Why Would Education Need to Exist?

I think I have been asking this question backwards.

What is education?

Usually, the moment I ask that, my mind produces all the familiar things.

Teachers.

Classrooms.

Books.

Lessons.

Homework.

Examinations.

Universities.

Qualifications.

But those are already very developed answers.

They are what education looks like after humans have spent a very long time organising it.

So perhaps they should not be allowed into the question yet.

Remove the classroom.

Remove the school.

Remove the examination.

Remove the Ministry.

Remove the syllabus.

Remove the university.

For the moment, even remove the professional teacher.

Now ask again.

Why would education need to exist?

Start With Two Humans

Imagine one person discovers something useful.

Nothing sophisticated.

Perhaps:

This plant makes you sick.

That animal is dangerous.

Water can be found over there.

This stone works better for cutting.

Do this and the fire lasts longer.

There is no school.

There is no subject called Science.

There is no worksheet titled Understanding Fire: Exercise 1.

There is simply one human who now knows something that another human does not.

And that creates a problem.

The second person can discover it independently.

Or the first person can somehow pass it across.

A gesture.

A demonstration.

A sound.

An imitation.

Whatever works.

Something learnt by one human has now reduced the amount another human has to discover for themselves.

That seems small.

But I think something enormous just happened.

Time Was Saved

Person A may have needed three mistakes to discover something.

Person B does not necessarily need to make the same three mistakes.

The result can be carried across.

EXPERIENCE
↓
DISCOVERY
↓
PASS IT ON
↓
ANOTHER HUMAN STARTS FURTHER AHEAD

Education, at this point, has nothing to do with school.

It has something to do with time.

One human has already paid part of the discovery cost.

The next human does not have to pay all of it again.

That may be one of education’s earliest advantages.

Then Another Human Adds Something

The second person does not merely receive.

They live.

They try things.

Perhaps they find a better method.

Now there are two useful pieces.

They pass those forward.

The next human begins with more.

PERSON 1
discovers A
   ↓
PERSON 2
inherits A
discovers B
   ↓
PERSON 3
inherits A + B
discovers C
   ↓
PERSON 4
inherits A + B + C

And this keeps going.

Eventually something rather strange happens.

The new human is no longer born into a small amount of previous experience.

They arrive into an accumulation.

That takes us back to the thought from earlier.

Every child arrives late.

Education Begins to Look Like a Shortcut Through Other People’s Time

This is the part I had not really thought about.

If ten people before me spent their lives discovering things, I do not have ten lifetimes available to repeat their work.

I get one.

So somehow, their time has to be compressed into mine.

A story can do that.

A demonstration can do that.

Watching someone can do that.

Language can do that.

Practice alongside another person can do that.

Eventually writing can do that.

But we do not need to get there yet.

The important thing is simpler.

Education allows one human to begin from some of the work already completed by other humans.

It transfers starting position.

Remove Transmission, Keep Learning

Not schools.

Education.

Imagine that useful experience is no longer passed from one person to another.

You can still learn.

Reality will teach you plenty.

Touch the fire.

Fall down.

Try again.

Get lost.

Find food.

Watch what happens.

Human beings are capable of learning from experience.

So perhaps education is not necessary for learning.

That distinction matters.

Learning can happen alone.

But without education, the cost becomes very different.

Every individual has to acquire vastly more from direct experience.

And direct experience can be slow.

Sometimes harmlessly slow.

Sometimes painfully slow.

Sometimes fatally slow.

There Is a Limit to Rediscovery

Suppose I want to learn how to make bread.

Perhaps I can experiment.

Eventually I might get somewhere.

Now suppose I want to understand infection.

Or structural engineering.

Or navigation.

Or mathematics.

Or metallurgy.

Or childbirth.

Or weather.

Or agriculture.

Or law.

At some point, the idea that each person should independently rediscover everything becomes ridiculous.

Not because humans are incapable of discovering.

Because a human lifetime is finite.

That may be the constraint sitting underneath education.

Perhaps Education Exists Because One Lifetime Is Not Enough

That sounds strange.

But consider it.

The world can accumulate experience across thousands of people and thousands of years.

I cannot.

I have one life.

A child has a limited number of years before they have to begin operating increasingly independently.

So there is an asymmetry:

ACCUMULATED HUMAN EXPERIENCE
████████████████████████████████████████
ONE HUMAN LIFETIME
████

If every individual has to personally reconstruct the accumulated world from experience, the arithmetic simply does not work.

There isn’t enough time.

That Gives Education a Different Reason for Existence

The shallow version might be:

Education exists so people can learn.

But people can learn without education.

A slightly better version:

Education exists to pass knowledge from one person to another.

True.

But why does that matter?

Keep going.

Perhaps:

Education exists because useful human experience accumulates faster and further than any new individual has time to rediscover for themselves.

Now we have a reason.

And it appears before schools.

Before curricula.

Before examinations.

Before professional teachers.

The reason appears as soon as:

WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN LEARNT
>
WHAT THE NEXT PERSON HAS TIME TO REDISCOVER

Once that happens, some way of carrying capability across humans becomes valuable.

As that gap grows, it becomes more valuable still.

And the Gap Keeps Growing

Imagine the earliest versions.

Perhaps there are relatively few things that need carrying.

Where to find water.

How to use a tool.

Which plants are dangerous.

How to cooperate.

How to communicate.

But each successful generation can add something.

10 useful things
↓
100
↓
1,000
↓
10,000
↓
far more than one human could possibly rediscover

Again, not literal numbers.

Just the direction.

Success creates accumulation.

Accumulation creates an inheritance problem.

The more humanity knows, the more the next human arrives behind.

And education becomes the bridge.

But Education Itself Now Has a Problem

At first, perhaps it is easy.

Show the child.

Tell the story.

Let them follow.

Let them imitate.

Let them practise beside you.

But accumulation keeps growing.

There are more things to pass on.

Different people know different things.

Some things must be learnt before other things.

Some things are dangerous to learn purely by trial and error.

Some knowledge takes years to build.

Some people explain better than others.

Some children encounter the right person.

Others do not.

Some important knowledge disappears when the person carrying it dies.

The transfer problem itself is becoming complicated.

And now imagine leaving all of that to each individual.

Every child must somehow find:

the right knowledge,

from the right people,

in the right order,

at the right age,

with enough practice,

without missing anything important,

before enough of their life has already passed.

Suddenly the problem is no longer simply:

Can humans pass knowledge to one another?

Of course they can.

The problem becomes:

Can we do it reliably enough, quickly enough, and repeatedly enough for every new human who arrives?

And that is where I think we should stop.

Because something is about to happen.

Humanity already has education.

It has been educating all along.

But the information has accumulated.

The routes have multiplied.

The next child still has only one childhood.

And leaving each person to individually find and organise all of this becomes increasingly slow and unreliable.

The organisation of education becomes a problem in its own right.

We have not built the school yet.

But now—

we can finally see why someone might.