13 years of school in a month

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This text is part of: "I would never send my kids to school" by Piotr Wozniak (2017)

Schools are useless

Schools are useless in teaching languages. All kids in Poland learn English, however, it is very hard to meet a child who can converse in English. Only the children who had spent some longer time abroad can show reasonable fluency. Increasingly, I hear claims that computer games have a great contribution to knowledge of English. However, game habits are actively combated by parents and teachers. This short text quantifies the abysmal inefficiency of schooling.

It was easy to beat school at 150:1 with spaced repetition

Proving inefficiency of schooling

SuperMemo World advertises SuperMemo with: "Learn 3000 words in a month". We have seen many people perform even better with English vocabulary. One of our colleagues crammed most of Advanced English in a few months (40,000 words).

With my friend Kuba, we decided to prove that it is possible to easily beat many years of schooling with a month of SuperMemo. Kuba is a smiling, nice, smart, and ambitious 19-year-old. Kuba has never learned English enthusiastically. His learning was limited to school and his favorite music genre: hip hop. Kuba does not speak English. When I measured Kuba's vocabulary with a vocabulary test, it came out at shocking 2,440 words. Yes. 2000+ words after 13 years of schooling. This is as much as a 4-year-old native speaker learns in a year. This is how much users of SuperMemo easily memorize in a month and retain for life at negligible cost.

This is why I asked Kuba to memorize 2440 English words in a month. My reasoning was simple: Kuba learned 2440 English words in 13 years of schooling. I could ask him to double that amount in a month with SuperMemo!.

Kuba agreed unhesitantly. The deal was to do a bit of symbiotic exchange. I would help him plan a month in which he would double his English vocabulary, in return, he would provide a nice punchline for my text: "Schools are useless in teaching English!". Kuba was 4 months away from his high school exams that would include English. He was enthusiastic.

I suggested that he put in all his school assignments vocabulary to SuperMemo. That would give him some 800 words and phrases. He could easily pad it up with commercial collections: English Grammar, some portions of Advanced English, and some randomized Basic English in case he was running out of time on any given day.

After 31 days of work, Kuba memorized exactly 2440 words. This doubled his vocabulary built in 13 years of schooling.

Effective learning methods expose the abysmal inefficiency of schooling! SuperMemo produced in a month as much as schools have produced in 13 years

We redistributed Kuba's memorized material and some 1000 new words in equal portions for review before his exam that took place in May 2017. To retain his new vocabulary and learn new portions of the material, he needed 30-45 min per day. On the day of the exam, his total vocabulary amounted to some 6000 words. He passed the test at 85% (top 5 percentile). This is a stunning achievement for a student who suffered grade retention due to bad English.

For more details of Kuba's story see: Schools are useless in teaching English

Time for change

Kuba is special, but so are dozens of underappreciated teens who suffer grade retention or school torture for no good reason. The system is a failure and it drags down everyone through its inefficiencies. There is a simple remedy: end all forms of coercion in learning. Kids know that English is essential. They can learn it fast with computer games and social media. All they need is freedom and time.

Instead of letting the new generation adapt optimally to the new world, we enslave them in school walls and use anachronic methods that undermine and offend their intelligence. Compulsory schooling must end.

Inefficiency in language learning demonstrates the impotence and harm of the school system
Rapid acceleration of learning when using spaced repetition in highly motivated state
Rapid acceleration of learning when using spaced repetition in highly motivated state

Figure: The graph compares the rate of compulsory learning at school, with motivated learning boosted with spaced repetition. In the presented case, after 13 years of compulsory English, the student doubled his English vocabulary in a month by means of spaced repetition. The main difference here is not technology. It is the effect of compulsory schooling on motivation. Compulsory schooling must end



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