Sui Learning

By Trenton Rich

The art of teaching has evolved greatly over time, yet our school systems refuse to adapt modern solutions or even address modern problems. "Sui" in the term "Sui Generis" in latin, means "in a class of their own" and it represents this learning model's priority of completely customizing curriculum to each student. Each student is unique in situation, aptitude and personality, and so they must have a learning path that is optimal for their success.

 

Normally custom learning is considered impractical or expensive. This model alleviates this issue by simply reducing and condensing student/teacher interactive time. That being, students are taught more effectively, more efficiently, and it costs the same or less than traditional teaching, while also giving students more flexibility of schedule and time to enjoy life with family and friends.

 

This model is "holistic" meaning it addresses every part of a students life, from education, to taxes, to emotional skills, and specific career development. It truly prepares students for the real world. As well, this model is scalable, allowing teachers to educate students in decent quantity without the need for expensive facilities and extensive curriculum. In fact, this model allows even regular parents to homeschool, or even unschool their own children, without the need for advanced credentials or special skills.

 

I truly hope that this book brings prosperity and happiness to you and your family, now and in the future. Thank you for reading and being part of a new wave of education that values students first.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trenton Rich
• Release date: Mar 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201355036

Book preview

Preface

In reading this book, you’ll go over many topics in an information dense format. I’ve made this book as short as possible to make it easy to review and reference as a handbook. Because of this, it should initially be read slowly so that you may have time to mentally understand and reflect upon the information in each section. I recommend reading one chapter a day, until you reach the ethics portion, in which you should read one ethics topic, or subchapter, per day.

If read quickly, this book can seem confusing or less detailed than it really is. Because this book is meant to create a deep skillset, it’s important to fully grasp and practice each concept even in your personal life. You’ll find that many of the things I recommend for children are also things you could practice yourself. One example would be communication skills or financial literacy among other content I cover in this book. Every great teacher is a great student.

The Need for Education

As most know, the need for education is one that has never fully been met. While many first world countries fail to teach children to properly communicate and handle emotions, other countries struggle to teach reading to all children.

It’s often said that children are the future, and so education is the solution to nearly all problems. While this isn’t totally true, it does have plenty of truth to be valued.

Education is the foundation of major systems, including: politics, economics, culture, education, law, and more.

As such, the way we educate our children really does form the world of tomorrow. By teaching children how to behave, we reduce crime. By teaching them teamwork, we boost efficiency and promote peace. By teaching them logic, we create civility. By teaching them math we create rationality. By teaching psychology we create empathy. By teaching ethics we avoid tragedy.

All of these effects are marginal of course, but they are universal goals for society that must be improved upon. You’ll notice that so far, I’ve only mentioned math and reading, regarding core subjects. Most of the subjects I discussed would be categorized as more humanitarian or philosophical. Let me explain why in the next chapter.

The Format of Modern Education

American education, as many of you have likely heard, was originally based off of the factory model, where children learned to be a cog in an industrial machine. They’re graded the same way meat or other products are, from A to F, and then told to stay in their place and memorize what they must. I don’t  need to convince most of you that this isn’t a great model.

Grades really cover up failure to teach. A bad instructor can go through an entire quarter leaving absolutely nothing memorable in the minds of his class, curve out the scores on an irrelevant test, and leave the impression that some have learned and some have not.

-  Robert M. Pirsig

Many European countries have already moved past this industrial model and have adapted much stronger and more impactful models.

Trial and Error education places heavy emphasis on problem solving, in an effort to develop the mind and create a nation of leaders and changers, rather than mere followers and traditionalists. The way they do this is through a very simple model, guessing and answering, rather than just teaching.

Children are presented with a problem, such as how to figure out how fast something falls. Children then try to theorize and test out ideas, and only after they show their well thought out answers, are they taught the equation. Of course the children won’t be smart enough to recreate it on their own, but by trying and failing, they are growing in their ability to create answers, problem solve, and take in new information when they’re wrong. This leads to mental resilience. They also better understand the problem. It’s no longer ethereal or theoretical and detached.

Context In Education

I remember the moment I lost interest in math. It was at the end of 8th grade. We started to learn about quadratics in Algebra 2. I was the best student in my class when it came to linear algebra because I could easily conceptualize it. It just made sense. Quadratics however, was estranged to me. I couldn’t understand how it related to anything. We learned the equations and were taught how to manipulate them, but there was no context. Even the students who did well, had no idea what they were actually doing. They simply memorized the process and performed on command. Later in life, most of them no longer remembered how to work with quadratics, nor understand its value.

I, on the other hand, now understand the value of quadratics and that of other mathematical findings and apply them to my life when the need arises. I didn't catch up in college or take private tutoring, but instead learned what was relevant for my life, including an understanding of some math.

Had I gone to a school in a more updated education system today, I likely would have been taught first how to use quadratics in problem solving, and then learned how to manipulate and form it through equations.

Here's a little demonstration, try to follow along:

'Imagine learning how to use a link trainer, an instrument only simulator where dials and knobs show you exactly what's going on. You’re sitting there looking at these dials and indicators, moving your controls around in hopes of creating the same conditions you started with.'

Even this explanation gives you no context for what I’m talking about.

That was confusing right? Here's a proper explanation of what happened:

The link trainer is a flight simulator(for flying planes) with no visual monitor, no screen, only dials. It only gives information like altitude, speed, and so on.

If you learned to use one of these flight simulators without understanding that you were learning to fly a plane, you likely wouldn’t even be able to fly a plane given the opportunity. That's because learning without context and relevance is futile.

There are some skills we learn forever like riding a bike. The reason we learn them so well is because the relevance and context is immediate. You use this action while on a bike, and nowhere else. It’s like using a skill at your job. You learn it and perform it constantly while working, and so you remember and use it whenever you enter that situation.

If I taught you to ride a bike without a bike, you would practice contracting the needed muscles in a timely fashion. This way would take much longer to learn and be less effective. This is what it is to teach without context.

This idea of context is from the educational theory of Constructivism, made popular by Jean Piaget(who created the theory of cognitive development) and other experts of education.

The Secret of IQ

As humanity evolves mentally, its IQ has continued to rise. Many don’t know this but, the IQ scoring system is actually adjusted periodically to recreate historical averages. This means that each generation is becoming smarter. This is known as the Flynn effect.

What is IQ and how does it work? Put simply, rather than measuring memorization, like many schools do for grading, it measures the ability to understand metaphor and simile. It’s much like philosophy, in that the goal is pattern recognition and application.

This means you need to be able to look at patterns and apply them to other contexts. A simple example might be observing how metal bends under stress, warping its shape, and seeing that  other materials also do this, but so too might an economy, trying to handle more stress than it would normally be able to. This could look like the great depression, where a lack of supply and financial hedging lead to the destruction of many banks and businesses that supported our infrastructure.

In studies and experiments done on primitive hunter gatherer tribespeople, it was found that they had very low IQs. For example, while they had memorized hundreds of facts and gained many skills which allowed them to survive, they didn't have much skill in conceptualizing information, because it didn't hold much relevance in their lives.

For example, in one study, a man was asked about an imaginary animal, which was much like one that he was familiar with. He was asked about how that animal might behave or be, and he had not even a guess. He said something like, I don’t know, I’ve never seen it before. He had almost no ability developed to draw conclusions based on facts, or see patterns and transfer them. They live in a factual and experiential world, where the only thing judged is that which is different and strange.

IQ isn’t developed very well in the US education system. Instead they focus on memorization and muscle memory for skills taught out of context, that are then forgotten shortly after. This is the fundamental flaw and the reason why no matter how much math, science, and language they teach, students still aren't getting better results. India for example, which excels at math and science and provides more focus on these topics than the US, reportedly has 80% of it's graduating engineers being unemployable. Meaning they're not good enough at engineering for entry level work, according to the 'National Employability Report for Engineers 2019'.

The same can be said for American students. It's not uncommon to see computer science students with a bachelor's degree that don't have fluency in any programming language.

To fix education, we must change its fundamental structure to one which is designed to work in the modern era and under physiologically sound and tested models. In other words, we need results that speak for themselves.

The Education We Need

From what I’ve said, you can probably figure out what we should prioritize in our education. That being IQ and relevant skills, among more. So how do we do that? It’s actually quite simple and natural.

First, we don’t need to create a massive curriculum, and go through it sequentially. That's part of the outdated factory model.

Of course education starts with the very basics, learning those things which have immediate context and are needed to learn, like reading and basic math. But what about science and history? These things come in time, as does everything else, when context is present.

For example, a child goes to touch a hot stove, and you tell them not to. The child may ask why, but if not, you ask them why they think it’s not good. They may say anything, but what's important is that they try to answer. You then explain that it's hot and will burn and hurt them.

This is usually where the conversation stops, but in learning we must take advantage of context if we wish to use it for learning. You can ask why things are hot, and let them guess. You can then explain how particles move when they have lots of energy and how too much energy can disrupt a system like a skin cell, or explain how chemical changes work, depending on how advanced and old they might be.

Eventually the child will become more narrow, caring about certain things, instead of what you tell them. This is a mental formation that can happen around the age of 4 to 7, depending on maturity. At this point, education can go from general to interest based education.

The Basics: Overview

The basics aren’t a fixed list and change over time. Cursive handwriting for example is basically no longer taught by the majority of American schools today. That’s just part of our growth as a society. Here are a list of many essential basics:

-  Financial management: everything from investing to buying wholesale, paying taxes,