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Should an entity as intrinsic to human beings and as intricate to individual identity as education be governed by a system? If so, what should the system governing education look like? What are the problems with the education system? What is at the core of the problems with the existing education system? How could the transformation of education system be helpful? How should the transformation be handled? These are the questions that keep on puzzling policy-makers and educationists across the globe. This blog-post is an attempt to explore possibilities and to do analysis to address these questions.
Ideal expectations from an education system can be to provide learners with equal opportunities of learning, freedom to design learning path (and to flexibly alter the design), facilities (and guidance) to pursue learning and with a fair evaluation mechanism (on capabilities developed through learning).
The education system can be considered as a system in itself. Therefore, it can be assumed to have general features of a system. These features include inputs, outputs and controls. However, the education system may also be considered as a social construction of economic significance, which is legitimized by the state. Therefore, this system may also be considered as a part of an eco-system (system of systems).
In view of the above, it can be assumed that the education system has to function under dual limitations. Firstly, the limitations of the system itself and secondly, the limitations of the eco-system under which it operates. Thus, comprehensive analysis of educational system may need to be done on the following two aspects, first analysis can be on the system of education and second analysis can be on the eco-system (education system as a system of systems) under which the education system operates. Both the aspects simultaneously determine the behaviour of an education system. In this blog-post, I have tried to drill deeper into the system's aspect of education system. This is an attempt to look within the education system with very limited consideration to external influences on the system (or the influence of other actors in the eco-system).
Education as a System
Let us attempt to apply systems approach to the education system. A system can be considered as a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole. In this blog-post, let us consider the education system as a unified whole having the following two design features: -
Structure – The Organization of Education System. It defines shape of organization and includes design of vertical and horizontal power distribution requirements for smooth execution of the system.
Governance – The Governing Framework of Education System. Governance framework is aligned with governing principles. The foundations of the governing principles are usually in socio-cultural norms of the region in which the system is (designed to be) implemented.
In addition to the above two design features, the unified whole of an education system can be considered to have an implementational feature: -
Practices – An organized set of normative to implement Education System in a way deemed to be the best way. These normatives are usually based on governing principles and structural alignment (as per aspirations of the design).
Both the above-mentioned features (namely design features and the implementation feature) shape the execution environment for the following four executional features of the education system: -
Inputs – Inputs to Education System. Broadly, the possible inputs could include entities like funds, human efforts (required to operationalise the system) and selected students (to be educated by the education system).
Outputs – Outputs of Education System. The outputs could include entities like educated students (to be the good citizens), employable workforce (with the potential to run and enhance production facilities) and produced intellectual properties (as a result of intellectual activities).
Facilities – Available Facilities with the Education System including physical infrastructural facilities, intellectual assets and access to supportive services.
Control - The Control Mechanism to do tuning during on-going execution of Education System.
Monitoring – The Monitoring Mechanism to monitor Education System and to capture feedback on different executional aspects.
And, all the above aspects of the education system (namely design features, implementation feature and executional features) are modelled in pursuit to achieve following endeavours of the education system: -
Objectives – The Envisaged Objectives of Education System.
Predictability - A Predictable Pattern of Behaviour of Education System.
In a nutshell, the design feature of the education system sets the orientation of the system. Implementational feature shapes execution (as per design) and therefore, plays a role in infusing intended educational spirit into governing mechanism of this system. The executional feature runs the system by processing the inputs to produce outputs (with the help of available facilities with the system).
The Education System - Objectives
The primary objective of the education system is to provide a Simulated Environment to the students (may also be referred as learners in this document) to hone capabilities to face challenges of life in the real world. The underlying assumption remains that the simulated environment successfully replicates the real world (and its challenges) and trains students (learners) to respond to these challenges in a way a good citizen of a civilized society is expected to respond.
In addition to this, the education system also consolidates collective learning of society and serves as a body of knowledge (academia) to help society to explore and to understand the world in different ways and from diverse perspectives. In this endeavour, the simulated environment of education system helps in replication of those aspects of real world, which need a closure scrutiny and systematic examination to develop an understanding.
The implicit role of education is to prepare the society to face the challenges of future change. This endeavour is largely supported by ever expanding academics (a credible and well managed knowledge base). Academia consistently strives to understand the dynamics of changes in the surroundings and to develop capabilities to predict and prepare society for future challenges. And, needless to say that in doing so, it is assumed that the (education) system will contribute to making the world a much better place to live.
The Education System - Problems
To meet the above objectives, the simulated environment should be architected in such a way that it becomes a place where access to information is free and where knowledge can be acquired, shared and enriched without any restriction or hesitation. However, it turns out that the education system with all possible efforts could only provide an artificially designed simulated environment (may also be referred to as educational environment in this document) to the society, which remains restrictive, disproportionate in accessibility and directed. These three aspects are detailed as under: -
Restrictive - Restricts Freedom of Choice to Learn – By imposing standardized curriculum, the education system provides only limited freedom to curious minds to lead their learning by themselves. Curtailment of such an intrinsic spirit (to learn in natural way) hampers with the process of identity development (which is intrinsic to human aspirations and which is understood with the help of concepts related to ‘self-concept’ and ‘self-esteem’ in psychology) of learners.
Learning to learn by oneself is a natural human instinct. This is accomplished by a process of repeating the cycle comprising of self-exploration, making observations, invoking imagination, igniting one’s curiosity, developing an intent to query and to conduct investigation (to quench curiosity), collecting and processing information, aligning thoughts in the light of acquired information, doing analysis, shaping and maturing ideas, sharing ideas and initiating interactions through logical discussions, putting ideas to test, assessing test results, returning back to original idea and improving on ideas in the light of test results and eventually continuing this process of improving ideas till a logical conclusion is reached. If nurtured (by education system), such a natural instinct (of learning to learn) may groom learners to develop self-confidence for sensible use of available resources (which includes available knowledge), and to reach out for required support to pursue their own respective ambitious dreams independently. Such an instinctive learning by engaging the free-will of learners (students) to motivate them to educate themselves will help in development of natural-courage to excel in life (by solving problems around them presumably for larger good of the society).
Such a freedom (of choice to learn) may allow learners to break free from all the narrow domestic walls of education system (like (say) subject wise studies, standards-based syllabus, instructor driven learning). Learners may consistently follow their curiosities to gain knowledge (through diverse sources) by selectively mixing and matching cross-functional knowledge, applying cross disciplinary concepts, breaching process oriented sequence of approaching higher standards (complexity wise ordered classification of studying things in sequence as prescribed in schools) in the interest of personal capacity to grasp. They may try going beyond the text-books (or popular books propagating populist thoughts) by using unlimited access (ushered by content available through digital media) to reference materials available from a large number of sources. In this way, learners may develop intellectual abilities in their own individual ways through self-chosen learning path. Such a path may not necessarily be the most efficient path but may give a better learning experience to the learner. Learning by owning the learning and owning learning path may increase the likelihood of shifting learner’s perspective from gaining an educational degree to becoming a life-long learner.
To achieve such a scenario, the education system may need to get transformed completely and re-orient itself to a different positioning to serve the society. In its new avatar, the education system may become a facilitator from being a provider. Educational institutions may evolve as mentoring centres rather than teaching faculties. The (education) system may need to get redesigned to reach out to the learners, to understand individual learning aspirations (of learners) and to understand the chosen learning path (of learners) from learners’ perspective and educate them about other possibilities make choice from to achieve their respective goals. The system may try to get into every learner’s shoe with the intent to assess their efforts (put in unique ways by every individual learner) and evaluate their achievements (in context to the conditions under which the achievements were accomplished).
This would be in contrast to present education system, which instead of putting real individuals (learners) at the centre puts an average learner (as calibrated by consensus of fraternity of educationists) considered as generic standard at the centre under the expectations that every learner will reach out to fit herself into the dimensions of the (so classified as) average learner. Instead of keeping learning at the focus, (the system) keeps teaching at its focus. Instead of following curiosity driven learning path lead by an individual learner, it follows strictly structured syllabus.
Disproportionate (in Access) – Unequal Access to Education – The education system has largely failed to provide equal access to education to every aspirant (or every needy), let alone equal access to quality education.
Prolonged educational inequality can result in inefficient utilization of human resource hampering (optimization of) economic productivity as those who get privileged access to education are not necessarily the one’s, who can take maximum advantage from this privileged access (to education). Any meritocratic selection mechanism to function as a gateway to given access to education cannot be perfectly impartial and (say) even if it becomes so (perfectly impartial), likelihood of the (selection) mechanism being able to do fair screening, which does justice to aspirations, capabilities and intent of (promising) learners would be questionable.
But, probably greater cause of concern is trap of systemic educational inequality, when gets coupled with systemic uneven distribution of wealth. Such a situation can have larger repercussion to the power equation in the society. The weight of power tilts towards economic power and towards academic (or formal intellectual capability) power disturbing the existing equilibrium of power equation. The combined effect of these two powers comes with a risk of shifting power equilibrium at the cost of justice to other types of powers co-existing in the society (like say political, social or cultural powers). An equilibrium of power subjected to a shift without adequate negotiations with other types of power can render a large section of society to subjugate to newer dynamics of newly arrived power-equation irrespective of their (the impacted large section of society) general willingness or broader collective consent (tacit / explicit). These developments may lead towards conflict of interests resulting in trust-deficit amongst social groups with divergent interests. Trust deficit in society can aggravate many social fault lines, which may work towards destabilizing the society.
Moreover, inequality in educational levels has a potential to give rise to social classes based on levels of education or (say) positions acquired in society through achievements in the arena of formal education. Those who get the privileged access (to education) may not necessarily acknowledge the advantage they enjoy may be a result of pre-existing socio-economic disparities that have worked to favour them to reach to a position of advantage to get the access (as a privileged-few). In parallel to the process of privileged-few getting access to education and getting success in the arena of formal education, there are many other stories of struggle through unstructured processes of those who failed to make a cut to get educated not necessarily due to merit but many other socio-economic-cultural disparity (which would have kept them out of competition). Mostly, these excluded lot gets restricted space to build capabilities and to perform to their potential. But there is a possibility that some of this segment of people may have been talented and/or ambitious learners with a capability to fight back in life to compete with the educated fellows (from whom they parted as excluded lot). But, having no means to acquire education through informal means (matching the recognition of those included under formal education) and no way to get their informal learnings evaluated to fit somewhere at a suitable level in formal education, the excluded (usually) remain disadvantaged throughout their life. Even those excluded individuals, who succeed in pushing themselves to make a difference by successfully applying informal learnings to make a difference at work or in socio-economic sphere, get classified as some variant of uneducated class in the society (notion of educated class, well-educated class and highly educated class remains in play in determining social identity).
There is no denying that in the present-day societies, educated people have natural advantage in terms of prospects for better standards of living and in terms of holding a sound social standing within social communities. In general, the collective-psyche of the society forms social groups in form of layered-clusters based on social-identities. This is reflected in formation of social aggregates (classes) based on levels of education or based on socially elite positions held by educated people.
Let us dig deeper on this important aspect of should educational excellence (achieved through formal means) be basis of social aggregation as a separate class? Educated people usually aggregate as a dominant superior class in a society (say superiors) and are at a different orientation (at times at conflict) with commoners (larger uneducated or having relatively low level of education) class, which are unable to relate themselves with the dominant class and (in some way) resist their dominance. Commoners may even hold apprehensions that the worldview propagated by superiors be a part of larger socio-political design to maintain the power structure within the society in such a way that it favours to the few already in powerful positioning (superior themselves included). The superiors on the other hand may view world to be rational and may assume commoners to be intellectually inferior to be included as fellow-superiors. The difference in orientation to view the same world from two different aspects of two different classes (superior and commoner) and inability of superiors to articulate their viewpoint to commoners in simpler terms may be largely due to the way formal education groom individuals in today’s world. Historically, such a higher status for educated class may have creeped-in into social thought process as a part of evolutionary process of social aggregation within communities. The natural instinct and persistent sense of direction of social consciousness to favour supremacy of intellectual meritocracy within a community assume the deemed intellectual class (superiors) to be trusted as democratic in character and sensible by nature to holistically address social problems.
But, in today’s world, neither the system of education nor those who got educated by this system (as superiors) may be as democratic or as sensible to seamlessly connect with all social groups including the weakest and remotest or be able to understand problems from commoners’ perspective. Therefore, what a responsible social leadership should question and be sceptical about is whether the superior class formed through meritocracy accredited by formal education system be trusted to be internalized as socially sympathetic and as benign class to be entrusted to sensibly address social problems? Social consciousness (of a society) has its own ways to educate itself through learnings from observations and from experiences of society as society faces twists and turns over a period of time. Soon it may be learnt and get imbibed into social consciousness that only free and equal access to quality education to all could solve the problems faced in the interactions between the society and the education system. Then, the society through social power may start building pressure for the same to pursue other dominant forces of power (say - political, economic powers) in favour of exploration of possibilities for democratization of education. However, before this happens, it may be better, if education system itself can behave sensibly, reflect on itself and transform itself to the possible extent.
Directional – Directional, Departmentalized and Definitive Approach - Directed, definitive and departmentalized (subject wise faculties) approach of education system contradicts with aspirations of learners to develop confidence in understanding unexpected, random and the ever-evolving real world from diverse perspective (so to say developing 360 degrees view after assessment from multi-disciplinary multi-dimensional view). A relatively more neutral, holistic and impartial educational environment to encourage learners to explore, query and analyse the real world by going beyond the limited view of the subject being learned may enable them (learners) to develop specific detail-oriented views (from different angles) and at the same time a broader panoramic view (from perspective of the learner’s worldview) in accordance with their individual motives.
In order to comprehend the issues of the complex world surrounding us, the approach taken by education system is to simplify by applying reductionism. However, the world affairs modelled by applying simplifications, assumptions and relevant abstract-concepts by the formal education system either carry risk of being too generic explanations to a multi-dimensional complex phenomenon or being a detailed examination specific to one aspect (picked as an isolated entity) of an extremely dynamic entity.
Presumably, deploying such a directed, departmentalized and definitive approach to view things may carry huge risk of having gaps in development of a comprehensive understanding of the reality. These gaps may be evident in lack of abilities of learners to resolve inter-dependencies spanning many subjects, to reconcile divergent schools of thoughts (related to real phenomenon being studied), to comprehend beyond the subject of expertise or to analyse information collected from different perspectives. These gaps may result in losing the essence or the spirit of studies during translation of real-world entities to academically studied entities. It may also be noted that the worldview under the lens of education system is based on historical facts (taken for analysis from the past), observations are made during present times and predictions are futuristic. Therefore, it may not be fair to assume educational excellence to be absolute or perfectly deterministic under all conditions. There exist limits to determinism of academically acclaimed findings and this fact must always be prominently acknowledged in pedagogy. Nevertheless, one must accept that the education system supported academic studies are still the most credible and best available apparatus in the hands of society to enrich and enhance learnings about the surroundings.
Another problem with the present education system (especially during grooming of learners at early schooling levels) is assertion on formal education as being definitive, exhaustive and complete. The simulated environment of schooling consistently insists that the worldview under the lens of modern education system is absolute and presents real understanding of the real world. Under such an environment, learners get inclined to believe the worldview presented by the education system to be an unchallenged authority of truth. Worst comes when some learners start to reject personal and individual experiences of people around them as anecdotal cases (instead of taking judicious decision to query and to reach to a conclusion). Such learners carry risk of becoming insensitive towards practicalities of real-life problems. They do not take into cognizance the fact that it is anecdotes, which add-up to a generalised standard theory. Blatantly disregarding individual experiences or individual accounts, which are not subscribing to formally acquired learnings, without making suitable query (and investigations) goes against the true spirit of education. Education is expected to enhance capabilities of learners to organize thoughts and to enable them to apply thoughts into real world. Therefore, the more sceptical they may be towards their learnings, the more inclined would they be to apply their learnings and gauge the authenticity of learned material. In the process, they may come across limitations in the learned materials they refer and they may add value to referenced materials by suggesting suitable improvements.
Education system promotes unidirectional learning. The pedagogy is designed to reward with greater pay-offs (to the learner) to follow what the education system intends to teach. Not allowing learners (students) incentives to wander and to themselves explore to figure out whatever education system intends to teach. Conditioning the innocent and curious minds to be guided to a (universally accepted) best solution to a problem, may at the best make learners follow logic, analysis, analytics and make them express themselves but may not enrich with the excitement, experience and confidence of independently solving the problem by self-motivation to reach to the best possible solution.
In existing education system, in the name of obedience, the classroom teaching gives authoritative advantage to the teacher to officiate the class, thus automatically positioning learner students as sub-ordinates (many times submissive sub-ordinates in a discipline focussed school environment – say defence academies trusted to train students (learners) to serve in the forces). At the same time, the teacher is restricted to use the privilege to officiate only to the limited extent to make learners fall into learning in prescribed way (the way the curriculum is designed to taught in schooling environment).
Under such an educational environment, learners may have temptation to understand things from analytical perspective. They may also try to become good at communicating themselves by developing linguistic skills. But, may not necessarily get inclined to develop supporting-backbone of contexts, situational compulsions and contextual perspective required to understand massively diverse and extremely complex dynamics of real situations. Most probably, learning from real experiences faced on ground and attempting to solve problems by applying acquired skills (analytical and linguistic) can help in building deeper and wider contextual perspective.
With above discussions, it may be concluded that such a directed, departmentalized, definitive and subordinative learning throughout the childhood carries risks of conditioning the deeper consciousness of learners to follow a guided approach to learning and to understand thing as followers. Not having got enough training to fail, to learn from failures and to try again by apply learnings, learners experience fear of failing, when faced with an untrodden path or unforeseen challenges. It may so happen that when faced with unforeseen problems in real life, a person groomed in modern education system may trust the lineage to simulated school environment she/he has been schooled into or may look for an authority for instructive guidance. None of these may necessarily be available or adequate to tackle the problem. In such a scenario, a spontaneous response by learning from situation and from available information to understand the problem instinctively and to apply consultative approach with stakeholders to reach to a judicious solution may be helpful. In short real-world problems may need maturity to mix instinctive approach and learned approach to process available information to fine-tune previously acquired knowledge, which may not be developed as efficiently by the formal education system as is expected out of it.
The Education System – Not so Democratic
It turns out that the problems as discussed above, can have an implication of presenting an undemocratic educational environment to learners. This aspect is explored in following points: -
Better Alignment to Democratic Values is Expected from Education System
Democracy is a way of life. It is widely accepted that only under a democratic environment, the system can sensibly understand people and people can openly express themselves. So, for success of democracy it is important for every individual to have ability to understand and to express. It turns out that these are also the two characteristic features of education as (in simple terms) education could be considered as process of developing (i) ability to understand sensibly (अनुà¤ूति) and (ii) ability to express (अà¤िव्यक्ति). Drawing parallels, it may be reasonable to expect that the environment provisioned by education system must be as democratic as possible. Otherwise too, to keep a system flexible, sensible, credible and accessible, democracy is a generally accepted norm. This is in the interest of both the academia and the society (committed to democratic values).
Further, it may be noted that the three core values of democracy are freedom, equality and justice. But, with the above-mentioned problems persisting, the education system may not able to provision learning environment following the spirit of democracy. An attempt to map the problems (of education system) with the core values of democracy could further elaborate the same (refer to the table as under): -
Table – 1: Democracy and Problems with Educational Environment
Thus, (to sum up in brief) the three problems of educational environment can also be considered to be having restrictive effect on freedom, equality and justice. In this way, the environment provisioned by the education system can be assumed to be inhibiting democratic values and democratic way of learning. Obviously, there are both scope and need for expanding the horizons of existing education system to a greater democratization.
Democratic Educational Environment may keep Education Associated with Society
It may be noted that despite being in the information age, the worldview still remains a matter of perception. Despite unequivocal support of scientific way of thinking by the education system, there is a possibility that directed pedagogy can play a role in formation of perceptions (and of the worldview) or may influence development of rationality of the learner-community (by consciously or unconsciously guiding to a largely accepted rationality - as deemed to be normative as per the socio-legal norm of the land).
Any system, which does not have strong commitments to democratic values are at risk of being governed by governing principles of centralization and standardization. The governance is usually not that agile to keep on changing in response to collective will of being governed. Even at times, to voice collective public opinion protests has to be staged and pressure has to be created (say to the extent of creating chaos) in lesser democratically governed environments. Present education system is less democratic and therefore, there is a likelihood that the course content prescribed (usually under state supervision) may also get designed under a central theme woven around ethos of mainstream socio-cultural (may be politically relevant for the state) and those socio-cultural groups at periphery of social strata may get ignored. This may not only be a gross injustice to educational aspirations and intellectual representation of such socio-cultural groups at periphery but also may contribute to their marginalization or increased vulnerabilities.
Presumably, a democratic educational environment functioning with a bottom-up accountability for a say in governance be expected to have a better built-in mechanism (confirming with the core values of freedom, equality and justice) to remain inclusive in terms of accommodating all the groups of learners and also remain open to let learners have a chance to express about their respective understanding of the world. Such an environment will be a reflection of learner’s experiences shaped by real life experiences (of the learners).
The Education System - Democratization and Establishment of Truth in Society
The most important duty of an education system is to establish truth in the society. This system must be empowered and positioned to unequivocally support, advocate, establish, legitimize and propagate truth in the society. It may not be wrong to say that (in the long run) only to that extent the education system can meet its objectives to which it can perform this particular duty (of establishment of truth in society). The real test of excellence of scholar-hood of an education system lies in exploration and establishment of facts acceptable as truth across intellectual fraternity (a realm of scientifically acceptable facts) and eventually across the world subscribing to scientific rationality and academic meritocracy.
But, the system (the education system) entrusted to establish the truth is bound to function under constraints of an eco-system (a system of systems). This eco-system may not necessarily be friendly to the system. Broadly, in context to education, the system is influenced by at least three other major entities (can be considered separate systems in themselves) in the environment of the eco-system, which are the state, economy and society. Obviously, these entities are often more powerful within the ecosystem (in this nation-state era of human existence) and therefore may collectively have potential to guide the education system rather than being guided by it. These entities can be viewed as separate systems in themselves and may have their own respective (explicit or implicit) motivations. The motivations may even keep on changing with the time as per situational circumstances. The combined effect of their individual motivations on education system may play a critical role to shape the education system and to decide whether to allow the flexibility it (education system) requires to pursue its own independent endeavour (of establishment of truth).
In relation to above discussions, it may be noted that the truth is not an absolute entity. It needs a realm to be evident and assertive. Manipulating the realm can easily change the stance of truth. In such a circumstance, naturally the (above mentioned) three powerful entities may compete to influence the realm for (academically acclaimed) truth of education system with a vested interest to favour their own respective belief systems. At times, it may be observed that (eventually) these three entities get limited success in mending the realm of truth of education system. The extent and character to which the realm gets modified (by the three entities) depends on socio-economic and socio-political dynamics getting played out in the society (or societies within a nation-state) in question.
However, such an eventuality of mended realm of truth contradicts to what is expected from education system to do for society. In an ideal scenario, it is expected that truth be impartial and be independent to be allowed to get established by the education system under academic realm (based on scientific acceptance). While, all other entities in the ecosystem, irrespective of their standing in terms of power dynamics getting played out in the society, must adapt according to the truth authoritatively established by the education system.
Bestowed with such a great responsibility, the education system must be designed in such a way that it stands tall at the face of attempts to tilt the realm with the intent to alter academically acclaimed truth. Such a system can be established and sustained only by establishing itself as credible, as trusted and as intrinsic to every individual as a faith. But, this faith (of academics and on academic excellence) cannot be purely an ideological construction. It is well known fact that ideology is a window to see the world from a particular perspective. This perspective is based on a set of beliefs (belief-system) and a converged perception-framework (directed framework of perceptions based on belief-system). In the light of the belief-system, the perception-framework can sound logical or can justify and predict events or even prescribe a value-system to be practiced. The sense of identity of affiliation to ideology builds a strong perspective. This ideological perspective holds the belief-system and the perception-framework so strongly that ideology becomes absolute truth to its followers. To them, everything in the world can be interpreted and justified through the lens of ideological preview. But, not everything ideology suggests may remain true once assumptions of belief system are challenged and proven wrong. Therefore, an ideology remains averse to scrutiny by different schools of thoughts, to exposure to divergence of pluralism. It prefers to bind through cohesion of emotionally-pleasing (or emotionally appealing) logics and remains resistant to adaptation of change (as any change comes with risks of a change in emotional appeal). This is diametrically opposite to the faith education system may prefer to propagate in the society. Academic faith needs to accommodate multiple schools of thoughts (perspective co-existing with their respective sets of belief and respective perceptions), which may enjoy open academic space to consistently compete to assert themselves through academic meritocracy. Academics is expected to develop a faith accommodating dynamism of ever evolving understanding of the world, which keeps on changing the worldview in continuum. The faith which may let go anything and everything for sake of sensibly accepted academic truth. The faith which welcomes divergence of pluralism, supports merit of academic rationality (with adequate space for others not so academically rational views to exist and enjoy a hope to someday prove themselves on academic merit) and which is flexible to change.
Therefore, education system be a platform, where everyone must feel she/he is integral part of the system and she/he can access, develop her/his academic capabilities and contribute to body of knowledge of academics. Everyone’s learnings, experiences and thoughts have a place under broad and diverse educated world and nothing may remain anecdotal. All the anecdotes (howsoever remote and rare) converge to some (widely accepted, partially accepted or broadly rejected) school of thought under education system. The education system must be designed to hold all-inclusive perspective in its approach so as to remain credible with all representative groups and even (so far as possible) to all individuals residing within the society or the state. An education system may only be able to live up to such expectations only if it could provision an educational environment, which is extremely democratic in design, in spirit and in practice.
The Education System – Design Constraints
The need for a system to provide educational environment, which may accommodate perfect inclusion (high diversity, thorough representation) and commitment to democratic values is well understood by scholars since quite a long time. Still not much seems to have changed in the way the education system functions. Probably, for last two centuries (or even more), fundamentally the existing model of the system has been in operation without undergoing much change. In an eco-system, under which the system of education operates, the following could be major constraints, which (probably) may have resisted a (long due) transformation to take place and allowed the existing system to linger on: -
Scarce Resources
Scarcity of available resources required to scale the educational infrastructure makes education a scarce-resource for distribution. At the same time, increased relevance of education to the society makes it an in-demand service. Its capacity to shape the thought process of the society makes it politically important. Its ability to produce human resource for economic activities makes it economically significant. In all, this is amongst the services, which face service-pull by the learner community and service-push by government and industry.
An in-demand but scarce service needs to be distributed in the society. Such a distribution will always need an optimal utilization of resource. Optimal utilization is ensured by access through a selection mechanism, structured organizational set-up, just and fair governance, standard operations and centralized monitoring and control.
Therefore, with the intent to efficiently distribute available scarce resources, to optimize efforts of learners (for more productive learning outcomes), to measure educational achievement on a standard scale and to avoid any misuse of privileged access by the learners, the education system is usually made to operate under institutional framework (usually) regulated by the state.
Howsoever meritocratic selection mechanism for educational services may remain, the ‘rationality of selection’ is difficult to be justified for a service as fundamental, as useful and as in-demand as education. General consensus favours education to be accessible to all. So, governments try to scale-up educational infrastructure by all possible means. But, scaling up of education may need adequate funds and reasonable time for institutional capabilities to mature as credible institutions. Most of the governments may not be able to afford massive scaling of education system through public funding. Therefore, governments engage private players to invest in education (and run educational services). Possibly, the strategy is to encourage education-push-service through public funding and to facilitate education-pull-service through private spendings. This is why government educational infrastructure can be found in remote areas and in areas accessible to weaker sections. Government educational policies are observed to be flexible to accommodate those who may not otherwise take education.
Both privately and publicly funding educational services are usually not accessible to everyone (either as provisioned by government or as self-financed) and therefore, selectivity in availability of education remains subject to opportunities available to learners.
Education can be considered as an enabler to facilitate capture, dissemination, synthesis and augmentation of knowledge in a particular region (say society or nation-state). This makes education critical for regional competitive advantage and for regional economic prosperity in the age of flourishing knowledge-based economies. Broadly, this appears to have been understood by almost all the nation-state having functional governments.
Governments across the world appear to have high aspirations to enhance their education systems. The objective is not just making education available to all the citizens but also to improve quality of education with the intent to generate intellectual property. Still, the problem of scarcity of educational services remains a big issue in the larger part of the world. The optimal utilization of this scarce resource is a concern for designers of educational services.
Suitability to Operating Power Dynamics in the Society
The dynamics of power within a society can be studied through Network Theory of Power. In this section, we will discuss power dynamics in societies under the traditions of Network Theory of power.
Disproportionate share of power in societies is a norm irrespective of social composition, cultural heritage, regional diversity, political ideologies or economic policy practices. The power equations within a society play role in shaping the design of the systems operating within a society. Education system cannot remain excluded from the influence of power equations.
Social Networks (or simply Network) can be considered as interconnected entities. These entities operate in the socio-economic sphere. The examples of social networks could be financial market, political system or (say) education system. A social network can be separately taken for analysis of social power dynamics (how power operates in the network?). Other networks can influence the network power of the network chosen for the analysis.
The world is transiting from industrial age to information age. So are the social networks evolving. During former times social networks used to function with relatively lesser information exchange (using limited information exchange facilities available to them). In those times, social networks were more standardized to be centrally synchronized. Information used to flow amongst the networks through central co-ordinating body. Information asymmetry across networks were common. Gradually, as a result of diffusion of information technology, networks began to get transformed to become a mesh of much more connected, agile and inter-dependent.
This led to the evolution of notion of network society as we know it today. “The definition in terms of a network society is a society where the key social structures and activities are organized around electronically processed information networks. So it’s not just about networks or social networks, because social networks have been very old forms of social organization, it’s about social networks which process and manage information and are using micro-electronic based technologies” (Castells, 1996, 34). In his magnum opus The Information Age (1996, 1997, 2000) Castells presents his concept of the network society: a new emerging society that is connected by ubiquitous information and communication technologies (ICTs). Driven by these ICTs, Castells observes the formation of a new kind of capitalism that he calls “global informational capitalism”, or in short “informationalism”. This new system is characterized by the processing of knowledge and information through technologies. Networks constitute a pivotal element of this new socio-economic arrangement and represent the organizational logic of society. Networks are defined as “a set of interconnected nodes” that follow very adaptable, open-ended and decentralized structures (Castells, 1996, p. 470). Thus, in the relatively newer world, the power dynamics the social networks are influenced by information-flow (and information-management). Information asymmetry is virtually non-existent. A social network and its power dynamics are consistently challenged as other networks keeps on learning (almost at real-time) from consistent stream of information flow.
At the global level, the social networks fall under the umbrella of Global Network Society. The network theory of power assumes world as a social structure namely the Global Network Society. This social structure (Global Network Society) is characteristic of key processes (organized activities) of various social networks in the world. The activities are driven by information enabled actors participating in the social networks.
It may be noted that power equations are the fundamental foundations of relationships in society. Those who have power determines the rules and values of the institutions and in this way those who have power hold domination in society. However, there are also counterpowers, which keep on resisting the power and keep on attempting to reconfigure the networks and/or eventually the network society. (Ref – Manuel Castells, University of Southern California, Lecture Feb 20, 2010)
The ideation and consensus formation are critical for counterpowers to promote alternate way of configuring the power dynamics in a network. Consensus building process (Network Making Process) may be thought as connecting human networks through communication networks to influence the social actors with new ideas. (Ref – Manuel Castells, University of Southern California, Lecture Feb 20, 2010)
Networking Power is the power of those entities that constitute the core of global network. For instance, bulk of academic work is carried out by some 300 universities across the globe. So, these 300 universities may be considered as included in the core of academic network. There are number of universities in the network with miniscule contribution to academic activities. These can be considered as excluded from the core. Those included in the core of the network exhibit networking power in the network with respect to those excluded from the core. However, once an entity is into network (irrespective of making a core or not) has to follow the rules of the network. Network Power is protocols of communication that determines rules to be accepted (as a part/member of the network) once in the networks. (Ref – Manuel Castells, University of Southern California, Lecture Feb 20, 2010)
But more important aspect is Network Making Power. The network making power can have two mechanisms. First is the ability to constitute the network and consequently to program and reprogram the network. This is Programming. The programming of network is done in such a way that the automated logic of the network favours those who constitute the network. The second mechanism is ability to connect and to ensure co-operation of other different networks by sharing common goals and combining resources and at the same time fending-off competition from other networks which are not in the cooperation agreement. This mechanism is called Switching. So, in a way the network power is acquired and maintained by those in position of power through Programming and Switching. (Ref – Manuel Castells, University of Southern California, Lecture Feb 20, 2010)
But, in the global network, in actual sense, who (actually) benefits from programmatically controlling the power dynamics or (say) who has this unified source of power? Surprisingly, as many may (inclined to) think it is not the global power elite, who benefits. Under network theory, it is considered totally undetermined, who owns the unified power. Actually there are different forms of power in each society like (say) economic, social, cultural and many other such powers. These powers are organized in different networks in different ways following different relationships amongst themselves within the network and also their counterparts across different connections of the network in question. So, the interconnection of entire relationships of influencing powers are negotiated, fuzzy, loosely connected, complex and distributed in nature. This also means that to bring a radical change to any network through persuasion is a challenging, time taking, complex and uncertain phenomenon. (Ref – Manuel Castells, University of Southern California, Lecture Feb 20, 2010)
Trying to understand from Network Theories of Power perspective, it may be possible to assume that under the ecosystem in which the education system operates, the forces that manage power dynamics may have vested interest in programming the design and operation of the network of education system in the way it is currently functional. The switchers may also be active in switching the network of education system so as to orchestrate the shared interest of other associated networks gets aligned with the network of education system.
One thing is obvious, that education systems across the globe have not undergone the transformation from traditional social network to an information age social network. Even if, they have changed to some extent, it is only to a limited extent. There still is a larger ground to cover in this space. There may be internal resistance to such a radical transformation. Presumably, this resistance may be from the selected stakeholders, who hold the network power (within the network of education system) and are locked into an equilibrium reaping benefits from the status-quo and also passing benefits of the equilibrium to other connected networks (either implicitly or explicitly). There is a likelihood for synergic effect of shared benefits of status-quo may not only be limited to those holding the network power in network of education system and to those holding network power in connected networks (to the network of education system) but also to those holding consolidated network power in entire Global Network Society.
Bringing radical change to the education system may disturb the prevailing power dynamics in the ecosystem (under which the network of education system operates). Therefore, unless the (explicitly or implicitly) participating powerful entities either (tacitly) agree with change in power dynamics brought about by bringing radical change to the education system (could be as a result of pressure from counterpower forces in Global Network of Society) or make some other alternative arrangement to accommodate respective vested interests as served by existing network of education system, a radical change appear difficult to take place. Even though this may mean limiting human aspiration of freedom to excel in academic arena in favour of serving vested interest of a matrix of systems (or an eco-system) conforming with collective-interest of powerful entities of society.
The Education System – Democratization through Virtualization
From the above discussions, probably it may be reasonable to assume that this is the time to transform the education system from being in a position of authority (supervisor of learner aspirations) to being in a position to render service (subordinate to learner aspirations). The system may not continue as a top-to-bottom oriented governing system but may become bottom-to-top oriented governed system. It may not be an imposer of will of socio-cultural-political power on learning community but become an accommodator of the free-will of the learning community. It is expected that with such a transformation, the education system may bridge the divide between (so called) formal education and informal education. This may bring an end to discrimination between education acquired through schools and outside the schools. Transformed system of education may function with intent to ignite and to encourage curious minds and may enable learners (students) to own and to pursue their learning ambitions with conviction. The system may put honest efforts to make all the possible educational facilities available to every seeker, reach out to every learner to assess each and every learner from learners’ perspective and to conduct evaluation with complete flexibility on a diverse and dynamic scale, which is tailored to qualitative assessment of each individual.
This sort of transformative change will gradually lead to democratization of education system and subsequently to democratization of the educational environment. Education may transcend from reflection of an acquired identity to illustration of natural human excellence acquired in search of meaning in life. The education system will broaden its horizons to go inclusive and to get assimilated as a socio-cultural hallmark of civilization. In this way, life-long association with learning and with pursuit educational excellence may eventually become a new normal.
But, for such a transformation to take place, the two core issues, which may need to be addressed are: (a) Scarcity of Resources for Provisioning Educational Infrastructure and (b) Resolution of problem of shift in the equilibrium of power dynamics in the society due to transformation in education system. Enabled with the digital technology, very sophisticated virtual environment having potential to augment and (eventually) to replace existing educational infrastructure available at classrooms are readily available and accessible to learners at remotest places at very economical price. Exploration for further assimilation of new technologies into operational design of education system may address the issue of scarcity of resource for provisioning of educational infrastructure. The second issue of shift in equilibrium of power dynamics in the society due to transformation of education system is not only a complex issue but also an uncertain as many visible and invisible actors compete to change their respective standing as power equilibrium shifts in society. The greatest fear of stakeholder (including elites and elitists as credited by the present education system) holding control (network power) over education system could be that in the perfect democratized education system, no single entity may control the system instead it will be the collective will of the learners, which will truly hold the control. In such a democratized education system, for any entity intending to bring a change may just propose an idea and then it will be up to the collective consensus to evolve for or against the proposal. So, at the moment, even though it may be possible to take a leap in transforming the education system taking milage of the technological advancement, there may be many resistive forces at play to resist the change as they may be uncertain of their respective role in changed environment. Socio-Political actors must consciously advocate on this matter with enthusiasm. Such an effort may result in some sort of initial transformational consensus (in the form of guidelines or policy framework), which may help to make it clearer to every possible stakeholder to assess what holds in future for them in this transformation.
The digital technologies are enabling a paradigm shift in design of services that is the shift from generic-standards design pattern to specifically-customized design pattern. Service designers are finding themselves much more equipped to opt for a shift from generic standards of ‘fit-for-all’ services to personalized customization of ‘fit-to-specific-needs’ services. This shift is quite evident in some of the services of the digital media (like (say) video streaming services of popular sites offer selective choices tuned to user preferences, online advertising services are selectively displayed on screens of popular websites based on relevance to individuals, social media feeds are tuned to interests of specific users). Similar change to service design is beginning to happen in healthcare sector (like (say) with recording medical metrics on mobile or wearables). In the same spirit, MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) are evolving with a potential to disrupt the way education is imparted in traditional ways. MOOC offers learners to choose courses as per their respective personal interests from wide variety of educational material offered by reputed educational institutions across the globe.
In the educational landscape, influence of virtual learning (e-Learning) is gradually creeping-in. Instructors and students now have a digital toolbox – ranging from mobile devices to virtual learning systems to online courses. The following statistics collated in a blog Bobby Chernev in his blog post clearly indicate the interest being shown by the different stakeholders in adaption of technology augmented learning: -
Impressive E-Learning Statistics for 2021
The massive open online course (MOOC) market could be worth $25.33 billion by 2025. (Source: Globe News Wire)
The US e-learning market could grow by $12.81 billion between 2020 and 2024. (Source: Market Research)
Mobile learning could reach $80.1 billion worldwide by 2027. (Source: Globe News Wire)
Augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) are key trends that could drive the e-learning sector forward in the next couple of years. (Source: Globe News Wire)
The corporate e-learning market could increase by $38.09 billion between 2020 and 2024. (Source: Business Wire)
Corporate e-learning takes 40% to 60% less time to complete when compared to traditional learning. (Source: eLearning Industry)
General E-Learning Statistics
The worldwide e-learning market is projected to be worth $325 Billion in 2025. (Source: Forbes)
In 2017, approximately 77% of US corporations used online learning. However, 98% planned to incorporate it into their program in 2020. (Source: eLearning Industry, Small Business Trends)
In 2019, 67% of US companies offered learning opportunities via smartphones. (Source: eLearning Industry)
E-learning increases learning retention rates by between 25% and 60%. (Source: SH!FT)
Corporate e-learning is expected to grow by over 250% between 2017 to 2026. (Source: Business Wire)
E-learning has helped to increase income for 42% of US organizations. (Source: The Educators)
An “American Society for Training and Development” survey of 2,500 companies discovered that those with “comprehensive training programs” have 218% higher revenue per employee and 24% higher profit margins. (Source: E-learning Infographics)
IBM saved approximately $200 million after switching to e-learning. (Source: SH!FT)
General E-Learning Trends
43% of US college students found digital study technologies extremely helpful for doing homework. (Source: Statista)
56% of US college students stated they used laptops in the classroom during a typical week. (Source: Statista)
81% of US college students agreed that digital learning technology was helping them improve their grades. (Source: Statista)
41% of US teachers stated the lack of training was the biggest barrier to increasing the use of educational tech in their classrooms. (Source: Statista)
49% of students worldwide stated they had taken an online course in the preceding 12 months. (Source: Statista)
In 2020, 180 million learners used MOOCs worldwide. (Source: Class Central)
A study by the Open University found that producing and providing e-learning courses consumes 90% less energy and produces 85% fewer CO2 emissions per person than face-to-face training. (Source: SH!FT, College Stats)
Canvas had the largest LMS (learner management system) market share in the US, with 36.7% of institutions using it in 2020. (Source: Edutechnica)
33% of post-secondary school administrators will continue to offer remote and online courses after their campuses have reopened completely. (Source: EducationData.org)
And then, there are popular portals like Byju's and Khan Academy for younger learners. The dynamics of diffusion of technology in general and absorption of e-Learning (or virtual learning) in particular may need a closure look to assess the nature, trend and transformational role of enabling electronic based solution.
Technology and all required infrastructure to support transformation of education system are in place. Diffusion of digital technology to grassroot level during last one decade has made learning community to achieve comfort level in conducting online interactions. The situation appears well poised for radical change in education system to adopt digitization in a systematic way. Teaching activities may slowly get reduced in schools and learners may have the privilege to learn any-time, any-where and anything from anyone at their will through online classes (as opposed to system mandated time-table and curriculum). Digital technologies are still evolving at a fast pace with a bright future. Revolutions in technology are expected to enrich the virtual experience. To capture the benefits (of on-going technological revolutions), regulatory framework may device (and enforce) a robust mechanism to authorize virtual education and an authentic mechanism to assess self-learning undertaken from available virtual courses. If this is done, teaching efforts in schools will get reduced. Taking benefits if reduction in teaching efforts, schools may promote themselves to become centres to exhibit creative pursuits and to promote academic excellence (by various means including research on local issues, facilitate multi-dimensional development of learners (students) through conducting sports or fine-arts related activities, conducting special skill development activities, providing high quality laboratory for conducting scientific researches, handholding for kindergarten kids, innovative socializing activities).
For a moment, let us assume that we are into a world where the virtual education transformation has already taken place. Such a transformation may be helpful in minimising the following problems identified in the existing education system as elaborated in a tabular format in the table as under: -
Table – 2: Democratization as Solution to Problems of Educational Environment
Such a transformed education system will provision an environment for learners where every individual will have full freedom, full accessibility to educational facilities with complete neutrality (flexibility for exploration in every possible way without any forced guidance or guided direction) and the onus will be on individuals to do unlimited explorations in infinite ways following their own curiosity on the way to achieve their respective long-term aspirations. The education system will slowly shift from a doer to a facilitator. Such a system will be led by leaner community. The education system will get designed, structured and governed by following needs and aspirations of the learning community to become a system of the learners, by the learners and for the learners.
The Education System – An Approach to Transformation
Design could be considered as finding a best possible standard to optimize the available resources for maximizing the outputs (generated to fulfil intended objectives). The service-design of educational services for digital world is going to provision for an educational environment, which is open, agile, accessible, credible, personalized, comprehensive and localized (content and language). It is evident that the internet-based educational service providers are consistently improving on these lines. They try to provision educational services along with required educational infrastructural-support to the learning community.
It may soon be possible that such service-providers may get matured to make a space for themselves as an alternative channel to formal educational system. Some early-movers (say unconventional learners or under-privileged talents) may surely opt to educate themselves through this alternative channel without bothering about recognition of their educational achievement by mainstream education system. And who knows, such learners may become challengers to those educated through conventional system. Presumably, the early-movers may compete with the conventional learners in those arenas, where open competition will be possible. Some such arenas could be entrepreneurship, software development or say creative field of fine-arts. If these challengers are able to successfully prove themselves to be at par with the conventional learners, likelihood is quite high that alternate channel of education thus evolved (as alternative to education system) may slowly start to encroach conventional education system and gradually firmly establish itself over a period of time. However, even before the story goes this far, there is good chance that conventional education system may adapt by formulating some mechanism to gradually assimilate education acquired through alternative channel within conventional education.
Anyways, let us shift our focus towards the policy-makers. If the transformation of education system with the intent to democratize educational environment for learners is to be done systematically in a policy-based manner to take advantage of the changing landscape of the education sector. One of the ways to approach could be to try to make changes to the design of existing education system. It may be worth to explore possibilities to re-orient it (the design of the education system) in such a way that the system becomes more compatible to take-on the futuristic transformational challenges.
The characteristic design features of an education system are: - i) Structure and ii) Governance (refer Section - 1). Let us analyse the design of education system in terms of these two paraments (Structure and Governance). Let us start with the structure. A structure (in this sense) can be designed to be either Hierarchical or Flat. In terms of a simple linear representation, the structure could be considered as a line with Hierarchical as one extreme and Flat as other extreme. Let structural aspect of all the education system designs be considered to be falling between these two extremes. Similarly, governance norms (in this sense) could be designed to be either to have Authoritative-Regulation or Self-Regulation. In terms of a simple linear representation, the governance could be considered as a line with Authoritative-Regulation as one extreme and Self-Regulation as the other extreme. Let governance aspect of all the education system designs be considered to be falling between these two extremes.
With the above assumptions, let us try to organize these two critical parameters (Structure and Governance) of (education system) design as a two-dimensional co-ordinate system. This will help in understanding education system design expressed in the scale of structure and governance. As illustrated in the Picture - 2, broadly following types of designs (quadrants) could be classified for ease of studying different possible education systems (from system design perspective): -
Picture – 2: Classification of Education-System in Structure-Governance Co-ordinates System
Type A – Centralized Bureaucratic Design (Hierarchical and Authoritative-Regulation): This type of design has hierarchical structure. This follows conventional hierarchy, which is pyramidical to facilitate centralization. In such a structure, the governance is often centrally controlled through cadres and authoritatively regulated through standards.
Such a design is usually considered appropriate when limited resources are to be distributed in the best possible interest of larger individual entities (groups or individuals). Amongst these individual entities, there is a general lack of cooperation and there is a lack of collective consciousness required for accomplishment of collective action directed towards justified distribution of available resources. Governing agency (usually a government) is entrusted by the individual entities to set and to enforce standards immaculate with prevailing notion of justice, following which an optimization of resource distribution in best interest of the collective can be done.
Type B – Autonomous Cooperative Design (Flat and Self-Regulation): This type of design has flat structure. Flat structures do not have structurally mandated shape(s) or level(s). It is expected that entities collaborate to shape structures in need-based manner with mutual cooperation and consensus. Thus, at different points of time based on different situations, relevant structures keep on emerging, evolving and diffusing. This is to facilitate de-centralized administration. In such a structure, the governance is often collectively controlled by collaborating individual entities and collectively regulated through consensus and general will.
Such a design is usually considered appropriate when abundant resources are to be utilized in the best possible interest of participating collective. This is particularly preferred in an environment, in which, individual creativity shapes collective productivity. Amongst these contributing individual entities (contributing as collective), there is a general cooperation and there is a sound collective consciousness required for accomplishment of collective action (directed towards justified distribution of available resources). Self-governing temporary entities emerge through democratic processes from amongst the collective to govern and this temporary entity is entrusted by the individual entities to complete mandate and eventually get willingly dissolved. Collective consciousness is entrusted to drive actions according to prevailing notion of justice and according to requirements of resource optimization for greater efficiency.
Type C – Autonomous Bureaucratic Design (Hierarchical and Self-Regulation): This type of design has hierarchical structure. Contrary to conventional hierarchy, which is pyramidical to facilitate centralization, this relatively loosely coupled hierarchy is to facilitate coherence amongst decentralized entities (which collectively collaborate). In such a structure, the governing mechanism supports decentralization with a coordinated central regulatory control. Federalism could be an example of such a design.
Such a design is usually considered appropriate when limited resources are to be distributed in the best possible interest of larger individual entities having strong sense of identity and independent mechanism of governance amongst themselves. This is an environment, in which many times individual autonomy (of participating entities as collective) is a critically sensitive issue for collective cohesive behaviour. Autonomous entities (even though govern themselves) lack collective consciousness required for accomplishment of collective action to ensure justified distribution of available common resources amongst themselves. Therefore, central mediation for co-ordination is required.
Type D – Centralized Cooperative Design (Flat and Authoritative Regulation): This type of design has flat structure with relatively lesser layers of hierarchy. Contrary to conventional flat structures, which do not have structurally mandated shape or levels, this design has some form of official structure, which facilitates centralized administration. In such a structure, governance is often centrally controlled. However, there is built-in flexibility and approachability across layers of hierarchy allowing free flow of information and ideas. Hi-Tech corporations pursue this type of design with the intent to keep the organization focussed on strategic objectives of the company (through central control) and at the same time allowing creative minds to freely collaborate for promoting innovation (through allowing individuals cooperate across loose and often overlapping hierarchy).
Such a design is usually considered appropriate when limited resources are to be distributed in the best possible interest of individual entities having focussed efforts and common goal to create value. This is an environment in which Individual freedom (of participating entities as collective) is required for collective contribution. Even though the individual entities have a collective consciousness on mutual cooperation but still need a centralized governance for a justified distribution of available resources amongst themselves for generating a collective value is required.
Many of the contemporary education system design of present days fall into Type-A design. A few may be confirming with either Type-C or Type-D. Not many formal education systems may be falling under Type-B design. Naturally, Type-B would be most appropriate choice of design for futuristic democratized education system. Policy makers, who may be convinced with this way of looking into design of education system may opt to look for possible strategies to place their education system under third quadrant that is Type-B (Autonomous Cooperative Design). If the education system being addressed by policy makers is already in confirmation with Type-B and if the circumstances permit, the policy makers may try to further enhance further enhance Governance by making it further Self-Regulating and further flattening the structure and try to reach towards ideal design, where structure gets so flat that individuals cooperate and collaborate in democratic way to regulate themselves with perfect autonomy. Probably, this may be democratization of education in true sense.
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