Why schools are failing teaching

The education system has failed to teach students what the truth means and why it matters.

As an analogy for this failure, imagine a student entering college, Sarah, who has previously been under the watchful eyes of her over-protective parents. Throughout her life, Sarah was a victim to her parents’ strict regime; any sort of revolt would lead to a series of punishments and looks-of-disappointment. In college, newly endowed with freedom, she breaks all the rules. Drugs, theft and unprotected sex are common occurrences in this formerly innocent square—sound familiar? We’ve all heard this story before, but haven’t really analyzed why it’s so recurrent.

The problem is in the way Sarah’s parents taught her the rules; they created a disassociation between the rules and its rationale. By placing unrelated consequences to each broken rule, the parents trained Sarah to believe that the only rationale behind following the rules is to not get punished. Therefore, whenever she isn’t caught by her parents, in her eyes, nothing wrong happened. She never developed the ability to reason by herself why it’s in her best interest to follow certain rules.

Similar to Sarah’s parents, the schools threaten students to retain information with unrelated punishments. The consequence of not memorizing the atomic structure of Boron is a few less points on the exam. Of course, scientists that memorize Boron’s atomic structure do so for a completely different reason. Similar to Sarah, most students never learn how to reason on their own the rationale behind the information they are learning. As long as knowing the information leads them to higher scores, they don’t care to acknowledge why they’re learning what they’re learning.

Schools try to teach students the most accurate models of reality known to date; the most accurate models are conventionally described as “true.” The accuracy i.e. truth of a model is determined by how well it makes predictions relative to other models.

For example, consider two models that we can posit to explain why people get sick: demons and germs. Say, demons run around in your body punching your organs and that’s why people get sick. Germs, on the other hand, have no supernatural properties and explain why people get sick with a causal description. We can choose to believe either demons or germs, but why do most of us choose germs?

When we adopt the model of germs, we can not only explain why people get sick, but can also predict the sickness’s duration, future symptoms, possible cures, contagiousness, etc. The demon model, however, can’t predict any of those things; for that matter, it can’t predict anything at all. Even if demons really do cause sickness, even if all of life is one big illusion, the germ model is still the most useful for now.

In short, the most accurate models of reality do more for you than stop your curiosity or comfort your mind.

Unfortunately, most people aren’t able to grasp how profound and useful accurate models are. Because of school’s constant decoupling between a model and its accuracy, students are trained to memorize accurate models only long enough to get a passing grade. And for the models they do believe in, accuracy is not a prerequisite. Not only does this create the tendency for students to have false models, but it stops them from questioning the accuracy of models they currently believe in. Students may stop questioning the validity of what they are being taught. Worse, they may reject everything they are taught that conflicts with their prior beliefs.

Schools should give tests that force students to come up with their own models of reality. A good grade on these tests will depend on the predictive power i.e. accuracy of their models. For example, students can be told about a phenomenon like water boils faster in higher elevations. Then, without memorizing the question beforehand, they’d have to write the best possible explanation for why the phenomenon is true. They probably won’t get the right answer, but will learn why some answers are better than others.

Unreliable Status Signals

We are all constantly throwing one giant marketing campaign for the most important product ever—ourselves.

Just like most companies, we are trying to build a “cool” brand amongst competitors with a very similar product. And just like these companies, we pull all these clever marketing techniques when the spotlight is on us.

These marketing techniques we use are called: status signals. Status signals are anything we do with the purpose of signaling to others that we are high status i.e. that we are “cool.” For instance, we might tell our friend that we never eat fast-food because we believe they value health-conscious or environmentally friendly people.

We all use status signals to our advantage and there is nothing wrong with that. However, there is a breed of status signals which cause a lot of problems—the cheap, unreliable signals. These signals are unreliable indicators of actual high status, but people use them anyway because they are cheap and still work.

For example, consider the Livestrong bands. For only a dollar, you could signal to everyone you meet that you’re a charitable and caring person. The band is simply not costly enough to be a reliable indicator of those desirable traits. On the other hand, consider the “I donated blood” t-shirt or sticker. This signals for similar traits as the Livestrong band, but is much more reliable. In most cases, people wearing the “I donated blood” shirt actually donated blood. Obviously, donating blood is more costly than spending a dollar and, therefore, the shirt is a more reliable status signal than the band.

People who aren’t truly high status resort to cheap signals. For example, someone who isn’t truly environmentally conscious can’t afford to go too much out of their way to signal for it. They would rather join the “Keep The Streets Clean” Facebook group than to actually go around picking up trash.

We have to be more aware of these cheap, unreliable signals so we don’t falsely attribute higher status to someone. For this reason, I have made a list of cheap, unreliable signals that my friends and I have recently observed. Next time you catch someone saying or doing these things, you’ll calibrate your perception of them appropriately. Once it is common knowledge that a signal is cheap and unreliable, the signal reaches expiration i.e. it becomes no longer effective. Hopefully, publicizing this list will bring these signals closer to their expiration date.

- This first signal is on the verge of expiration: making people know that you only like bands that nobody knows about. This signal is suppose to indicate your individuality; your taste in music isn’t influenced by group-think. Fortunately, most people are skeptical of those who make an extra effort to show-off their unique taste in music.

- Telling people you don’t watch reality shows and, instead, only watch the Discovery Channel. This one is suppose to signal that one is intelligent or sophisticated. The Discovery Channel does not require much intelligence to enjoy and plenty of smart people like reality shows.

- Saying, “Ah, I know, I am such a nerd.” Usually girls say this after saying something atypically abstract or educational. This line is just a clever way for girls to covertly signal for intelligence.

- Blasting Backstreet Boys, Nsync, Spice Girls or Britney Spears when people are around. This sounds like a good status signal because occasionally doing something un-cool is cool. However, people who do this aren’t courageous individuals who can determine what is cool again; they just saw some other people do it and successfully solicit the desired response.

- Telling people you haven’t eaten or barely ate all day. This signal is supposed to imply that you’re such a hard-working person that you haven’t had the time to even eat. In most cases, people who don’t eat all day were just too lazy to get food.

What cheap, unreliable status signals are you sick of hearing?