Illusion of Traditional Education

In a world increasingly driven by rapid technological change and complex problem-solving, our traditional education systems, particularly school and edtech industry, are failing to prepare students for the real world. This failure stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how we actually learn and make decisions.

The Rising Cost of Education: Starting at Kindergarten

The education crisis begins much earlier than most people realize, right at the kindergarten level. The cost of education has skyrocketed, creating a system where:

Early Education Premium: Parents are paying premium prices for kindergarten education, often more than what some college degrees cost in previous generations.
The Pressure Starts Early: Even at the KG level, children are being pushed into competitive environments, setting the stage for the stress and anxiety that will follow them through their educational journey.
Regional Disparities: While my American and European friends find it odd that education costs are such a significant burden, in their countries it might be single digit percentage of a typical GDP. However, in many Southeast Asian countries, education costs can consume up to 60-70% of a family's income, creating an entirely different level of financial pressure and stress.

The Coaching Industry: Feeding on Parental Anxiety

As someone who has been personally involved in teaching my daughter, I've witnessed firsthand how the coaching industry has evolved, and not necessarily for the better. The pre-COVID and post-COVID landscape reveals a troubling pattern:

The Coaching Myth: The industry has preyed on parents' never-ending appetite for more "coaching," creating a false narrative that more coaching equals better marks and higher ranks in competitive exams.
The FOMO Factor: Parents, often unable to teach their children themselves, fall victim to the fear of missing out. This creates a vicious cycle where more coaching is seen as the only solution.
The Parental Dilemma: Many parents, despite their best intentions, find themselves unable to effectively teach their children, making them easy targets for edtech companies promising quick fixes.

My Learnings During Teaching My Daughter

Teaching my daughter has been one of the most interesting experiences of my life. It's made me realize something fundamental about learning that we often overlook: what seems obvious to us as adults is not at all obvious to a child's developing mind.

Here are some key insights:

The System-1 Reality: You can't force System-2 (analytical) thinking by bulldozing through concepts. Children naturally operate in System-1 (intuitive) mode, and trying to bypass this natural learning process only leads to frustration on both sides.
The Caching Process: System-1 thinking needs time to "cache" information, to build those intuitive patterns and connections. When we rush this process, we're essentially asking a child to memorize before they can pattern match.
The Patience Paradox: The more we try to speed up learning, the slower it actually becomes. True learning happens when we allow System-1 to naturally build its cache of patterns and associations.

The Nuanced Reality of Coaching

Here's where it gets complicated: if coaching methods were completely ineffective, they would be easy to spot and reject. But the truth is more nuanced. These methods do work, to an extent. By applying sheer pressure and time, they can produce results. This is precisely what makes them so insidious and difficult to critique:

The Pressure-Time Equation: More hours of coaching + more pressure = better test scores. It's a simple equation that appears to work, but at what cost?
Short-term Gains, Long-term Losses: While students might achieve higher marks, they often develop a dependency on external pressure rather than intrinsic motivation.
The Illusion of Success: The visible results (better grades, higher ranks) mask the underlying issues, lack of critical thinking, creativity, and genuine understanding.
The Opportunity Cost: The time spent in coaching could have been used for developing other crucial skills or simply being a child.

This is why the problem is so difficult to address. The methods appear to work, making it hard to spot their fundamental flaws. It's like a drug that provides immediate relief but creates long-term dependency.

The Career Choice Crisis

The problems with our education system extend far beyond the classroom and into the workforce. We're facing a crisis of career dissatisfaction that stems directly from how we approach education and career choices:

The Money Trap: "Computer science pays money, let me do it", this mindset has created a generation of professionals trapped in careers they never wanted. The pursuit of financial security has overshadowed personal fulfillment and genuine interest.
The Happiness Gap: A startlingly high percentage of the workforce is unhappy, not because of their companies or bosses, but because they're doing work they never wanted to do in the first place. They're are not living their own.

The MBA: A Case Study in Educational Failure

Let's examine the MBA as a specific example of how our education system has gone wrong. MBA programs, especially highly charged ones, have become more about connections than actual learning. While the networking aspect is valuable, it begs the question: if there are alternative ways to build meaningful connections, why do we still cling to the MBA model?

I've often wondered about this paradox. The astronomical costs, the outdated curriculum, and the emphasis on "projects/case studies" over actual learning, it all seems to miss the point of what education should be about. The value proposition of an MBA has become increasingly questionable in a world where knowledge is more accessible than ever.

My "Lazy" Approach to Learning: A Different Perspective

I was a pretty "lazy" student. I never thought I'd top my 10th-grade class, and I'm still not entirely sure how it happened! I focused intensely on what truly interested me: math

The key here is time optimization. By diving deep into math, I gained a foundation that I could then apply to physics and chemistry. It was like getting three subjects for the price of one! My biology teacher couldn't understand my lack of interest, but if biology had felt like applied math, I would have embraced it too. The subjects simply weren't connected in a way that resonated with me. Time is a valuable resource, and this approach allowed me to use it far more efficiently. I never did night-outs before exam in school, the mind was far more fresh. I did few night sessions in college and that showed, in all of subjects electronics was a "E" that was ever my lowest grade. I like electronics a lot, but that method of reading didn't work.

My learning style is guided by a few key principles:

Non-Linearity: Never start with chapter one. I hate chapter 1's.
Dependency Grouping: Group chapters based on interconnected concepts, creating subject clusters. For instance, thermodynamics, typically introduced later, can be explored earlier, even in grade 11, regardless of the textbook's sequence.
Storybook Reading: Approach initial readings without pressure, like reading a story. This transforms classroom lessons into revision sessions.
Holistic View: Avoid fixating on individual chapters. Instead of tracking progress by chapters completed, focus on understanding the overall concepts.
Problem-Driven Learning: Begin with an overview, then select a challenging problem from the exercises. Reverse engineer your attempts to solve it, analyzing why you succeeded or failed. This approach provides a clear target and practical application for your learning, preventing aimless exploration of foundational concepts. You're not delving into the material simply because it's there; you're driven by a specific goal.
Timeboxing: It's tempting to endlessly reread a single chapter, untill you can solve all possible excercise in that chapter. I don't enjoy that. It's similar to mindlessly using a treadmill at the gym; it has some benefit, but it's not optimal. Vary your approach. Timebox everything.
No Immediate Tests: Section-wise tests for student certification can be detrimental. They create a false sense of accomplishment because students merely load the content into their short-term memory (cache) and perform well. However, if revisited after a month, the information is often gone. The common fixes involve flashcards, revision, and other techniques. Essentially, we implement a flawed process and then seek additional methods to compensate for its shortcomings.
Multi-Track Study: It's even better if you can study multiple subjects in parallel. For example, thermodynamics requires some knowledge of partial differential equations. Studying both subjects together gives the student a sense of appreciation for PDEs because they are necessary for understanding thermodynamics.

[I really wanted to make it a 10-point principles, heck why, let it be 8.]

Traditional textbooks often lack this non-linear approach, presenting information in a rigid sequence. However, learning becomes more engaging when approached with assumptions and exploration. For example, even without a complete understanding of integration or differentiation, one can assume an axiom and continue building upon it. Foundational knowledge isn't always a prerequisite. I don't need to grasp S-P orbital hybridization to appreciate bonding, nor understand energy band gaps to comprehend photon frequency. I can make assumptions and revisit the fundamentals later to experience a deeper "aha" moment.

We've experimented with introducing orbitals and integration to a 10-year-old, and they grasped the concepts. This suggests that the order of learning isn't as crucial as having an "assumption pointer" that allows for building upon ideas.

We did another experiment with a math chapter "conic sections".

Option 1: Start with Focus F, Point P, Line M, and the distance ratio PF/PM = e. Option 2: Visualize a double cone sliced by a plane to illustrate different sections.

While Option 1 might seem mathematically rigorous, it proved difficult to grasp, even with assumptions. The goal is for students to discover Option 1 themselves. This highlights the importance of catering to different learning styles, particularly visual learning.

The Future of Education with AI

AI as a Learning Companion: ChatGPT and similar tools are definitely changing how we learn. There's no such thing as a stupid question anymore, and kids can ask whatever they want without feeling judged.
- This really opens things up for them.
The Human Spark is Essential: You still need a human in the mix. That moment when a kid makes a connection and excitedly tells you about it? That "wow" feeling, the glow on their face, the excitement in their voice – it's pure bliss.
- Parents, don't leave that to ChatGPT or coaching teachers. You're missing out on a lot. Simply put, get involved!
The Homeschooling Trend: A lot of my friends and relatives homeschool their kids (maybe it's just a coincidence they have 3 kids – cost of education?). But I still see those kids having great social connections within their homeschool groups.
- We're going to see this trend increase even more.
Visuals: Great, But Not the Only Way: Its magical to see things visually. But it's not everything, and no single method trumps all others. You need a mix of methods.
- You can't always rely on Grant Sanderson ( 3Blue1Brown ) videos for everything. AI can help, but don't be totally dependent on it either.

If there were a magic wand AI to cultivate a culture of confidence, that would be the most significant contribution AI could make, especially for children.

The foundational principle of school education should be "confidence" thru knowledge. not just pure knowledge.

I will explore how these principles can be applied to corporate and entrepreneurial settings in a future Part 2.