25 theses on
WHY SCHOOL FAILS.
And how we can improve.

Most schools devote very little time and effort into establishing a larger-than-self sense of responsibility, unity and purpose in pupils. This lack is partly responsible for the disproportionately self-serving choices we make as adults, in which we weight personal gain or convenience above the needs of others. Justification for this statement:

• Political choices
  Fear mongering, fabricating a common enemy and hate speech are very common political strategies, because they work. These tactics can only be effective if we are willing and inclined to see fellow humans as enemies to be fought against, usually for the perceived sake of personal preservation, rather than someone to care for and help. 

• Purchasing behavior
  We are often aware that the products we buy are produced by a production chain stained with environmental and human exploitation. At least, the information age provides us with ample opportunity to find out, if we so choose to. But in the vast majority of cases, we choose to be either willfully ignorant, or simply indifferent. Every purchase of such products is a literal sponsorship of these practices, since it directly provides the funding and figurative vote-of-confidence to continue and expand these processes. Buying is voting. We vote for those who's offer we like the most, which frequently seems to companies that utilize detrimental practices to provide consumers the lowest price or most persuasive ad.
  
  We tend to criticize the morality of those who work for the highest bidder. Would it not be sensible to extend this to those who buy from the lowest offer? Both are often willingly harmful in nature.

• Occupation and business choices
  Many adults find employment in companies that utilize such detrimental production chains. As employees, we are complicit at best, or worse actively engaged in the perpetration of human and environmental violations. Destructive supply chains and exploitative business don't just appear out of nowhere, it's not a different species that does that. That's us. And this behavior partly finds its endorsement in our education system's lack on ethical ideals.  

Since schools are intended to prepare us for partaking in society, they are partly responsible for this unfortunate reality. And thereby are also obligated to make an effort to improve.

When playing a new game, or using a new machine, you better first check the tutorial to see how it works.
But when you start being a human body and mind, you get no such tutorial. How does this thing work? What does it need? What fundamentally drives it? What does it enjoy and dislike? How does it change over time? And what common vulnerabilities does it have? And how do more experienced people exploit those vulnerabilities for their personal gain in politics and marketing?

Our society is created entirely by the countless micro and macro decisions all individuals make daily.
Thus, if we want to understand the society we live in, we must understand the psychology behind all these decisions.
But, schools neglect to teach any human psychology, instead excessively focusing entirely on (often arbitrary) facts.

As shown above, employers consistently rank teamwork-ability as the most important quality for recruitment. We will spend almost every hour of our entire life working in some kind of group, whether its colleagues, family, sports club, volunteering, etc. 
And yet, we almost entirely neglect to practically and theoretically teach children about (in)effective groupwork.

Can you remember ever being structurally educated on how to effectively work in groups?

Probably not. And if you were, it was likely in a work environment, where your employer hires external coaches in an attempt to patch up the hole that the formal education left in this crucial skill. 

The one thing we learn about group work in schools is that it always somewhat sucks. And you are left to your own devices to figure out effective ways to navigate these situation. That one person that never does their work, or the other person that always does it poorly and leaves frustrated others to fix it up. 

The entire curriculum of every topic is prefabricated on an hour, day, week, month and year basis.
Like a kidnap victim, kids are blindly along for the ride (in a locked car) and instructed to perform tasks at the threat of punishment.
They have no say, involvement nor insight in where we're going, how we'll get there, or whether we ought to be going at all. 

It removes any control from the student, and teaches them they are not in charge of their own lives.
Such a rigid system removes any sort of curiosity, creativity, independence and self-management ability like planning and goal setting.
It conditions them to believe that their life's direction and value is determined externally, and independent from their own desires or values.

Are we surprised most people become mindless followers seeking external validation?  

Perhaps it's rather telling that individuals who start successful companies and organizations, often rejected conforming to formal education during their youth. Apparently your chances of outsized success are improved by avoiding the influence of common education.

Now, a fully free system has been tried in Sweden with suboptimal results. An optimum lies somewhere on the spectrum of rigidity-freedom. 

We hold their hand through every step of the learning process, and walk them through it in a perfectly straight line. This way, we never learn how to find their own path in a dark room filled with knowledge. You've got no idea how large the room is or where the walls and items are. We have to feel around blindly, in the dark, until we get some sense of the topic. That's the learning process as an adult, where there's nobody to hold our hand. But we never learn to find our own path and explore in an unknown space. We are conditioned to think that the first truth we're presented with, is the absolute one, and that no further wonder is required. This enforces the Dunning-Kruger effect. And is it surprising then, that many people form premature opinions based on shallow research, and have no idea how to properly do research and learn a new topic?

We overly focus on arbitrary facts, and neglect how they can independently obtain more knowledge in an effective and reliable matter. We're training kids like databases or narrow AI's, not life-long-learners.

They do not learn how to learn. They never become self reliant in the approach for how to learn something. Let's teach them how to fish, eh? Rather than trying to shove them so full of fish that they need never eat again.

Could it be that understanding and recognizing confirmation bias is more universally important to an individual and society as a whole,
than knowing the different types of volcanoes, and the capital of Norway? The opportunity cost of what we choose to teach is hugely damning. 

1. How many good vs mediocre/bad teachers do you remember having as a kid? Probably not a favorable ratio. This is not a norm we should be comfortable with. 
   The impact of being inspired by a great teacher is huge, and very noticeable. But the impact of a bad teacher is just as strong, except in the opposite direction and less noticeable. There is a huge hidden cost to uninspiring teachers. Its hidden in our acceptance of mediocrity as the norm, and all the enlightenment that wasn't. 

2. Research showed [SOURCE] that 86% of teachers think they are in the top 5% best performers. However, when teachers were asked assess each others performance (for once), 15% of teachers are rated as underqualified by their peers. And yet, they still teach our children daily. Reasons: First, we actually have no idea who is a good or bad teacher, because we do not systematically assess this at all. (Grades are a terrible metric). Second, the huge teacher shortage prevents firing them, while, third, budget and time constraints prevent training them.

3. Teachers far too frequently have relatively limited insight about what is out there in the world. Many of them went from learning in school, to teaching in school, without passing through the various aspects of life and our world. One cannot prepare kids a world they barely experienced themselves. 

To conclude, it is completely unscalable and woefully irresponsible to rely on great performance from every teacher in every lesson of the day, in every classroom in the world, forever. Teachers don't have the recourses, and their performance has been shown to be predictably unreliable. That, is why we must somewhat decouple the quality of the education from the quality of the teacher.

The last thing we should do is provide more autonomy (aka even less support) to teachers. That is not a criticism of teachers as individuals, but of the mere fact that their resources to create great lessons are too limited to be relied upon, while the importance of those great lessons is paramount both to each individual child, and the society they'll inherit and own as adults.

Teachers should be inspiring and interesting individuals, but are often bored, stagnated and unrelatable to students. They lost their fire long ago, and are just running on autopilot. This is not at all engaging to kids, and provides an incredibly discouraging image of what a supposedly exemplary adult life can be. Many teachers are rarely impressive or inspiring figures, not someone to look up to. Is it any wonder then, that kids aren't longing for the appreciation from their teachers?
"Never take advice from a [person] that ain't tried." - Lil Nas X
"I don't take advice from people less successful than me." - Kanye West

Those who build our next generation, should be the crème de la crème of our generation. Learn from the best.
Let's put that into practice. We don't learn how to become great by copying the methods of mediocrity. To learn from the best, we should learn from people who helped many people, built/led awesome organizations or companies, did great research, or otherwise reached the top of their field. Only those who performed at the highest level, and are equipped to teach about it.

Human history seems to be cyclic. We repeat mistakes we've made before, because we failed to adequately transfer the wisdom of those who lived through these troublesome times, to those inclined to live it again. 

Those who do not learn their history are condemned to repeat it. But, our history classes often largely miss this part, focusing on events, dates and names rather than the insights in humanity's reoccurring behavioral traits that can be obtained from them. 

People of the past are not biologically different from us. They are perfectly relatable to us in their traits, choices and made. Rather than only learn their events, we ought to focus on what generalized lessons they can teach us.

Let us start our lives by learning the life lessons from the elderly, to give us a jumpstart. Successful people all greatly differ, but there is one trait they all exhibit: they read and learn everything they can from the fortunes and failures of those who came before them. They accumulate millennia of life lessons in a fraction of a single life, and thereby achieve outsized success.

And beside the enormously valuable insights on a personal life, its also of critical responsibility to understand and anticipate the larger consistent trends of the past, to avoid repeating mistakes. (Book: the lessons from history - Will and Ariel Durant)

The sleep patterns of kids are different, and must be accommodated for. They need 8-10 hours, and often should sleep longer in the morning. Many schools start too early, thus compromise the sleep of kids every day. 
https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/later-school-start-times-more-popular-what-are-drawbacks 

Failing/demotivated students are very often met with disapproval and judgement. They 'failed'. This often leads to further demotivation,

Belief comes before ability. A very effective way to make someone more capable in anything they do, is to let them believe they can do it. Confidence does not only follow as a result of great performance; great performance follows as a result of confidence. That is why, even when unjustified, we must instill kids with the confidence required to turn that around.
Churchill, Disney, and many other impressive figures were fully convinced they were destined for greatness, before anyone else had reason to agree.

Positive feedback is a self fulfilling prophesy. Even kids who do not perform as desired, should receive some positive feedback. It will help them feel acknowledged, worthy of existing, and desiring to try. I was a shitty kid in school, but I worked hard for the praise of teachers who already provided some, however unjustified. Respect the kids. Treat them like adults, and they will act more like it. We conform to the expectations of our surroundings. If we feel that those around us genuinely expect us to do well, we are more likely to actually do so. 

A high performer in Medium Level often gets much further in life than a low performer in High Level. Confidence rules.

"There was one teacher who really believed in me, and ..."

Sounds like a familiar start of a story? When we hear stories about that one awesome teacher who inspired us to do well, that teacher's method was rarely one of negative judgement and pressure. Almost always, it was one of encouragement and trust. Drill sergeants inspire only fear. And a story that starts like that, never has a bad ending.

Humans tend to conform their behavior to what those around us expect form us, in a very subtle way. We act as very different people around our parents, friends, employers, partners and customers. We adapt to the expected behaviors of our surroundings, because we are group animals. Thus, if our teachers genuinely treat us like capable and willing people, we are more likely to become that way. 

Schoolbooks are created with a profit motive, not an effectiveness motive. Lesson materials receive very little scrutiny to prove their effectiveness. So, often they are not scientifically proven or optimized for effectiveness. Or worse, some are even proven to be ineffective. 

The industry for lesson materials is monopolized [SOURCE]. Since competition drives improvement, and there is no competition in a monopoly, there is no drive for improvement.

Boys perform worse in academics [SOURCE], even though there does not appear to be a difference in intelligence [SOURCE]. 

The short length of lessons, usually around 1 hour, requires both students and teachers to switch classroom, classmates and topic up to 8 times per day. This can be very draining. And its completely unnecessary. 

By allowing more time in a single class, teachers don't need to rush as much, we can better focus and dig into the topic, and we alleviate the constant migration of students. 

Longer lessons have been applied successfully Alasca, an innovative school in Amsterdam. 

Classrooms are impersonal, uninviting and uncomfortable places to be, which only further adds to the already wholly unpleasant experience of going to school. It's not uncommon for a classroom to resemble a factory or stereotypically soul-crushing office space. 

Plants! Wood! Nice lighting! 

Plants are known [SOURCE] to increase comfort, happiness and air quality.