I disagree because I think you’re forgetting humans are also inherently pretty lazy. Evolution programmed us to conserve our energy, and that includes our brain power. In the ancestral environment, we worked because we had to, we learned because we were forced to learn to survive (ie. learn to plant crops or hunt prey so that you don’t go hungry).
Children and teenagers are also pretty terrible at delaying gratification, as countless psychological studies have shown. Forcing students to study specific problems, upon threat of failure, mimics the evolutionary environment of “learn or die”.
Personally, I think I would have learned very little as a child and teenager if I hadn’t been forced to by my schools and parents.
Kids (and adults) are only lazy in the context of being made to do things they don’t want to do. Kids who aren’t subjected to school have lots of energy because they’re exploring things they’re excited about. Learning is playing for them.
I think we need first to understand what the purpose of schooling is. When you say “terrible at delaying gratification” and “learn or die”, is it something that helps one to be an achiever, or something that helps one to live a happier life?
I think the schools have been long useful for 3 main purposes:
Being a (mostly unsafe) training ground for socialisation.
Producing “standardised” packages of knowledge, which is useful for economy, since everyone knows what to expect.
Encouraging people with a tendency to overachieve to excel at it.
Of these three, only the first one is strictly for the benefit of the student, and even at that it is implemented quite poorly. The thing is, the schools were never designed to maximally help somebody in living a happy life. Of course, we’ve never had the luxury to do that, but as we are progressing further and further from the matters of pure survival, it’s something to consider. And that’s what the linked article is really about.
PS I must also mention that the schools are not at the root of this problem. The culture that judges people by their achievement and success is deeply ingrained in the US (compared to, say, Europe), and the schools and parents simply train the kids to survive in it. See also a great (and lengthy) inspection of this phenomenon by The Last Psychiatrist: https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/113360634364/the-stanford-marshmallow-prison-experiment .
I disagree because I think you’re forgetting humans are also inherently pretty lazy. Evolution programmed us to conserve our energy, and that includes our brain power. In the ancestral environment, we worked because we had to, we learned because we were forced to learn to survive (ie. learn to plant crops or hunt prey so that you don’t go hungry).
Children and teenagers are also pretty terrible at delaying gratification, as countless psychological studies have shown. Forcing students to study specific problems, upon threat of failure, mimics the evolutionary environment of “learn or die”.
Personally, I think I would have learned very little as a child and teenager if I hadn’t been forced to by my schools and parents.
Kids (and adults) are only lazy in the context of being made to do things they don’t want to do. Kids who aren’t subjected to school have lots of energy because they’re exploring things they’re excited about. Learning is playing for them.
I think we need first to understand what the purpose of schooling is. When you say “terrible at delaying gratification” and “learn or die”, is it something that helps one to be an achiever, or something that helps one to live a happier life?
I think the schools have been long useful for 3 main purposes:
Being a (mostly unsafe) training ground for socialisation.
Producing “standardised” packages of knowledge, which is useful for economy, since everyone knows what to expect.
Encouraging people with a tendency to overachieve to excel at it.
Of these three, only the first one is strictly for the benefit of the student, and even at that it is implemented quite poorly. The thing is, the schools were never designed to maximally help somebody in living a happy life. Of course, we’ve never had the luxury to do that, but as we are progressing further and further from the matters of pure survival, it’s something to consider. And that’s what the linked article is really about.
PS I must also mention that the schools are not at the root of this problem. The culture that judges people by their achievement and success is deeply ingrained in the US (compared to, say, Europe), and the schools and parents simply train the kids to survive in it. See also a great (and lengthy) inspection of this phenomenon by The Last Psychiatrist: https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/113360634364/the-stanford-marshmallow-prison-experiment .