BRETT HALL
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the paradox
of
compulsory schooling

Learning
Part One: You can’t force it.

Learning. Education. School. Going to school does not mean you will be educated. Being educated does not mean you will learn. You cannot force someone to learn and nor can you prevent them from learning.

But we force people to go to school.

Most people - especially most teachers - seem to appreciate the difference between learning, education and school - but then act as though it doesn’t exist. They pretend that by changing the approach to schooling or education that they can improve learning. What they say is they want to improve learning outcomes. Perhaps that is one of the most odious words ever introduced into the English language and taken up by those involved in educational theory: Outcome. An outcome is a way of defining some (more or less) arbitrary criteria that an educator deems important - say being able to complete particular questions in a certain test (and also wanting to) and then labeling that learning. If someone does not achieve your “outcome” you say they have not “learned”. Of course the educator themselves never needs to bother with what learning actually is. They have simply defined into existence some arbitrary criteria that they call learning. Students of course may or may not see the merit in such things. And forced to attend school as they are and attend lessons they would prefer not to and learn content they might not be interested in, it is unsurprising that large numbers do not “achieve the outcomes” or "meet the standards" set for them. Children are born learners, curious about the world and desperate to uncover its mysteries. Every parent knows this as the infant grows: much is eternally fascinating to the young child who has not yet been coerced into spending time on questions they never asked.

It will be my thesis here that almost all students - most especially those who we say do not "achieve the outcomes" - would be far better off doing something else. Something they were able to choose to do. Something other than compulsory school.

Let me say right from the outset that there are some, few people who enjoy their time at compulsory school and may even, it must be admitted, benefit enormously from it (although these are benefit that could be had far better without the coercion). Soon after graduation a miracle indeed occurs with many people looking back and claiming they loved their school days. Many of those people have invested in the deepest possible shade of rose coloured glasses. Mass amnesia strikes - and it only takes a year or so in the workforce or at university for a 19 year old to speak about year 9 or year 10 as being “so much better” than “the real world”.

But you can be wrong about your memories. You can simply fail to accurately remember what it was like. How can we know what it is actually like being forced to attend school against your will?

Speak to any 12 to 15 year old and more often than not you will speak with a person who would far prefer doing almost anything than attend school. I do not deny some people would love to have the opportunity to attend school. But let us be careful here; to be precise: those same children would love to have the opportunity to learn to read, to write - to learn. But what they know about learning consists of the widespread meme (persistent idea) that "school is how and where you learn".

But it isn’t.

A child with a laptop connected to the internet will learn far more in a day than 6 hours of forced lessons could ever possibly teach them. Because they will be engaged. (And by the way - the experiment has actually been done in the developing world more than once - famously. This experiment shows that the theory “Students must attend school to learn” is false).

The first day of school often begins with tears. This is no accident. Many children must be forced to attend school - so although some leap at the chance and skip down the drive in their new uniform with new school bag and brightly coloured lunchbox, most do not. Most are distressed to be separated from what they want. Most parents send their children to school for one or more combination of these reasons: it is illegal not to, they agree with the idea that school is indispensable to learning and it is, they believe, a most safe and worthwhile form of adult supervision over their children while they both attend work.

But as adults we know full well, from our own experience even if we do not think about it or wish to admit it: one does not need to attend school to learn. I include “home-schools” in this. You do not need to be forced to attend lessons you do not want to attend to learn what you need in order to be successful in the areas you want and contribute to the things you want. I include Montesorri schools and all alternative-methods-of-teaching in this - that is mere tinkering at the edges. The central problem is coercion. Compulsory schooling.

Forced-learning is an oxymoron. You can force children, on pain of truancy laws and other punishments to attend school. But you cannot force them to learn.

Part 2 is here.
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  • Home
  • Physics
    • An anthropic universe?
    • Temperature and Heat
    • Light
    • General Relativity and the Role of Evidence
    • Gravity is not a force
    • Rare Earth biogenesis
    • Fine Structure
    • Errors and Uncertainties
    • The Multiverse
    • Galaxy Collisions
    • Olber's Paradox
  • About
  • ToKCast
    • Episode 100
    • Ep 111: Probability >
      • Probability Transcript
  • Blog
    • Draft Script
  • Philosophy
    • Epistemology
    • Fallibilism
    • Bayesian "Epistemology"
    • The Aim of Science
    • Physics and Learning Styles
    • Positive Philosophy >
      • Positive Philosophy 2
      • Positive Philosophy 3
      • Positive Philosophy 4
    • Inexplicit Knowledge
    • Philosophers on the Web
    • David Deutsch & Sam Harris
    • David Deutsch: Mysticism and Quantum Theory
    • Morality
    • Free Will
    • Humans and Other Animals
    • Principles and Practises: Preface >
      • Part 2: Modelling Reality
      • Part 3: Political Principles and Practice
      • Part 4: Ideals in Politics
      • Part 5: The Fundamental Conflict
    • Superintelligence >
      • Superintelligence 2
      • Superintelligence 3
      • Superintelligence 4
      • Superintelligence 5
      • Superintelligence 6
  • Korean Sydney
  • Other
    • Critical and Creative Thinking >
      • Critical and Creative Thinking 2
      • Critical and Creative Thinking 3
      • Critical and Creative Thinking 4
      • Critical and Creative Thinking 5
    • Learning >
      • Part 2: Epistemology and Compulsory School
      • Part 3: To learn you must be able to choose
      • Part 4: But don't you need to know how to read?
      • Part 5: Expert Children
      • Part 6: But we need scientific literacy, don't we?
      • Part 7: Towards Voluntary Schools
    • Cosmological Economics
    • The Moral Landscape Challenge
    • Schools of Hellas
  • Postive Philosophy blog
  • Alien Intelligence
  • High Finance
  • New Page
  • Serendipity In Science
  • Philosophy of Science
  • My YouTube Channel
  • The Nature of Philosophical Problems
  • The Nature of Philosophical Problems with Commentary
  • Subjective Knowledge
  • Free Will, consciousness, creativity, explanations, knowledge and choice.
    • Creativity and Consciousness
  • Solipsism
  • P
  • Image for Podcast
  • ToK Introduction
  • Begging the Big Ones
  • Blog
  • Our Most Important Problems
  • Corona Podcasts
    • Brendan and Peter
    • Jonathan Davis
  • Responses
  • Audio Responses
  • New Page
  • Critically Creative 1
  • Critically Creative 2
  • Critically Creative 3
  • Critically Creative 4
  • Critically Creative 5
  • David Deutsch Interview in German
  • Audio Files
  • Lookouts
  • Breakthrough!