Education as a Designed Product
Performance-Challenges
The modern global educational and schooling system is a designed product.
It was developed to address business performance-challenges for a specific point and time in history.
The British East India Company was given a charter to administer territory on behalf of the monarchy.
This was a large-scale land management challenge overseeing the extraction of goods and wealth from the subcontinent on behalf of the Crown.
Upon renewal of authority via the 1813 Charter Act, the Company was given some of the responsibility for local education.
The company’s performance-challenge was multi-faceted. In addition to standardization of language (English), it needed massive quantities of talent that could:
- perform complex mathematical calculations without instruments
- read for comprehension and produce complex written documentation
To effectively oversee the Property of India, the Company needed to educate enormous numbers of children who could be prepared for employment as civil servants.
Utilitarianism
After the mutiny of 1857, and Indian territory management — and education — was now the mandate of the Crown itself.
The global economy was also transforming, as the Second Industrial Revolution kicked off.
Modern school bells, which alert students that classes are starting or ending are an audio cue, conditioning children for future factory shift work.
As economic needs adjusted and grew, the education system mostly attempted to keep up.
Advances in material sciences and understanding of our outer world resulted in humanity abstracting itself to machinery of the Gilded Age and modernization.
The result was a step-change in grappling with understanding our inner world, including an explosion in thought and philosophy around human psychology.
The utilitarian nature of educational institutions tracked with geopolitical conflicts, technological advances, and industrial innovation up until the 1980’s.
Child’s Play
Two technological developments fractured the educational system, but were not recognized as such, at the time, both related to products by Apple Inc.
The first was VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet software which transformed computers from a plaything for hobbyists into a serious business tool with profitable applications.
The reason: it facilitated complex mathematical calculations, with the computer as the instrument.
The second was the Oregon Trail game.
The reason: the gamified experience transformed reading for comprehension by and the production of complex written documentation as computer code.
Fit for Purpose
At this point — whether widely recognized or not — the design of the modern, global mass education system was no longer fit for the purpose of producing utilitarian talent.
From the elementary to university level, institutions of education have not been utilitarian, tracking the evolving needs of society.
As a complex adaptive system, the institution of education adapts painfully and slowly.
Students are both users and products of the system, but the design is optimized for conformity and standardization.
Critical-thinking and innovation are bugs, not features, of the designed product.
The modern education system is complex and adaptive like a city, not a business.
Just like most cities of North America have been optimized for cars — not people — the schooling system has been optimized to maintain status quo, with heavy sunk costs, tenured egos, and motivated reasoning.
As Brian Rosenberg said, these:
institutions in many ways were designed for stability and the resistance to change
Schools, including colleges and universities,
…have to stop being what they are.
And have to start being something else.
Product Change Management
As systems which were designed to meet specific performance challenges, the education system achieved product-market fit.
As the market changes, so must the product.
Per Darwin, it’s not the strongest that survive, but those most able to adapt.
