Education cannot be constrained by developmental milestones

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

Neither early education nor long freedom from specialization are necessary.

Non-linear functions confuse educators

An average human's ability to model the development of the brain seems to be limited to linear interpretations. As a result, neuromythology may come up with two extremes of the same optimization based on critical periods in the development of the neocortex or "maturation" of the prefrontal lobes.

On one hand, we have proponents of early education, who claim that the early period of development is most decisive and important. This is why academic learning should begin as early as possible with early reading, early math, and other forms of "stimulation". This is an extremely dangerous strategy that prepares ground for toxic memory and 100 bad habits learned at school.

On the other had, we have those who claim that the brain takes three decades to mature, and we should avoid any major specialization decisions before that maturity is reached. In that reasoning we mourn the pressure put on 14-year-olds to chose the middle school of their dreams, or 18-year-olds to pick their college major, or 25-year-old to pick job specialty or the subject of their PhD dissertation.

This reasoning has its harmful side effects as well. Deferred specialization seems to push children into all imaginable areas of interest for the sake of "expanding horizons" and "broad universal education". There is nothing wrong with diversity in exploring various areas of knowledge as long as it is not done at the cost of passion. If children decide to be singers or footballers at 4, they should be free to specialize. If they want to engage at (voluntary) paid work at 6, they should be free to do it. Increasingly, little kids find work on the net. However, this often involves a lot of cheating (e.g. about their age). In that sense, limits on the freedom of employment are not much better than coercive school. In both situations, little humans are conditioned to cheat.

Freedom is optimum

As much as we should not push early development or early specialization, we should impose no limits on it. There is no period that is particularly essential for success in life. Greatness can emerge at any stage and might be somewhat be domain dependent. An early tennis or chess prodigy may stand a good chance to rich the acme of human potential in those fields. At the same time, the seed of Nobel-winning theory may emerge in a well-crystalized brain at fifty or later, but even those regularities can be quashed by all sorts of prodigies or late bloomers.

The only time-dependent principle of brain development might be the claim that early harm is cumulative. Early harm undermines all successive stages of development. It is easier to mess up education at 3 than it is to ruin it at 30. This is why we should pay particular attention to freedom at younger ages. Free child grows to be a teen who will never accept any form of enslavement. Defense of one's own autonomy also solidifies over time.

Early limits on freedom inflict cumulative harm

Brain architecture

The development of the brain should be seen as a conceptualization process, in which the micro-architecture of the brain is determined. This process should be under the exclusive control of the learn drive. The formula for greatness is freedom: a preschooler who wants to earn money on YouTube or a thirty year old who wants to spend his days pondering the theory of everything have one thing in common: in conditions of freedom, the quality of their decisions will be maximized.

Freedom in education is independent of developmental milestones



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