The 21st Century Curriculum: 15 Most Useful Things Everyone Should Know
[Note: As you, I founded
Fatskills, an online study platfrm. Reproduced below is from a page on Fatskills written by, called '
What Should We Know?'
How can we all get a well rounded education to become a full fledged participant in modern civil life? What should we educate ourselves on?
You can vote on this
poll, which aims to find some answers. But first, quick rundown on what we think are 15 most useful things everyone should know.
A real-world curriculum for the 21st Century in brief:
1. Modern Home Economics: Adulting, Living On Your Own, Self - Sufficiency, Sustainable Living
2. Emotional Literacy
3. Politics: Main ideas & Tactics
4. Religion & Society
5. Media Literacy
6. IT Literacy
7. Financial Literacy
8. Basic Business Literacy
9. Trades Knowledge
10. History Knowledge
11. Math Knowledge
12. Language Skills
13. Art / Literature
14. Science Knowledge
15. Skills For The Apocalypse
1. Modern Home Economics: Adulting, Living On Your Own, Self - Sufficiency, Sustainable Living
Level 1: Things to know in order to get through life:
Cooking (at least how to cook a basic meal)
Car repair (e.g. what the lights mean what the various fluids do etc)
Emergencies (power line goes down medical emergencies etc)
How to connect things (gadgets systems) together
Sewing
Basic homemaking & home repair
Plumbing
Gun handling and safety
First aid
Calorie counts
Fitness basics
Healthy living / basic health facts
Carbon footprint of human activities
Pollution & consumerism etc.
Sex-ed (which is a biology lesson, not a moral lesson)
Level 2: Consumer protection
How to effectively file a complaint with both a company and with consumer protection agencies.
Level 2: Surviving office work:
Office Work is 2/3rds politics (Basically keeping the boss happy & keeping your opinions to yourself), 1/3 actual work.
Quiet quitting.
Knowing your employer / HR department isn't loyal to you.
2. Emotional Literacy
Emotional maturity
Finding a balance in life
Finding the middle path
Knowing that you may like someone but that person may not like you back
World works on 'give and take'
Nothing lasts forever
The golden rule
IQ vs EQ
Value of persistence
Knowing when to finally let go etc.
3. Politics: Main ideas & Tactics
Communism, Socialism, Anarchism (People governing themselves)
Democracy & its variants (representative - first past the post, proportional etc)
Capitalism & how it stokes over-consumption and base human desires to thrive
Voting on issues and not on ideologies
Nation states
Elites
1%
Groupism (Us vs Them)
Politics vs Statesmanship
Propaganda
Argument tactics, Public Speaking
Pseudo news
Civics:
How the government works
Paperwork, forms, procedures
Checks & balances
'Letter of the law' vs 'spirit of the law'
Workings of the legal system - progress of a case.
What to do do when stopped by a cop.
The benefits of knowing people in the right places
Question the competence and judgment of the political leadership. They work on your dime.
4. Religion & Society
Atheism
Organized religion
Religion's role in politics and government
Difference between faith and reason
Main ideas from famous atheists
5. Media Literacy
Fake news
Paid news He said, she said kind of news
Astroturfing
Sock puppets
Cliches
Buzzwords
Content analysis
Recognizing disinformation
Recognizing the ads - they are everywhere. Most of the entertainment is advertising.
Movie business
Video games business
6. IT Literacy
Level 1: Basic computer use. Basics of folders / files organization. How to format documents/text.
Touch-typing
Word processing
Spreadsheets
Internet search
Social media "hygiene"
How cloud storage works
Having offline backups of your data / Do not trust Big tech
Instructions on not believing most of what you read on the internet
Avoiding malware
Avoiding spyware (including the advertising variant)
Online scams & frauds
Difference between computer science (information theory
Complexity theory
Digital algorithms and digital system engineering Website / app programming etc.
Level 2: Basic personal Cybersecurity
Not reusing passwords.
Understanding the value and risks of one's personal data. How to spot a phishing email.
How to recognize a scam email.
Level 3:
A little programming so you know how you can get computers to do what you want.
A little bit of AI and Data Science / Data Analytics basics.
Knowing that humans make algorithms (at least s far).
7. Financial Literacy
Financial planning
Power of compounding
Health insurance
Right kind and right timing for taking debt
Marriage
Buying a house
Getting a mortgage and a loan
How to do your taxes
How to calculate future value of an investment
How to calculate the cost of a loan at a given interest rate
Both monthly payments and total interest payments)
Basic investment approaches
Maintain a proper budget
Plan for retirement
Financialization of the system
Tactics used by banks and financial companies
Needs vs wants
Who pays the most tax (salaried middle class)
Hypes (e.g. crypto)
MLM
Financial bubbles
Credit cards
Stock market as a business model for modern capitalism / Stock market vs Gambling
If it is to good to be true it is NOT
8. Basic Business Literacy
Business planning - 1 page business model canvas, product / market fit
Business promotion
Business accounting
Selling
9. Trades Knowledge
Front line essential jobs:
Electrician
Mechanic
Plumber
Nurse
Doctor
Machinist
Sanitation (society shuts down without sanitation)
Robotics/ automation
Jobs that can't be replaced by AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the near future etc.
No need for college degrees. 2 years community college at most if needed. Apprenticeships.
10. History Knowledge
Nation states / their 'special' origin stories
Big history (Timelines into the future)
No such thing as clean narratives
Victors write history
History vs propaganda
Big man theory of history
Debunking myths
Process of historical research
Histories of little things
11. Math Knowledge
Money math
Consumer math
Home math
Business math
Some linear algebra
Practical geometry (e.g.. construction)
12. Language Skills
Reading
Writing
Communicating effectively.
Using correct grammar.
2 languages preferably.
13. Art / Literature
Classic works / canon (Genre wise)
Tropes
Shapes of stories (e.g. a situation - rise - fall - rise fall...)
Art styles
Writing styles (Hemingway iceberg, Faulkner / McCarthy Gothic, Markson experimental etc.)
How to market and brand yourself
The sad business of art (What really sells, making a living doing art, etc.)
14. Science Knowledge
Scientific literacy: Knowing how science works - By asking a lot of Whys. The scientific process. Scientific Literacy is more than just knowing a 'cool' science fact - e.g. number of sand particles on beaches of Earth.
Biology, Chemistry, Math, Physics are all needed in real world jobs & situations - E.g. What do plants and humans need to survive? How much CO2 is produced by burning a given amount of a hydrocarbon / a specific human activity like flying from A to B? How to read a periodic table
Knowing what elements a compound contains.
15. Skills For The Apocalypse
Nursing & farming.
Prepper / Survivalist, etc - Basic supplies to have in various situations. Bug out bags.
Labels: curriculum
How Byju's Became The Most Valuable Edtech Startup: By Pushing Expensive Education Packages To Parents Who Can't Afford Them
In my previous post, I wondered if we can make online tutoring go non-profit in India, which would help achieve education equality in India. Now, Akanksha SIngh has written a brilliant expose of Byju's shady sales tactics and shoddy work culture.
A former Byju's salesperson says:
“My last sale was to a driver whose boss gave him a phone,” Ritesh, a former sales associate, whose name has been changed at his request, told Rest of World. The driver only had $9 (700 rupees) in his account when he signed up for a subscription for his only child. “[His] boss paid the down payment and deducted it from his monthly salary. … [His wife] said, ‘I’ll work 24/7 for this course.’ That was the day I resigned.”
Akanksha's article details other important things you should know about Byju's methods:
1. Byju’s has partnerships with local lending companies to help finance its expensive education products.
An investigation by The Ken, which analyzed 110 consumer complaints, found that 54 people were unaware they were being signed up for loans when they signed up for subscriptions. The average ticket size of the loans was $952 (66,000 rupees), and down payments ranged from $15 (1,000 rupees) to as high as $864 (60,000 rupees). Annual per capita income in India is around $2,000 per year.
2. Byju's sales associates are told to ask children tricky questions to make them look “bad” in front of their parents on field visits.
“If their parents weren’t literate, we’d ask them questions that looked easy, like, ‘Which is bigger: one over two or one over four?’ … [A younger] child would say one over four.”
3. Byju's promises a mentor as part of the package, but parents complain of lack of proper mentoring.
(a parent) signed up for Byju’s mentorship program, where an academic mentor is assigned to each student but got none. She complained but got nowhere. Eventually, she cancelled the subscription.
4. Byju's pushes expensive tutoring services from its acquired companies.
(For example) When she mentioned that she’d been sending her daughter for tuition at a local institute, they instead pushed her to sign up for an Aakash Institute training center, saying a small institute wouldn’t cut it.
5. Byju's has made it hard for people to get refunds.
Parents find out that when they get to the end of the 15-day free trial they are unable to opt out.
A quick Google search for “Byju’s refund scam” reveals hundreds of customers detailing trouble with getting a refund through the company.
6. A Byju's sales associate has to meet their weekly sales targets of $2,700 (200,000 rupees).
Byju's sales associates are under immense pressure to make their weekly sales targets. As one employee put it: “As long as we met our targets, nothing else mattered.”
7. There have been multiple cases of mistreatment of sales associates by Byju's managers/ supervisors.
(In a video on Youtube) Several individuals claiming to be former employees commented on the video, saying they’d faced or witnessed similar verbal attacks from their supervisors.
“My manager shouted a lot,” Ameer, the sales associate, told Rest of World. But he never reported the abuse to HR because he was threatened he’d lose his job. “My manager once told me that if I tried anything, he’d make sure I don’t have a career,” he said.
This is how you make a billion dollar Edtech startup.
Labels: online learning
Can We Make Online Tutoring To Go Non-profit In India?
The big news is that the State Council, which is China's highest governing body, has passed orders for after school tutoring companies to go non-profit, and also banning them from going public or raising foreign capital. No company can now invest in or buy online education startups involved in out-of-school teaching.
To reduce the cognitive burden on school kids, China's rulers have also put limits on tutoring hours during weekends and vacations
Three reasons have been cited for the new rules.
One, the Chinese government believes that high private tutoring fees are a huge burden on young families, who then are discouraged from having more kids, and China now wants to reverse the adverse effects of 'one child' rule.
Two, the Chinese government wants to put an end to the unethical practices of false advertising and VC capital-induced pricing wars by Edtech startups. For example, most Edtech startups heavily promote cheap trial classes. However, once the trial period is over, Chinese parents find they have signed for expensive courses, which they were not prepared for.
Three, and this is most important, Edtech is doing nothing to address underprivileged children. If anything, Edtech startups go all out to influence impressionable parents from lower income groups, pushing to sign up for courses that are supposed to be the answers to all problems in life. And, the Chinese government does not want an angry populace.
So, can we make online tutoring to go non-profit in India?
We should. But we won't. Read on.
One, while China boasts of multiple multi-billion dollar Edtech startups, Byju's in India is fast becoming a monopoly, using all the VC money to buy all other Edtech company. As of writing, Vedantu is next up for Byju's greedy kitty, and only UnAcademy seems left in the other corner. Monopoly in any business is undesirable. Monopoky in education, more so.
Two, there is something very objectionable about Byju's pricing.
I tried to look for Byju's pricing for its various products and most of time, Google showed me spammy websites or a web page on Byju's showing the Rs. 2000 first month trial offer.
Having found the product pages after exploring the Websites, and not relying on Google, I found the answer to 'How much does Byju's cost?'
Byju's pricing:
Class 1 - 3: Rs. 3,333.33/month
Class 5-10 Math & Science: Rs. 26,000.00 (Rs. 2166 / month)
Class 11, JEE 2023, English: Rs. 135,000.00
And so on. pricing for competitive exams is much, much higher.
And you thought the internet would make education affordable.
An average city - based parent is paying Rs. 2000 - 7000/ month as school fees already. Tack on the 3-4000/month cost of Byju's. Much has been written abut Covid-19 being good to Edtech companies. No one is writing about the burden on parents and how much benefit online learning can be to young students.
Three, the kind of dog-eat-dog work culture and revenues-at-all-cost business ethic at Byjus. This may or may not be the norm in many Indian startups today.
But first, you must understand what Byju's really is.
Byjus is a big VC-funded education marketing company, not an Edtech company.
Byju's the education marketing company depends on an army of 40000+ sales people.
The modus operandi is simple: Hire desperate graduates from India's interminable and numerous tech and business schools, promise them Rs. 7-10 lakh packages, train them the basics of sales and push them out into India's dusty streets, making shady deals with school teachers (who force student sin their class to do some quiz, and the Byju's starts to spam you) and guilt-tripping lower middle class Indian parents ('apka bachha bahut kamzor hai math mein') into signing up for EMIs on expensive / overpriced packages of ho-hum quality educational videos, far better quality versions of which are freely available on Youtube and Khan Academy.
If these poor new grads (who studied IT but are now doing sales) are not doing enough revenue, Byjus then uses highly paid sports and entertainment celebrities to influence gullible parents, who never pause to ask where Shah Rukh Khan sends his kids to study (pssst...it is 'phoren').
To get an idea of Byju's sales tactics, read this Reddit post titled 'BYJUs BDA feeling proud of putting a lower-middle-class family into an EMI trap'
From the thread:
True story: was approached by a sales guy in Big Bazaar while shopping. Saw my lil one toddling around and came upto me to discuss an awesome package for the kid. I looked at him and then at my kid. I told him the kid was a year and half old. He looked as if he couldn't comprehend this info as if why i wouldn't even listen to his scheme. He seemed disappointed.
But then i realised, the brief given to them is if you see a little kid, irrespective of the age just throw the bait, let the maa-baap bite.
Another relevant thread about Byju's: How is Byjus able to generate a revenue of $72m in a country where majority of its population is middle class, and of course a fair share below the poverty line?
This brings me again back to the question: Can we make online tutoring to go non-profit in India?
NO!
The government is on the side of business.
Farmers, students, jobs, migrants, and minorities do not matter.
The middle class matters much less.
What will the middle class do?
Revolt?
Ha!
I understand you got to make money.
But, in a post-Piketty, aware-of-the-1% world, it matters who makes the money and how the money is being made.
According to Crunchbase, Byjus' has received $2.7 billion in funding, which amounts to Rs. 20000 crores. This means, the rich are going to extract Rs. 20000 cr plus interest. All from selling over-priced, redundant videos.
Media companies, private equity, celebrities, search engines...everyone is making money from the Rs. 20000 cr+ gravy train! India's media will spin the China story as being good for India, which will now become a more attractive target for Edtech investments.
But, teachers are not going to become millionaires. Almost no one among the 40000-strong sales army will become a a crorepati. No one in the Byju's support center will win the 'Kaun Banega Crorepati' lottery either.
The extraction of value from India's already stressed middle class will continue unabated.
How much would it takes to create videos on every chapter in every subject across every grade?
Taking an average of 15 chapters for subject, it is about 1200 videos, 1200 chapter, and 1200 quizzes. Let's be generous to our content developers / Subject matter experts and say it will cost Rs. 100 crores. Add in some extra couple of crores for translation.
I am sure the figure will be less than 0.5% of what Byju's has received in funding.
What else? Oh yes. Establish a support center for students, answering problems, offering mentoring and so on. Is the 2-3000/ month that Byju's charges for support services? I am not so sure. At Rs. 3 lakh/ teacher per annum (Rs. 25000/month), an army of 1000 teachers would cost Rs. 30 crore/annum.
So, You can create a comprehensive online learning tool, we need Rs. 130 crore (Rs. 100 cr + Rs. 30 crore Annual cost).
Or, you can curate all the best videos on Youtube in one place and offer teacher support and tests only.
What else can we do?
A lot.
We can create and / or share free / very low cost educational resources
- in multiple languages and made available everywhere the students are.
After all this bhashan, what rashan am I bringing in the house?
Some of the work I have been involved in
1. Free directory of educational resources online.
For example:
Khan Academy Videos: Class 1 math (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 2 math (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 3 math (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 4 math (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 5 math (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 6 math (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 7 math (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 8 math (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 9 math (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 10 math (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 11 math (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 12 math (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 9 Physics (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 10 Physics (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 10 Chemistry (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 10 Biology (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 11 Physics (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 11 Chemistry (India)
Khan Academy Videos: Class 12 Physics (India)
A List of 600+ Khan Academy Basic Math Video Tutorials on Youtube
The Fatskills Directory of Online Learning Resources & Tools
2. Fatskills.com: 12500+ Free Practice Tests and Quizzes, 1.2 million questions across 700+ Subjects.
Labels: online learning, practice tests
