We don't want more education, we need more Seeducation!

The most amazing thing I've done in my life.

Hi,
I'm Noam, I am one of the 4 founders of Seeducation and I am thrilled to tell you about the most amazing thing I have done in my life:

Starting Seeducation

I am now facing my biggest challenge: to explain what is Seeducation in less than 2 min as this idea has been germinating for me for about 5 years… and it took me just under 4 years to be able to explain it well enough that someone understood what I was talking about!

We often hear the following sentence:

Seeducation seems like an amazing organisation but what is it exactly that you do?

As you most probably know our education system was created at the beginning of the 19th century to answer the needs of the industrial revolution: factories are booming and industries like the car industry needs an ever increasing number of managers and workers. Following the trends of science, we have become increasingly obsessed with standardization: creating a mechanical process like an assembly line to produce as many identical cars as possible. Mass production is the main thing we seem to focus on, and education has become the same. We educate children like we build car: every child studies the same thing at the same time, pass the same exams and are expected to finish school at the same speed.

We believe that education is a lot more like growing a plant: you put the seed in the soil, nurture it, give it light and water, look after it… but you cannot force it to grow. Even with seeds of the same type, they never grow in the exact same way. And every plant needs different care: you don’t treat a cactus the way you treat a rose or a palm tree.

The basis for Seeducation is that Education is not like building a car but like growing tree

 
1. The best you can do is to create an ideal environment for growth
2. Everyone is unique and has to be treated differently

When I ask people about their education, the answer is always very similar: Bachelors in Math, Masters in Sociology, A levels in English, etc… it seems that education has become synonym to qualifications.

We believe that education is about learning and we want to bring back this understanding to society.

We all agree that everyone learns in a different way, and that as much as the academic system works extremely well for some, it doesn’t for others. Some people learn better by doing, or by working in groups. Some people learn faster and others slower. People have also different interests and nobody can learn everything.

And yes, of course the current system is fantastic and has served us well for so long. Of course some students love it and do very well in the academic system. And that’s great! It’s incredible for them to enjoy learning and studying. I am so happy for them that they do well in exams and want to purse academy studies. But for the vast majority it doesn’t seem to work. Most people don’t learn by sitting at a desk and remembering dates, numbers, etc.

So the question we ask is: what do we do with all these people who learn in a different way and are interested in different things?

Now you might think that what we’re saying is that the government should take care of every single kid individually, tailor every course and that we want to completely revolutionize the education system.

Absolutely not! What we are saying is that all these amazing opportunities already exist! That is the craziest part! And especially in the UK where there are 76,000 charities working towards improving education.

There are incredible programmes like Common Purpose and AIESEC that offer leadership training and opportunities to work on real projects, or like the boy scouts that have 28 million young members in 160 countries, or even sports clubs and organisation that help young people practice different forms of art.

In the UK, we even have NVQs, National Vocational Qualifications, for people to get “work related qualifications”.

All the solutions are out there!

There are so many amazing opportunities to learn different things in different ways.

So what IS the problem? The problem is that all of these are seen as a side thing. They are treated like a lesser type of learning, and people without academic qualifications are almost seen as second-class citizens. They are even called in English “alternative education” or “informal education”… which is for me unbelievable when all research shows that the vast majority of the population learns in a non-academic way! So basically these “alternative education” systems are actually more mainstream than the mainstream in which the government pump most of the money and efforts!

We’re forcing a whole lot of people to study at school while they would be so happy to spend more time in the boy scouts, travelling, working, volunteering for a charity and in the UK, join one of the at least 76,000 education programmes.

For the moment, if they do want to join these programmes, they have to do it after school or on weekends only. So we are restricting these programmes from growing and giving more opportunities to youth who would love to join them! And we are stopping these youth to learn what they want to learn and contribute to society.

What we want is for the government and society to recognize the so-called informal education as part of the mainstream.

Of course we agree with the fact that there has to be some standard, there are some things that every student should learn. What we learn now is based on programmes created over a hundred years ago.

When is the last time you used a square root? When is the last time you used a compass?

What does 21st Century Seeducation looks like to us? 

What we want to do is make a research on what are the current essential life skills. By running a country wide survey, and asking people about what are the most useful skills for them to thrive in society we will know what it is that our youth need to learn. From our preliminary research it seems that it includes things like: reading and writing, basic math, computer skills, communication skills (public speaking, etc), teamwork, individual work, cooking, how to pay bills, tax, how to start a company, basic law (rights and obligations), etc.

So these “essential skills” would be taught in a school environment where youth come all together 2 days a week.

The other 3 days a week, they could join any of the 76,000 education programme, do sports, arts or even get some work experience.

Obviously, one of the choices must be to follow the academic curriculum. So for those who want to, they can choose to keep learning the way they do now: math, physics, biology, latin, or anything else. They can take their A levels and do everything the same way… with the only difference that you only have the kids who want to learn it who are there: this makes it so much easier for the teacher, the ones who want to learn will learn so much more, and reduces a lot the costs as now there is statistically 75% of the students don’t want to be there.

These 75% of youth can chose to do what want they do and everyone wins: those who want to learn academically do and those who don’t do want they’re most interested in.

You just need to check how Cambridge students spend their time (...and no offence to their great history of teaching). If they spend so much time on social media, it says a lot more about the teaching methods than it does about the students or Facebook. If the world's best learning institutions can't interest students, we should stop pourring so much money and effort into them.

Now obviously you wouldn’t want these kids to be running around doing nothing. So they would have to join one of the recognized programme that would include the 76,000 charities working on education, but also organisations to propose work experience or even companies like Google could apply to run a computer class. A democratic system would have to approve each organisation that wants to provide some opportunities and kids can join them.

If you want to know more about the awareness we are trying to raise about education, how we want to do it, what are advocating, how to give support or how to share your opinion, take a look at the Awareness Campaigns in About Us.

So great, we’re getting people talking, organising think tanks, making research and raising awareness about education and the opportunities out there, what do we actually do to improve the situation?

As we have already said, we believe that there is huge amount of untapped potential and knowledge out there in our communities. I have myself had the chance to receiving incredible training from leaders in their fields and being a trainer, coach and consultant for organisations as small a community group in an Indian village to multinational like HP or UK charities through the Directory of Social Change, people pay a lot of money to access knowledge and gain skills that would be so useful to everyone.

Many people wouldn’t even think of going to a training because they could never dream of affording it… but if they got the knowledge, they could actually get a better job or start their own business, their charity or even social enterprise and get the money needed to increase their skills and broaden their knowledge. It’s a catch 22 situation: where do you get the money to get the knowledge on how to make earn money from doing what you love doing or what you are good at?

And there exist a lot of free sources of knowledge out there – and especially on the Internet –, but we are often surprised to see how many people are not aware of it. And many experts and leaders are willing to share this knowledge to those interested but often don’t know who and don’t have the time to organise everything.

Any half-sober economist would have sworn that an encyclopedia written by millions of peope, voluntarily, all over the world in the free time could never succeed. However, Microsoft's encyclopedia Encarta which was backed up by experts, more money than anyone could dream of, and a company that can ship all around the world... was discontinued because it couldn't do as well as Wikipedia. Encyclopedia Britanica has adopted the Wikipedia model because Enc Britanica is falling behind... knowledge is becoming more and more free, and more and more easily accessible!

This is why we have decided to create the Learning Hub, a platform to find free learning resources. We are creating a directory of free learning resources and we are recording training videos from leaders in their fields who agree to share their knowledge for free!

We already have a few short podcasts about fundraising, the recording of Dr Wolgroch, a professional psychologist who teaches you how to do self relaxation and a video by Simon Bucknall, the youngest star of public speaking teaching you the basic skills of overcoming your fears of speaking in public. Find all our learning material on the Learning Hub.

The hub of learning is and will always remain free. We want to create a space where everyone knows that they can find the learning they’re looking for, for free! We aim to be open source and welcome all contributions.

If your website or one you use has free learning material, or if you want or know someone who would be willing to make a video, or any other training material, please contact us!

Now, the learning hub is free because we want it to be accessible to everyone around the world and to be shared easily!

But surely just having video on the internet is not enough to really teach stuff to people… right?

Of course we do agree with you that Internet is not enough.

“If it’s not online, it’s dead. If it’s not online, it’s not alive!”

This question of whether the government, education and everything should be online or not is as silly as debating whether chocolate ice cream is better than strawberries. Some people like chocolate ice creams, some like strawberries and some like both. I even like them mixed together! It is obvious that we need to find a balance between online and offline, and to be flexible about it.

I don't even understand where the debate is: the internet is a tool, and should be used for its functions.

People can learn a lot from it and it is an incredible platform and has so much untapped potential, but it is not enough: face-to-face contact and regular meetings are essential.

This is why our third activity is to give training, coaching, consulting and other personal and organisational development services and you can learn more about it in our projects > Our Services.

The last thing that bugs us with the education system as it goes is that there is no satisfied or reimbursed scheme. When I buy a Hoover on Argos, I can return it within 30 days if I’m not satisfied. With universities, you have to pay for the 3 years of studies, and it doesn’t help you get a job like for about 40,000 of the graduates expected to be unemployed. In the US, Trina Thompson, a New York graduate sued her college for not having been able to provide her with jobs but only a student debt of $70,000. In the UK the average student debt is £23,000!

Each year 60,000 of the top academic performing school leavers chose not to go to higher education. A degree is not enough to get work experience, and many seek for an alternative environment to learn ? AND but self sufficient as many cannot afford studies. And we are not only talking about the lower class, many middle class parents refuse to pay for higher education and the youth has to get student loans and work during their studies. Often student jobs include working in pubs, which is a lot of fun, but not great for focusing on studies and waking up early in the morning… but how else to survive when you are supposed to study during the day or discover about freedom, find your way, learn about life, independence, meeting friends, etc?

However if you are a talented football player, from the age of 15, you can be PAID by your club to practice. And that means you earn money for training and becoming amazing at what you love doing. No wonder the world’s leading players are in their early 20s. This means they can focus 100% of their time and energy to learn, improve their skills and practice to become amazing at what they do.

We want to do the same for people who have a passion and want to learn how to make a living out of it, and how to help society through their social enterprise. We will run a 1 year intense programme in which we will pay the students to take part in it. Malcolm Gladwell has shown in the Outliers that to reach mastery, one needs to practice 10,000 hours. A normal university degree with an average of 12 hours a week reaches a total of about 2,200 hours in three years. With the core we aim to give them 2,500 hours in one year, meaning that if they continue at the rated, they are likely to become the next Mozart within the next 4 years. We are paying them because that way they can commit 60 – 70 hours a week towards this. At the end of the programme they will have started their social enterprise and will have practical experience and a fantastic network to support them.

We aim that every single alumni of our programme goes into a form of social enterprise in the sense that they will lead positive social change and help their communities.

This CORE programme will be run at most at 50% by Seeducation, 50% by externals because we want it to be a best of all programmes available, and the place to test the most forward thinking educational methods. We are seeking for the best organisations in each field to deliver part of the programme. We want this programme to lead research in educational practices so that the best ones can be replicated by anyone: everything we do will be open source. This means we will share the content of the full programme so that others can replicate it and improve it.

If you want to help us make this possible, if you know anyone who can help or if you want help fund this CORE programme, visit the CORE Programme in Projects.

Now you know pretty much everything about Seeducation. Everything else that we do falls somewhere under these 3 categories – 1 year programme, Online learning hub and Redesigning curriculum in schools.. We see Seeducation like a social eco-system.

What we mean by that is that we believe there are so many amazing ideas out there, and so many people doing incredible things… there is no point redoing what they you – what you do maybe! – and we want to cooperate with every organisation that seeks to make the world a better place.

Please contact us if you think like we do, because if you do, we would be very happy to talk to you and find rooms for cooperation.

Now I hope you will enjoy the website, browse through and feel free to register to make comments and spark conversations.

Before I finish, I want to point at the coolest feature of the whole website: the feedback button on the left.

By clicking there you can give feedback, make suggestions and very importantly vote on other people’s ideas! This is the best way to make Seeducation a democratic organisation: by sharing your feedback and suggestions, and voting, you are telling us what you want us to do, you are giving us your direction and we can’t wait to hear it! We will take it into account because it is very important for us to include you in this whole process. You might have only one idea, but it might be the missing link so please share it!

Before I leave you, I have the last request:

Take a look at what we do,
Get involved by sharing our website with your network,
By talking about Seeducation around you,
And by writing comments and giving us feedback.

If you believe Seeducation is a good idea and needs to grow, please remember to make a donation as we are currently running all of this at a zero budget and voluntarily on top of our other jobs.

Every penny you give will make it possible to record more videos, grow the amazing awareness campaign and deliver more free training to people who need them.

Thank you for your time, support and generosity!

Thanks to the whole Seeducation team for making this dream come true.