Schools violate the Genius Checklist

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

Genius Checklist

In 2001, I compiled a Genius Checklist. The list was addressed to teens and adults who can manage their time, and seek high achievement. I primarily wanted to help young people who look for a boost in their cognitive powers. Those individuals would be able to freely manage their self-directed learning.

I never thought too much about students bound by rigid school obligations. In the context of this book, I decided to re-visit the list and see to what degrees schools are conducive to fostering genius. The conclusions coming from that review are scary! For most people, school environment suppresses genius and creativity!

That thesis is largely based on two first essential points on the list. To foster a genius mind, we need a free, rested, peaceful, happy and passionate brain! In modern world, there are two primary inter-connected killers of good brain potential: stress and bad sleep. Schools quintessentially introduce both factors to the young man's life, while they should do the opposite. I venture that a well-working brain is more important than knowledge iteself. Well-working brain is naturally designed to soak in knowledge. Knowledgeable brain can easily be ruined with stress or sleep deprivation.

Good brain comes with a warranty of good knowledge!

Sleep and school

Most schools being classes to early. This is to accommodate parents who need to go to work. This is to accommodate teachers who want to get some life after school. However, early school hours are the prime reason Why kids hate school?. If kids need to get up with an alarm clock, they destroy the benefits of natural creativity cycle. Bad sleep alone undermines the purpose of schooling. For more see: Science of sleep

For kids who go to school sleepy, the whole idea of school is harmful. They would do better unschooled

School stress

For a large proportion of kids, school is a never-ending source of stress. Most of that stress comes from the system. Knowledge is tested all the time, at all levels, to an increasing degree, and with an increasing rigor. The volume of material and the speed of learning keep increasing beyond the point of usefulness. Only a fraction of students were born with a natural stress resilience or had it imprinted with great parenting. Those lucky few, just do not care that much about grades. Some of them care little enough to progress little. For many, eustress is a good motivator. For a fraction of winners, school comes so easy that they are immune to test stress. If tests come easy, they can be pleasurable. One simple solution to the problem of stress levels would be to estimate the actual capacity of the brain to acquire information. It has already been done (see: Theoretical aspects of spaced repetition). This way we might test kids only on things they are likely to remember in the long-run. In other words, we should not test to verify if students spend their time cramming, but if they progress at the hoped-for rate, which is a snail's rate by today's standards.

Instead of taking a test on the entire book of chemistry that may require a week of cramming, we should just test on a couple of essentials that we hope kids retain from the chemistry course for life. The whole testing system is a fake. Most adults would fail chemistry essentials that primary school kids need to master in their first year. Why do we whip kids for not knowing things we adult fail to retain ourselves? We need to reduce the volume of knowledge by an order of magnitude. If we manage to spark kid interests instead, we will end up with dramatically better outcomes years later.

Schools could improve dramatically if they just slowed down to match human cognitive capacity!

Naturally, the school system brings some unavoidable stress in the shape of bad teachers and bad classmates. Elite schools can remedy that component by rigorous human selection. Finland seems to be going good job at filtering out bad teachers, but this is a costly process. Only a fraction of the population can afford elite schooling. Even the richest countries struggle with teacher selection and pay. Current design of education systems around the world is inherently stressful and harmful for the young population. Unstructured homeschooling and unschooling carry no inherent stress. Those approaches to education are child-friendly.

Learn drive at school

Schools suppress the learn drive, which is essential for efficient learning. As a result, learning is no longer pleasurable. Boredom is #2 factor that kids hate most at school (right after the early waking hours). Paradoxically then, institutions of learning are extremely effective in discouraging the love of learning and long-term learning. This is an anti-thesis of fostering genius. Tired by schooling, kids do not spend their evenings learning new things, which is a natural instinct in unschooled kids. Instead, they "rest" with videogames, YouTube, or Facebook. For more see: Schools suppress the learn drive

QED: schools are awful for creativity

A quick run through the rest of the checklist proves that no new genius quality is likely to emerge from schooling executed as prescribed. Once kids get sleepy or stressed, once they lose their love of learning, the rest of the checklist is doomed. Cramming leads to no abstract applicable knowledge. It does not even lead to long-term knowledge. It leads to spotty knowledge needed to survive the next test or the next exam (see: Futility of schooling). Weakened minds and bodies show little self-discipline. If anxiety or depression set in, the entire future of the kid may get clouded. Focus on short-term learning undermines the need for mnemonic skills and good knowledge representation. Kids do not even pause to think they might need spaced repetition. I am a living proof. Instead of getting the skills and tools from school, I needed to write down the algorithms myself. This is how SuperMemo was born.

Research for this book proved to me beyond any doubt: schools promote no genius. All genius graduates came to school harboring genius in the first place.

I venture that a great deal of genius is also lost in the process of schooling. Suppression of learn drive, bad sleep, and stress are all effective anti-brain weapons. Every year, we release millions of superficially educated graduates from primary and secondary schools. In the process, we damage their creativity, their brains, their love of learning and their zest for life.

Schools do not contribute to human genius and creativity! All genius that comes out from school is the genius that came in too school in the first place

Summary: Schools and genius

  • school environment suppresses genius and creativity
  • healthy brain is more important than knowledge
  • school begins too early for most kids, esp. for teens
  • school is timed in violation of the natural creativity cycle
  • school is a prime source of stress for kids
  • stress is a well-know destroyer of brain health
  • slowing down the speed of learning would be a simple step to easily improve schooling
  • kids are penalized for not knowing things most adults do not know
  • for majority of kids, stress is inherent to the present system of schooling based on coercion and testing
  • schools suppress the learn drive
  • schools generate the hate of learning, which may last a lifetime