Part 2: Epistemology and Compulsory School
The most popular TED talk ever given was by self-described “Educationalist” Sir Ken Robinson in 2006. This university professor has, as of November 2015, almost 36 million views of his talk about “How schools kill creativity”. It is a talk loved by teachers. He says the kind of things other “educationalists” and those enamored by “educational theory” like to hear. To any teacher, what he says is not exactly ground breaking: the nexus of his talk is a summary of his hopes (and the hopes of most teachers) that it would be wonderful if students have somewhat more control over their learning. That they have a broader range of subjects to choose from and that standardized testing is bad.
That is, tinkering with the "you must attend school on pain of legal consequences" idea.
Certainly such aims would be an improvement over the current system. But to my mind nothing that Sir Ken says goes anywhere near far enough. And it makes no steps, at least not explicitly, towards the central problem with school: that it is compulsory. The real problem with school is none of the things Sir Ken lists - some students do actually benefit from this bad system (for example: for some not insignificant number of students the teachers are more caring and the school more safe than their parents and their home). But changing one compulsory, coercive system for another - albeit labelled with educational buzz words like “individualized curriculum” or “students centered learning” or even “creativity” - is paddling in shallow waters when there is actually a deep and wonderful ocean waiting.
Genuine creativity only comes when the mind is genuinely allowed to be free. And freedom is the antithesis to confinement.
So why does Sir Ken not go far enough?
Well firstly when you watch Sir Ken you get the impression that he does (of course) appear to understand that the “bucket theory” of mind is false. This is the mistaken idea that many teachers speak about during staff meetings and conferences. An idea that they themselves have learned is false and that educational theorists have taken on and promoted as false but then do not take seriously as a false idea. The misconception that is the bucket theory of mind is this: human minds can be filled with information or, like sponges, will absorb the knowledge. A teacher merely needs to make a lesson “engaging” and the mind will be filled by or absorb the knowledge so generated during the lesson. Learning can occur by observation. So put an “effective” teacher in front of a kid and they will learn. Now, of course, some teachers are 'better' than others by the standard that: a greater number of their students will perform better on some test compared to the students of another teacher. And perhaps reliably so. But it is very difficult to tease out what qualities this might entail or if those qualities are constant across what might be regarded as "effective" teachers. Here are some different qualities that can help teachers have their classes perform reliably well:
1. The teacher genuinely makes the subject matter interesting
2. The teacher has a personality such that students wish to please him or her
3. The teacher has a personality such that students are afraid of disappointing him or her (notice the subtle but crucial difference with 2 here!)
4. The teacher knows precisely what material to focus very narrowly on in order that students perform well in tasks (a special case of which is the common "teaching to the test" strategy).
5. The teacher is able to marginalize "poor performing" students such that they exit the class early or never take it on
Or any combination of the above.
Another type of 'effective' teacher is, of course, one who helps students learn what they want to learn - and to understand how learning itself can best work. And this might very well have the effect of students scoring particularly bad grades (sometimes). This is because such a teacher will encourage students to pursue their own interests. And if those interests do not include material from the curriculum then this type of teacher who actively fosters a genuine love of learning in students will not be identified as 'effective'.
But this type of genuine efficacy is a liability in teaching as a profession. Even where tests are not "standardized" the simple fact parents demand grades that are by some inexplicit criteria in their minds authentic - an otherwise effective teacher will feel pressure to test by trial the knowledge gained by a learner. (Note that I resist the common dichotomy of "knowledge and skills" which curriculum writers idiosyncratically distinguish. Skills are a certain type of knowledge. So I will speak of "knowledge" in the most general sense). Teachers, parents, administrators and policy makers use the word rigour as a proxy for "harsh" or "difficult" - which essentially means "not everyone can get the highest possible grade". If all students in a given class did get the highest possible grade this would - to most people mean one of two things: the test was flawed or the takers cheated. Effective teachers must get many students the highest grades. But not too many. That would be suspicious.
Whatever the case is with what educationalists mean by the adjective 'effective' as applied to teachers, most agree that effective teachers know that the bucket theory - the idea knowledge is poured into a mind - must be false. Most themselves sit through lessons at universities about how the “bucket theory” of mind is an antiquated misconception. But that is where the analysis often ends. Teachers rarely learn how learning actually works. Teachers learn what is false but not what is true. So we cannot put into practice the true theory because the true theory is not taught. And the false theory merely remains false in theory. In practice it is still very much a motivating idea. Educationalists act as though it's true while claiming it is false. How so?
Because compulsory schooling is the bucket theory in action.
The whole motivation for compulsory schooling is the idea that students will learn when forced to. When information is presented - in some form - they will gain it. So send students to school to learn. The presumption of tinkering at the edges in ways suggested by people like Sir Ken is that: we can ignore the fact people are being forced to attend classes on topics they are not interested at hours they might not want to be “educated” - so long as the lessons are “engaging” or “dynamic” or “self-directed” (or whatever) enough so then we can ignore the elephant in the room: the students so often would rather be doing something - anything - else.
The way learning works is this: people guess what is correct and test it.
That might almost seem like an off-the-cuff remark and if it does appear that way to you, I urge you to read it again. And if this urging seems arrogant, it is only because - like many so-called "arrogant" claims: it is both true and starkly simple.
It is true because it has been known by many people - some of the ancient Greeks knew it and it would seem even some Chinese philosophers skirted the edges of this epistemology - but more recently an entire philosophy of knowledge and learning has been devised and refined and yet it still fails to inform education. Perhaps because it is so antithetical to compulsory schooling. For if we took seriously the idea that knowledge is generated through guessing and testing (conjecture and refutation) then the whole raison d'être for compulsory schooling would be undermined. So the truth goes ignored by educators. The correct theory of learning was a genuine discovery and it did not occur in the fields of psychology or science - it was a discovery in philosophy. Knowledge creation works the same way in an individual as it does for discovery more broadly. Karl Popper was one of the first to most precisely and correctly explain that knowledge must first be “conjectured” (that is, guessed) before attempts at “refutation” (i.e: criticisms) are made.
When a new "fact" or "concept", a "skill" or "technique" is first encountered what happens in the mind is that a learner - young or old - attempts to understand it. This amounts to: criticizing the idea. This can occur in a fraction of a second - and unconsciously. If there exist no criticisms then the claim is regarded as tentatively true by the learner. Or, in less philosophical jargon: it is understood. Sometimes the "attempted criticism" is a very deliberate, explicitly conscious process. One might very well think the words "Does this make sense?" or "How does that work?" or "Wait...what's going on here?". If the answer is "I don't know" then that itself is a criticism and though the idea is true it does not become part of the knowledge of the learner. So that, in brief, is that. But for more on this epistemology, my pages here explain the details further.
It is also a misconception that material can be made engaging. Either one is interested in the material or one is not. If I were forced to attend lessons on Russian Literature, then no amount of fancy pedagogy would ever spark in me a desire to pick up Tolstoy and begin reading. I literally have better things to do. The teacher could do karaoke, sit up all night developing puzzles - they could bring guest speakers and take the class to a play. Forced to sit through lessons on Russian Literature I would tune out at every instant. I would not understand the relevance to my life. Even if you tried to explain it to me. I wouldn’t even be interested in learning why it’s relevant. The only way you could get me to 'achieve the outcomes' is to threaten me with punishments severe enough for me to want to avoid them, or offer me rewards great enough for me to want to achieve them. But these are no ways to learn anything useful.
This, we must accept, is exactly what so many students think about mathematics. And science. And English Literature and Physical Education - and, and, and, and...the list is a list of all the subjects provided at school. Once again, let me stress - of course there are students interested in certain subjects - or indeed many. I know I was. But those students are not in the majority. Nor should we ever expect them to be. Because you have to already be interested in the subject and if, by the time you arrive in high school you do not have a desire to learn maths - more maths lessons are not going to fix this. Some may wish to say here that: well the difference is all in the teacher. A student who previously disliked maths, but then gains a fantastic teacher, can have sparked in them renewed interest. This gives too much credit to the teacher and too little to the student(s). We hear anecdotes about teachers inspiring students...and yet even a student can be mistaken about the source of their new interest. A sufficiently inspiring Russian Literature teacher just might motivate me, but I would not be able to necessary separate out the teacher from independent reasons I have myself arrived at for suddenly changing my mind about Russian Literature. And the point remains: why try to inspire me to learn a subject (like Russian Literature or mathematics) when there is something else I am more interested in learning? Why force me to attend compulsory lessons on topics I am just not interested in.
What can fix this? An understanding of how learning actually works. And we know how it works. We know how knowledge is created - both at the level of society and the individual.
Most educational theory has, seemingly, absolutely no idea whatsoever about how learning actually occurs. And I know this - because I have engaged with what passes for the “literature” there. All teachers do to some extent or the other. But I did not only study science and education at university. I studied analytical philosophy (for the uninitiated philosophy has deservedly wishy-washy reputation because so much is not seriously analytic). Specifically, I studied Popper. Now I did say most educational theory - not all. There are some better theories that do try to engage with Popper. But they never take his epistemology to its logical conclusion when it comes to education.
Karl Popper is perhaps most famous outside of philosophy for demarcating science from non-science. But that is merely a special case of his “Conjecture/Refutation” system of epistemology. In science you conjecture your theory (develop a hypothesis) and then attempt a refutation (by experiment). If your experiment refutes (falsifies) your theory, you reject it and develop a new one.
At the level of the individual person, precisely the same system works. We encounter some new knowledge (we watch a television program, read a website or book, listen to a teacher, speak to a friend) and we guess that it is correct. And next we attempt to refute that guess by criticizing it - typically at first just in our own minds. We think “Is this reasonable?” and sometimes that even happens unconsciously - especially if we agree with the claim. Sometimes some things presented to us immediately do not pass the first hurdle. We see some news story about a UFO spotted over a Texas farm and we see the poorly photoshopped video and listen to the “eyewitness” testimony. Do we “learn” about aliens from the story? No. We immediately criticize the claim (at least many of us do). We guess that the claim is true. We think for an instant. We criticize. We reject the claim. Of course if the guess survives the criticism we are apt to say we “know” it. We see a story about a bushfire on the prime time news. We see the clear pictures. See the helicopter footage. We hear the reporter’s voice. We listen to interviews with fire fighters. We see burned trees and houses. Do we know a bushfire happened? Yes. We criticize internally - perhaps unconsciously. We have no good reasons why the prime time news we always watch would orchestrate an elaborate hoax.
This is how learning works. We guess. We criticize.
Now the precise details may differ between minds, but the general scheme is the same. Some people may be better at guessing on the first go than others. Some people may have a more complete arsenal of potential criticisms. Some may jump to conclusions more quickly. Some people may learn some things faster or slower than others because they are more interested in doing so and so pay attention more closely.
Let’s look at a quick example of how this happens. You happen to be interested in the history of the Korean War. You watch a documentary that says that during the latter stages of the war the communist forces had pushed almost all the way to the south of the Korean peninsular. In desperation the South Korean leaders evacuated all the children of the nation to an island off the southern coast to protect them. That’s an interesting fact you didn’t know before.
But do you know it now? Well yes - you’ve no reason to doubt the documentary. Are you sure about it? Well - no. You can never be sure. So how do you know? Well you guess it is correct but being an avid amateur historian of The Korean War (for argument’s sake) you have your doubts as is wise. You think there are some details missing. For example you wonder: all the children? Really? What can that mean? Surely not the children from the regions already under northern control? And how did they get all the ones not under Korean control? You happen to know that Busan is the largest city in Southern Korea and it’s huge. How could they round up all the children in such a huge city - did all the parents willingly separate themselves from the children? So you read more - you look into your Korean history books and websites. That is: you seek to test the claim, refute it, critisize the ideas from the documentary. You check. You engage in analysis. You refine what you have learned. You come up with yet better guesses. And yes: there is always doubt. The sources you consult may always be mistaken. Although, the more they agree, the more confident you become. But you never lose all your doubts.
If you truly were interested at the highest level of scholarship perhaps you become a world expert in these events of the Korean War. You seek out raw video and audio tapes that are so old you need to restore them. You learn the language so you can interview people who were actually there. Eventually you publish an article about the children of the Island of Jeju-Do. And you write how it was a complete misconception that the South Korean leaders evacuated the children of the nation. In fact it was just the parents who took their children there: in fishing boats. And it wasn’t all the children, but just those of rich families who could afford the trip. You have found a grain of truth in the old sources: but you have refined the original guess through criticism. And you yourself have pushed knowledge in history forward and in the process you had to learn the Korean language and technical things like how to operate old video projectors and how to clean up old tape recordings, transfer them to digital and increase the fidelity of the sound. You had to become competant in many fields and expert in others. All because you were really interested in one narrow thing.
Just like every other human being on the planet, when given the choice.
See part 3 here.
The most popular TED talk ever given was by self-described “Educationalist” Sir Ken Robinson in 2006. This university professor has, as of November 2015, almost 36 million views of his talk about “How schools kill creativity”. It is a talk loved by teachers. He says the kind of things other “educationalists” and those enamored by “educational theory” like to hear. To any teacher, what he says is not exactly ground breaking: the nexus of his talk is a summary of his hopes (and the hopes of most teachers) that it would be wonderful if students have somewhat more control over their learning. That they have a broader range of subjects to choose from and that standardized testing is bad.
That is, tinkering with the "you must attend school on pain of legal consequences" idea.
Certainly such aims would be an improvement over the current system. But to my mind nothing that Sir Ken says goes anywhere near far enough. And it makes no steps, at least not explicitly, towards the central problem with school: that it is compulsory. The real problem with school is none of the things Sir Ken lists - some students do actually benefit from this bad system (for example: for some not insignificant number of students the teachers are more caring and the school more safe than their parents and their home). But changing one compulsory, coercive system for another - albeit labelled with educational buzz words like “individualized curriculum” or “students centered learning” or even “creativity” - is paddling in shallow waters when there is actually a deep and wonderful ocean waiting.
Genuine creativity only comes when the mind is genuinely allowed to be free. And freedom is the antithesis to confinement.
So why does Sir Ken not go far enough?
Well firstly when you watch Sir Ken you get the impression that he does (of course) appear to understand that the “bucket theory” of mind is false. This is the mistaken idea that many teachers speak about during staff meetings and conferences. An idea that they themselves have learned is false and that educational theorists have taken on and promoted as false but then do not take seriously as a false idea. The misconception that is the bucket theory of mind is this: human minds can be filled with information or, like sponges, will absorb the knowledge. A teacher merely needs to make a lesson “engaging” and the mind will be filled by or absorb the knowledge so generated during the lesson. Learning can occur by observation. So put an “effective” teacher in front of a kid and they will learn. Now, of course, some teachers are 'better' than others by the standard that: a greater number of their students will perform better on some test compared to the students of another teacher. And perhaps reliably so. But it is very difficult to tease out what qualities this might entail or if those qualities are constant across what might be regarded as "effective" teachers. Here are some different qualities that can help teachers have their classes perform reliably well:
1. The teacher genuinely makes the subject matter interesting
2. The teacher has a personality such that students wish to please him or her
3. The teacher has a personality such that students are afraid of disappointing him or her (notice the subtle but crucial difference with 2 here!)
4. The teacher knows precisely what material to focus very narrowly on in order that students perform well in tasks (a special case of which is the common "teaching to the test" strategy).
5. The teacher is able to marginalize "poor performing" students such that they exit the class early or never take it on
Or any combination of the above.
Another type of 'effective' teacher is, of course, one who helps students learn what they want to learn - and to understand how learning itself can best work. And this might very well have the effect of students scoring particularly bad grades (sometimes). This is because such a teacher will encourage students to pursue their own interests. And if those interests do not include material from the curriculum then this type of teacher who actively fosters a genuine love of learning in students will not be identified as 'effective'.
But this type of genuine efficacy is a liability in teaching as a profession. Even where tests are not "standardized" the simple fact parents demand grades that are by some inexplicit criteria in their minds authentic - an otherwise effective teacher will feel pressure to test by trial the knowledge gained by a learner. (Note that I resist the common dichotomy of "knowledge and skills" which curriculum writers idiosyncratically distinguish. Skills are a certain type of knowledge. So I will speak of "knowledge" in the most general sense). Teachers, parents, administrators and policy makers use the word rigour as a proxy for "harsh" or "difficult" - which essentially means "not everyone can get the highest possible grade". If all students in a given class did get the highest possible grade this would - to most people mean one of two things: the test was flawed or the takers cheated. Effective teachers must get many students the highest grades. But not too many. That would be suspicious.
Whatever the case is with what educationalists mean by the adjective 'effective' as applied to teachers, most agree that effective teachers know that the bucket theory - the idea knowledge is poured into a mind - must be false. Most themselves sit through lessons at universities about how the “bucket theory” of mind is an antiquated misconception. But that is where the analysis often ends. Teachers rarely learn how learning actually works. Teachers learn what is false but not what is true. So we cannot put into practice the true theory because the true theory is not taught. And the false theory merely remains false in theory. In practice it is still very much a motivating idea. Educationalists act as though it's true while claiming it is false. How so?
Because compulsory schooling is the bucket theory in action.
The whole motivation for compulsory schooling is the idea that students will learn when forced to. When information is presented - in some form - they will gain it. So send students to school to learn. The presumption of tinkering at the edges in ways suggested by people like Sir Ken is that: we can ignore the fact people are being forced to attend classes on topics they are not interested at hours they might not want to be “educated” - so long as the lessons are “engaging” or “dynamic” or “self-directed” (or whatever) enough so then we can ignore the elephant in the room: the students so often would rather be doing something - anything - else.
The way learning works is this: people guess what is correct and test it.
That might almost seem like an off-the-cuff remark and if it does appear that way to you, I urge you to read it again. And if this urging seems arrogant, it is only because - like many so-called "arrogant" claims: it is both true and starkly simple.
It is true because it has been known by many people - some of the ancient Greeks knew it and it would seem even some Chinese philosophers skirted the edges of this epistemology - but more recently an entire philosophy of knowledge and learning has been devised and refined and yet it still fails to inform education. Perhaps because it is so antithetical to compulsory schooling. For if we took seriously the idea that knowledge is generated through guessing and testing (conjecture and refutation) then the whole raison d'être for compulsory schooling would be undermined. So the truth goes ignored by educators. The correct theory of learning was a genuine discovery and it did not occur in the fields of psychology or science - it was a discovery in philosophy. Knowledge creation works the same way in an individual as it does for discovery more broadly. Karl Popper was one of the first to most precisely and correctly explain that knowledge must first be “conjectured” (that is, guessed) before attempts at “refutation” (i.e: criticisms) are made.
When a new "fact" or "concept", a "skill" or "technique" is first encountered what happens in the mind is that a learner - young or old - attempts to understand it. This amounts to: criticizing the idea. This can occur in a fraction of a second - and unconsciously. If there exist no criticisms then the claim is regarded as tentatively true by the learner. Or, in less philosophical jargon: it is understood. Sometimes the "attempted criticism" is a very deliberate, explicitly conscious process. One might very well think the words "Does this make sense?" or "How does that work?" or "Wait...what's going on here?". If the answer is "I don't know" then that itself is a criticism and though the idea is true it does not become part of the knowledge of the learner. So that, in brief, is that. But for more on this epistemology, my pages here explain the details further.
It is also a misconception that material can be made engaging. Either one is interested in the material or one is not. If I were forced to attend lessons on Russian Literature, then no amount of fancy pedagogy would ever spark in me a desire to pick up Tolstoy and begin reading. I literally have better things to do. The teacher could do karaoke, sit up all night developing puzzles - they could bring guest speakers and take the class to a play. Forced to sit through lessons on Russian Literature I would tune out at every instant. I would not understand the relevance to my life. Even if you tried to explain it to me. I wouldn’t even be interested in learning why it’s relevant. The only way you could get me to 'achieve the outcomes' is to threaten me with punishments severe enough for me to want to avoid them, or offer me rewards great enough for me to want to achieve them. But these are no ways to learn anything useful.
This, we must accept, is exactly what so many students think about mathematics. And science. And English Literature and Physical Education - and, and, and, and...the list is a list of all the subjects provided at school. Once again, let me stress - of course there are students interested in certain subjects - or indeed many. I know I was. But those students are not in the majority. Nor should we ever expect them to be. Because you have to already be interested in the subject and if, by the time you arrive in high school you do not have a desire to learn maths - more maths lessons are not going to fix this. Some may wish to say here that: well the difference is all in the teacher. A student who previously disliked maths, but then gains a fantastic teacher, can have sparked in them renewed interest. This gives too much credit to the teacher and too little to the student(s). We hear anecdotes about teachers inspiring students...and yet even a student can be mistaken about the source of their new interest. A sufficiently inspiring Russian Literature teacher just might motivate me, but I would not be able to necessary separate out the teacher from independent reasons I have myself arrived at for suddenly changing my mind about Russian Literature. And the point remains: why try to inspire me to learn a subject (like Russian Literature or mathematics) when there is something else I am more interested in learning? Why force me to attend compulsory lessons on topics I am just not interested in.
What can fix this? An understanding of how learning actually works. And we know how it works. We know how knowledge is created - both at the level of society and the individual.
Most educational theory has, seemingly, absolutely no idea whatsoever about how learning actually occurs. And I know this - because I have engaged with what passes for the “literature” there. All teachers do to some extent or the other. But I did not only study science and education at university. I studied analytical philosophy (for the uninitiated philosophy has deservedly wishy-washy reputation because so much is not seriously analytic). Specifically, I studied Popper. Now I did say most educational theory - not all. There are some better theories that do try to engage with Popper. But they never take his epistemology to its logical conclusion when it comes to education.
Karl Popper is perhaps most famous outside of philosophy for demarcating science from non-science. But that is merely a special case of his “Conjecture/Refutation” system of epistemology. In science you conjecture your theory (develop a hypothesis) and then attempt a refutation (by experiment). If your experiment refutes (falsifies) your theory, you reject it and develop a new one.
At the level of the individual person, precisely the same system works. We encounter some new knowledge (we watch a television program, read a website or book, listen to a teacher, speak to a friend) and we guess that it is correct. And next we attempt to refute that guess by criticizing it - typically at first just in our own minds. We think “Is this reasonable?” and sometimes that even happens unconsciously - especially if we agree with the claim. Sometimes some things presented to us immediately do not pass the first hurdle. We see some news story about a UFO spotted over a Texas farm and we see the poorly photoshopped video and listen to the “eyewitness” testimony. Do we “learn” about aliens from the story? No. We immediately criticize the claim (at least many of us do). We guess that the claim is true. We think for an instant. We criticize. We reject the claim. Of course if the guess survives the criticism we are apt to say we “know” it. We see a story about a bushfire on the prime time news. We see the clear pictures. See the helicopter footage. We hear the reporter’s voice. We listen to interviews with fire fighters. We see burned trees and houses. Do we know a bushfire happened? Yes. We criticize internally - perhaps unconsciously. We have no good reasons why the prime time news we always watch would orchestrate an elaborate hoax.
This is how learning works. We guess. We criticize.
Now the precise details may differ between minds, but the general scheme is the same. Some people may be better at guessing on the first go than others. Some people may have a more complete arsenal of potential criticisms. Some may jump to conclusions more quickly. Some people may learn some things faster or slower than others because they are more interested in doing so and so pay attention more closely.
Let’s look at a quick example of how this happens. You happen to be interested in the history of the Korean War. You watch a documentary that says that during the latter stages of the war the communist forces had pushed almost all the way to the south of the Korean peninsular. In desperation the South Korean leaders evacuated all the children of the nation to an island off the southern coast to protect them. That’s an interesting fact you didn’t know before.
But do you know it now? Well yes - you’ve no reason to doubt the documentary. Are you sure about it? Well - no. You can never be sure. So how do you know? Well you guess it is correct but being an avid amateur historian of The Korean War (for argument’s sake) you have your doubts as is wise. You think there are some details missing. For example you wonder: all the children? Really? What can that mean? Surely not the children from the regions already under northern control? And how did they get all the ones not under Korean control? You happen to know that Busan is the largest city in Southern Korea and it’s huge. How could they round up all the children in such a huge city - did all the parents willingly separate themselves from the children? So you read more - you look into your Korean history books and websites. That is: you seek to test the claim, refute it, critisize the ideas from the documentary. You check. You engage in analysis. You refine what you have learned. You come up with yet better guesses. And yes: there is always doubt. The sources you consult may always be mistaken. Although, the more they agree, the more confident you become. But you never lose all your doubts.
If you truly were interested at the highest level of scholarship perhaps you become a world expert in these events of the Korean War. You seek out raw video and audio tapes that are so old you need to restore them. You learn the language so you can interview people who were actually there. Eventually you publish an article about the children of the Island of Jeju-Do. And you write how it was a complete misconception that the South Korean leaders evacuated the children of the nation. In fact it was just the parents who took their children there: in fishing boats. And it wasn’t all the children, but just those of rich families who could afford the trip. You have found a grain of truth in the old sources: but you have refined the original guess through criticism. And you yourself have pushed knowledge in history forward and in the process you had to learn the Korean language and technical things like how to operate old video projectors and how to clean up old tape recordings, transfer them to digital and increase the fidelity of the sound. You had to become competant in many fields and expert in others. All because you were really interested in one narrow thing.
Just like every other human being on the planet, when given the choice.
See part 3 here.