The mad rush to miseducate our kids
We’re doing what’s not working, faster.
Test scores in the US are falling behind the rest of the world.
Kids coming out of college aren't making enough money or aren’t getting jobs at all.
Parents are worried. They work harder and harder to get their kids into better and better schools because they see dwindling prospects for their futures.
No time for kids to play anymore. They must do more homework. More extracurriculars. More volunteering.
But there's a reason why, when left alone, kids default to play.
It’s not a waste of time. Rather, play is a highly evolved algorithm that searches for harmonizing matches between interests and real-world applications.
When the child begins to receive feedback that what they're doing is useful (in the form of social acceptance) or that it's fun for them to explore, they become more interested. That deeper interest results in deeper exploration, creating deeper positive feedback.
Kids in the traditional school system are forced to sit in perfect rows and learn random information that once interested geniuses. But schools parrot discoveries and artistic creations in the driest, most uninspired way possible. Of course, that bounces off kids as easily as a dodgeball.
Educators notice that this is not working. In response, they’re in a bigger and bigger rush to educate our kids poorly, relying on tutors and pills.
If we just relaxed and let them play, we’d get better outcomes than those we’re trying to force with all this effort and pharmaceuticals.
What best predicts success in traditional school?
Agreeableness.
The kids who fare best in school demonstrate willingness to follow arbitrary rules. Agreeable kids are very nice, but they’re unlikely to challenge norms.
Droves of (agreeable) women quit high-end law firms in their early 30s. For their whole lives, they followed the rules, aced all the tests – only to discover they didn’t like where they ended up.
In other words, the eventual outcomes of traditional schools are counterproductive, even for the most successful students.
If we want to educate our kids in a way that creates a meaningful life and career, we have to allow them to use their exploratory tendency. Let them try things and figure out what captivates their interest (not just what's supposed to). Let them play.
This makes kids happy and resilient; it also makes them successful. You have to know what you want before you can successfully go chase it.
You don’t necessarily have to change schools
You don’t have to pull them out of whatever school they’re in. Not right away, anyway.
Life will always be partly about making the best of what we don’t want to do.
Help your kid learn to deal with the people who want to limit them. That skill never goes away.
School isn’t preparing us for the future of work
The kids chasing the things they care about are the ones who will blossom into people with unique skills that are extraordinarily valuable in the marketplace.
TIn the age of the internet, your child doesn't have to have the highest credentials. They have to produce value.
If your child wants to be a graphic designer, for example, she can put together a portfolio of good graphic design. She can learn the principles of design online, practice and find a perspective, put together a portfolio, and send it to someone she admires.
If she’s a good designer, no one will care which accredited agency she gained her skills from. Harvard and YouTube are all the same if the skill is there.
If your child wants to chase a career that requires credentials, that’s okay too. But seek to attain them for a specific end–don’t just jump on the treadmill for no reason.
If your son wants to be a marine biologist, for example, he'll have to learn to deal with bureaucracy and credentialism, the same way a rock climber has to learn to deal with gravity.
But if you're running on the credential treadmill just to have something to brag about at cocktail parties, your kid will always be a slave to someone else’s standards. "That's a world devoid of play (which, remember, is the source from which greatness stems).
Since at least 1900, we've been fed propaganda that doing well in traditional school is like eating your broccoli: Good for you in the long term.
So, we put up with wasting our kids’ entire childhood. And we get into races with each other and become obsessed with wasting those childhoods faster, all in the name of getting a higher test score – but to what end?
It’s been a long time since we’ve collectively asked those questions.
And left unquestioned, schools systematically destroy kids’ interest in learning, creativity, play, expansion, growth, and thinking for themselves.
Allow your children to follow the things that light them up.
That energy can last a lifetime.
Thanks for reading,
Taylor
Send this to a parent in a mad rush to miseducate their kid.
P.S.
What we’re looking at:
Toan Truong is only 17 and interviewing people in the alternative education space.
How to tell your in-laws you’re unschooling this Thanksgiving
The Future of Education by David Perell
Quotes we’re pondering:
“The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I would make education a pleasant thing both to the teacher and scholar.” — Henry David Thoreau
“In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.” — William James
I like a lot of this-- most of it even. But it seems to me there is a necessary place for foundations of the classics, minimally-- even that would-be graphic designer can learn from understanding the how painting evolved over the centuries and the cultural implications (or the cultural influences) on that evolution, as example. And all kids, it seems to me, need a grounding in what has been understood as beautiful for centuries-- on which to build, or from which to deviate. Simply following kids ideas, when they don't have enough exposure to understand what ideas MIGHT resonate, seems shortsighted, unless and until they've been given that exposure. (that said, clearly schools today are not doing this)