Proposed School subject: Risk-Taking and Introspection (RI)
Are we going to address kids natural desire to "escape the matrix" or do we let Andrew Tate do it?
I think a lot of time our children spend in school is wasted on things that are irrelevant or perceived as irrelevant by children (both are problematic for developing of the love of learning). The natural enthusiasm for learning is killed off in the period where learning is easiest and when there is a genuine hunger on the kids’ part to learn about things that are real and relevant.
I think schools should teach a new subject and curriculum: Risk-Taking and Introspection (RI).
Why Risk- Taking?
When you get interviewed by a VC to fund your idea or want to get in an accelerator, typical questions include: ‘What are meaningful challenges you took on and overcame? Describe something weird or unusual that you have built or done early in your life. Describe a time when you intentionally broke the rules.’
All of this would have involved risk-taking in one way or another, whether perceived or real. That’s all great, but how is a child, who has been raised in an environment where all risk has been eliminated and where most of his time awake has been filled and optimised by others, supposed to do that? Where is that child supposed to take the risk-taking skills from? How to overcome the fear of being judged, of going against the grain, of risking something and being wrong?
The kids spend 1100+ hours a year sitting at a desk, a lot of it is chosen for them and involves listening TO information as opposed to applying, developing and finding the things THEY are interested in.
Finding and persevering with meaningful challenges, with adequate appreciation of risk vs reward, which would lead to independence and “freedom” in life, is a skill. It is a skill that can and should be taught and kids are hungry for it.
Why Introspection?
Remember this one from Blaise Pascal? "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone". Which kid is going to sit quietly and why on earth would he feel like doing that, when he has an immediate relief of any inconvenient feelings available on tap in the form of a smartphone? When he has thousands of information sources preying on his attention?
In the Netflix show Painkiller, there is a monologue from Richard Sackler:
“All of human behaviour is comprised of two things: Run from pain, run towards pleasure. Pain, pleasure. Pain, pleasure. If we place ourselves right there between pain and pleasure,” he continues "we will never have to worry about money again.”
There the subject is a move away from physical pain towards heroin in a fancy packaging. The mechanism is the same when moving away from mental ‘pain’ or any light anxiety or discomfort: you want to move away from it and it has now been made super easy. You have a ready dopamine hit device in your pocket in the form of a smart phone. You will use it every time to avoid going into and processing any boredom, anxiety and concern. The mind does not like change and uncertainty and will find any escape available.
Whilst there is a clear mental health crisis in teens, for a large silent majority there is a more delayed, quietly accumulating and mostly unnoticed multilayered effect, where in the end, you are alive but your life is not really what you wanted it to be. Giving teenagers god-like technology without the wisdom to go with it, is like giving a Jedi Lightsabre to a toddler.
The idea of classes of ‘responsible technology use’ is good, but not sufficient. If a kid doesn’t understand the whys and the how’s that are relevant for him, he is just not going to care. There is so much more than the dopamine mechanism. If the child doesn’t know how to ask himself good questions, how to be with and transcend discomfort and use it as a guide, the depth of available resources inside as opposed to outside, the child is going to be missing out on life and dancing to someone else’s tune. (And then end up finding gurus a la Andrew Tate who tell half-truths that resonate). They also need to learn other ways to tap into those innate resources, that don’t involve sitting quietly in a room or meditating.
“We had problems and life was difficult in the past” - Sure. But you didn’t have 1000 of information sources and all the world current and future problems in your line of sight. You didn’t have millions of people to compare yourself with. When you were feeling down, you went outside, interacted with your friends, climbed a tree, got into trouble, and got out of it, walked to the cinema (without tiktok in your hand), experienced occasional moments of pause, without your attention span being the hottest traded commodity out there.
Introspection is not just about technology. It is self-awareness, critical thinking and about the ability to remain equanimous when necessary, which is most of the time. People tend to oscillate between overconfidence/hubris/delusional beliefs and lack of confidence/depression/doomerism. Seeing the ineffectiveness of both extremes is also part of Introspection.
Why do Risk-Taking and Introspection go hand in hand?
Risk Taking without Introspection turns into gambling and problems.
True introspection naturally leads to taking on meaningful challenges, which then require skills to overcome them.
Any good framework to think about risk and challenges contains introspection subjects.
What RI is NOT:
Philosophy: elected subject, usually in older age, can be interesting but is presented as too removed from actual concerns. It is not widely popular because it’s not clear how it is relevant for a typical teens’ worries, for example - how do I make money in life or get a mate. (The underlying desire being: how do I fill the existential hole, find out what to do in live that I love and I will be appreaciated for in the world as it is now). Can parts of philosophy be made more practical and attractive for most 13-17 y olds? Sure. Has it happened so far? No. Same goes for history. Great gems there, but has not been made relevant enough to stick for most youngsters.
Investing or Trading or how to punt in stocks/crypto or how to get rich quick. Trading is great when teaching you about things like taking on challenges, dealing with being wrong, probabilistic thinking, complex adaptive systems, acting under uncertainty, dealing with stress and much more - we will take all this knowledge and experience and apply it in way that is relevant and clear for kids. Having said that, RI is not teaching how to invest/trade. The driver of ‘I want to be financially independent’ is natural and obviously present for many kids. It should be addressed in the right way, without the kids ending up losing their shirts and time gambling.
RE (Religious Education). It teaches appreciation of the diversity of religions which is great. It is not what this course is about, I think the finding of ‘God’ or appreciating the miracles of existence is a personal quest. A quest that nowadays does not require instruction from institutions, but a free, independent, and inquisitive mind.
Game Theory: separate subject, usually taught in university, focused on understanding incentives in multi- player games and competition. RI is about helping individuals to grow their own unique capabilities in such a way that competition and resource scarcity is not a concern.
Thank you for reading.
Anna
Some relevant links:
I love this renegade teacher Ana Lorena Fabrega who broke out of the traditional system and is on a mission to change education for kids https://afabrega.com/my-blog/i-was-a-teacher-i-loved-it-i-quitnbsp . Many of her ideas resonate with my own conclusions about how children best learn and flourish (and how outdated the current system is). I have preordered and looking forward to reading her new book : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Game-Teaching-Themselves-Challenge/dp/1804090514
Recognition of the effect of overparenting and removal of all risks and independence for kids. ‘Independence therapy turns out to work better than druggin 9-14 years with anxiety syndrome” . For real? Who would have thought? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/04/opinion/anxiety-depression-teens.html
Austin is a 17 year old who runs a substack and popular twitter on how outdated education is and what needs to change
https://twitter.com/AustinScholar/status/1698837108142620854
Jonathan is a psychologist at NYU’s Stern and has plenty of interesting data on the impact of tech on kids:
