When culture changes, education should change with it.

     The American educational system has a history of falling behind the technology When calculators began to make its appearances into classrooms, teachers became hesitant about its acceptance. When the internet came out, and everything became google accessible, teachers also rejected its appearances in curriculum.  In a very broad stroke, this boils down to the educational philosophy of Just in Case. Under this philosophy, strategies such as: focus on memorization, and quick repetition to develop the brain were often employed. One good example of this is a teacher who assigns 30 different problems so that students use repetition and memorization just in case one day students face the problem in real life.  Another good way to think about this model is to think about it as buying stocks. With stocks, the holder learns something about the stock, buys it, and expect a future reward. While you wait for said reward, you spend time and effort hoping that it will pay off. When the future comes, and you never gain use that knowledge, or in this case you never receive the reward, your time was wasted. This remains the model most schools follow simply because of its traditional value. Times have changed however, and continuing this outdated model is not doing the students a favor. 

     Instead, schools should adopt a different philosophy called Just in Time. Under this philosophy, focus on creating nodes or information sources is key. In order to understand this just think about it as buying bonds. These are investments that have a very predictable outcome and reward. In a way, the person who is buying it knows exactly what they need to know in order to purchase it and have it payoff. Then, if the person really wants the reward, they learn about it and get the payoff. If this example was not very clear, here is another that has more common application. A person does not practice over and over how to change their car's headlights because one day they will need to be changed. Instead, the person waits for the issue to arise, learns how to fix it, and completes the task. This is what Just in Time learning is.

     Even though this post is clearly biased towards one side, Just in Time, there needs to be a balance between the two. So far, schools have not made an effort to diversify their curriculum which poses a problem in today's world. Kids today live on their phones and YouTube has become the biggest self-teaching source ever. With this in mind, do we really think students will respond well to the repetition and memorization just in case they need the knowledge? I seriously doubt it. The simplest answer to this issue, is by diversifying the curriculum to fit the student's needs. 

https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/just-in-time-vs-just-in-case-learning-2b5c1539ede2 (the comparrison of stocks and bonds came from this website)