Glorification of schooling

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

Stockholm syndrome

Most of the adult population tends to praise the value of schools. The basis of that praise is a cognitive bias I call "glorification of schooling". The bias is the reason for which the Prussian model of schooling still survives in a democracy despite having many hallmarks of childhood slavery.

When adults say bad things about school, they will invariably blame the implementation. Rarely do they see system design problems that cannot be resolved.

Most of the teen population expresses dislikes or hate of schools (see: Why kids hate school). They experience reality on the daily basis and this judgement is most reliable. This judgement should be respected. On a rare occasion, a young student may praise her school. Despite having a thousand face-to-face conversations, in the last five years, I know only two cases of kids genuinely praising school (as of Feb 2020). Both students recanted their testimony (see: Why kids like school).

When the adults praise school, I always see one or more reasons to believe this to be the case of glorification of schooling. Here are the key reasons:

generalizing power of the brain (we tend to model things as black or white as explained later)
generalizing the freedom of college while whitewashing the slavery of compulsory schooling
reattribution of merit from one's own brain to schools
empathy problem (an adult is unable to empathize with a first grader due to the nature of the conceptualization process, esp. childhood amnesia)
unfulfilled dreams (failure at school that seems remediable in adulthood)
having kids at school that calls for a good justification for one's own actions

When an adult says she would love to experience again her days of school, it is most likely associated with the romantic notion of schooling where students engage in inspirational conversations with enlightened wise men. That wish is definitely whitewashed from the possibility of making the whole enterprise compulsory, or based on grading one's performance and intellect, or involving most hated subjects, or waking up early, or meeting bullies, God-like unpleasant figures, or frustrated adults. The romantic notion of schooling involves no stress and no injury to one's self-esteem. It is an extension of the pleasure of learning to a social context of a broad-minded institution. Compare: Introduce Mandatory Adult Education!

Brain: Generalizer-in-Chief

The key reason for praising school in adulthood is that the brain naturally generalizes all memories. This is why adults recall episodes or periods as great or awful to a statistically implausible degree. Those who glorify school years are subject to the rosy retrospection bias. The glorification of schooling poses a serious threat to the success of the Grand Education Reform. The problem is magnified by the fact that smart people tend to be biased towards great experience in reference to schooling. Those who recall school years as awful tend to keep their mouth shut. They do not feel they are entitled to speak up. They blame themselves, not the school, for their failure. One of the main factors in the glorification of schooling is the survivorship bias: we tend to look at the surviving winners, and forget the large gray mass of those left behind.

Mea culpa. I did not speak up either. I thought my school years were pretty successful. This kept me blind to the Problem of Schooling.

A case study

I have documented a nice case of glorification that literally unfolded before my eyes. This is about one of my smartest and most influential brains around: Tom, the handsome man in the picture, is the case study in this text.

My friend Tom likes the social aspect of schooling. He attributes a great deal of his own success to competitive spirit of his high school. He does not like my reform (yet) for he does not trust the power of free learning (see: Optimality of the learn drive). He is very skeptical about the hole in the wall. He believes in the guiding hand of the adult world.

It would be easy to believe that Tom has good reasons to praise school. Why should we not trust his own experience and his own memory? The reason I use Tom as my case study is that he compiled all necessary evidence in his own blog. The details of his educational story clearly demonstrate the case of glorification.

Mechanism of glorification

Smart people show little empathy for a kid's brain. Their thinking is adultcentric. They see everyone in the lens of their own intellectual experience. This is natural. I need a backup from neuroscience, e.g. in reference to childhood amnesia to explain the error of the adultcentric approach.

Tom is a good example of the problem. His IQ is stratospheric. I pestered Tom with mail for one year in reference to this book. I wanted to provide a case study of how smart brains develop. As a bonus, I got a case study how opposition to free learning is built through rigorous schooling.

One of the most interesting threads in the exchange with Tom was Tom's distorted glorification of his school experience. I never revealed main themes of the book and the first chapter I submitted for Tom's review was the chapter on Soviet economy. A cocky intellectual, Tom instantly found issues with the chapter. This explains what type of reactions my reform might elicit in people who will otherwise agree with my basic claims on how the brain works.

Tom, grew up in free capitalist Poland, and was a good student in a great high school. His school was arguably the best in the country (e.g. in terms of knowledge contests). This alone may condition students to feel special and grateful.

Tom was surrounded by extremely smart peers in a very competitive environment. Unlike it was the case with Timothy or Ronnie (see: Dangers of Straight A), Tom would thrive in competition. The reason was simple: he was among the winners (top 3 in English). At school, winners thrive, losers get depressed.

Tom didn't get much taste of communist Poland as a little kid, and today, his leanings are socialist, mostly on noble grounds. This is why before he had a chance to read my biological arguments against compulsory schooling he had a peek at my Soviet Economy metaphor and reacted:

Yours is not an argument against schooling, it's an argument against rigid schooling. All my knowledge of math, programming and languages comes from being forced to learn. Why didn't I learn all this stuff when I was in elementary school, with tons of free time? Students should be able to pick subjects, but they should be forced to make a choice. It's crazy to think that keeping kids at home with their working-class parents will result in a flourishing of creativity and intellect. People need mentors, challenges, inspiration, motivation, correction. The job of a good school is to provide those

Tom's reaction is an instant signal of how difficult it is going to be to put the old Prussian education system to sleep. Tom's words are very convincing and very wrong. See: Compulsory schooling must end

No credit for two decades of self-learning

I know that Tom's claim on what he learned at school is false. For nearly two decades after high school, he worked in his own company where programming and English are his chief tools. Blatantly false generalization may indicate that his reaction to my text was emotional (see: falsity vector). In an emotional state, we often resort to fast thinking. Fast thinking leaves little time for deliberate search of memory banks. It leaves little room for analysis and inference.

Tom's impromptu reaction to learning freedoms is understandable. In fast thinking, we often rely on entrenched dogma. When I was compiling my CV after graduation, I was proud of the long list of schools, and specialties I could mention. I was proud to mention a degree with honors. My mindset was clear: education is good, long education is better. My knee jerk reaction to a concept of a democratic school might have been similar at that time. Three decades later I am wiser though.

8 years of primary school English: no result

It wasn't difficult to find evidence of Tom's false convictions. He provided a good description of his own learning history on his own website:

For 8 years I learned English the way everybody does — by going to English classes. It was awfully ineffective. I did everything that the teachers told me to do: I took notes, I did the homework assignments, everything. But I didn’t get any results

In other words, despite his impromptu generalization "my good English should be credited to schooling", his own text says that the first 8 years of effort brought no results. 8 years wasted for nothing! This is exactly what happens to most kids. I describe Kuba's 13 futile years here: 13 years of school in a month, and my own futile 8 years here: Schools are useless in teaching English!

A crowning argument can be found on Tom's website (source):

Millions of people around the world waste their time by going to English classes, even though they do not improve their English

Computer games contribute to learning

Tom's second generalization could be summarized as "when my dad confiscated my computer, I stopped wasting time on games, and focused on learning". At the same time, his own text says:

Things got a little better [with my English] because of... computer games. Adventure games like Monkey Island 2 were my only source of input in elementary school. I had to understand at least some English to progress in the game

Learning occurs without a teacher

Computer games helped Tom understand that he may not necessarily need a teacher:

As I looked at the grammar questions, I noticed that I could sometimes tell the right answer just because it sounded good and the other answers sounded bad to me. [...] For the first time, I thought that maybe you don’t need a teacher to explain grammar to you; maybe you can just “absorb it” by reading in English

This seems to indicate that the prime effect of schooling imprinted on young Tom's mind was that learning requires a teacher (see: Do we need teachers?). This imprint still affects Tom's thinking despite two decades of successful self-directed learning and extensive knowledge in a vast range of topics that have never been mentioned at school. For example, get the taste of his prognosticating brain: Brexit will never happen. Consider that this text was written in a week after the Brexit referendum. Today it seems very accurate. Come back in 3 years to verify. This is not a kind of knowledge Tom got at school, however, his schools still get the credit for his smarts. Unjustly.

Learn drive thrives during vacation

His next generalization was: "I did not learn much during vacation. I wasn't like you, studying biochemistry for the fun of it". His text falsifies that claim and speaks of the impact of literature on the quality of his English:

During the summer vacation of 1994, I started reading books in English, mostly thrillers and sci-fi novels

Programmers are autodidacts

Tom also attributed his programming skills to being forced to take on programming, as opposed to mindless gaming. Anyone who studies history of computing must be aware than no world-famous programmer has ever come from schooling. Programming is all about self-development and self-experimentation. So is problem solving and creativity. Tom would have taken to programming at the point when he felt the need. He might be right that he was not ready at the time of being forced. In that, he is rather lucky that school did not discourage the practice of programming.

We know that 80% of developers are self-taught and computer courses in programming have negligible impact on actual programming skills. Those who claim to have learned programming at school simply overlook the degree of self-learning required in the process. My own case is striking. Despite studying computer science for 5 years, I learned no programming at school. All my learning happened after school hours and in the years of self-directed learning that followed. I should add though that meeting great people in college helped me explore interesting aspects of computer science that I might have reached with years of delay.

Socialization occurs all around

Tom speaks of the positive impact of competitive spirit and meeting two other great brains in high school. This is what a good school is supposed to do. His text reveals however that, to improve his English, Tom spent a great deal of time at home reading, practicing pronunciation, watching American TV, browsing dictionaries, enjoying his progress, and even adding "thousands of hours" with SuperMemo. In other words, social factor played only an important motivating role. Tom seems to overlook his own hard work and the fact that we meet great people in life in a myriad of situations, not only at school. Schools seems to provide a rich reservoir of social anecdotes only because it steals so much of youth and dominates social life of kids in modern world. Schoolers are often caught in disbelief that social life of homeschoolers is no less rich, and usually far more satisfactory, inspirational and fulfilling. School is like your perfect wife. She seems the best in the world mostly because you never tried any other. That bias is precious in marriage. It is poisonous when evaluating the value of schooling.

Power of mythology

The myths that sprouted in Tom's mind as a result of impromptu generalizations are numerous and well-documented. They can easily be falsified using Tom's own texts written with more deliberation and in a less contrarian state of mind. These are the facts:

8 years of schooling produced no results in English. This outcome is pretty typical: Schools are useless in teaching English!
computer gaming had a positive effect on English
computer gaming helped understand that learning can occur without a teacher
it is easy to forget how learn drive gets activated in free time (e.g. during vacation)
progress in English requires thousands of hours of self-directed learning
self-learning is essential for mastering programming skills
by virtue of school's dominance over social life of youth, it is easy to overestimate the value of school in sparking social interaction with other smart brains

Tom started reading my book from a wrong end, and instantly arrived at wrong conclusions. This is why in all texts, I try to put most emphasis on the learn drive, the pleasure of learning, and the Fundamental law of learning.

For people like Bill Gates, or Martha Albertson Fineman or Tom, the education system provides an illusion that it works. It is easy to overlook the fact that most of the credit goes to kids' brains, and very little is attributable to the system. This is how smart people and good schools slow down the transition to the only rational system outlined in my Grand Education Reform.