The Fallacies of Formal Education and Why Learning Outside of the Classroom is Needed

This really bugs me: “Samson, you are not a financial advisor. Therefore, your advice on investing doesn’t hold as much weight as a professional’s.” Now, I have heard these type of statements either explicitly and implicitly. And it really, really gets under my skin. Just because I am not a certified financial advisor, does not mean I have no knowledge or understanding of finance.

Let’s even examine the wisdom of exalted hedge fund managers. Most funds cannot beat the market. According to the 2020 S&P SPIVA report, active funds have not beaten the index benchmarks for 15 years. 15 years. The report states, “For the 11th consecutive year, SPIVA's researchers noted, the majority of active fund managers underperformed the S&P 500 index.” You have to understand a lot of these funds are designed to not lose money, not to make large returns. Let’s not even discuss the ultra conservative nature of financial advisors. The 60-40 stock-to-bond ratio is dead. Why? Low interest rates. If you follow their advice, you seldom beat the market benchmarks. I haven’t even factored in fees and expenses yet.

So what this have to do with the education system. Well, the prevalence of this thinking has its roots in the education system. The education system indoctrinates you to think in very regimental manner: “You are doctor! Put all your effort and time on becoming a doctor!” I believe this type of thinking is creating harm in a pernicious way. I am going to demonstrate three specific types of fallacies the current education system perpetuates.

Short Term Thinking Like Wall Street

Like Wall Street, our education system is obsessed with short term results. Let’s look at the incentive system. Just like individuals on Wall Street, teachers and administrators are rewarded for results on intervals shorter than an year. Traders work on daily time frames. CNBC spends hours examining the numbers from a quarterly earnings report. C suite executives are compensated for growing the company compared to the previous year. Teachers are rewarded for students scoring marginally higher on an AP exam. Schools are paid more if the average SAT score goes up. School districts are runned by elected officials whose job is to not to lose an election and to climb up the political totem pole. I know because I worked for political campaigns and special interests. I am not saying pay zero attention to small time frames, but the system has trained us to look at things myopically. Look how that hurted Wall Street. Much of the Street did not believe in Amazon or Tesla: “Look! They do not have positive cash flow.” It’s hurting America’s youth. It already has. Do we pay attention to the long term growth or well-being of students? Either we have overstressed students in competitive school districts like Palo Alto or we have failing schools. We can strike a balance.

We can start with small changes that change our relationship with time. Let’s expand the role of home room teachers beyond just taking attendance. Have those teachers teach life lessons for 30 minutes per day like MetaLearning does in the mentoring program. To decrease the burden of these teachers, let’s change the time structure of schools by lessening the number of hours of schools in a day, but extend the school year. Instead of five class days a week, lower it to four. Or extend the length of the holidays.

I, of course, can do my part by acting as a long term shepard for your son or daughter.

Fear of Failure Leads to Fragility

I do this by teaching failure. Failure teaches one how to succeed. Unfortunately, we pay lip service to this creed. Even pop culture has manifested the wretched trend by mainstreaming the terms, “helicopter parents” and “participation trophies.” I will go out on a limb and assert that hordes of fragile students occupy the halls of elite universities across the homeland. The adults in the system have encouraged the kids not to make mistakes lest you lose the chance to go to Stanford (No offense Stanford.).

I have failed. I have failed classes both in high school and college, and I still came out fine: I graduated with honors. I definitely failed in my professional ventures. These failures have taught me important lessons. I would not be who I am today without them. In turn, I pass these lessons to my clients. What I do to is to provide challenging projects to my students. They will not succeed on the first try. And that’s fine. They will learn. Further, they will fail in practice, so that when the stakes are real, like on an official SAT test, they will thrive. And to do so, students need time to fail. You cannot rush the lessons of life.

Rigid Walls

Our fear of failure has created walls within our system. Why is that we teach classes like history, math, and biology? Why are there no classes on subjects like “The Chemistry of Food,” “How to Build a House,” or “Building a Website to Measure the Analytics of E-Commerce?” As the world accelerates towards a future with AI that can program other AIs, robots that deliver and drive, and software that can outperform top corporate lawyers, we need an education that can break down the barriers of the past. In order for students to flourish in the future, they need to learn how to synthesize disparate ideas from seemingly unconnected areas.

Take the field of computer programming. A outsider observer or even an intermediate programmer may see no relevance to English writing, but they would be dead wrong. WRONG. Donald Knuth, professor emeritus from Stanford, father of analysis of algorithms, and author of “The Art of Computer Programming” characterizes great computer programming as “literary essays.” The Yoda of Silicon Valley says programming, like writing, needs to be understood by others. And there are so many other examples: mammalian herd theory that underpins trading behavior and integrating a greenhouse into a nuclear power plant concept.

My students are encouraged to pursue ventures that combine multiple disciplines like a creating a geometric fort to defend against a 18th century army or expanding a podcast to talk about societal trends.

Conclusion

The system will not change in the short or medium future. In the meantime, our scholars will need to pursue learning outside the classroom. This is what I spur on in my students: going on field trips, guiding students on projects, and teaching through demonstrations. I will ask, how many tutors do that?