The key is to do something on a small enough scale that you manage the risks. Anything you can walk away from in one piece is just practice.

I like computerized drills – of my own design. Perhaps what kids really need to learn first is how to write their own personalized computer drills. Then they can start learning how to learn.

For example: instead of French, teach the basics of the Pimsleur method and the basics of Python/Tkinter scripting, give them sample code to crib off of, and let them study whatever language they see fit with whatever emphasis they see fit.

But of course the education industry wouldn’t get as big a cut anymore…

“If you can’t explain your thesis in terms that are intelligible to a person with a sixth-grade education, odds are that your ideas are not at all workable in the first place.” I guess it would depend on the particular seventh grader you try to explain it to.

The bafflegab in all the material I see about this Minerva thing is amazingly dense, almost off the scale.

I don’t know why these people can’t use plain and simple language, as opposed to all this complexity and BS. The fact that they don’t is a marker for how full of crap they are, I think. If you can’t explain your thesis in terms that are intelligible to a person with a sixth-grade education, odds are that your ideas are not at all workable in the first place. Complexity is to be avoided like the plague–Old boss of mine was of the opinion that any military operation that could not be outlined on the sleeve from a rations box was too complex to succeed.

Thinking critically about selected topics in structured ways, and not otherwise

Thinking creatively about ways to achieve prescribed goals or about solving previously identified problems, and not others

Communicating effectively to ensure others share these goals, and by using approved methods

Interacting effectively in approved ways

I can’t remember when I read anything that triggered my cynicism subroutine so quickly.

The rest of it sounds like some plausible extractable concepts mixed into a word salad of baffaloo and, as you say, borrowed by these authors from all over the place. Most of that lingo could be pulled out of the air these days by any good tinfoil hat’s receptors. If you work in government or academia or any entity that emulates them, you are likely taking a mental bath in it daily.

This is not the “future of education”, any more than the current dysfunctional paradigm is.

What is going to wind up supplanting all this current mania for institutionalization is decentralized learning and skills certification. As the current paradigm loses relevancy and focus, it is going to be pushed aside by the needs of the users, which include the people doing the hiring as well as the ones seeking employment. Academia is going to always be here, but its relevance to the average person is going to go away as it loses track of its rigor and discipline in the search for cachet.

Today, we have the spectacle of diplomas that don’t mean jack; if you are an employer, you can’t trust that the possessor of one actually has the skills you need them to have–Thus, the decreasing value of the diploma and the increase in what might be termed “proof credentials”. What’s going to happen, in my belief, is that you’re going to start to see private certifications from outside the realm of academia come in, much as the state runs things like the boards which run Professional Engineer licensing. If you can’t trust a diploma to mean that the holder can read and write clear English, well… You’re gonna have to have something, and if you can’t do your own testing (established by law and the courts, which is how we got here…) someone is going to have to step in to fill the void. And, they will. Once that happens, things like the Khan Academy will start filling the need for basic certifications, and from there, it will only grow. We’re going to see an increase in de-institutionalization of these things, because the institutions have proven to be easily captured by those with outside agendas, and have completely lost the trust of the public. The current academic paradigm is in the early stages of committing institutional suicide, and what comes after them is going to have to look a lot different, and be more trustworthy.

Time was, even a high school diploma meant something. Today, those diplomas have been so thoroughly devalued as to make them so much toilet paper, and the eventual effect of that is going to be felt up and down the current academic food chain. It’s not just the lower levels that have problems–You see this crap with the recent admissions scandals, and you suddenly start to understand why so many products coming to you from these schools are barely functional as citizens, let alone skilled employees.

Something has to change, and I don’t see reforms coming from within. The next century or two will see the current paradigm for education becoming a quaint anachronism, more ceremonial than anything else. It’ll be like Buckingham Palace–A facade for tourists, rather than a living institution. The real function will be out the world, decentralized and powered-down to the lowest level, likely run by local certification agencies that earn and keep their trust through the demonstrated skills of the people they certify.