Vertical Learning Is Bad
This is an evolving post...
Our educational system misses an opportunity to nurture passion
thesis
We teach young kids unnecessarily deep verticals when we could be nurturing a passion for the horizontal interconnectedness of topics. By focusing on the details, we miss an opportunity to foster real holistic interest at a young age.
notes
- our education system trains 10% chemists, 10% physicists, 10% historians - all this in the same person. what you end up with is 0% of anything substantial. i think that would be fine if you also had a holistic understanding and interest in the world at large and how all these concepts hang together - but my observation is that going very vertically into these implementation details robs a student of that wider curiosity.
- what’s the point of teaching a 12 year old an implementation detail that they will literally never use?
- testing can be done at any level of abstraction. rather than testing on memorization of an equation, why not focus on application of it, and better yet: what it means to apply it?
- the implication here is that all courses would essentially be writing courses and philosophy courses. that isn’t an accident. “Writing” isn’t a subject - it’s just the thing we do when we’re conveying our inner processes. “Composition” can still be a separate, teachable topic, but the act of writing - of expressing thoughts as fast as possible - shouldn’t be judged.
- time saved on not teaching implementation could be spent developing a greater holistic understanding of the topic and brining it into context with the rest of the world. potentially nurturing a passion that they’d otherwise not have
- implementation could furthermore be an ‘extra credit’ realm, or an after school activity. (or an elective that could replace another more abstract topic?)
- if a 12 year old eventually goes on to be a professional chemist, he will no doubt re-learn, in a more useful way, whatever it is you’re going to teach him today at higher education. just let it happen there only.
outline
[ to come ]
Disclaimers
- I am not an education system scholar, nor have I had the anecdotal experience of sending a child through the school system as a rational adult - this is all based on my own feelings about school as a kid and my current state of mind in reflection on those times. I’m sure there are alternative school systems that follow the pattern I’m outlining here.
- also all the usual disclaimers