The issues raised here are side effects of the discontinuity between how humans evolved to learn, and how we are taught today. Fundamentally, the problem is si

The issues raised here are side effects of the discontinuity between how humans evolved to learn, and how we are taught today. Fundamentally, the problem is similar to the problems of mass production. The need is to produce greater volume, with standardized results and less variance in the end product. But this is exactly opposite of how humans evolved to learn. We're evolved to learn primarily from our parents, secondarily from extended family and then from the larger group. This is why children in general have a desire to please their parents, and parents have both anxiety about struggling children and and pride when they do well. There is another force for learning, curiosity, that is the underlying factor for children's increasing knowledge and innovation, and which drives persistence and resilience. In a prehistoric environment, teaching and learning were highly personalized. 2 parents may have to nurture 2 or 3 children at a time. Prehistoric children also learned quite a bit on their own, in their own way, at their own pace when no teacher was paying attention. [0] In today's world, the amount and type of what has to be learned to function far exceeds what parents and family can teach. Even with homeschooling, advanced topics may be learned from texts that the student reads, rather than from tutoring by their parents. Most parents don't have homeschooling as an option, so we invented schools, which are by their nature, not personalized. Instead of ~1 teacher/parent per student, we have 30+. Teaching is not personalized, which goes strictly against human nature. [0] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/02/spoiled-rotten http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/02/spoiled-rotten