Schooled people do not understand free learning

This text is part of: "Problem of Schooling" by Piotr Wozniak (2017-2024)

Learning is like sex

People who glorify school often passionately defend the importance of compulsory education. They quote figures on literacy, progress of science, increase in longevity, decrease in crime, etc. When I speak about human rights and the need to free children from school bondage, I am seen like a insurrectionist with seditious goals. Do schooled people lack empathy for children? After all they belonged to the same group, which at the age of 15 reaches a peak of school hate. Why are they defending the system as soon as they become college students? Forgetfulness has its contribution. We easily whitewash prior experience (see: Educational empathy). Fresh freedom of college makes one grateful for the high school diploma. However, there is a deeper issue at hand. Well-schooled people truly do not understand freedom of learning. They can theoretically operate all concepts of free learning, and yet they do not feel it in the gut. It is as if they knew everything about sex, could discuss it in exquisite detail, and yet never have actually experienced the ecstasy. It is hard to understand that the true ecstasy of learning can only be experienced after many years of free learning. A day or a week or a month can provide some taste of the phenomenon, but it is still not the real ecstasy. The tree metaphor is helpful to explain the sensation of the intercourse with knowledge.

Free learning is like sex, you need to experience it to understand it

Knowledge is like a tree

Metaphor. Why use metaphors?

• Knowledge is a tree: Knowledge can be visualized as a tree. All individual leaves of knowledge need to rest on foundations of prior knowledge: the twigs and branches of the knowledge tree. It is hard to understand the sun without understanding energy, chemistry, nuclear physics, astronomy, etc.

• Sources of knowledge are light: The tree of knowledge actively seeks light of new knowledge. Each ray of light provides energy for further growth of knowledge. Each leave takes part in seeking new sources of light. This is particularly important in a forest

• Society is a forest: In a forest, each tree will optimize the use of space around it. It will use all available spaces in the canopy. Tree of knowledge will omit well occupied dark spaces, and see those patches of canopy that are still lit. Each individual in society adapts optimally to find her own fit of knowledge to the needs of other people

Growth of a tree is determined by simple rules. Leaves grow towards sources of light in the same way as the learn drive seeks sources of high learntropy. We find useful things interesting. If we follow natural interests, we grow a rich tree of knowledge

Knowledge is like a tree which always seeks new knowledge to expand its crown

Straight jacket of school

Metaphor. Why use metaphors?

School is an artificial construct in which a little seedling needs to find a patch in the canopy and persistently drive in the direction of the patch with little concern about opportunities that arise on the way. Compulsory schooling and coercive learning are even worse. They provide a direct pipeline to that pre-designed patch of light. The seedling has no room to branch, no room to feed on new sources of light while growing, all extra branches are painfully cut and bleed sap. Each time a new interest is born, it needs to be suppressed for the sake of grades and exams at school. Nutrients for growth are supplied by the farmer who is a pipeline master. The schooled tree grows in a straight line. It is poorly balanced, has fewer leaves, and its health is undermined by endless external growth control. When it finally reaches its patch of light, it finds it hard to requalify. With a great focus on a specific patch of light, other free areas in the canopy are hard to reach. All the necessary support branches are weak and withering. We quickly forget things of little interest, and in coercion hardly anything is interesting

School puts constraints on the speed and direction of the growth of the knowledge tree

Trees with feelings

Metaphor. Why use metaphors?

To understand the ecstasy of free learning, we need to expand the tree metaphor with a nervous system that provides valuations of knowledge, and the pleasure of learning. Each ray of light hitting a leaf has a potential to generate an impulse of pleasure in the tree brain. That impulse will depend on prior history of learning and the quality of new leaves the light can add to the tree.

Users of spaced repetition know it best. If you learn a new fact today, and keep it in your head for ever with optimum review, you often remember the exact context of learning. For example, a new idiom will for ever be associated with that fun movie you learned it from. All memories have associations and those can be pleasurable or unpleasant. When new knowledge is added, those association determine overall valuations in the entire tree. If we passionately study chemistry, each new facts expand the tree with new leaves and pleasurable associations. All new leaves in the tree have a collective power to generate new learning pleasures. New knowledge associated with those new leaves is more pleasurable. If the same knowledge is acquired in a class with an unpleasant teacher, the effect of ecstasy may be gone. Even if the tree is of the exactly same shape, it will produce a different feeling while learning. New knowledge will have a different effect. Perhaps all new learning in chemistry will be tainted by memories of that one bad teacher. Those memories may be unavailable to conscious thoughts. When knowledge does not feel as great as it is the case in free learning, its lack of positive impact on the mind becomes a norm. All new learning needs to be forced. The whole life becomes an obstacle course when professional life and hobbies are clearly separated. There are things we need to do and things we love to do. In a schooled person they often do not mix. With a bit of luck, in a free student, the life and the job blend into the same source of fun. The concept of work is displaced with the concept of the pleasure of living

Naturally grown tree of knowledge is richly branched, and pulsating with happy energy

Toxic schooling

Those who were failed by the school system, and developed a set of toxic memories, e.g. mathematics, do not put the blame on the system. Just the opposite, they will blame themselves or their parents or teachers for not doing things right as if always believing that coerced learning can bring any fruit. Coercion can only produce a mix of good and bad memories of which many are poisoned by bad associations (see: old soup problem).

For a free individual, the knowledge tree is extensive, rich and pulsating with happy knowledge. Each leaf was added optimally and with great pleasure. The healthy tree of knowledge radiates happy warmth that affects the entire life of an individual. It is denied to most people by years of rigorous schooling. Not only is the schooled tree structure artificial and unhealthy, it often radiates a very different kind of associations. Schooled knowledge is a very weak source of pleasure. This is why schooled people struggle so hard to understand the pleasure of learning. They see learning like work. Compulsory schooling is then full of child laborers. That's child abuse. Compulsory schooling must end.

Unhappy graduates often blame themselves for the failure of the school system

Childhood passions

An unschooled child will quickly drift to using electronic devices. Gaming is almost inevitable. Roblox is one of the most popular games among kids. Parents rarely know much about Roblox. Many teachers never heard of the name. They will never suggest Roblox as a career option. If a child is slow to progress at school, his PlayStation or tablet may get confiscated. A homeschooler may be sent back to school just because she "lacks self-discipline". All protests are ascribed to "bad temper" of the child (with enslavement exculpated).

School inhibits the pursuit of childhood passions that are a direct pathway to future greatness

At the same time, unschooler may quickly progress with programming skills and discover that Roblox provides a chance to earn a million dollars per year in in-game purchases. This realization may drive a child to a career in programing. The path to this career is passionate and early. School stands in the way. School recommends calligraphy and orthography instead. While an unschooler programs his distances and angles in Roblox, a schooled child gets tortured by the memorization of the multiplication table. Seymour Papert bemoaned that dissonance long before the arrival of YouTube. Today he must be spinning in his grave. See: Tunnel vision of school letteracy.

A child who tasted freedom will defend it vigorously. All cuts to branches of interest are perceived as particularly painful. They are contrasted with the pleasure of learning. A free child is already well on its way to understanding the power of learning. It senses the ecstasy. Once an unschooler, never a schooler!

Free learning provides natural defenses against coercion in schooling

Progress cannot be measured

Free learning is unpredictable. It meanders. It begins with no specific goals, and then it keeps changing goals. For that, there is not test in which we could measure the knowledge of an unschooler. The test would need to aim at the passions and interests of an individual. It might be a mix of a dozen subjects at various proportions. Most likely, answers to test questions would be unsatisfactory because in free learning, there are no imposed modes of thinking. Redefining one's take on reality is a norm. In free learning, we might encounter seemingly preposterous outcomes such as never learning the day of the week in a student who does not ever divide his time into 7 day portions. This type of selective ignorance fosters creativity, helps solving problems by thinking out of the box, and is part of human diversity power.

Figure: Unschoolers justifiably resist scrutiny. It is inherently hard to answer questions such as "What did you learn?". If learning is passionately blind, it is hard to verbalize goals and effects. The unschooler instinctively knows she is on the right path. However, the rest of the world may remain unconvinced. The benchmarks do not exists, and well-schooled populations fail to appreciate the power of free learning. The picture helps to illustrate the problem. In an illustrative two dimensional knowledge space, a schooled pupil pushed by the pressures of the school drive is dragged along a linear pathway from its present status of knowledge A to a predetermined goal at B (blue pathway). The process is slow and ineffective. The student gradually develops a dislike of school and a dislike of learning. In contrast, a passionate unschooler follows unpredictable pathways in red (see: Mountain climb metaphor of schooling). The learning is highly effective and pleasurable (see: Pleasure of learning). The total mass of knowledge illustrated by the length of the entangled red pathway is huge (in comparison to schooling). The love of learning keeps growing in proportion to the size of the knowledge tree. A pupil will pass the school benchmark test adjusted to the goal B. An unschooler may fail. He would destroy all competition if someone cared to design an "interest benchmark" (in green). While most of the world worships achieving predefined goals (B) for a predefined society, we keep failing to explore the natural learning instinct (the learn drive). In the process, we build unhappy societies

My arrogant conviction

I say I am one of the most qualified people in the world to make judgements about school and free learning. I understand both sides of the equation (see: My qualifications). While well-schooled people can valiantly defend their positions, they need to realize that their stance come from never truly experiencing what the pleasure of free learning is. At the same time unschoolers do not care. They know the power of free learning and they are busy with their happy lives. They see the school system as the relic of the past and an evil that they can do little about. We all move on with our lives while still being aware of a child laborer in Ivory Coast, modern slavery, climate change or human right violations in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, or at home. We all need to focus on solving one problem at a time.

I spent 26 years being "educated" in public institutions in the era of communist indoctrination. I know school inside out, and that knowledge is not tainted by negative emotion. I never hated school, and I defended the institution for many years after graduation.

However, I then spent three decades on free learning, of which the last 20 years were powered by incremental reading. Incremental reading is the best metaphor for free learning, and the best tool to study its dynamics and optimality (see: Optimality of the learn drive). In incremental reading, I can see the tree of knowledge grow. I see biases and passions. I see the contexts and positive associations. I see solution to various problems in life. I see how branches that were ignored or disliked at school get populated with ideas that are customized to my own needs. I can authoritatively compare school with free learning, and the winner is freedom. KO in the first milliseconds of the first round! Verifiably, most of my school knowledge has been forgotten, and often re-learned differently. It is the new knowledge beyond the offer of schooling that provides the biggest boost of happy energy. If you never tried sex, you should trust my words: it is great!

You need to combine years of schooling with years of free learning to make a good comparison between the two

Horrific conclusion

The ultimate verdict is horrifying. The institution created to promote learning is actually the biggest stumbling block on the way to better learning in the future:

School makes it hard to understand the principles of efficient learning

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For more texts on memory, learning, sleep, creativity, and problem solving, see Super Memory Guru