“Education is about giving the tools to think and understand the world.” This is a quote from Samuel Arbesman, author of The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date. He also has a blog right here on Wired called Social Dimension. The point of Samuel’s book is that knowledge changes rapidly, and the rate of change is not random; it's something we can predict. Understanding how it changes can provide a structure to our world.

I had a short half hour talking with Samuel about his book, with a focus on how this impacts education. Does the rapid change of knowledge affect what kids are taught in schools? Should kids be taught facts at all if they are only going to change? What does the fast pace of technology hold for the future of education?

Samuel first pointed to a place that is doing it right: medical schools. Medicine acknowledges the problem of the change of knowledge. Doctors are taught that much of what they learn will be obsolete in a few years of graduation, and they must always devote time to the latest changes in their field. For example, Uptodate.com is a virtual textbook utilized by the medical profession. Experts in the field constantly write articles on the newest facts of medicine. The hope is that other professions do the same.

It’s one thing to know that facts change. But if we can teach people how facts change, that there is an order and regularity on how knowledge grows, changes, and is overturned, it can lead to a better education overall. That is one of the primary reasons Samuel wrote the book. It’s not just about constantly learning new facts, but having the resources to understand how those facts will change and be on top of the information needed to function in the world.

But how to do this? How to learn how to learn?

Samuel emphasized that having a base knowledge is always important. For example, even if we use calculators in our daily lives, because we all learned basic arithmetic, we can tell if a number is completely off. General information gives you a starting point to ask the right questions. Teaching students how to find this new knowledge is next. Google is not making us stupid, or unable to memorize. (Samuel mentioned how when printed books came about, there was the same fear, yet we’re doing just fine.) However, using search engines well is a learned skill.

Too often, facts are lost in the vast sea of information. Samuel pointed out how there are many instances where scientists recapitulate something has been known, but from a different scientific field. Everyone uses different key words, phrases, and jargon for the same subjects. Finding relevant information, by knowing how to ask the right questions is crucial. We need a better way to cluster data.

Choosing sources carefully is the next logical step in research. Teachers can do research themselves on sites that are legitimate, sites that quote their sources, sites that have credibility. They can share those sites with their students. And emphasize what credibility means.

Samuel also pointed out that information takes time to be passed around; errors take time to be rooted out. This may seem the opposite from experiences with viral videos, but so much research is being done and published, it is impossible to keep up. Even for his own book this was true. A fact mentioned in The Half-Life of Facts was debunked right after publication, even though he had done extensive research at the time.

Another way to teach students to gather information is by interacting with actual people instead of the internet. He wishes people knew how accessible people in academia are. Professors are the people that are constantly updating their own knowledge and are happy to share. Teachers should encourage students to contact the name at the end of that blog post, or magazine article, or even the face on a TV interview.

I asked Samuel about a recent Time economic article that stated that “The fact that [the prices of new devices] aren’t falling so quickly now means that technology isn’t increasing at the same pace it once did.” The conclusion was that we are entering a long period of slow tech gains, and now maybe education can catch up.

Samuel disagreed with that, saying that technology is not slowing down. People adapt to incredible changes, and our younger generation is going to need to learn how to learn. We adults picked up computers and the internet and the iphoness as quickly as we needed them. There is no need to spend endless hours instructing kids on how to use a computer. If the computer is needed as part of their education, they will learn as they go. Learning how to figure things out on their own is the skill to teach.

I constantly annoy my kids by NOT showing them how to do something, and instead help them find the answer in the Help menu, or by searching in public forums, or finally, by emailing support people. Those are the skills they need, not for me to simply show them the right button for one particular program.

Speaking of my children, I talked with my two teens about The Half-Life of Facts, explaining about the rate of change is predictable, and can be shown through mathematics. There is a shape for how knowledge grows and decays over time. I used examples Samuel mentioned in his TED talk, and we all chatted for awhile about it. My daughter then wondered if this could be the same shape for how an individual acquires a sense of self over a lifetime. How everything we learn while children about being a human are huge leaps, and there are sudden changes in everything you thought you knew, but as we get older it's more a fine-tuning.

I mulled that bit of seventeen year old wisdom for a bit, and then she said, "Though I suppose that doesn't account for a mid-life crisis."

I'll have to ask Samuel about that next time. Right now, I'm glad my kids can embrace this new knowledge, and that they have the flexibility to keep up with the pace of change. They will need to see technology as more than a tool, but a partner in keeping up. The field of information science is growing, and desperately needed. Hopefully schools pick up on the idea of 21st Century skills so their students can continually be a success in our rapid world.

Check out more about The Half-Life of Facts. Thanks to Samuel for a great discussion!