Problem of Schooling

Introduction

All my life I have worshiped free learning (i.e. self-directed, and self-paced self-learning). I love learning with SuperMemo. I have long forgotten my 22 long years of schooling. In the past, each time someone asked me about my formula for the perfect modern education system, I would say I have no idea. I like free learning. However, by 2016, I have reached a breaking point. I know dozens of kids and teens. Some of them are users of SuperMemo, some are kids of my friends or family, others I know from a football field. They almost universally hate school. The older they are, the more intense the feeling. To me, learning is one of the most enjoyable things in the world. Why would school be such a torture. In late August 2016, the heat of the summer was unbearable. I love the optimism that comes with the sun. It stood in stark contrast with those long faces of kids who knew that in a few days, they would have to go to school again.

Then I vowed "I would never send my kids to school". I see that we fail our kids dismally.

Education is based on wrong principles and a wrong design (Piotr Wozniak, 2017)

This free book tries to explain the problem, and suggests a solution.

Printable version

"I would never send my kids to school" (2017)

Chapters

Chapters that are missing in the original printable version from 2017 are marked with '*' below:

Brain science

• Learn drive: origins of human curiosity
• Pleasure of learning: good learning is always pleasurable
• Pleasure of knowing * knowing things is pleasurable
• Pleasure of communication * communicating one's ideas is pleasurable
• Biederman model: how pleasure emerges in good learning
• Education counteracts evolution: schools squander the blessings of evolution
• Natural creativity cycle: cycling changes between focused learning, creative exploration, and their mirrors in sleep
• Knowledge in creative problem solving * supply of new knowledge is necessary to sustain creativity
• Optimum push zone: coercion is wrong, but there are minor exceptions
• Brain is a perfectly adaptable device * brain development is optimum in conditions of freedom
• Baby management: micromanaging a child's life is bad for intelligence
• How baby brain does not work: brain mythology makes parent scramble for early academic instruction
• Daycare misery: negative effects of separating babies from their moms
• Stress resilience: acute stress may help resilience, while chronic stress is a brain cell killer
• Confusing creativity with ADHD * creative kids are wild
• Sleep deprivation amplifies the harm of schooling * sleepy kids may unlearn while learning
• Can coercion cause dyslexia? * coercion in learning may have awful side effects
• Evolving a smarter brain: pushing the brain beyond its limits has no evolutionary value
• Precocity paradox * developmental delays may turn out to be good news
• School damages your brain * Many years of schooling result in maladaptive changes to brain architecture
• Feedback in learning * high quality feedback determines high quality learning of complex tasks
• Education cannot be constrained by developmental milestones * freedom is always optimum
• Circuit metaphor of the learn drive * curiosity is generated by a fragile circuit
• Chimps hate school too * history of language learning in apes highlights the failures of schooling
• Ban schools, not TikTok * schools sue social media to prevent doing harm to the youth. Social media should sue back to stop schools from hurting children!

Memory

• Forgetting curve *
• Childhood amnesia
• Toxic memory
• Semantic learning *
• Asemantic learning *
• Semantic aspects of childhood amnesia *
• Conceptualization theory of childhood amnesia *
• How school turns off memory *
• Error of Ebbinghaus forgetting curve *
• Bad learning contributes to Alzheimer's *

The system

• 10 mortal sins of schooling *
• 100 bad habits learned at school *
• Why schools fail
• Why kids hate school?
• Schools suppress the learn drive
• Learned helplessness vs. learn drive
• Schools violate the Genius Checklist *
• Mythology of schooling *
• Schools are useless in teaching English! *
  • 13 years of school in a month *
• Learning history: school vs. self-directed learning *
• Passion and memory
• Unpleasant learning at school *
• Setting goals *
• School dropouts *
• Bill Gates is wrong about education *
• Futility of schooling *
• How school can ruin a life *
• How I invented perfect schooling *
• How schools can contribute to Alzheimer's disease *
• Would you have a heart to cage a puppy? *
• Glorification of schooling *
• Schools must reform or die *
• PISA fuels the education arms race *
• Mountain climb metaphor of schooling
• Example of the educational mountain to climb
• House building metaphor of learning *
• School vouchers are not about education *
• Finnish school paradox *
• Summer slide is an indictment of school *
• School start time *
• School choice in Sweden *
• The noose of schooling is tightening *
• Optimization trap of the coercive school system *
• The failed experiment of coercive schooling *

Teaching

• Teaching is dead * artificial intelligence today is as boring as teachers, but it keeps improving
• Insidious coercion * proponents of educational freedom often swap coercion with a set of tools that can do even more harm
• Videogames are better than teachers * many educators condemn videogames which are a fantastic learning tool
• Don't teach your child to read * Reading became the chief harmful obsession of parents and education systems around the world
• Tunnel vision of school letteracy * compulsory curriculum is a strait jacket on creativity and innovation
• Adults are incapable of empathy in education * School system survives on adult ignorance
• Dangers of being a Straight A student * great students often end up unhappy as adults
• Curriculum lag * instead of letting kids adapt to the modern world, we force them to learn the rules of past reality
• Asemantic curriculum * curriculum is jam-packed with knowledge that has a destructive impact on conceptualization
• Abandon early math instruction! * early math instruction often leads to math anxiety in later years
• Direct instruction blocks pathways to great discoveries * modern schooling prevents the emergence of new Newtons and Einsteins
• Destructive impact of praise in learning * praise may undermine progress in learning
• Coercion in learning * coercion leads to inefficient learning and intellectual harm
• On the superiority of a rat over a schooled human * by observing a rat on an island we could learn how education should look like
• Learning to navigate uncertainty and complexity * freedom in learning is necessary to breed great problem solvers
• Don't teach your child to read * early reading instruction contributes to school hate and dyslexia
• Do we need teachers? * perfect education would replace teachers with intellectual companions
• Prussian discipline inevitably destroys education * school discipline destroys quality learning
• Myth: students are lazy * happy children are converted into lazy individuals by schooling
• Reading wars are over (phonics vs. whole language) * reading skills emerge best in natural reading
• Inherent problems of classroom schooling * classrooms are inherently bad for learning
• Crushing student convictions * convictions and prior knowledge determine learning trajectories
• Optimum class size * after a lot of deliberation, the optimum size is 1.4
• Never trust parents nor teachers * children are the best source of knowledge about their own learning
• Handwriting is dead * in digital age, handwriting declines in importance, but not at school
• Hating school and loving money * compulsory schooling produces sad societies with sad goals

Socialization

• Optimal socialization *
  • Socialization model *
  • Social groups in socialization *
  • Bullying *
• Optimization of behavioral spaces in development *
• Zero-sum gamesmanship *

Homeschooling/Unschooling

• Child is always right * Optimality of the learn drive is hard to comprehend (see also: Optimality of the learn drive)
• Schooled people do not understand free learning * Schooled mind perceives the world differently
• On freedom of education and freedom of information * Children should be free, so should we in accessing the world of information
• Ban on homeschooling * Evil forces representing dark ages of education are still lurking in shadows. Lawyers are often the most schooled people. As such, they want to school the entire world
• Elizabeth Bartholet: ignorant attack on homeschooling * Martha Fineman and Elizabeth Bartholet are professors of law who would want to deepen child slavery
• Hall of Fame of Educational Liberation * Some names will never be forgotten. Future of free learning will stand on the shoulders of many giants
• Psychology 101 for Dr Phil: Unschooling FAQ * A comedy with a PhD can be particularly entertaining
• How to recognize a fake unschooler? * Opponents of unschooling are also guilty of manufacturing fake news

Information science

• Modern education is a threat to the survival of mankind *
• School undermines intelligence *
• Learntropy
• Exponential acceleration in free learning *
• Proof: Internet makes us smarter *

Politics

• Compulsory schooling must end *
• Declaration of Educational Emancipation *
• ABC of Education Reform *
• Education Reform *
• Reform: Health care vs. Education *
• Modern schooling is like Soviet economy *
• Utopian visions: Education via-a-vis North Korea *
• Children should have the right to vote *
• School curriculum is inherently political *
• On mandatory adult education *
• We need more bad schools *
• Peter Gray under attack from Larry Sanger *
• History curriculum can shape nationalist attitudes *
• School slavery will end soon *
• Woz in Polish Parliament *

Health

• Dr Phil's failed mission *
• Coercive school system is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic *
• Daycare infections *
• I have ADHD and I love it *
• Scientists invent TikTok use disorder (TTUD) *

Revolution

• Compulsory schooling must end *
• Evolution or Revolution? *
• Petition to End School Coercion *
• FAQ: How to end coercion? *
• Declaration of Educational Emancipation *
• Children should have the right to vote *
• Compulsory schooling can accelerate the collapse of civilization *
• End school slavery *
• End school slavery (Poland) *
• School slavery will end soon *
• Education as a human right *
• School is prison *
• School strike *

SuperMemo

• How can I read faster? *
• How schools kill SuperMemo and incremental reading *
• SuperMemo does not work for kids *
• Spaced repetition does not work in a classroom *
• Serendipitous impact of mindless cramming *
• Incremental writing: Problem of schooling *

Summary

• Summary

Glossary

• Glossary

References

• References

Color codes

Important notes: the most important ideas are marked in yellow. Those are snippets I want you to remember most from my texts. If you do not have time for reading, reviewing those notes will tell you roughly what I want to say. If you disagree, you can dig deeper in the text to figure out my reasoning

Excerpts: mark the most remarkable or influential words taken from other authors. At times, putting things in my own words would not do justice to the original

Personal anecdote. Why use anecdotes?

Personal anecdotes: if you have an impression that my opinions about education are distorted by my own experience, you are right. I have spent all my professional life on self-directed learning, while my 22 years of formal schooling remained a distant memory. With each improvement to my own learning, I recall those early years with less and less respect to the old ways of learning. My personal notes are marked with this colored template. You can skip them without losing on the message, or dig into my own recall to see how my opinions have been shaped or biased

Anecdote. Why use anecdotes?

Anecdotes: some stories from lives of great and/or ordinary people

Motto: some witty idea or quote from a wise man, usually from ages ago. A quote that sets the theme for a chapter. Those witticisms often help us realize that we are re-learning history over and over again. The ancients knew things many people fail to see today

Metaphor. Why use metaphors?

Metaphors: some ideas are best presented in a metaphoric pop-science fashion. If you fully understand the text, skip metaphors. If you don't or if you are skeptical, see if metaphoric approach is more convincing. Metaphors help you build models that facilitate reasoning

SuperMemo insert. What is SuperMemo?

SuperMemo notes: are relevant only to those who care about SuperMemo. You can skip those inserts without missing main points

FAQ question. What are FAQs?

Frequently asked questions (FAQs): Interesting questions you might have about memory, learning, creativity, sleep, etc.

Archive warning: Why use literal archives?

Archive: Archive materials are presented for historic reasons. They may intentionally include wrong hypotheses or models, e.g. to illustrate the progression of thought

Your Help

If you see errors, distortions, inaccuracies or would like to contribute to this article, write to me