Facebook, and Evolution.

It's been 3 month since Facebook staff updated their layout to the latest incarnation--the one dubbed 'The Publisher'--the one we all used right now. The funny thing is, every time Mark Zuckerberg & co released new layout upon the site, there were always, ALWAYS, some groups of people voice their sound against it (don't mistake me, I've been in Facebook since 2007, almost 2 years now) I did a little search just some minutes later with the keyword 'new layout', and guess what I found:

 

There are many groups established to rally a support against Facebook's new layout (and I reckon many friends of mine joined in them, too...hehehe). According to my experience since 2007, Facebook had updated their layout, like, 3 times till now. And in each updates, those 'status quo' supporter always popped up again and again to scream their protests. "Bring Back The Old Facebook", "New Layout Sucks", "Against Facebook's New Layout", etc, etc. Of course people always had the right to indulge in their comfort zone and staying with the old. But what exactly is the pain of accepting change and new idea? To the close minded, the pain would be much and unbearable. To let go something that's been familiar with us--well, it required an effort, and open-mindedness. It urges us to form a new way of thinking, a new paradigm.

Notice something in those 'status-quo-lover' groups, they named themselves "2,000,000 People to Protest", "Millions to Hate New Facebook Layout" ...well, here's something I gotta tell you: communal protests, street revolutions, mass demonstrations, they ran out of place in this new century. Marxist revolutions won't work anymore. Today's power, it's not in the arms of many, it's in the arms of the minority. The dedicated, visionaries minority are the one who'll shape the world in future. Labor organization with 10,000 people could easily be smashed with one clever provocative person, right? See how Mark Zuckerberg ignore the protest and move on with those new layouts (not just once, but many times.)

 

‘The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.’

— Martin Luther King Jr.

 

From the micro-sized topic of the Facebook layout thingy, let’s broaden our topic, because frankly, all I want to discuss here was about change. The only thing that's constant in our world. Except time and change, nothing lasts forever in this world. Remember Darwinian evolution that encouraged us not to stay with the status quo, not to accept the things as they were before and as they are right now, rather we have to accept things as they will become. The strongest is not the one who'll survive, nor the most intelligent, it's the most adaptable who'll seize the day. 2,000,000 people with their strong will and loud voice might make a change, but imagine how long does it take to convince and find another 1,999,999 people who shared the same idea with you? Quantity can be beaten by quality, David can beat Goliath. The least minority--the ones who react correctly to situation--they are the masters of war. They’re the one who can turn the tide on the battle, because they had what others don’t: correct tools and instrument. See how Mark Zuckerberg stay deaf eared to the protestor, because in the end, Mark is the one who possess the tool, the instrument to change the whole Facebook layout and Terms of Service. He’s just one guy with a small army of programmer backed him up, but he can  spread influence to 200 million Facebook users around the world. He successfully turn the tide of the battle, he won in the war of one against many.

The idea is, today’s world is totally different from yesterday. And how stupid it was for us to keep looking back to the past, without so much looking ahead. The past may served us some deep meanings for our next step, but that’s that: we had to move on. Status quo may gave us security, comfort and sense of belongings, but it is merely an illusion, a temporary state, because in the end, it'll change. There's no point in resisting change, there's no use in tackling new ideas. Accept them, and change with them. Be responsive and adaptable, and you may continue to live.

(now, look what happened to those protesting groups in Facebook right now:)

1,497 fewer members, huh? Well, time's a CHANGING, buddy! :-)

‘Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.’

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Re-Education: Part 3

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.”

~ Galileo Galilei

Isn't it funny where an able pianist keep failing their subject just because they can't estimate standard error in statistics? Should a national athletes be scolded for their lack of skill in counting the validity score? What about the painters who were dragged to the headmaster's office just because he can't perfectly write Proclamation of Independence text?
Ours is a ridiculous education system, where subjects are broken into smaller pieces, with an emphasis on the technical and obscure, without any obvious instrumental value. Combined with the idea that neutrality is a condition of academic integrity, it's crystal clear that our educations are useless for public good. Too many of today's students graduate or leave early, unsure of their real talents and not knowing what direction to take next. Too many feel what they are good at isn’t valued by schools. Too many think they’re not good at anything.

 

Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. Every one, doesn't matter where you go (you'd think it would be otherwise but it isn't). At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts.
Everywhere on earth, mathematics and languages are on top, humanities in the middle and arts on the bottom in the academic hierarchy. As children grow, we educate them from the waist up. And then--in higher education like university--just the head. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics. We didn’t let the students be the person they wanted to be, instead we forced them to be the person that was working for a master—in whip and carrot manner.

We should usher a radical rethink of the world's educational system, the one which subjects are interacting each others to allow us to connect education and social transformation. We should create a system where students continuously move outside the classroom to engage the world directly. The cross-disciplinary education is what we needed now, because frankly, our society had evolved much, today's education should be nothing like 10 years ago. We should create the school environment where students are passionate about their goals, an environment which allow the imagination and creativity. We should adjust our moral shift of education from 'traditional' and 'rigid' to 'flexible' and 'relevant', and NOT by breaking the subject into smaller scale for the sake of specialization, but by allowing the students to have their own 'personal space' to give birth to the dancing stars inside them.

"He is to be educated because he is a man, and not because he is to make shoes, nails, and pins."

~William Ellery Channing

END.

(PS: these three writings upon education are influenced by Sir Ken Robinson and Liz Coleman speeches on TED.)