The grind is the glory

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

Introduction

An ancient myth says that children should study hard and that the pain of learning is a sure way to the glory of high achievement. The reality is very different. Only the adherence to the Fundamental Law of Learning ensures a fast path to enlightenment. Children who always learn with pleasure, become conditioned to always seek maximization of learning outcomes. Schooling often relies on the myth of painful glory, and not on the facts of science. See: 50 bad habits learned at school

Confusing hard work with productivity

Chris Cuomo, on the occasion of Labor Day (2019), spoke about the benefits of hard work, which is supposedly one of the American shared values (see video). For starters, hard work is valued in all cultures. It is not just an American value.

There is a deeper problem with Cuomo's editorial though. The future of humanity will see a departure from hard work towards highly effective work executed with pleasure. The hard part will increasingly be automated and delegated to machines. The part that requires self-discipline may often be made fun by adhering to the principles of a healthy lifestyle. For example, there is little benefit to extending one's working day beyond the limits of the human brain. The surgeon may still need to use an alarm clock to be ready at the set time, but free flowing schedules should free most of the population from similar requirements. Hard work does not imply effective work.

We should put more emphasis on productivity as opposed to the pain? "Let's Get Productive!" would be the modern version of the outdated call: "Let's Work Hard!".

Instead of striving at hard work, we should strive at productivity

Dangers of glorifying the grind

There is an awfully dangerous snag in Cuomo's reasoning. He extended his glorification of hard labor to his own kids and their learning effort. This stands for a drastic violation of the Fundamental Law of Learning:

In learning, working hard may be the opposite of working effectively

Coercive learning underlies the inefficiency of schooling. Learning with displeasure leads to learning little. Learning with displeasure results in memories that do not last.

Part of the illusion that "working hard is good" in learning comes from the confusion between athletic training and declarative learning. Cuomo adds to that confusion by saying that he refuses to assist his kids in acrobatics or basketball, which is the correct strategy. However, he imposes coercive learning when his daughter Bella Cuomo wants to drop Latin. Cuomo cuts it short: "No. You gotta grind!".

The confusion is classic, and the glorification of Latin is classic too. Latin is famously disliked by the kids and students. However, once they master it, years later, they keep extolling the benefits. This is natural. This is also natural to try to impose those benefits on the kids. However, the imposition itself is harmful. It comes from the old cognitive illusion found in the problem of the "mountain climb optimization". Latin is welcome, but Latin needs to be self-imposed. I consider English the key to effective brainwork in the new millennium. However, as long as English was just an imposition from above, I learned little. My time, and the time of my teachers had been wasted with no returns. If Bella wants to drop Latin, she should be free to do so. She can always come back when her mature brain allows her to climb that particular rung on the ladder. Unfortunately, coming from a high-achieving family, Bella will probably persist, and years later pass the tradition onto her own kids. She will be successful, however, it will happen at the cost of some loss to her learning and creative potential.

Love of work is the key to success

The glory of the grind is not unique to left-leaning journalists. In a painful-to-watch display of arrogance and narcissism, Bill O'Reilly interviewed Danny Greenberg and used that opportunity to mock freedom of learning and the pleasure of learning. His tirade could have been summarized as follows: "Look at me. I worked like a horse. I hated learning. This is why I am so great and popular today. No pain, no gain. Your democratic school students would never get a job from me. They would not survive the pressure".

A great journalist often works very hard and works long hours. However, he would never get to the level of greatness if he hated his work. Just the opposite. A great journalist loves the sweat and the effect. Many productive high-achievers glorify their work by self-flagellation. They claim their work is a road through hell. In a Trump-like way, they believe their own lie. I used to claim that I worked hard too, however, if I love my work, why would I honestly claim it is hard?

From that self-flogging belief, there is just a short step to demanding pain from one's own kids. This demand is a grave error.

Violation of the Fundamental Law of Learning is the Prime Error of Education Systems around the world

Cuomo loves his work, he works long hours, he can call his work "hard", but this should not translate to the pain of learning for his daughter. Least of all, that pain should never be glorified!

Displeasure can mask pleasure and seed confusion

In a recent conversation, I discussed the benefits of homeschooling with a friend. His son Barry is a natural talent and an 9-year-old rebel. He attends a very good private school. When 2 days before the beginning of the school year, Barry told me he was not happy to go back to school, I asked his dad for reasons he opposes homeschooling. Like Cuomo, the dad is an avid athlete. It is easy to confuse the pain of the marathon, or a heavy workout in a gym, with the seemingly good "pain of learning". When we focused our discussion on declarative learning, in the same old mountain-climb bias, Barry's dad remarked on his recent effort that doubled his salary. In a short period of time, he had to master a new course for a new skill in his computer science domain. He added the course was a pain.

This is a classic confusion of the pleasure of learning with pain factors such as:

You cannot motivate a child extrinsically. Schools motivate with grades, certificates, accolades, and penalties. Increase in a salary is also a good motivator. However, the pleasure of the salary does not compensate for the loss to the quality of learning.

In the ultimate equation, there are only two possibilities:

  • learning was ineffective and was to serve a sole purpose of doubling the salary
  • learning was effective, but the pleasure was drowned by all the factors of displeasure

If learning was ineffective, i.e. it did not contribute to long-terms skills, the problem is usually masked by the fact that the student passed the exams (goal achieved), and then mastered actual skills by the daily practical application of the crammed up knowledge (actual learning).

Tolerance of hardship undermines lifelong learning

To illustrate the problem of unpleasant learning, I prepared a fake history test here. This kind of incomprehensible school material would cause immense torture to any student. Many parents are in disbelief when I claim that this type of learning happens at school all the time.

Despite the torture of learning, once the context of the above text was explained, the storyline would re-assemble in student's mind, gain on coherence, and click with a jolt of pleasure: "yes! I understand at last". If the newly gained knowledge played a bigger role, some time later, the same student might claim wrongly: "This test was a pain and torture, but the gain in knowledge is highly valuable". This is wrong. The claim is based on a cognitive bias.

A free learning child would never let the above text pass the censorship filter of the learn drive. The text would be so off-putting that the reading would definitely be abandoned. The same knowledge would be gained in a different context using more suitable materials. As suitability is relative to context, prior knowledge, and interest, a specific portion of knowledge might be encountered in a month, in a decade, or never. This is not an expression of the inefficiency of free learning. This is a function of the vastness of the human knowledge resources. This is also a function of specific interests of a particular child.

A free learning kid always maximizes its learning benefits. Kids who grind through torture, get conditioned to tolerate a trickle of unstable knowledge.

This tolerance underlines the weak adaptability, and weak creative capacity of the population. If we accept the hardship of learning in childhood, we risk trading the pleasure of learning for a lifelong battle with educational self-discipline.

If we accept the hardship of learning in childhood, we condition our minds to accept poor learning outcomes in adulthood