Japan – Experiences of Partha Majumdar

Colonise the World

What if there was a new kind of Colonisation where the best teachers in the world collect their knowledge assimilated till date and unify the most people to a more or less same level of know-how?

If we consider a world population of 7 billion people, it is safe to assume that about 65% of the world population is between the age of 19 years and 64 years (Click this link for the report on World Population Distribution). If we consider that out of these 65%, 25% of the people have the means for educating themselves adequately through normal education channels, that would leave 40% of the world population (About 25% of the World population should be very smart). If we consider this 40% group between 19 and 64 for educating, that would mean educating 2.8 billion people.

Now, if one teacher teaches a group for 10 hours a week (total commitment time including time for preparation and evaluation; this implies about 5 hours of lectures per week or 1 hour lecture per day). Of the 60 hours in the week (at an average of about 10 hours per day for 6 days in a week), the student studies on his/her own for about 20 hours, the rest being for working for livelihood (i.e. 40 hours in a week). This is considering that the student devotes only 10 hour per day for all work other than personal work (in this case, studying is not a personal work) with one day totally for himself/herself. This implies that the student has 40 hours per week to devote to working for livelihood as is nearly the standard industry requirement. The total load on the student is about 65 hours per week (40 hours of work for livelihood + 20 hours for self-study + 5 hours for attending lectures).

This would imply that one teacher can teach 4 groups simultaneously. This would mean a load of 40 hours per week for the teacher. Considering a class size of 50 students, this would imply that a teacher can teach 200 students simultaneously.

For 2.8 billion students at the average of 200 students per teacher for a period of 5 year, this would take 14,000,000 teachers. If we take the PhD generated in this world for last 25 years (as these people have a good chance of having the energy to still teach (having an average age of about 45 years)), this would mean checking whether the world produced 560,000 PhD per year at an average in the last 25 years.

Now, China produces about 50,000 PhD in a year presently, Germany produces about 25,000 PhD per year presently, Japan produces about 16,000 PhD per year presently. So, there is a good chance that the World produces about 500,000 PhD per year presently. Considering the number in the last 25 years, the average could be somewhere around 200,000 per year. This implies that there is a good chance that we have about 5 million PhD holders alive and able to take up the job for the next 5 years.

However, this is still a shortage of about 1 million PhD holders. In other words, this mechanism can cover about 1/3rd of the World population. However, this can be a decent start. This mechanism could cover the total population of the world in 15-20 years. I believe that 20 years is not a very large period for colonising the World.

I have kept away from Online Education means using the Internet as my experience is that the best education is imparted by active participation. I am a huge fan of online education; however, I have learnt most by working under someone’s guidance and someone’s personal attention. The Online Education bit is very important and if the student uses it as the secondary means of learning, that would mean “going the extra mile” for the student. I now believe that every extra mile leads to Mars.