Modern Education is Addiction

And the parallel is exact.

Addiction is when you treat symptoms in a way that keeps you from solving the real problem. It keeps you externally dependent, while atrophying your ability to solve that problem. Modern education substitutes developing autonomous, thinking individuals with measuring them¹. After all, we designed it to produce easy-to-track factory workers. Systems Thinking precisely equates Modern Education with the vicious cycle of addiction, also known as reliance on an intervenor²:

1. You want to improve [problem]
2. Intervenor applies (false) [solution] that merely ameliorates your perception of [problem]
3. [problem] gets worse AND your ability to self-correct atrophies ⇒ GOTO 1

Taking medication as a knee-jerk reaction to a headache ensures you’ll never investigate the cause of the headaches — they won’t go away. Remember to always drink a glass of wine after work to maintain eternal corporate complacency. And Modern Education is no different.

You want to learn how to learn, how to think, and how the world works. Instead, you figure out how to take tests, chase external incentives, and appear knowledgeable — educated. You spent so much time performing that you still can’t learn or think independently — you memorize the example questions and ace the next exam.

But Busy != productive. Modern Education teaches you how to ‘win’ but not how to play. Education should help you in a way that doesn’t sabotage your internal motivation and abilities, because Internal scorekeeping is a virtuous cycle. To break the addictive cycle — reliance on an intervenor — Education needs to help students help themselves. In other words, Education should create independent minds. But how?

One way is by removing obstacles to their success. Learning should be the primary goal; grades should not. Instead of grades, try project-based learning, where students and teachers negotiate contracts on project details and evaluation criteria.

But Modern Education misses another element: play. Leisure is active contemplation, and students’ spaces should reflect that principle. Quality leisure primes new connections and synthesis of learned material. But removing obstacles is only half the job.

The other is making students more effective. Structure enables creativity, so intentionally designing students’ environment supports their learning. ‘Hub & spoke’ classrooms mix focus periods with open discussions³. Instructors can promote peer teaching and grouping where respective SMEs learn from each other. This benefits everyone involved — the struggling students learn from peers, and the stronger students externalize their ideas (reinforcing what they know). And this group independence is the first step to recovery.

Instead of treating symptoms, shouldn’t we focus on the cure? The spoon-feeding, the interventions, the external incentives — its the “glass of wine” that creates the dependent intellectual. But its independent students that create a critically thinking society. And the longer we wait, the harder the withdrawal.

Footnotes

1. Bruner argues education should develop autonomous, thinking individuals who understand knowledge structures. Jerome Bruner, The Process of Education — The Process Of Education ↩

2. Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, “System Traps… and Opportunities,” 197 — Thinking In Systems ↩

3. Cal Newport, Deep Work, “Work Deeply,” 133 — Deep Work ↩