Education

So, Gregory Johnson was asking about education:

On a tangentially related note (to firmish SF), how does education work exactly, in your universe? It has been implied in several places that skills get basically downloaded (or can be), while it still takes to age 18 or so to be educated to Ph.D. levels. What does education really LOOK like?

Well, indeed, they can be. Data-sets, skill-sets, and so forth can be downloaded across the dataweave (mnemonesis), or even pulled out of the collective consciousness (remembrance), along even with personal memory sequences (exomemories). Indeed, dynamic mnemonesis enables you to remember any data on record as if it resided in your own memory. Advanced gnostic overlays permit the download of entire partial personalities, instincts, professional mindsets, and other similar temporary mental modifications.

The problem, of course, is that just having the knowledge won’t do a damn thing for you on its own. Grab some chump off the street and download a full knowledge of, say, proteomics into him, and all he’ll get is an uncomfortably full sensation in the brain-pan. The problems are two-fold: first, learning is associative, and without something to hook onto, said knowledge will be inaccessible. Second, it is a matter of processing power. Downloading knowledge into a mind that never learned to think doesn’t suddenly enable it to, whatever its genetic gifts.

So, education – about which I am only going to speak in general terms in case I want to use it later – is much more focused on teaching people how to think than on learning facts; facts are easy to acquire. The “primary” education initially focuses almost solely on this (logic, metaphysics, epistemics), followed by a “secondary” education that is their equivalent of a liberal arts education, which provides the very broad-based core that such modules you download later can hook into, along with the lots of practice needed to synthesize the gentle art of thinking.

(It’s actually rather broader than what we’d classify under that name – the traditional strands in it could be given as Advanced Logic & Mathematics; Business, Finance, and Economics; Domestic Arts; Engineering; Ethics & Civics; Fine Arts (both appreciation and practice); History; Literature; Martial Arts (both armed and unarmed); Natural Philosophy/Science. So, y’know, that this is what they expect any reasonably educated person to have good knowledge of might explain a few things…)

As for the hows, they don’t have schools (both for reasons of population demographics and because, well, they’d be absolutely terrible at doing this kind of education, rather than the kind of fact-and-discipline-centric kind we use). Education at this level is home-based, delivered by parents, the child’s muse, and companion AIs (and, of course, mnemonetically, for raw facts). Stylistically, it’s integrated into day to day life (since learning, they find, sinks in best when it’s fun and easy). Much of it is also practically-based; children are rather more integrated into society and work, and as such learning by doing – usually in whatever eclectic things strike their fancy – forms a great part.

By the time that this period is over, its average “graduate” has the equivalent of at least a couple of degrees worth of educational achievement, albeit widely spread and electic.

Now, as for higher education, it’s similar to ours; one attends classes at (or remotely from) a university. The distinctions would be that it’s very unstructured: organized by the class, and the degree one comes out with is just a matter of total achievement, not a specific pattern; and that there is little point to lectures in their paradigm, since information is easily conveyed mnemonetically. Instead, courses concentrate on class and lab time – discussion and practice at practical application are what synthesize and integrate the mnemonetically delivered knowledge with your core self.

Also relevant reading: Powers as Programs, Skilled but Naive, Neural Imprinting.