69. We Are Born Learning Machines

"The mind is not a blank slate on which any idea can be impressed. To be understood, a new idea or phenomenon must connect to cognitive structures that are already available to the individual."
- Francis Heylighen, What makes a meme successful?

In Mindscapes, Seymour Papert describes 3 principles he and his colleagues found while addressing a serious problem with education: a culture that makes learning foreign and alien to the vast majority of people. Although Seymour focused on mathematics, all formal education experiences the same issues.

Humans start their lives as extraordinary learning machines. As babies, we learn to speak and become mobile. We form theories about the world and how it operates, often with love and gentleness from adults who meet us at our level of understanding. Yet, we abandon this intuition and subject children to the rigid structure of formal education just a few years later.

“I once heard a former Public-School pupil remark: ‘the purpose of a Public School is to cause distinctive scars, by which its inmates will be recognisable for the rest of their lives’.”
– David Deutsch

Children are forced to follow the very worst model for learning, and we wonder why each generation does "academically" worse. Rote learning, where material is treated as meaningless and dissociated from the learner, stifles creativity. This is a crime against humanity that Seymour Papert dedicated much of his life to solving. Here are the three principles he mentioned (quoted from Mindscapes, page 54):

1. Continuity principle:
   The new topic must be continuous with well-established personal knowledge from which it can inherit a sense of warmth and value as well as cognitive competence. 
2. Power principle:
   It must empower the learner to perform personally meaningful projects that could not be done without it.
3. Principle of cultural resonance:
   The topic must make sense in terms of a larger social context.

This approach is far better than the current state of education today! Our responsibility, as Seymour says, is to become anthropologists supporting our children and others in becoming epistemologists.

Anthropologists: are people who study human behavior, cultures, and societies. They observe, learn, and understand how people live and interact.

Epistemologists: are people who study knowledge itself—how we know what we know, how we learn, and how we understand information.

So, what Seymour is saying is that as adults, educators, or mentors, our job is to:

1. Observe and Understand:
   Like anthropologists, we should observe our children and others carefully, understanding their behaviors, interests, and ways of thinking without imposing our own views.
2. Support and Guide:
   We should provide the right support and guidance to help them explore and learn on their own whatever topic they want. This means creating an environment where they feel safe and encouraged to ask questions, explore new ideas, and learn from their experiences.

Our society has failed the children of the past and present but we can correct this problem. It may take deep self-reflection and may subject our most rooted ideas to criticism but we owe it to ourselves and those around us. Let us look at and judge these idea's merits and faults encouraging our own inner epistemologies to have fun.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
- Nelson Mandela

PS: If you have kids and want a great resource for parenting check out Taking Children Seriously.