Background: What are the thoughts of the founder of Ousia? ~An initiative born from three questions~ ※Out of the three below, the stories marked with a ☆ in ② account for the majority of the motivation for founding a business.
Question ①: Questions about my educational experience as a child with major problems:
"Teacher, why do I have to study?"┗>“Okay, just do the drill.”
Ever since I was in elementary school, I hated studying. No, it wasn't so much that I didn't like studying, but maybe it was that I didn't like being told what to do or being told what to do. Thanks to that, he always rebelled against his teachers and was such a problem child that he was even called to the principal's office.
I didn't understand."Why do I have to study so boringly?" "Why do I have to sit and listen to what the teacher says?" "Why do I have to listen to what the teacher says?""Why, why, boy?" desks like this were sometimes placed outside in the hallway. Because it disrupts the class.I was impressed and said, "Everyone is able to sit quietly and listen to what the teacher is saying."
Such a boy also aims to become an English teacher. I think this may have been due to the fact that her mother aspired to be a school teacher, but another factor may have been the fact that she was a great help to teachers.
Then, I will go on to university to obtain a teaching license. After I seriously started aiming to become a teacher, I began to study independently, something I had hated in the past."What kind of education should I provide and what kind of teacher should I aspire to be?" I imagined myself as my student and tried to organize my ideal education and teacher image.
As a result, an image of education that was the exact opposite of the education that I had received with doubts in the past was created. That is "students becoming teachers". Instead of "listening unilaterally to what the teacher says," "students themselves teach others as if they were teachers," and everyone becomes a teacher, creating a "culture of mutual teaching." As a result, I thought that since I was inputting knowledge with the premise of teaching it to others, it would become clear to me what I didn't understand, and above all, I would feel it was rewarding and would be willing to learn on my own. Also, regarding the image of an ideal teacher, I thought that it would be important for a teacher's role to "ask questions and get students to think for themselves" rather than “unilaterally teaching" something. I thought that by acquiring the habit of thinking for oneself, one would be able to carve out one's own life.
Based on this idea, I made appointments with several current teachers and talked with them about their ideal education. I received feedback from all the teachers saying "I like it!" but also saying "It's just...". It was said that it was difficult for so-called teachers to provide their own ideal education at school because they had to provide education in accordance with the curriculum guidelines."Will I be the one to provide the education that I had my doubts about? That's impossible."
So I decided to quit my goal of becoming a teacher and go on a journey. When I say traveling, I mean studying abroad in Cebu Island in the Philippines…
Question ②: ☆Questions born from encounters with street children:
“Give me the money," were the words from a boy in Cebu who was in the lower grades of elementary school.
When I was in my first year of university, I went on a short-term study abroad trip to Cebu, Philippines for two weeks.
Partly I wanted to improve my English skills, which was a self-growth perspective, but I also took the plunge out of curiosity and wanting to see a world I didn't know.
When I landed at the airport, it was very different from Tokyo and I felt an extremely foreign feeling.
As I headed from the airport toward the city center, I saw large complexes and skyscrapers lined up.
I lived in a suburb a little far from the city center. I forget the name, but it was a place where there was a gate when entering a residential area, and there was a gatekeeper.
One day during the day, I was curious about what was going on outside the residential area, so I decided to take a walk around the area while going to the supermarket.
When I moved a little away from the area where I was spending time, a strange scenery spread out there.
The road is not concrete but unpaved.
The house is made of exposed wood and is in a dilapidated state, threatening to collapse at any moment.
A child walking barefoot wearing a t-shirt that is dirty and torn from sand.
Stray dog dirty with dirt
It was a shocking sight for me as a first-year university student.
As I was walking and looking at the townscape, a boy wearing a gray tank top (probably around 6 years old, in the lower grades of elementary school) held out his hands and said something to me."Give me the money," he said. And in Japanese.
I froze.“What should I do?”I tried to have a conversation with him in English, but he just stuck out his hands. I guess he didn't understand English. Despite this, I said "Give me the money" in Japanese.I also thought, "I now understand that I am Japanese."Looking at his clothes and feet, it is easy to imagine that he lived in a poor family.Does he actually have parents?Will a child as young as six years old go around talking to tourists and collecting money?I was perplexed by this event, which would be unimaginable in Japan. There were also several other children who were speaking in the same way as him.
In the end, I decided to give him a small amount. Then he puts the money I gave him in his pocket, sticks out his hands again, and says, "Give me the money."Seeing this, other children also gathered around. He held out his hand and said, "Please, please!"I felt scared.
A guy on a bike who was passing by saw the scene."Get in the back," I said, and walked away.
"Be carefull". When I got off the bike, the older brother said something to me.
When I returned home and told the staff that something like this happened today, their expressions changed and they asked, "Are you serious?" and the atmosphere became a bit tense. According to him, the area he went to is a so-called "slum," an area where poor people gather, and where crime and trouble often occur. The children living there are called street children, and they earn money to survive tomorrow by talking to tourists.
I see, that's why the guy on the bike said "Be careful" at the end.I understand.
From there, I started researching street children in Cebu. There are many different types of street children; some have parents and work to support their parents' living expenses, while others have been abandoned by their parents and work together with other children in similar situations. It is said that some children do. It is said that such children are not able to attend school. Specifically, in families with multiple children, parents send the brightest children to school so that they will be able to take care of them in the future, while sending the less talented children to work or kicking them out of the home. . This is because parents cannot afford to take care of their children.
"I can't believe something like that happens in real life..."I feel that this is "heartless," but for parents in such a situation, it may be the only thing they can do to survive.I started thinking, "Is there anything I can do to help street children like that kid in the gray tank top I met in Cebu?"This leads to the Ousia project, which will be discussed later.
After returning to Japan, he began to think, "What can I do?" based on this shocking experience.
After thinking about it, I decided to return to education. However, when it comes to education, the idea has changed to "creating new educational institutions and educational services on my own," rather than being a school teacher like before.
So, first of all, I decided to research the history of Japan's education system, which is the most familiar to me, starting from the question of what kind of educational service I should launch.
Question ③: Questions about the modern Japanese education system:
I had various doubts about the modern Japanese education system.“Why do I have to study five subjects?”“Why is the evaluation when taking the exam based on the paper test results?”"Why is there so little time to think about my future compared to the time spent studying the five subjects?""Why is it that in elementary, junior high, and high school, all you had to do was listen to what your teachers say, but in college you start designing your own curriculum and planning your future?""Why has Japan's current form of education (knowledge transfer education based on so-called curriculum guidelines) not changed since the war?"
After researching the above question, my answer is as follows.
Due to the tax revenue system of Japanese society, it is structured as a worker training school.*This is just a personal hypothesis. The information is not based on data or materials, but based on what you would think if you were the person in charge of thinking about tax revenue.
Japan is a country that relies heavily on tax revenue (61% is taxes and 31% is public debt).
Company employees account for the majority of income taxes
Since the Industrial Revolution, emphasis has been placed on training factory workers.
The image of a company employee that factories are looking for is someone who can faithfully follow the organization's rules and manuals and act appropriately under the instructions and orders of their superiors. (I get the impression that many major companies have a top-down structure.)
In order to develop human resources who faithfully follow the instructions of the organization and their superiors, schools assign "teacher" and train students to follow the teacher's instructions.
The teacher instructs us to study, and in order to evaluate it relatively and quantitatively, we take a "⚪️×paper test" (rather than measuring academic ability, it tests how loyal a person is to society). (I get the impression that they do).
Furthermore, the reason behind group education rather than individual education is that when belonging to an organization, children are encouraged to be altruistic and value harmony, rather than selfishness, and to develop cooperative skills. (I think there is also a realistic cost reduction perspective and a lack of human resources perspective). As a result, I believe that group conformity is considered better than individuality.
=I think this is the current state of "worker training schools."
I also feel that there is a contradiction between the current human resource development policies of educational institutions and the human resources required by modern society.
In the past period of high economic growth, the human resources in demand were certainly manual laborers and unskilled workers called blue workers, so uniform group education and preparatory training may have been better.What about in modern times?With the advancement of IT, we have entered an era of rapid change called VUCA, where the future is unpredictable. As a result, we believe that the demand for human resources in society is increasing year by year, from blue workers to knowledge workers. Despite this, the modern education system has not changed much.
What happened to Japan as a result? If you raise the market capitalization ranking of companies as one indicator,
In 1989, seven of the top 10 companies were Japanese.
In 2023, no Japanese company will be in the top 10, and the top Japanese company will be Toyota Motor Corporation, which ranks 39th.
Five of today's top 10 companies are technology companies, or so-called BIG tech companies.
The human resources required by BIG Tech are mainly knowledge workers.Is Japan keeping up with the current trends?If you can't keep up, what's the reason? After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it was "education" after all.
From the above, I believe that the skills needed in modern times are not the ability to solve a given problem, but rather the ability to come up with a solution to a problem that has no correct answer, and even more importantly, the ability to figure out what the problem is. I believe that it is the ability to discern. In order to provide educational services that focus on improving problem-finding skills rather than problem-solving skills, I launched "Private Tutor Service Uxia."
In terms of content, I not only teach five subjects as a general tutor, but also go out for a walk together and ask questions such as, "Why was there a convenience store over there?" and "Why is that child playing alone in the park?" "What is that old man sitting on the bench thinking?" He posed questions to the children based on what he saw, and trained them to come up with their own answers. In the process, we took an approach to help children acquire the habit of asking their own questions and improve their problem-finding abilities.
However, one day I suddenly realized that although there had certainly been changes in the children I interacted with, I felt that with the current business model of educational services, there was a limit to the scope of my influence. I thought that Japanese society would continue to decline and that we needed to fundamentally change the Japanese education system.
After thinking about how we can change the current education system, we came to the conclusion that there are only two ways to do it.
Become the Prime Minister (The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology will create the draft, but the final authority rests with the Prime Minister (after listening to the opinions of the people, of course))
Launching educational services that will force the country to take action
Private educational services have a major impact on the existing educational system, raising citizens' awareness and expectations, leading to a citizen movement for educational reform, and as a result creating a trend in which the country is forced to change its policies and reform the system. do
From the above, the first option, "I want to become the Prime Minister now," requires a huge amount of time (you need to graduate from a top university, become a national civil servant, and accumulate achievements over a long period of time). ), so it was rejected.The only thing that remains is the second idea, "Launch an educational service that has enough influence to move a country," and then think of Big Tech and start thinking, "Is it possible to create an educational service that involves the world?"
Ousia project started:
The three questions above lead me to think about "educational services that involve the world."
Then one day, when I learned about the concept of "the Metaverse," a three-dimensional space that allows people to connect with people all over the world through the Internet, I thought, "This is it!"He thought, "With the Metaverse, we can create educational services that involve the world!"And, "With the Metaverse, wouldn't it be possible to create a world where anyone can access education anytime, anywhere?"
From this, the vision of "democratizing education" was born: "creating a world where anyone can receive the education they want, anytime, anywhere."
I stood up to realize that vision, but I thought, "Something is still missing with just the Metaverse."That something is
Is it possible for a single private company to create educational services that involve people around the world and have a strong impact simply by establishing a corporation and developing educational services that utilize the Metaverse?
For example, would street children like the kid in the gray tank top have access to education just by rolling out free Metaverse schools?
My conclusion was "no". Based on the above two points, when we reconsidered what kind of educational service we should build, we came up with the idea of "Metaverse x DAO x Token Economy."In other words, I thought as follows.
Rather than working as a single private company, like DAO, we can create a metaverse school by involving all the people around the world who sympathize with our vision, and as a result, we can have a huge impact on the world. I wonder if it can be done.
We believe that street children will not be able to access education simply by providing it for free. This is because they have to earn money in order to get water, food, etc. to survive today and tomorrow. They also don't have expensive electronic devices. Therefore, there is also the problem of not being able to access the Internet in the first place. Then what should we do?My answers are below
Building a Learn to Earn token economy means building a system where the more you learn, the more money you can earn. As a result, they can earn water and food to survive today and tomorrow while attending school in the Metaverse. I thought that by doing so, street children would also be able to access education.
In addition, to address the problem of not being able to access the Internet due to not having a device, Ousia is considering collaboration with the space sharing service "LearnHop" currently being planned. In other words, an ordinary household becomes a home school, a "school" so to speak, and by lending devices (PCs, smartphones, VR devices, etc.) to the "school", the children who attend there can attend the metaverse school. I thought it would be.
Based on the above two points, I believe that the girl in the gray tank top I met in college will be able to access education through Ousia, which means that 2 billion children around the world will be able to access education.
That's OusiaDAO'sStart a businessIt's a story.
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