Schools of Procrustes and The Ludic fallacy

Monday Map

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Are Schools Outdated?

I have told my friends and people who care to listen. My children will have to fight me to go to university.

Attending university used to be and still is, a kind of prestige. It speaks of ambition, of quest, and the need to make something out of one’s life. But from where I currently stand and speaking from personal experience, this institution called University is gradually dying. We don’t know how long until we experience its final demise.

For someone like myself who I'm certain of my knack for learning, I can boldly say that schools and classrooms did a lot to impair my appetite to learn. This does not mean that I didn’t learn what was useful. But I will describe myself and my predicament like an infant who was force fed to the point where he chokes on the food.

Someone I have come to resonate with on some deep level when talking about institutionalized learning is Ana Lorena Fabrega. Herself, Ana, was a schoolteacher. She became fed up with the platonified system of education and learning that deletes the creative mess that comes with every individual. She quit, and instantly became a creative force to reckon with in education by leaving the system to focus on what education and learning really is. She has seen something that only a few people have identified- that schooling is not a one size fits all. It is on that I present my first grouse with institutionalized learning: its appearance as an inevitable standard that everything must adhere to. In this sense, everything that defies this ‘standard’ is marked as an anomaly. It becomes something akin to the bed of Procrustes.

Hear me out: what if your child doesn't have a problem? What if they are not meant to learn in this way that everyone is learning? What is the difference now between schooling and herding sheep?

Ana tweeted this: “Kids are hungry for the real thing. They don't want more worksheets or assignments. They want to solve problems that mirror the real world.”

After working on and understanding the Ludic fallacy (listen to podcast here), this hypothesis is something to take seriously. We know people (including kids) show greater interest and put in more work when there is a real problem to solve. Why then do we trap them in such a domain of cumbersome school work?

Don’t get me wrong. School is not bad. But I have to insist that school is not for everyone. True education requires a human touch to work. And human touch is not necessarily teaching. This human touch is a deep sense of connection between the instructor and the student, which requires and fosters patience, trust, and a good relationship. But should I tell you, these kinds of high-level connections are rare and perceived as dangerous by those who intend to keep school children as spare workers for their factories. Socrates was executed because of this kind of high-level connection with the youth of Athens. He was charged and found guilty of “impiety” and “corrupting the youth.” Everytime a person is doing a unique job that threatens the crispness of institutions, he is quickly found guilty of a charge.

Speaking of learning in schools, Paul Graham writes that “The most damaging thing you learned in school wasn't something you learned in any specific class. It was learning to get good grades.”

If we check this statement using Goodhart’s law (read here, listen to podcast here), you would see that it checks out. When learning in school is incentivized by grades, you get a major focus on getting good grades rather than learning well. And so the decay begins. Is it time to give up on schooling yet?

I insist that for crucial professions like medicine and surgery, law, and engineering, school will always remain a necessity. But even they may need a little reform. But for others, we should start promoting the inevitable need to follow one’s thirst in the direction of knowledge. Pursue your curiosity; that’s the Busyminds code.

Ludic Fallacy and Goodhart’s Law

Important to today’s discussion was the Ludic Fallacy and Goodhart’s law.

The Ludic fallacy helps us to examine and understand how crisp, gamified environments do not sufficiently mirror the real world, removes complexities, and are ultimately deceptive and detrimental to regular development.

Goodhart’s Law on the other hand allows us to see how human beings adjust their goals to a given metric. They will keep producing accurately to the metric even at the expense of doing quality work.

Causal Opacity

For something challenging to read, that would change how you see the world, spend time poring over this essay on Causal Opacity.

Make a curious week.

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Of course, here is a picture.

See you around.

Yours,

Jegdy.