As humans who grow up, discover things and die we must share our knowledge to let it survive. Every human has to go through education to learn all the basics of being in a civilisation and enhancing our existing knowledge. Knowledge is passed on to evolve the human race.

Through time we as a human race constantly redefine our ways of living: sometimes we improve and sometimes we go downhill. Just look up some history and you will see many changes of thinking and their effect on society. There is not one set in stone kind of thinking, our ideas of the world change every generation. We as a human race are in a constant state of flux and learn along the way.

Pedagogy

The thing that did not change that much is how knowledge is conveyed. Knowledge is abstracted into books and many teachers will go through the same order through the knowledge and are using the books as guidance. At the end of a series of lessons most students are tested to see if they are ready for the next lesson. This kind of learning is pedagogy.

But this kind of learning assumes all people are the same and learn the same. Students have to go through the curriculum as drones. School is mostly regarded as a dull place with exceptions of schools with inspiring teachers. The teacher and his/her social skills decide the affection of the students. Students with different interests are considered disfunctional and are sometimes thrown out.

Andragogy

Well lately a second type of education is gaining popularity: Andragogy. This kind of education focusses on the student itself instead of the curriculum. Students themself decide what to learn and in which way and coaches inspire and guide them. You still need to acquire the basic knowledge but how and in which order is not important. The process is all about one thing: inspire the student. Give the student emotional binding with the subject. This can be enabled to give the student a choice, to let him free and explore.

This new learning also calls for new learning methods. Books are just abstracted knowledge of which people remember only small bits. (10% is rembered according to research) People only remember the written information by repetition.

Something that works much better is learning by actually doing it. (90% of information will be remembered) If a student sees the consequenses of his actions in practice he/she will remember it for life. A practical situation where errors can be experienced works on the emotions and emotions trigger the brain to directly record the information.

Knowledge is about processes

Almost all knowledge is based on processes and understanding the workings of it: Math as ultimate meta language to describe everything, history and psychology to understand human actions, languages to understand and formalize communication, biology/physics/chemnistry to understand how the world works etc. We learn to understand those processes to form or interact with them. So knowledge is all about processes and if doing is the best way of learning we have to be directly in control of the factors of the process to best understand it.

Serious Games replacing books?

In the past lots of knowledge could not be tested in a practical environment without damage. With the computer age we could easy single out steps of those processes people have to learn and simulate them so people can work on them without consequenses. It is possible to explore, find the edges of the process, find what damages the process. This much more active learning will inspire the students much more than trying to describe abstractions of the knowledge. This new kind of study materials are serious games, games that lets students learn through exploration and testing, thus by doing.

By letting loose the strict paths of pedagogy you also let loose creativity. People can explore the knowledge but also redefine it and turn it upside down. It will create a new wave of innovation and a much more active thinking society of people.

Are we saying farewell to the books as a way of educating people?