If like me you believe the world is basically bad (perhaps I'm the only one), you have to be willing to ask the difficult questions.
Like the truth about religion the answers are technically unknown, but they lead in controversial directions.
Someone has to say it: teachers, and the whole education system, are way overrated.
Sure they mean well, making tremendous sacrifices and all that. They don't do it for the money, but for the love of teaching.
That's exactly the problem.

Education is absurdly inefficient, and getting worse as spending increases.
My own slog through the educational-industrial complex could be described as the garbage decades, a crude atmosphere of conformity and boredom. I learned little in the seventy or so classrooms I've trundled through.
Education hasn't improved significantly in thousands of years, there's just a lot more of it. Classes are based on group lectures, stress schedules, and chaotic immersion. It's basically a cultural transmission process relying on mass suppression. Most learning actually takes place during homework drills, a form of unskilled labor. To become really skilled in something, you need a mentor or an elite peer group.
Those teachers who are held in the highest regard seem to make a virtue out of the problem, relying on showmanship and charisma. More art than science, their methods can't be transferred or copied. Apparently, the emotional or social aspect of learning is more important than the information itself.
This should not be the case.

The core problem is the complete and utter lack of research interest in accelerating human information transfer. In fact, teachers are offended by those who suggest learning should be made easier.
This is how it has always been. Change is heresy.
A simple Windows PC, supposedly millions of times less powerful than a human brain, can load the Japanese alphabet in a few seconds. Humans need an entire year to accomplish the same task.
There has been no research, or even any serious discussion, on how to 'upload' data to humans in the shortest possible time. Ideally, it would involve sleep-learning or hypnotic induction.

In reality, teachers don't even provide useful mnemonics. That's left up to the students themselves, or the educational aftermarket.
Teachers teach by example what they can't explain.
Instead of perfectly defined knowledge, each student is supposed to reach their own conclusions through an accumulation of subconscious rules, a cycle repeated across generations. Part of the learning process is learning how to ignore things.
Instead of innovation, we have a surplus of tradition. The worst offender is the US Ivy League, which proudly fetishizes the past: mystery, privilege, social connections and destiny embedded in a deep sense of entitled superiority.

The biggest failure of the education establishment is the public absence of even a fundamental understanding of science, economics, sociology, or for that matter music principles. The only way to learn anything about them is through many years of higher learning.
It shouldn't have to be that hard, but the system isn't set up to teach the big picture about any subject.

Currently, the least bad teaching method involves repeat memorization drills at specific intervals, an effort that requires tremendous willpower.
Another method is Direct Instruction, which seeks to control every second of the learning experience, forcing the student to pay attention to every detail. It's also difficult and requires total concentration, but is less bad than most standard methods.
This research is mostly carried out by private companies.

A much better way would be to organize knowledge as clearly and logically as possible. Perhaps teachers want to avoid this, thinking it would make them obsolete.
All human knowledge could be formally described at any level of understanding, a project that would require the combined brainpower of all mankind. Each step should be explained as concisely as possible.
The first step would be to generate the shortest possible true description, almost like an equation or a flowchart. This would then be expanded and padded out.

My favorite solution is to summarize more often. All knowledge is arranged in an immense hierarchy. Start by describing the top level, and repeat it often. Then explain the lower levels and their connections one by one.
The Flynn Effect (the measured rise in human IQ) is explained entirely by the slow discovery of better metaphors.

The ultimate solution would be to find a way to physically change the human brain, or to extend it through interactive software, linking it directly to computers. Perhaps people should just become extensions of search engines and databases.

At the start of the second decade of the twenty-first century, mankind remains mired in ignorance and poverty. The educational elite is just fine with that, but this problem may represent a hidden opportunity for others.
Whoever manages to invent an easier and faster teaching method could make a fortune. What we need is to find ways that could theoretically educate people against their will.


Other upcoming controversial articles:
-The great healthcare scam: let patients die rather than tax unwilling subjects.
-If fathers weren't required to pay child support, would society change?




The best hard SF novel ever written: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
Buy the book
Read the chapters