Education

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An apple a day keeps the teacher away from medical bankruptcy

Evidence-based education is an established field of study working to determine best practices for teaching and education based on proven effectiveness in learning.

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

Looking to get more educated? The Organizations page contains a number of online resources, courses, and learning tools that promote the ideas and values described in this wiki.

Curriculum with Metanarrative

It's not enough just to teach students an array of disconnected facts about a variety of subjects. In order to really comprehend these concepts holistically, seeing how they relate to each other, to ourselves, and fit together as pieces of the universal puzzle, education must be undertaken with a clear picture of what that puzzle is depicting.

metaculture is designed to be that picture. The fractal serves as a visual representation of the universal whole, with everything it contains fitting into its simple yet infinitely complex pattern. The philosophical grounding in science, reason, critical thinking and universalism make it religiously and ideologically neutral, avoiding conflicts with church/state separation that a purely atheist or religious point of view would raise.

By giving children (and adults!) a vision of what the puzzle will look like when it's finished, they will learn much more easily and eagerly while building a meaningful vision of life's purpose and how to make the most of it.

The metanarrative of everything contains the basic story that describes the holistic view of reality that this wiki is based on. The contents of the wiki provide a complete curriculum for teaching or learning how to view the universe this way.

Filling In The Knowledge Gaps

One of the goals of this wiki is to address the most common knowledge gaps that most people still have after the typical high school or college education. Specifically, the gaps that serve as blocks to understanding core scientific concepts like creation and evolution, and the psychological and sociological principles behind morality, that cause continued reliance on supernatural belief systems.

Other important evidence-based best practices for improved life choices are also provided for a variety of practical subjects not generally taught in schools.

An Algorithm is Not a Curriculum

A lot of people are getting their science, religion, and philosophy educations from YouTube these days. While you can learn a lot from these videos, they are not nearly as good as books, which should be obvious, but some don't bother to make the leap. Another thing that should be obvious is that no one content creator, or even an algorithmically generated stream of them, is going to give you robust coverage of all the necessary concepts you need for holistic understanding of the universe. The algorithm gives you what it thinks you like, not what it knows you need. The wiki is designed to provide comprehensive coverage of the essential concepts from every subject that you need to know "get" the universe, with a unified fractal theme that helps with understanding and infuses it with meaning.

Education Over Ideology

Ideological differences reflect differences in the structure and content of our memes (in the Dawkins sense). Cognitive development theories generally predict ideological behavior at the formal operational level, followed by an integral, universal, post-dialectical stage where conflicting ideologies are resolved (see Kegan, Kohlberg, Integral). This is a learning process, where broadened knowledge and experience (i.e. "wisdom") leads you to adopt a more expansive worldview.

This is a process that anyone can undergo, at any stage in their life, should they have the motivation and access to resources to do so. It is a process that transcends ideology and politics. It is simply teaching and learning. Once you have learned all of the necessary concepts, a rational, inclusive, optimistic, universal worldview will naturally emerge, because that is simply where the facts lead us. See free will.

Of course, we all know people who are very highly educated but also very negative, prone to conspiratorial thinking, or endorse authoritarian belief systems. This can happen if you consume the wrong types of knowledge, or constantly expose yourself to ideas that stoke fear and outrage. Many formerly progressive people have found some on-ramp to the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, often through health and wellness groups. Skepticism can become contrarianism if you aren't careful. Once you start exposing yourself to these bad ideas, they can quickly override your previous education and beliefs. This is especially true when people bombard themselves with this information via social media addiction, or leaving Fox News, talk radio, or alt-right podcasts on in the background all day.

You need to have a robust, holistic education in science, psychology, and the humanities to see the big picture and build a rational belief system. You need to use critical thinking to always avoid misinformation, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and superstition, and be forever vigilant about curating your information environment. Otherwise you can undo all of your hard work by allowing the algorithm to brainwash you.

Make Education Cool Again

The rise of anti-intellectualism is a huge impediment to education. Nerd culture has countered this somewhat, but it has often leaned hard into pop culture nerdom versus science, engineering, and philosophy nerds. Being smart needs to be cool, otherwise the incentives are all off and society evolves toward Idiocracy.

As usual, Philomena Cunk provides the perfect allegory to help us understand this concept. Charlie Brooker's other hit show Black Mirror has some pretty decent social commentary as well.

Cunk & The Rise of Anti-Intellectualism

Peer to Peer Adult Education

You cannot combat polarization and authoritarianism in politics and religion without doing something about the deficiencies in education that leave the majority of adults without critical thinking skills and addicted to social media that is bombarding them with propaganda and misinformation. The public schools should be teaching these things, but there is a chicken or egg issue there. Propaganda and polarization has eroded support for public education to the point where it would be difficult to implement a proper civics or critical thinking curriculum within that institution. Home schooling and private religious education mean that over 15% of children would never see this curriculum anyway. Until we teach the adults whey these things are necessary, they will not vote to teach it in the schools.

“I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.” -Toni Morrison

Adults love self-help, especially if it is couched in spirituality. They spend billions of dollars each year to learn about kinds of pop psychology mixed with pseudoscience, woo, and other ideas of questionable utility. Pretty much all of organized religion is just ritualized self-help. People have a natural drive to want to improve their lives, acquire knowledge, and be happier. The progressive, secular, and scientific communities have made the educational resources available via libraries and the Internet, but they have completely failed to motivate people to use them. Meanwhile, people with misinformation have huge marketing budgets and shrewdly target the people most in need of that education.

Teach-ins need to make a comeback, but instead of teaching political ideology, they need to teach people the science that will help them understand and navigate the modern world.[1]

For example:

None of these subjects is inherently partisan or anti-religious, which should allow these teach-ins to partner with local churches and civic organizations. It adds up to an advanced class on adulting. This term was popularized because there is so much that our parents and schools fail to prepare us for in adult life. It goes far beyond just paying bills and auto maintenance. Proper adulting in the 21st century means having a functional grasp on how things work so you can steel yourself against the many grifters who prey on those that don't, and be a good citizen instead of a contrarian or useful idiot.

Religious organizations teach class after class where they analyze passages from scripture from every possible angle. If they just dedicated half of that class time to teaching these essential concepts, we could see real improvement in the level of discourse, civic engagement, and well-being of average citizens.

Secular organizations gather together scientists, engineers, professors, and other educated people to have erudite and enlightened conversations with each other, but do little to those who would benefit the most from their expertise. Even though teaching can be frustrating, it cannot be done by the uneducated. Secular communities need to be on the forefront of this peer to peer movement for adult education, because they are the ones who both know what needs to be taught, and understand why it's important to teach.

PLEASE: Peer Led Education on Adulting and Society's Evolution

Or: Adult Home Schooling

Every great movement starts with a great acronym. PLEASE is one that encompasses both the mission and the need for it. Society is evolving at an ever increasing speed. It is no longer possible for a single childhood education to prepare you for many of the things you will encounter ten years from now, much less fifty or more. It also references the deep need we have for this type of ongoing adult education, as well as our need for restored manners and generally agreed upon social norms.

Examples of Teach-Ins

This playlist has several videos showing teach-ins at protests, as well as recordings of virtual teach-ins online. Many of these videos come from the world of leftist and anarchist political activism, which is where the teach-in originated. This concept needs to be expanded to reach a much wider and more remedial audience, ensuring that the majority of the people have the necessary basic knowledge for informed democratic participation.

PM Press Teach-Ins

Expanding Education Is Always Good

Expanded access to education is a universal good. Any attempt to limit access to information, books, schools, or any other tool of knowledge, to any person for any reason, is bad.

Limiting access to education by making it unaffordable to some also falls in this category. The public benefit of free access to education will always significantly outweigh the cost to society.

Education enhances our ability to emulate free will by expanding the possible life choices we can make. We cannot choose to do something that we have no knowledge of. Education is a necessary prerequisite for freedom and democracy to flourish.

Education has been shown to naturally reduce the birth rate, the poverty rate, the crime rate, and generally improves every meterstick by which we judge successful policy.

Education is More Than Just Information

Education is not to be confused with information. As Yuval Noah Harari makes the case for in his book Nexus, the spread of misinformation is a necessary by-product of any new technology that improves our ability to communicate. This has led to witch trials, authoritarian regimes, and war as often as it has led to the age of enlightenment. Education is the spread of expertise, not just information; of vetted, evidence-based ideas that have proven to be necessary for the economy, government, and society to function.

Freedom of Speech is related. No information should be suppressed, no ideas are illegal. However, this does not mean that they need to be made widely available through algorithmic promotion on internet platforms.

Education as Behaviorceutical

This study on rats driving cars comes to the fairly obvious conclusion that learning helps improve our mood. It should not be a surprise that when you put a brain to use in its primary function (learning) it results in happiness.

The concept of a "behaviorceutical" is a fun way to describe the manner in which our actions and rituals can naturally produce the neurotransmitters that we experience as happiness. It implies that our chemical imbalances are often the by-product of a life that lacks learning, community, wonder, love, and fun, rather than some genetic condition that needs to be remedied with drugs.

See also: The Placebo Effect.

Public Versus Private Education

Public Education is a natural monopoly where geographic location is the most important factor for determining which school is best. Except for large cities, it is inefficient and redundant to offer multiple school options for children. Programs under the guise of "school choice" end up draining resources from existing schools that are already struggling, and the "alternative" is usually just different, not exactly better.

Another issue is that fundamentalist religious schools are the other "choice" that is most often available, causing public funds to support religious indoctrination and violating church-state separation.

However, there is a good point made by the Libertarians that competition in the realm of teaching methods and curriculum is necessary to allow new ideas to develop and gather evidence of their efficacy. Can this be done without the dismantling of public education?

In order to determine best practices in education, you need to perform experiments to determine which curriculum performs better than others, or which ones fit the needs of certain types of students the best. School systems in large cities can offer multiple types of school within the public system to allow for this without diverting and diluting the public funding that needs to go to those least able to afford a private alternative. Smaller cities and rural schools can adopt the best practices learned from the experimental schools, and offer multiple curriculum tracks to meet student needs.

School curriculum variety, competition, and experimentation are all needed to achieve constant improvement in our education system. Supporters of public education should find more ways to make this possible within the public system, or else lose the argument to those who seek to undermine it.

Can We Learn From Videos?

Let's find out! Watch all the videos on this wiki, go to Khan Academy and take a bunch of courses, or check out these videos on evidence-based education principles.

The Science of Teaching


Evidence Based Learning Strategies


The Case for Evidence Based Teaching


We actually do need education very much, though we can probably do a lot better than kind that existed in England in the 50s and 60. And the kind that exists now.

Pink Floyd - Another Brick in the Wall Part Two