# How education (pedagogy) works

Learning is how we develop [understanding](understanding.md). We can learn by trying things ourselves, or by trusting someone [specialized](jobs-specialization.md) in the things we want to understand. Self-directed learning will use *both* a hybrid of doing things ourselves with learning from others' specialized experience.

We tend to have limited attention spans, and learn best in "bursts" of condensed information. We stop learning as soon as we [feel](mind-feelings.md) fatigue from our memory holding too much information (which is usually about 4 new things, or ~20 minutes). To store the information in long-term memory, we [meditate](awareness.md) on those ideas to grasp their [significance](purpose.md), then repeat the information later to create a [pattern](symbols.md) between our memory and [reality](reality.md).

APPLICATION: To read 60 minutes of content in a day, we do better for 5 minutes every hour, mixed with [power naps](sleep.md) and snacks.

APPLICATION: Less information that's more well-understood is *always* better than lots of information that's poorly understood.

We gain *much* more [understanding](understanding.md) through direct, interactive experiences than simply reading about a concept.

One of the most rapid ways we can learn is through the distilled experience of great teachers *after* we've attempted performing the tasks ourselves. We need them to offset the [uncertainty](unknown.md) we'd normally confront when trying something [new](unknown.md), but only *after* we've tried something ourselves to [feel](mind-feelings.md) what the experience is like.

Everyone in a modern society must learn the basics of [reading](language.md), [writing](language-writing.md), and [math](math.md) (which should also naturally cover some [logic](logic.md)). However, gaining the full range of wisdom and [understanding](understanding.md) requires a far broader range of "soft understanding". While different societies have grouped it differently, a few general classifications always apply:

1. Consuming real-life [stories](stories.md) from the learner's favorite past era (i.e., [History](stories-storytellers.md))
2. The learner's preferred tactile form of [creation](mind-creativity.md) such as [computer programming](computers-software.md), sculpting, writing or fine art (i.e., "the Arts")
3. Showcased models of [virtue](morality.md) and [success](success-1_why.md) through the learner's preference of [media](creations.md), which typically includes music, video, literature, poetry, and video games (i.e., Comedy in classical Greek vernacular)
4. Showcased models of human [conflict](conflicts-inner.md) and [pain](mind-feelings-fear.md) in difficult situations, again through the learner's preference of [media](creations.md) (i.e., Tragedy)
5. Discipline in the learner's preference of the [sciences](science.md), such as astronomy, biology, or physics
6. Broad coverage of all the [religions](religion.md) as far as the learner wishes to understand
7. Understanding [basic life skills](https://adequate.life/habits/) and [technology](technology.md) enough to [coexist](people-boundaries.md) with others, as well as any [specializations for modern society](jobs-specialization.md)

Learning a wide range of interests gives us more skills at creatively [solving our problems](https://adequate.life/fix/), *especially* when we are in a [hyper-specialized](jobs-specialization.md) [social group](groups-member.md).

APPLICATION: Education is training for the mind, similar to how physical fitness is training for the body. If you're going to exercise, you'll follow someone who is (or at least was) *very* physically fit. To learn, you'll follow someone who has a *lot* of understanding. Unfortunately, it usually expresses best as a more intimate one-on-one matter, so mainstream educational systems can't scale it.

## Desire

To live [the good life](goodlife.md), a person will learn to the degree they [desire](purpose.md), and no more. This is usually to [accomplish](results.md) or [create](creations.md) something, and comes from the fact that they've been [obsessing](purpose.md) and [analyzing](logic.md) heavily about the subject.

APPLICATION: Kids are generally learning more from their free time and recess than the classroom, and are learning more from experience with their parents than their parents' lectures.

Learning isn't technically necessary to try things, and someone can [try anything](purpose.md) without prior education. Someone who wishes to learn is moderately afraid of the risks of failure, and wishes to avoid them. On the other end of the relationship, a teacher is afraid of *other* people failing.

People who enjoy education for its own sake (e.g., teachers, professors, philosophers) have a tendency to find [meaning](meaning.md) and [relationships](people-friends.md) inside the [created works](creations.md) of others in a secluded environment. For many of them, their [friends](people-friends.md) *are* their books, since they're able to penetrate past the writing into the [meaning](meaning.md) and [soul](humanity.md) of the writers themselves.

APPLICATION: To learn the most, we must desire *many* uses of the information we find. More desire means we naturally understand the information more.

This desire-based learning is counter-intuitive in [modern societies](jobs-specialization.md), though. It is now standard for most non-intellectuals to be forced into formalized schooling starting from [childhood](maturity.md), and they're typically taught *far* beyond what they [want](purpose.md). Since they don't care, they're forced to habitually [memorize](mind-memory.md) information they don't need so they can [pass a test](mind-memory-tests.md). It only becomes understanding if they happen to [need](purpose.md) it later, but it more often provokes their [intuition](mind-feelings.md) to *hate* learning.

APPLICATION: Learning must be our desire, nobody else's. We must want to learn, and should always find it [fun](fun.md). Only teachers who enjoy the subject can teach well.

APPLICATION: We learn when we need to or want to, but not because others told us to. The most educated people were simply curious about [understanding](understanding.md) many things.

FURTHER APPLICATION: Good teachers start with a passion for the subject, which they then [influence](power-influence.md) into their students. You're only around a good teacher if you learn something new with them every time you have a conversation with them and find new joy in the subjects they're covering.

If the knowledge is worthwhile, it's difficult for it to go away. Any [meaningful](meaning.md) knowledge, however, will persist across societies. Even when [war](people-conflicts-war.md) destroys the knowledge itself, people can reconstruct it rather quickly in another form or media. This only works in proportion to that society's [literacy](language-writing.md), though (which is why we may likely have had 3 [Bronze Ages](history-eras.md))

## Measuring

Education is [understanding](understanding.md), which means it's difficult to measure. However, most [cultures](people-culture.md) must demarcate between educated and uneducated people for [specialized tasks](jobs-specialization.md), so they use [measurable](math.md) criteria to judge others' worth:

- A test bank of multiple-choice questions. This is the easiest way to test because it can be automated by [technology](technology.md), but [it can be easily gamed](mind-memory.md). However, providing feedback on wrong answers (and, more importantly, why) can *dramatically* improve learning.
- [Writing](language-writing.md) or [spoken](language-speaking.md) explanations about the subject. Usually, this is as far as most mass-population educators ever care about. Like multiple-choice, it can be gamed, especially by matching the [language](language.md) and [opinions](understanding-certainty.md) of the educator.
- Performance-based review by requiring the student to [create something](creations.md) with what they learned. This is by *far* the most effective indicator of competence, but requires the educator (and any administrators) to legitimately [care](purpose.md) about the quality of the students' work, and it's difficult to delegate to [technology](technology.md) at scale.

APPLICATION: IQ tests, SAT, and school grades are measurements by intelligent people who want to call each other intelligent. They're no more [useful](purpose.md) than joining MENSA.

Ideally, a teacher will test their students on the way *into* the class to see how well they already understand and cut down on unnecessary teaching, then use a similar-enough test on the way *out* of the class to see how well they [gained understanding](understanding.md). This allows the teacher to [improve their craft](jobs-specialization.md) in the process.

The most distinctive measure of education is that a person can rely on their [understanding](understanding.md) for a given subject, and (if applicable) [use it](purpose.md) effectively in its time and place. Ironically, this success comes from being *outside* a cloistered schooling environment.

APPLICATION: To detect the quality of a teacher, ask students a week or month after the test what they learned.

A person will, however, aspire to gain an educational credential because they're trying to [signal](image.md) specific [groups](groups-large.md) that they're a new [member](groups-member.md).

In the absence of a standard test, the entire system becomes a [political free-for-all](mgmt-badsystems.md), with [reputation](image.md) management and [wealthy](power-types.md) [families](people-family.md) overriding any measure of [quality](values-quality.md).

## Conveying

Anyone who shares information that goes beyond [anecdotal belief](understanding-certainty.md) into a [represented value](values.md) is a teacher, even if only informally or for a few minutes. At that moment, the information they have is *far* more [important](meaning.md) than they are.

APPLICATION: If you wish to learn, find a mentor in that subject. The internet is a great place to connect for that reason.

One blind spot with any teacher, by the nature of who they are, is that they have an inherent [belief](trust.md) that their subject is worth [understanding](understanding.md) (since they wouldn't wish to teach it otherwise). Therefore, they have *two* jobs: convey the information, and convey *why* that information has value.

APPLICATION: Those who are most afraid of things will teach about them. While ineptitude may instigate that fear, over-thinking is just as sufficient.

Beyond decent-enough [speaking](language-speaking.md) and [writing](language-writing.md) skills, a good teacher has a profoundly accurate [impression](image.md) of the student's [understanding](understanding.md) that approximates what the student is thinking. This means they can communicate the information exactly to that person, while also being able to anticipate and answer the rational questions the student was going to ask next. To keep it interesting, they'll appeal to [novelty](unknown.md) over [repetition](habits.md).

The limits of our abilities to [understand](understanding.md) and teach have an inverted relationship. If we become *extremely* specialized into a domain, we often can't articulate it to others. On the other hand, if we're preoccupied with teaching well, we'll often disregard our continued studies further into the subject.

In practice, beyond [great communication skills](people-conversation.md), every moderately successful teacher will always employ a few proven principles:

1. Only teach what the learner wants to learn and, if it's mandatory, [inspire them](influence.md) through explaining *why* they should learn it.
2. Instruction must begin [as early as possible](parenting-babies.md) before people develop bad [habits](habits.md) from bad [ideas](values.md).
3. Nothing is [taboo](morality-taboo.md). Listen carefully to every question and answer them all.
4. Describe things where a [small child](maturity.md) can understand, no matter the audience. Then, work up into specifics and challenges.
5. Even with deadlines, never rush anything.
6. Associate everything through multiple senses as much as possible: seeing, hearing, and touching.
7. Apply *everything* to something the learner [cares](purpose.md) about.
8. Every teacher is also a living example for the student.
9. Use the same or similar teaching method across *all* disciplines.

APPLICATION: The best way to introduce students to a new concept:

1. Provide a challenge.
2. Let the students attempt to solve it.
3. Give them the correct way to do it, and why.

Teachers can use three forms of [communication](people-conversation.md) to get information across to the student:

1. Since it's the simplest way to communicate, they'll often cover the raw [theory](imagination.md) and [methods](habits.md) via [spoken or written text](language.md).
2. To capture an impression accurately in the student's [imagination](imagination.md), they'll include a visual/audio experience, often showing a performance of the idea fully expressed.
3. To ensure the student has an [intuition](mind-feelings.md) for the subject, they'll usually require them to [create](creations.md) their own things as well.

Great teachers use all three elements at once. When done correctly, the experience will feel a bit more like a [game](fun.md) than a [rote memorization](mind-memory.md) chore. The most effective teaching methods (e.g., [Power Teaching](https://wholebrainteaching.com/)) are so reliable at educating that they can even convey deep concepts like [philosophy](philosophy.md).

APPLICATION: Only learn from people who reap the [consequences](results.md) of what they teach, and keep in mind the subjects they [specialize](jobs-specialization.md) in.

When a student has a question, they're frequently [bold](mind-feelings-fear.md) enough to ask what all the rest of the class is wondering. Great teachers understand that to great effect, and tend to merge that question into their curriculum as a full dialogue.

Stunningly exceptional teachers often go beyond great teachers in keeping the information brief, and will typically distill their ideas to less than five minutes and require the students to meditate intimately on it or directly apply it.

APPLICATION: Teachers who are intelligent and care about their students will use small, easily understood words and walk the students through any large words they express. If they use large words without explanation, they're either dumb or selfish.

Further, great teachers will draw from many [connections](symbols.md) and associations to drive forward the [value](purpose.md) of the information, not merely the information itself. To achieve this, they must know *why* the information is important, not merely *of* its importance.

APPLICATION: Great teachers don't just permit the [chaos](unknown.md) of the students learning new skills (rather than hearing information), they *endorse* it when it increases the students' interest in the subject.

However, beyond [communication](people-conversation.md), a teacher *must* give students the [power](power.md) to perform the tasks themselves, which typically means they have a type of workshop to [create](mind-creativity.md) and experiment themselves.

Most teaching will sidestep [technology](technology.md) that makes life easier or simpler. While it *might* give understanding of the [primitives](values.md) of a craft, prohibiting a classroom from using computers or calculators will inhibit the students from experiencing the [power](power.md) they'll need to use when they [work with it later](jobs-specialization.md).

A great teacher will create students who are as skilled as they are after the teacher is [finished](results.md) with them, though good-enough teachers can assist a student when they're stuck with a difficult concept.

APPLICATION: Every good educational system would make "educator" a minor field of study, with the major directed toward a specific, [useful](purpose.md) discipline. The same goes for [business](business.md).

Since a great teacher *wants* to teach for their students' well-being, they'll typically be older, near the final [stages of their life](maturity.md) when they're trying to create [meaning](meaning.md) beyond themselves.

APPLICATION: If a culture's elderly are retired and doing nothing, they should be teaching. Any society that doesn't use their elderly for this reason is throwing away their [most valuable skills](jobs-specialization.md).

Great teaching is [not scalable](groups-large.md), and the most effective teaching *by far* is one-on-one between two people passionate to learn/convey the subject. In those situations, the teacher will continue learning about it while they [creatively](mind-creativity.md) find new ways to convey the concept, and the learner won't forget most of their lessons because the scope of the curriculum was tailored to them.

## Bad teaching

The role of teaching, like every other form of [power](power.md), draws many people who selfishly desire [social status](groups-small.md) or [specialized ability](jobs-specialization.md) to leverage elsewhere. A teacher's knowledge makes them inherently more [powerful](power.md) in their [understanding](understanding.md) than the students (or, at least, they [appear](image-distortion.md) to be).

Most [educational institutions](groups-large.md), though, have no other measurement of a teacher's [influence](influence.md), so they revert to how *long* someone was an educator (i.e., tenure). For this reason, most of the promotion and advancement of a teacher's status comes through [political influence](influence.md) and merely existing in a role, rather than any comparatively universal standard of quality.

Further, the only thing necessary to perform a task well is to imitate the [traditions](habits.md), but knowing how to [master](mind-creativity.md) the tasks requires knowing *why* the traditions exist, so sufficiently teaching at scale can be mistaken for great teaching.

For this reason, many formal teaching institutions run the same risks of any other large-scale system that runs for decades, which makes most official education institutions [dysfunctional](mgmt-badsystems.md):

- Teachers in many schools are often required to teach the same curriculum to every group of students who arrive, meaning they effectively stop learning themselves unless they pursue their education *outside* the classroom.
- In their [hubris](morality-evil.md), many teachers desire to be right more than correct. They hamper the pursuit of the truth for their students.
- Some ideas are [self-created](creations.md), but teachers are frequently taught their ideas are worthless. They often hide behind [circuitous references to other sources](image-distortion.md) to avoid self-ownership.
- In a classroom, teachers possess legitimate [authority](power.md) to control the class, so a bad teacher can easily devolve into small-scale [tyranny](people-boundaries.md) if the administration gives them too much additional authority.
- Teachers will frequently hide how little they know with confusing [language](language.md) (e.g., Latin). It tends to impress the majority of the students, but more intelligent students often see right through it after some experience with it.
- Many teachers have plenty of [unresolved trauma](hardship-ptsd.md) that provokes them to insist heavily on [order](unknown.md) in their educational system, which insulates their [culture](people-culture.md) from the rest of the world. Without a reliable amount of [social risk](socialrisk.md), they'll end up covering [trends](trends.md) that already passed and will impede a student's ability to apply the information they've learned more than if the student learned it themselves.
- If school standards start failing, school systems will often start drilling and training their students harder to compete with other schools.

APPLICATION: A major risk for all [teachers](education.md) is that they will invariably teach their subject enough that they're not as effective as actually [doing anything](purpose.md) with what they have. The only solution is for them to teach less and do more, but then they wouldn't be [specialized enough](jobs-specialization.md) for anything.

APPLICATION: Any formalized education, including [college](jobs-college.md), risks exploring meaningless topics through an avalanche of information. The only solution exists *beyond* the educational system (e.g., getting a college degree to become a lawyer), and we find that motivation through [self-awareness](awareness.md) and learning to simplify what we understand.

APPLICATION: Practice should always overshadow theory, but to their detriment, most formalized school systems believe the opposite.

The product of this is that popular education institutions work less like effective educational systems and more like factories.

APPLICATION: The classroom and the cubicle are detrimental to healthy learning. Great learning should be on-site, in the field, interactive, sporadic, and fun.

There aren't any bad students, though there *are* unwilling students. More often, there are many bad teachers who fail in a few possible ways:

- Failing to [inspire](influence.md) the student to *want* to learn. This is the most frequent failure, and comes from the teacher's unawareness of what the student [values](purpose.md) or *why* the information they're teaching is important. A little [sympathy](mind-feelings.md) and [self-reflection](awareness.md) goes a *very* long way.
- Failing to communicate the information correctly. Typically, in this case, the teacher hasn't [created](creations.md) anything new, and is simply using someone else's works.
- Failing to apply the information correctly to make it useful, which comes from them not having a [passion](mind-feelings.md) about the subject.
- Filtering educational principles through a [political](politics-conservativeliberal.md) lens instead of letting [stories](stories-storytellers.md) represent themselves as raw information and [experiences](stories-storytellers.md). This can become [terrible](mgmt-badsystems.md) when it applies to highly practical domains (e.g., [science](science.md), [math](math.md)).

APPLICATION: If children were taught sports the way most teachers conduct their classroom:

- Until they were 12, they'd read about its technique and story, and occasionally find inspirational stories of great players of the game.
- They'd fill out quizzes periodically about the rules of the game.
- Under strict supervision, college undergraduates might be allowed to reproduce famous historic plays from the game.
- Only after a few years in graduate school, they'd finally be able to play a game.

APPLICATION: A great lecture is a *terrible* teaching method unless the student is a self-confident self-starter. The students will imagine their difficulty understanding the subject must be from their stupidity, since it couldn't have been from the lecturer's brilliance.

A bad educational system can be toxic to its students. Committing random information to memory without a desire behind it only [clutters](organization.md) the mind, and the only students who survive it have a strong [purpose](purpose.md) that sits *outside* that bad educational system.

APPLICATION: Fixing a bad teaching system is difficult, but possible:

- Give the teacher increasingly important roles that continue to [challenge](meaning.md) the teacher. Or, fire all the young teachers and only hire [old veterans](maturity.md) with applicable [industry-relevant experience](jobs-specialization.md). There must also be some sort of [risk](socialrisk.md) for the teacher expressing bad information, or they'll develop and [propagate](people-conversation.md) bad [habits](habits.md).
- Consistently put teachers with other teachers of dramatically opposing views and [political values](politics-systems.md) (preferably co-teaching).
- Give the teachers the freedom (and expectation) to teach their self-generated ideas. If they only teach what other people have said or done, they don't [understand](understanding.md) the material.
- Expose the teacher's classroom instruction to public scrutiny. If the public agrees or finds [meaning](meaning.md) in it, it's a good class. Otherwise, shut it down.
- Require the students to ask incessant questions about what they don't [know](understanding.md). If the teacher has been speaking for 5 minutes or longer without a question, the class should be shut down. If the classroom is large enough to [scare](mind-feelings-fear.md) students from speaking up, split the class up.
- Introduce at least 1 new teacher every year from a non-teaching capacity, preferably [aging](maturity.md) [industry](jobs-specialization.md) professionals who want a more laid-back role than they were performing.
- If the students start failing, the teachers aren't covering the information well enough, and the school must either trim the curriculum or get new teachers.
- Ignore what other schools are doing. Ignore money-making activities that aren't central to the core curriculum and focus of the school (e.g., [sports teams](fun-sports.md)).

One of the most significant ways a school can become dysfunctional is through trying to specialize into too many roles at once:

- Teaching marketable skills for people to get [jobs](jobs-1_why.md).
- Informing students on [how to generally live life](https://adequate.life/habits/).
- Teaching [how to think](philosophy.md) and domains of [art](values-quality.md) and [culture](people-culture.md).
- Performing new research into new [scientific](science.md) domains.
- Running minor league [sports teams](fun-sports.md).

APPLICATION: If we trust others' understanding, we must mind the [culture](people-culture.md) that surrounds the people who understand something. Most experts spend so much time being [safe](safety.md) in their specific domain that they've experienced *many* unlikely circumstances and are [terrified](mind-feelings-fear.md) of those things happening (e.g., a doctor who [prescribes](body-4_health.md) an unhealthy treatment to stave off a horrific but unlikely illness, a [police officer](legal-safety.md) who fires a gun on someone rapidly reaching for their phone).

## Prevailing

The only true sign of a good educator is that the students will *outperform* the teachers. Those teachers were doing their job conquering the [unknown](unknown.md), so their students can take those ideas and run with them further. This holds true especially for intimate teaching roles such as [parenting](parenting-children.md).

APPLICATION: The dominant difference between an educator and an [innovator](socialrisk.md) comes through the dominant force they seek. Innovators seek answers and movement, while educators are farther back on any [trend](trends.md) by seeking the [compromise](conflicts-inner.md) between [creativity](mind-creativity.md) and [understanding](understanding.md).

Bad educators wish to be important as much as good educators, but most bad educators will find their students out-succeeding them to be [unacceptable](morality-taboo.md), similarly to [awful parents](people-family.md).

Intelligent students *can* learn from dumb teachers, but they will further widen the gap of [understanding](understanding.md) between intelligence within an educational institution.

APPLICATION: A smart student can still learn from a dumb teacher, though they'll often need to do separate research about what they're curious about.

Intelligent people who are formally educated in a bad teaching system without much [life experience](goodlife.md) tend to create a distinctive [culture](people-culture.md) that's not particularly good for society at large:

- They don't [trust](trust.md) their own or others' [instincts](mind-feelings.md). They'll [reason](logic.md) that those instincts are [irrational cognitive biases](mind-bias.md), but fail to see that there is still [utility](purpose.md) in everyone's perception.
- They [trust](trust.md) "experts" because they trust their [group](groups-small.md), which approves them over other well-educated individuals. While those "experts" may be intelligent, many of them are [embellishing that intelligence](image-distortion.md), and it's difficult to prove them wrong (i.e., Dunning-Kruger effect in [groups](groups-large.md)).
- Any [common-sense](reality.md) explanation will make them say "it's not that simple", similarly to how a person defends a [religion](religion.md). They are often unaware that they're suffering a crisis of [faith](trust.md).

APPLICATION: Generally, experts are 98% right on more straightforward matters, but any [conflicted discussion](people-boundaries.md) within that community (e.g., the ideal way to [amortize an asset](money-accounting.md) or [cover a risk](money-insurance.md)) guarantees they'll only be about 30-50% right. At that point, it's better to trust your [instincts](mind-feelings.md) or simply *distrust* the experts.

[Technology](technology.md) gives tremendous [power](power.md) for people to educate others in many ways, *without* the approval of an educational institution. This, in turn, gives more power to everyone else to understand just about everything that could be understood:

- Beyond [regulatory requirements](people-rules.md), vocational schools are relatively easy to establish.
- Apprenticeships are more intimate, but can scale with [information technology](computers.md).
- Using the library
- Watching educational vlogs
- Listening to informative podcasts
- Reading blogs