for the current topic. They also teach Python and Java. There are similar courses on Machine Learning.
But that’s only in programming and language learning. Almost everything else cannot be learned in this manner.
There are people who can create challenges for themselves and build skills independently. They have to go to thematic forums and ask for opinions of professionals for feedback, or form the right contacts to provide feedback.
There are few such people. Simply because to develop the skill of skill acquisition, they must have slightly missed out in life. If a child grows up in complete comfort, such a skill does not naturally develop. Because it’s not necessary. And later, in adulthood, developing this skill requires more effort, and many avoid such difficulties.
And so, I envision a network of educational centers, where each student has their own space, equipped with high-quality cameras, microphones, internet, computers, equipment, consumables, VR headsets. Students pay, of course, for renting such a center, as well as for the “teacher’s” time—or it is paid for by foundations or the state. In such a place, dawdling on your phone won’t be possible, as, through the camera system, the teacher can even see what’s in the phone’s messages. This same equipment can be rented and set up at home, if conditions allow. “Lessons” could be packaged in such a way that children would want, and even beg their parents to buy time there. Through such systems, you can teach embroidery and knitting, not to mention foreign languages and sciences.
All that is needed is to design such a room, select and standardize the equipment and software, wisely place cameras, create a marketplace for services, and develop a system for revenue sharing between authors and the service.
Who knows, maybe Facebook’s efforts in their Meta-universes will be a good kickstart.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 