View source for How school can ruin a life

{{:ArticleSchool}}

== Introduction ==

Schools have a potential to ruin self-esteem and affect people for life. Tamara story is another shocker on my list of high school anecdotes.

When writing [[Futility of schooling]], I tried to replicate Tanya's effort of [[cramming]] 60 pages of history in 3 hours. I wanted to see how it affects the mind. Tamara is a friend who agreed to be my guinea pig. In that context I got to know her life story. One crushing conclusion from that story was that school took away all happiness from Tamara's life. Tamara is a good mom and an avid reader. However, her self-confidence has been destroyed at school. Moreover, she seems to be adrift. School might have also affected her decision-making powers. In an outwardly ''happy mom'' context, Tamara is seemingly never happy. This could be a matter of personality. However, the details of Tamara's life tell me that events from high school totally changed the way Tamara thinks of herself, and changed the way she sets goals in life. Apart from good motherhood, this is a very sad story. Life is not just about how much we accomplish. We can accomplish happily and thus accomplish better.

The most interesting conclusion from Tamara's cram-reading experiment is that '''3 hours of hasty reading under pressure might easily threaten one's [[pleasure of learning|love of learning]] cultivated for a quarter of a century'''. At least that was the impression of my guinea pig at the moment of reading. Tamara shows a powerful [[learn drive]]. She loves learning. If she was subject to [[unschooling]], we might have had the same well-educated lady with a difference: her self-esteem might have been wildly different. 

{{Important note|The experience of [[democratic schools]] shows that '''we can help people learn without making them unhappy for life'''}}

== Tamara ==

Tamara is a 44-year-old stay-at-home mom. She loves history. Her bookshelf is packed with highly ambitious pieces from the most exotic periods of time. She regularly reads books, but history makes most of that reading. A great deal of that reading is done in English. Tamara's English is probably best in my entire neighborhood. If I was to guess, I would think Tamara was a graduate of some good university who gave up her ambitious plans for raising her four kids. I would be wrong. Tamara did not graduate. Surprisingly it was history that was the reason she dropped out of high school. It was not a bad teacher who hated her. It was not that she hated history. It was the system! Her story is similar to that of Tanya except it does not have a happy high school ending. Tamara was overwhelmed by the volume of the history material to learn. She honestly admitted that her teen years were also marred by a distraction or two, but she was always a diligent student. The type that begins with [[Dangers of being a Straight A student|straight As in primary school]], only to slowly degrade to a robot that goes through all school duties against all the protest from within her body. Ignoring one's biological needs can be toxic.

== Lifelong disappointment ==

When Tamara failed her half-annual history exam, she knew she would be penalized with grade retention. That was too much. Not only did she give up. She never returned to school. To this day, she blames her inferior intellectual capacity for the failure. Her thinking goes as follows: "''other kids could do it, I could not. There were only two girls in class who failed. Both dropped out and never went to college''". Incidentally, I happen to know both ladies. Tamara's classmate Joanna is an enterprising businesswoman. I know Joanna to be a fast learner. I saw her in action when dealing with technology. Unlike Tamara, Joanna never regretted dropping out. She found her comfortable place in life and never looked back. Tamara says she has lived her whole life with a degree of inferiority complex. She got four beautiful kids to cherish. Instead, she enviously looks at her friends who graduated from college and got good jobs all around the world. That one failed exam poisoned her entire life.

Tamara is a lady of multiple talents. We had a short chat about her knowledge of history and I was truly amazed that history was the subject that stopped her in her educational tracks. We spoke in English, and I was truly amazed at her fluency and the extent of her vocabulary considering she never travelled abroad. Her years after high school were primarily devoted to her children and to reading books late in the night when the kids were asleep. Tamara knows a great deal about things ranging from the 2016 Republican primaries to brain science and health. Some of her English fluency secret comes from the fact she has used SuperMemo for many years.

Two decades after her failure in the history test, Tamara says that '''dropping out undermined her self-esteem, self-confidence, and stripped her ambitions. She never seriously considered going back to school. Her dream of going to college died long ago'''. When I insisted it is never too late, she replied: "''perhaps once the last kid leaves the nest''".

== History test ==

Knowing Tamara's interests, I kindly asked her to run for me an experiment. I wanted to simulate Tanya's experience with 60 pages of history in 3 hours. There would be a major twist to the experiment. Tamara has already got all necessary knowledge scaffolding. She would not hesitate about the date of the Fall of the Roman Empire. Secondly, she also knows a lot about efficient learning. Her SuperMemo items about history are not perfect, but I would still rank them in top 90 percentile of users. I wanted to know how much difference those two factors would make in Tamara's learning experience.

To make things more interesting and inspirational, I picked 3 books at varying difficulty and in both languages: her native Polish, and her second language English.

Tamara agreed for the experiment with enthusiasm. I hoped that this experiment could provide some peace of mind for her after years of seriously hurt self-esteem. Whatever the outcome of the test, my words introducing Tamara above should validate her own post-school success with self-learning, self-discipline, and her wish to self-improve.

== Four school test disappointments ==

When we outlined the conditions for the experiment, Tamara was instantly disappointed. She wanted to choose a '''weekend morning''' free of family obligations. I insisted that we need to simulate Tanya's conditions that were far from comfortable. She would need to learn in the late evening after a day of hard work at home. I could see half of her enthusiasm evaporate instantly. As Tamara often goes to sleep well past midnight, she would actually need to learn between midnight and 3 am. That would simulate Tanya's need to cut into her sleep with learning. As I never tolerate violations of sleep hygiene, I did not ask Tamara to go that far and that crazy.

The '''second''' disappointment came with the fact that there will be no discount for "'''''reading with comprehension'''''". Tamara will get 3 minutes per page and will need to process all pages. Otherwise, she would risk failing the test by getting questions she did not read about. Tamara insisted "''this is crazy, I am a slow mindful reader''". She admitted though, that back in high school, in the identical setting, she would not complain. She would take as much material as it was necessary and just do her best.

The '''third''' disappointment came with a '''morning test'''. Tamara expected to be tested on each material immediately after reading. I insisted that we need to test her early in the morning, in exactly the same manner like Tanya. Tamara usually wakes up at 6 am. Sometimes she uses an alarm clock. She claims my "sleep theories" are wrong because she is always sleepy in the morning. To me, this is pretty obvious there are two simple culprits to her sleepiness: (1) going to sleep too late because of her reading passions, and (2) using the alarm clock in the morning. I consider alarm clocks brain killers, but people like Tamara just reply "''I need to sacrifice some of my brain cells or my kids would not get their breakfast before school''". We made an appointment at 7 am sharp to test Tamara's knowledge of her learning material.

The '''fourth''' disappointment came with the fact that Tamara won't have a chance to stop the timer for short breaks like toilet or coffee. I insisted that drinking coffee late in the evening is suicidal, but Tamara was adamant that she "''knows her brain''". I insisted that all breaks would have to cut from her learning time. Like in Tanya's case, the ruthless bracket of 3 hours was unmovable. For Tanya, it was even worse as she had to cut deeper into her sleep time.

== Reading test ==

Three books were used in the test. Each book was given an hour and 20 pages were read.

=== Book 1: American History ===

For Tamara's first book, we chose "''Ranaoke Island. The Beginnings of English America''" by David Stick. This was to be the easiest material for the nice beginning. Tamara chose the book herself. It was on her reading list for 2017. Unlike Tanya who had to start in the middle of the book with poor recall of the context, Tamara was allowed to start from the Preface and went through the first 20 pages.

This learning experience instantly became unpleasant when Tamara realized she needs to read much faster than her usual meticulous processing rate. She likes to make notes or peek into a dictionary. She gave up those habits due to scarcity of time. This undermined her comprehension. While reading the first page, her brain was already rambling. She started talking to herself: "''This is stupid. Why am I doing this? I will finish only because I promised Wozniak to do the test''". She skipped some paragraphs for speed's sake saying "''I love American history, but I am not too keen to read about Aristotle''". I checked back the text and there was only a passing mention of Aristotle in the context of Columbus's mistake in confusing America with India. This instantly told me that Tamara's focus was poor. She was thinking about completing the test and the futility of her reading. This was similar to Tanya's experience. Tanya was tired and hoping to read fast enough to survive the night without waking up in a coma.

=== Book 2: Polish History ===

The second book in the test was Tanya's infamous book of history. Reading in Polish should make life easier, but this time we made a jump deep into book's interior. To add to reading difficulty, I picked the chapter that started with 3 pages devoted to wars. I know this is one thing Tamara cannot stand in history: wars. Tired with her first book, Tanya had to ratchet the level of dislike and poor focus. She even complained about the book format: "''Why are pages so huge? I would never buy a book like this''". She reported losing it on the second page already. At first, she wanted to give up literally saying "''I wanted to throw the book against the wall''". She added in agitated Polish that all the book speaks about is "''kozak, szlachcic, kmicic, hetman, zold''". These are all ancient terms that probably cut into Tamara's comprehension leading to annoyance: "''cossacks, szlachta, Kmicic, hetman, emolument''" with Kmicic actually being a fictional character that certainly was not mentioned in the book. Tamara did not stop reading. She did not want to fail me. Instead, she got a serious laugh attack. When reading a section devoted to the Battle of Kircholm, her tired eyes misread it as Battle in Jello due to the similarity of the spelling of Kircholm and Starch in Polish ("Bitwa Pod Krochmalem"). I have never heard of Battle of Kircholm. To be precise, I totally forgot there was such a battle. I am sure it was spoken about in my classes of history decades ago. This 20 minute battle from 1605 was one of the major battles of the Polish-Swedish war. It makes a prominent place in Polish books of history because it was a "devastating" Polish victory. The excitement with that battle today is a bit flat as we often visit beautiful Sweden and its smiling citizens. Sweden is just a narrow Baltic sea away from Poland and there are no border controls. We can land in Sweden after just a few hours of inhaling sea breeze on a ferry. For Tamara, the only tangible connection of the battle with the present is that she lives in a neighborhood where streets are named after the great Polish hetmans who led the Polish army against the Swedes. Everyone around knows the names, but almost nobody knows who stands behind them!

After just 4-5 pages, Tamara started hating the book and her reading experience. She started having flashbacks to high school. It appears her "scaffolding" is now heavily biased to reading about certain periods, certain people, certain concepts. It is definitely not ready for reading about wars. She was shocked to see that she still needs a great deal of technical vocabulary in Polish to comprehend the text. She complained "''the first book in the test had a story behind it. This one is like reading facts from an encyclopedia. This is awful''". She admitted that her last 10 pages were based on her eyes doing the reading, and her brain doing the thinking about... things unrelated to the text. She remarked: "''I started fearing that this hate will now spill over to other books''". Instead of just wasting 3 hours, Tamara feared she might hurt her passions cultivated for two decades.

This experiment turned into a big eye opener. I wanted to show how forced reading hurts comprehension and learning. Instead, a bigger problem emerged instantly: '''a mere two hours of a forced learning session can undermine passions that take years to cultivate!''' Why does not Tanya report such feelings? It seems Tanya's defenses have already been blunted. Tanya cannot contrast her passionate reading with her forced reading. Via [[learned helplessness]], Tanya accepts her fate as an unavoidable necessity.

=== Book 3: Afghan History ===

For the third book, I picked "''Return of a King''" by William Dalrymple. The book is big, thick, and intimidating. Tamara has for long been getting down to reading it but admits being intimidated herself. The book got rave reviews and picked many awards, but it deals with a short period of the first Anglo-Afghan War 1839-1842. Tamara said she picked the book from recommendation and did not know the subject of war was that prominent. To make matters really difficult, I picked 20 pages from the middle of the book. I looked for a fact-rich text that would simulate Tanya's experience with the Fall of the Roman empire. That was supposed to eliminate Tamara's advantage with her scaffolding in history. By going deeper into details, Tamara would suffer the same comprehension issues like Tanya.

While reading about Afghan history, Tamara gave up. Sort of. The book was a relief compared with Polish history. It had an actual story that instantly became interesting. She concluded that she would rather read a couple of pages slowly with interest and comprehension rather than rush for her "test mark". Instead of hating the last book, she fell back on her good learning habits. She was awfully sleepy and tired by that time. By a stroke of luck, my chosen text mentioned [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Prosper_Witkiewicz Jan Prosper Witkiewicz]. While encyclopedic recitation of Polish national heroes in a schoolbook of history was offputting for Tamara, an encounter with an interesting Polish character in a foreign land in an obscure period of history instantly revived her interest. Witkiewicz's story turned out captivating! In the test of memory and comprehension, despite failing to read the entire 20 pages, Tamara's recall of details was excellent. She read the supposedly hardest piece at the point of utmost exhaustion well past her usual bed time. However, she was rescued by slowing down, her good general knowledge, and the quality of text.

== Schoolbook's curse of knowledge ==

This third read was most surprising. While I expected a further downturn in reading productivity, Tamara showed signs of recovery. It makes me think that my original diagnosis was wrong. Books for learning Polish history in Polish high school only look well done. However, they are a major mismatch for the cognitive capacity of an average kid. Written by smart professors affected by the curse of knowledge, they produce a huge knowledge gap. They raise the bar too high. Most kids are doomed to fail. Even when they pass the test, they leave with little knowledge and little passion for further learning. Considering the [[Polish education reform|current reform of Polish education]], new books are again being written in a hurry. In a record hurry actually. This is a mass production where cutting corners is inevitable. This production stands no chance in competing with the wisdom and literary skills of a passionate scholar. William Dalrymple put all his heart and knowledge into making his 500-page heavyweight interesting. In the end, Tamara made a good book choice. I am sure she will read the book with no regrets.

'''Update:''' Exactly one year later, I found out that Tamara did not resume reading claiming lack of time. However, she found time for other books. It makes me wonder, could my 20 minute coercive test discourage reading?

== Self-learning must be self-directed and self-paced ==

Interestingly, while preparing the tests for Tamara, I noticed that some of the test texts were heavy enough to make me sleepy! I was right after a short session of [[incremental reading]] where my alertness seemed excellent. Once I started digging into details of some obscure battles of the past, my processor started overheating. This is the state in which most of the kids learn, except they are usually more sleepy. Someone might label it [[self-learning]] because it is a kind of "learning" that happens by oneself. However, such "learning" is not [[self-directed learning|self-directed]] and is not self-paced. As such, there is very little "self" and a great deal of "foreign intervention".

Our morning conversation with Tamara after her night of reading had an interesting turnaround. She looked pretty disappointed at first. She said I burst her bubble. She felt again like a dumb schoolgirl. I needed a lot of explaining and reassurance that "failure" was the prime option from the very beginning. This is not how we should learn. Considering the possibility of stoking up hatred of learning, it is conceivable that those 3 hours of [[cramming]] could do actual damage. If the kid spent that time watching some mindless TV show, he or she might suffer less harm. It is better to waste time you enjoy wasting than to waste time on mental torture with long-term negative consequences. While talking about the test, Tamara started getting increasingly agitated. As if she had some time and reason to step back and re-think the whole concept of learning at school. As if only now the pieces of the puzzle started fitting together. She started urging me to fight harder to explain the thing to parents and students. She exclaimed: "''How can parents do it to their children?''". I toned her outrage by reminding her gently that awareness does not come easy. She did not fight for her kids. Her parents did not fight for her freedom to learn. Everyone seems to have accepted the status quo.

I told Tamara that her nighttime torture will have some important contribution to my [[Problem of Schooling|book]] and if it can help one kid in the world, it would be more than worth it. She smiled for the first time that morning. It was a job well done.

== Comprehension test ==

It was a great surprise: Tamara passed all tests despite my effort to make things difficult. To her, it was a horrendous experience. To a teacher, this might look like "school works". Perhaps such superficial impressions keep the education system in operation? 

This is how my testing proceeded:

=== Book 1: American History ===

Tamara passed the test on her favorite book of American history. From her point of view, she "remembered nothing" and felt bad about it. From the teacher's point of view, she knew the most important facts from the 20 pages. From the memory point of view, her passive recall was excellent, her active recall was good enough to pass, her long-term recall prospects were, naturally, very poor. This should be obvious to anyone who understands a thing or two about [[spaced repetition]]. She will certainly remember 1492 for reasons other than the mere mention in the book. She is unlikely to remember much beyond that date without further review.

During the test, I could see Tamara missed entirely a very interesting and long story of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjarni_Herj%C3%B3lfsson Bjarni Herjólfsson]. In 985, Bjarni sailed from Norway to visit his dad for Christmas. He did not sail from fjord to fjord. He sailed in a viking boat to Iceland. In Iceland, Bjarni found out that his dad had left for Greenland. Bjarni followed and discovered America on his way. It happened 5 centuries before Columbus. Tamara explained that she might have been in a skip mode when reading about Greenland. She explained that she wanted to meet the target of 20 pages per hour. She also had no recall of a slight mistake in the text, which claimed that Eratosthenes confirmed the roundness of earth while having no idea of its size.

=== Book 2: Polish History ===

I was even more surprised that Tamara passed the test on Polish history as well. This, however, was largely a pass on her prior knowledge.

For example, I asked a trick question about Polish Constitution of 1791. The Poles claim it is the second oldest constitution in the world after the US Constitution. However, there is still an active 6-book constitution of San Marino from 1600. Strangely, the text did not explain the global uniqueness of the Polish bill. When I asked Tamara, she claimed Polish constitution came second. She clearly knew that fact before. She was surprised there were 3 pages devoted to the subject. Her brain entirely missed that part despite her claim that her eyes went through the entire text line by line.

The biggest flop of that section was for Tamara to still claim she lives on a street named after a great writer Chodkiewicz. The book explained that Chodkiewicz was actually a hetman. Tamara was upset "''I recall checking it on Wikipedia. There must have been some writer of the same name''". Naming streets after great heroes of history seems like a great idea, however, few people truly know who stands behind their street name. Even those who care about history!

When I asked her the question about the resistance to populism, she disagreed with the book! I reminded her jokingly "''You are at school. You are not supposed to disagree with the teacher or an authoritative source''". In my experience, this anti-individualistic stance largely depends on the teacher. Some teachers are delighted to have kids with opinions.

In many cases, Tamara showed "useless recall". She missed Prof. Bobrzynski's interpretation of the causes of the loss of Polish independence. His Cracow School of Thought pointed to the lack of strong centralized government. Tamara noted, "''I remember Bobrzynski's picture. I skipped that part because I was running out of time''".

Tamara is a good mom. Her passion for parenting acts as a mnemonic aid in some circumstances. In the test, it helped Tamara answer questions about hetman Zolkiewski's testament. She summarized the testament as very moving at first. Zolkiewski wrote to his son about education and the need to read books of history. But the testament ended with a passage that Tamara summarized as "''Please die for your country. Death for your own country is sweet''". This is typical of Polish nationalistic indoctrination: die for Poland to deny something to a German, or to a Swede. Polish history books are full of similar sentiments.

=== Book 3: Afghan History ===

In her last reading section, Tamara fell back on her good reading habits. Partly because of her frustration with superficial reading, and partly because she truly got hooked on a story. She read with comprehension and interest. Her recall of details was excellent up to a point where it dropped to zero because she ran out of time. Tamara did not manage to read 20 pages. Despite good learning, she might have failed a test that would cover only the material she failed to read. Overall, however, she deserved a pass in the test of that section as well.

== Tamara vs. Tanya ==

Two decades older, Tamara performed better than Tanya because of the following factors:

* better general knowledge
* better knowledge of history
* better learning habits shaped with years of book-reading and some experience with [[SuperMemo]]
* lesser proportion of the material she did not choose or like
* only a symbolic penalty over her head
* competitive spirit. Tamara knew Tanya's story and wanted to do one better. For Tanya, her test was just one more boring day at school

== Deschooling ==

Tamara admits having little knowledge of math, physics or chemistry. Most of her general knowledge comes from reading books. If Tamara had never gone to school, she would have learned reading like all kids who are [[unschooling|unschooled]] or those who join [[democratic school]]s. She would then delve into history and English, reach higher levels and never damage her self-esteem. Without schooling, we might have a better version of Tamara: not only knowledgeable but also happy!

I presented my deschooling hypothesis to Tamara. She did not concur. Most people assume schooling is a good thing. However, after a short pause, she said: "''For sure my life would look better if I just never took that history test. It will never stop haunting me''".

== Conclusions ==

* good learning habits help learning, even if imposed conditions are irrational
* general knowledge dramatically improves reading comprehension and learning
* bad learning habits forced by schooling can backfire in genuine [[Why kids hate school?|hatered]] of the subject matter or even learning in general
* learning on one's own is no guarantee of efficiency. Self-learning demands self-directed and self-paced approach
* schools could make a huge difference if they just cut down on the volume of learning, increased freedoms, increases [[self-learning]], [[Self-directed learning|self-direction]] and self-pacing
* schools can have dramatically bad impact on self-esteem and sheer joy of life
* for some people, [[unschooling]] might do more good than school

== Message to all great people in hiding ==

How come we set up the educational system in a way that makes it possible for great people like Tamara live years of low self-esteem while she should rather feel like a fantastic contributor to global good and global well-being? She is a great mom, wise human being, and a model citizen. I hope this text can provide a tiny bit of comfort and compensation!