Page 40 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

28
The human ability to sense our world has been possible to some degree for millions of years while our ability to speak and listen has probably existed for hundreds of thousands of years to some degree, and our ability to learn and map ideas and concepts probably spans over 50-80,000 years, and our ability to be creative may span up to 60,000 years. When we compare these time frames to the 200–500 years, we have been learning via rote with any degree of intensity, we can see why this newly adapted learning system is so inefficient and subsequently, why it takes 2-4,000 hours to learn to read and write but only fifty hours to learn to drive.
Interestingly, some countries do have a history of being able to read and write for more than 200- 500 years. Some Chinese learners seem to do better than their global compatriots in rote learning tasks such as reading and writing and it is possible that this is due to a significant number (up to 20%) of Chinese citizens learning to read and write from the 11th 12th centuries53 onwards. Given that the number of Chinese characters that had to be learned was back then in the tens of thousands, the amount of rote learning required to read and write would have been considerable. This genetic advantage in rote learning would not apply to all Chinese learners as this percentage of readers and writers lived in quite specific geographical areas of China and reading and writing would have been more prevalent in the wealthier strata of those communities.
The percentage of Chinese readers and writers may have waxed and waned after the great book burning at the end of the Ming dynasty but over the centuries, additional generations of Chinese in these regions may well have continued the practice of being readers and writers and this could possibly help explain the small increase in rote learning capability of some Chinese learners. We lack the data to expand on this in any greater detail.
The lesson from this review is that learning to read and write is exceptionally inefficient, no matter what nationality you are or how many generations of readers and writers preceded you. We will all struggle to some degree when it comes to learning the required vocabulary, spelling, grammatical structures, syntax and the sequencing of a ‘story’.
With the advent of the personal computer, typing became a skill that many worked on to increase their output of words. Then came the ability to speak to a computer which would turn that voice into words on a screen, (as long as you do not have a cockney or any other broad accent). Then technologies evolved to the point where we could upload and watch video on the internet. The ability to watch or create video does not require a wide range of new skills as we have been processing imagery via our eyes and words via our ears for hundreds of thousands of years and, as a result, interpreting a video is equitable for almost everyone.
Equity in learning is now critical as we move from needing 20% of people to be able to learn and contribute to society to 80% of people being capable these cognitively demanding tasks. We now need to look at how we will optimise learning so more people have the capability to learn more quickly and more efficiently, as well as being able to communicate their thoughts, ideas, concepts, innovations and ingenuity to others.
53 For more information on this topic follow this research discussion thread (2014) What percentage of the Chinese population did the imperial exams? Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2h3x3d/what_percentage_of_the_chinese_population_did_the/