What we don’t teach children

Things are not what they seem

What is real? It’s a simple question, but one worth asking if you’re at a young age.

In my work in education, I’ve often come to the conclusion that the most important thing we can encourage students to do is this:

Question reality.

I don’t mean live in a sci-fi paranoia, or ignore real dangers, but rather that there is more to this world than what we see; that our world is coloured by the lenses and perspectives we accumulate. It is a pedagogy of reality, one which is important on a number of levels.

Most big solutions require thinking outside of our individual, day to day reality. For example, how do we respond to climate issues that have their cause and effect outside of our temporal frame of reference? How do we construct models of artificial intelligence that are fundamentally different from our own consciousness? How do engage with people of an entirely different background? The world is becoming more complex, and issues like these are only becoming more common.

To question one’s reality is a key to understanding large-scale problems, but it is also important on an individual level. If we come to understand that reality is not a rigid, inescapable shell, there is less ground to fear that our present situation is all that will ever exist. Indeed this feeling of being trapped in a meaningless is all too common, especially among the young. In an ideal education system, reality would not be a constrictive series of facts, but an always shifting expanse to be explored. With the latter focus, such education could hold potential in mental as well as intellectual health.

Is this not something we should teach children? Children have the intellectual capacity to learn this model, and teachers to teach it, such that any child can become an epistemologist early in their life. Rather than baking them into a pre-set unquestionable world, we can encourage them to examine things more closely. Rather than tell them what to think, we can help them to think about thinking itself. This perspective holds a relevance to learning in all fields, and bridges an understanding into advanced, abstract concepts.

When properly implemented, a multiple reality education model doesn’t require a disconnection from the world, but rather a closer examination of it. While there’s much to discuss in terms of what technologies, pedagogies, and environments can best catalyze this type of learning, the mere idea of making students question reality from a young age can have wide ranging effects, improving both the learning experience and the surrounding culture.