The failed experiment of coercive schooling
This text is part of: "Problem of Schooling" by Piotr Wozniak (2017-2024)
The brain is the treasure
The brain is a perfect adaptation device. It can be thrown into any non-lethal environment and find an adaptation trajectory that maximizes well-being and survival. Problems arise in environments when brain suffers injury in the process of adaptation, or where the best adaptation is the elimination of adaptability (this is what happens in coercive schooling, see: Missile metaphor).
Figure: C. elegans has a nervous system made of only 302 neurons. However, this is enough to implement an exploratory algorithm that is reminiscent of human curiosity, creativity, and problem solving. When the worm finds a patch of food, it will explore it. However, on occasion it will take an unexpected dash in a random direction in search of new patches (bacteria). Similar algorithms can be found in other animals, however, human learn drive is far more complex. It is based on knowledge valuation and the exploratory breaks are reserved for period of learntropy dropping well below the expected value. Human creativity is also based on knowledge, while in the worm its only aspect is a random choice of a direction. For the worm, a new patch of bacteria is a problem solved, for a human it might be a new idea for terraforming Mars. Last but not least, the metaphoric tool for inducing learned helplessness (marked as "school") in primitive animals will rather only have the form of drive habituation. Nevertheless, the little worm may present a convincing illustration than the intelligent missile metaphor is far more universal and may be relevant to primitive nervous systems as well. For more on the universality of the learn drive see: The psychology and neuroscience of curiosity
Experiment on freedom
When I talk to teachers that compulsory schooling must end, those with many years of experience in the world of coercion express doubt. After all, they observe children in the process of maladaptation and tend to believe that a degree of coercion is needed for educational progress. Little do they realize that the more we coerce the more coercion needs to be employed.
When I paint a glorious world of free learning, a teacher may experience a degree of trepidation. One has recently suggested that this kind of "experiment" should be done incrementally with cautious monitoring of outcomes. It is easy to forget that compulsory schooling is an experiment that we have run with increasing degree of inescapable failure (e.g. as measured by the suicide rate in children). Free learning is what humanity experienced for millennia. It actually has roots in natural adaptation of all animals equipped with the brain.
Secondly, the outcomes of free learning cannot be measured as it is the case with progress in coercive school where incoherent and short-term memory of compulsory curriculum can be verified with a test. I posit that one's own judgement at the end of productive life is a good measure of the outcomes of free learning. Everyone adapts differently, finds a different niche in life, and will use a different yardstick to measure success. In the jungles of Congo, how do we compare the well-being or adaptability of a gorilla with that of an elephant?
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
Natural adaptation
We have been trained to see education as a well-considered path for youth carved by the wiser adults in the adaptation to the modern world. However, that heart-warming picture is a myth obscuring a dark truth. Instead of educating, we stifle re-adaptation and the adoption of new models. Re-molding of past visions is the key power of the young brain that we rob the global population of. The world seen through the eyes of the child is a different world, and the adaptation must be optimized in real time like a trajectory of a flying missile. Schooling makes the kids adapt to the old models of the world while losing adaptability on the way.
Do we need to tell an entrepreneur how to adapt to running an enterprise, or an adult how to adapt to life in a new country, or a plant how to optimally adapt to its ecosystem? We don't. There is no need to experiment on the effects of freedom because science explains that freedom is the optimum for intelligence. This can be shown at the level of neuroscience, on models used by artificial intelligence, or, most precisely, with the help of physics of intelligence.