Narasim,

I was raised and taught in western style education and culture, but looking at your profile, we are probably talking about university students and technical subjects, where the differences should be minimal. In general, there are two education paradigms:

- depth first: to teach more and more specific details on one subjects with minimal details of other subjects

- width first: to teach only to certail level of depth with focus on broad overview and relations among multiple subjects

On the West and in the technical subjects, the depth first prevails. The level of details is defined by the goal: what output skills should the absolvents have. In Czech university education system, there are two basic forms of education on high schools and above:

- continuous: regular lectures and exercises during the whole semester, 2-5hrs/week

- blocks: 5-20hrs/week for 1-2 weeks

Blocks seems more suitable for technical subjects to me, as the students can focus on single topic, but I don't know any hard data about this.

To your note about implanting the lifelong interest in (self)education into students: on elementary or high school, this part of education is very important, because the students usually don't know their future specialization yet, so they don't refresh their knowledge after the exams, so in a few years they forget most of what they were taught and the education is more or less training of learning ability until they find out what they NEED to know to do their job.

On universities we educate adult people who are not teenagers anymore, who already formed and stabilized their personality, attitudes and the life philosophy (see the life virtues defined by Erik Erikson). They usually know WHY they learn and the older they are, the more they know HOW they want to learn and the more they require their style, the less they can adopt other styles, so the implanting doesn't work at this age, only inspiring at best. I don't know your culture, but in mine the high school practices are still applicable on bachelor degree level so the implanting is still possible, but not on the master level or above. In that way, the school is signifficant, but not the strongest motivator what to embrace as lifelong attitude: the family, the people who inspire us informally are way more important. If you wish to have more effect here, you need to be much more than a teacher: a mentor. Building a (professional) relationship with students like common research, talks outside the school institute, not just about the subject of teaching, but about philosophy, in socratic way, mutually learning. This is not recommended for teachers for many reasons you can probably guess.

If you wish we can go in depth in some detail of the overview I outlined. I can provide some links, you can also provide some links and to compare more sources of information is always fun :-)

That depends on the form and methods of teaching and on the age of students. Two subjects may be taught as one (i.e. mathematics and computer graphics) or one subject may be taught as two "threads" (i.e. geometry and integration in mathematics).

To your related question: education is interdisciplinary and broad activity with more or less chaotic basis and less strict methods (like philosophy). There are just educational experiments, like Waldorf education. If you look for scientific papers, statistics and hard data, you should focus on psychology or sociology.

Thanks Jan . Your idea suggests perhaps we need to revise our outlook on a

much larger window. This means

1.Revised textbooks which have mixed subjects as a basis.

2. Further thoughts that are provoked by your response is a whole new

 perspective on education. The present knowledge scenario is highly demanding

 with its requirements of continuous updating of skills .

3.It follows that we have to continually evaluate what is the critical mass of  "skills"/"knowledge base"that need to be imparted to students. i would imagine that learning to learn fast (steep learning curve ) is much more important than

plain knowledge mass at any point in time.

4.We have an important motivator to implant in students viz " lifelong

interest" in learning continuously. i suppose this implies whether this can

 be "installed" in an education process or it is inherent and genetically determined.

this is much more useful than installing   current knowledge mass with a limited shelf life.( I apologize for treating human beings as automatons ..in this context )

5. One more thought is ,How do we condense on a continuous time frame

 the minimum critical knowledge base required to achieve the desired

objective of lifelong learning.Does it lie in a complete revamp of "purpose

of life?"

Hope there will be interesting and valuable additions ...on this.

Cheers

Narsim

Narasim,

I was raised and taught in western style education and culture, but looking at your profile, we are probably talking about university students and technical subjects, where the differences should be minimal. In general, there are two education paradigms:

- depth first: to teach more and more specific details on one subjects with minimal details of other subjects

- width first: to teach only to certail level of depth with focus on broad overview and relations among multiple subjects

On the West and in the technical subjects, the depth first prevails. The level of details is defined by the goal: what output skills should the absolvents have. In Czech university education system, there are two basic forms of education on high schools and above:

- continuous: regular lectures and exercises during the whole semester, 2-5hrs/week

- blocks: 5-20hrs/week for 1-2 weeks

Blocks seems more suitable for technical subjects to me, as the students can focus on single topic, but I don't know any hard data about this.

To your note about implanting the lifelong interest in (self)education into students: on elementary or high school, this part of education is very important, because the students usually don't know their future specialization yet, so they don't refresh their knowledge after the exams, so in a few years they forget most of what they were taught and the education is more or less training of learning ability until they find out what they NEED to know to do their job.

On universities we educate adult people who are not teenagers anymore, who already formed and stabilized their personality, attitudes and the life philosophy (see the life virtues defined by Erik Erikson). They usually know WHY they learn and the older they are, the more they know HOW they want to learn and the more they require their style, the less they can adopt other styles, so the implanting doesn't work at this age, only inspiring at best. I don't know your culture, but in mine the high school practices are still applicable on bachelor degree level so the implanting is still possible, but not on the master level or above. In that way, the school is signifficant, but not the strongest motivator what to embrace as lifelong attitude: the family, the people who inspire us informally are way more important. If you wish to have more effect here, you need to be much more than a teacher: a mentor. Building a (professional) relationship with students like common research, talks outside the school institute, not just about the subject of teaching, but about philosophy, in socratic way, mutually learning. This is not recommended for teachers for many reasons you can probably guess.

If you wish we can go in depth in some detail of the overview I outlined. I can provide some links, you can also provide some links and to compare more sources of information is always fun :-)

Jan

Thanks. It is interesting to learn about the Czech university  education system . The

mode of education here is largely based on British system and very like American  at the University level so there is a certain globalization w.r.t scientific and technical

education.We can see this also in the questions and interest shown in ResearchGate

questions. The problem in modern times throught the world   is the orientation , aspirations and expectation of students and parents towards jobs as the final goal of education. This is much unlike my own older times when education was venerated!!.

and as you said it was like" the family, the people who inspire us informally are way more important."

In modern times it seems the education challenges are much more daunting

with MOOC and the prediction that there might be a disruptive change in

university education with certificates for courses taken online . It seems hard

for me to imagine  " How the magic of an inspiring physical presence of

an enthusiastic lecturer can be replaced with virtual experiences?" , yet

with technological developments it seems we are headed that way..

As an extreme example consider everyone possessed  with a personal robot

( or technical implants) which adapts itself to its owner's wishes. Clearly "managing" becomes more important than knowledge mass.

I do not have any ready links to post but would welcome your additions.

The interaction is indeed fun.

Cheers

Narsim

 more important than "knowledge".

Continuos/blocks are just common forms at our schools; the system (at least the college one) is much like US/UK: 3/2/3-4 Bachelor, Master, Doctor. The curriculum is largely based on Komensky (Comenius) work. Alas, I know just Czech links about him.

In Czech, there were lots of chaotic changes in the past four years: every minister asserted radical changes (it seems to be settled by now). The changes in my subject (Applications Development) are sometimes too fast, especially in IT, I have to update the subject plan every year, since I don't want to teach history. This is a problem at the final exams: I must accept two years old answers from students, because I had taught them so two years ago. In my view, this is too rigid, the students should update their expertise, but these expectations are too much. You described the expectations of students and parents: it was different a generation ago and it will likely be different in the next generation. At least in Czech: the political paradigm switched from communistic party with central planning and control ("never be first, never be last" was taught), to western-type democracy ("be individual" is taught), which seem to be just oligarchy camouflage with central (EU) planning again. The social networks like ResearchGate or StackExchange lacks the physical presence of the teachers as you say, but on the other hand it is more flexible and independent to politics. I'd give it a try.

Check out Maharishi University of Management (MUM) www.mum.edu and Colorado College https://www.coloradocollege.edu

Both offer the 'Block System' where students take one class at a time for one month to go deeply into one subject at a time. I have worked and taught at MUM and this format has worked very successfully. It is an interesting innovation.

thanks leslee , innovative policy indeed .

Thank you Rahimi. I see you are in Bangkok. MUM has a sister school in Thailand: 

Dhammajarenee Witthaya Free School, Thailand

what kind of school is it ? searched for it , seems its a religious school , isnt it?

It's actually a Buddhist nun's school, where all the students have learned the Transcendental Meditation technique. This is a non-religious effortless mental practice that allows the mind and body to gain very deep rest and reduce stress.  

My summary of my research that is here on Research Gate discusses the project I did with disadvantaged women in Uganda, who learned this technique as one of the training programs offered by their NGO. It is a women's empowerment organization that offers programs to help improve the lives of Ugandan women who are living in poverty and have very stressed lives. 75% of the women in Uganda live in poverty. 

TM is not just for really stressed people. You can visit www.tm.org to learn more.