Because in school, you are still a babbling infant learning to use the new language that you’re learning: mathematics. You don’t try to teach infants who are st

Because in school, you are still a babbling infant learning to use the new language that you’re learning: mathematics. You don’t try to teach infants who are still on the babbling phase, the complexities of metaphor or nuance. People have a very funny view of education sometimes. Like, this thing exists, so we should’ve been told about it in school. Like, imagine the consequences of that kind of pedagogy. In order to know something about the subject and be able to learn more about it, you must know everything there is to know about it. Learning is a good example of the hermeneutic circle at work. On first entry into a topic, you don’t know anything and are bewildered by everything. Slowly, you begin to get a foothold where you recognize things vaguely. Then, as you go deeper, your understanding of what you learned at the beginning, also becomes deeper and richer. The simplifications begin to fall away. Complexity emerges, complexity that you are now in a position to handle because you are not completely lost anymore.