You are not average. Why education should be radically individualised.

There is no such thing as ‘the average person’.

‘Average person’ thinking leads to problems. Systems and services that over-rely on averages can serve no-one particularly well, whether in education or the modern workplace.

There is a relatively well-known story about the US Airforce and the problems pilots had with flying their planes in the 1940s. There were many accidents that they couldn’t put down to either mechanical issues or pilot faults. They were at a loss as to why this was the case, but they suspected it might be related to the plane's design. They hired a young scientist, Lt. Gilbert S. Daniels, who had deeply studied humans and their physical properties as a way of exploring if the cockpits were suitable for their pilots. In his university work, he studied human hands. He wanted to understand what made up the average hand.

Painstakingly, Daniels measured thousands of hands and constructed averages for the critical dimensions. After a while staring at the data, he realised that no hand fitted the average measurements. No actual hand represented the average.

So, when the airforce hired him, Daniels had an opportunity to explore the same topic for a real-world problem with many subjects.

Up until this point, averages from 10 dimensions of over 4,000 pilots dictated the size of cockpits. Dimensions like sleeve length, chest size, leg length, neck circumference, height and similar physical characteristics.

One of the problems considered was that pilots were getting bigger, which meant the average would grow. In those days, only people that fitted norms became pilots. The interview process screened out everyone who was too tall or wide. When Daniels had remeasured everyone, he came up with a similar conclusion to his hands' study. No one fitted the average cockpit on all ten dimensions. And, just to put average in context, the standard was considered to be one that could be one third bigger or smaller from the average.

Before the study and the number crunching, leaders provided what they thought the results might be. There was a general view that the vast majority of the pilots would be within the average on most of the dimensions. After all, we learn about averages in a way that makes us think it should fit most people. So, the results were a shock. They didn’t make sense to the leaders. As they explored the data further, they found that less than 3.5% fitted even three of the dimensions. The cockpit supposedly designed for the average pilot was suitable for none of them.

Daniels believed that the idea of the average person fools most people. Indeed, there was a similar finding a few years earlier. A doctor conducted a study of over 15,000 women. He wanted to produce a sculpture of the average woman. The statue was called Norma. Because of Norma's growing interest, an American magazine shared Norma’s measurements with its readers for a competition. They were looking for the girl who best matched the supposed ideal of Norma. Nearly 4,000 people submitted their measurements. Less than 40 were within the tolerated range in five out of the nine dimensions. The winner, a lady called Martha Skidmore, was not very close at all.

What can we learn from this? Knowing averages doesn’t help design things that are useful to individuals when it comes to physical characteristics.
Fortunately, the US Airforce acted upon the findings to redesign cockpits. There was an immediate, operational need to make changes, and they implemented improvements based on the insight. Because of this insight, we have so many controls in modern-day cars to adjust seats, mirrors, and other controls.

However, when non-intuitive insights appear, people often try to explain things using different, unhelpful ways. For instance, the ‘average woman’ study concluded that women should do more to look after themselves. Rather than questioning whether averages were helpful, they blamed the individuals. And there is a lesson here: when using averages to design services, the individuals who get accused of being the problem when things go wrong.

When thinking about how this phenomenon might help education, it’s worth considering how much more complex humans are outside of 10 dimensions of physical norms. Once we enter individuals' hearts and minds, we find hundreds of potential aspects, with far more degrees of freedom. Finding ‘the average person’ is impossible.

Is there such thing as an average hope? An average hobby? An average interest?

Is there such a thing (really) as average intelligence? If so, which intelligence is most useful? Is it emotional or intellectual? Scientists can’t agree whether there is such a thing as a general intelligence score or how helpful that is to future life performance. We do know that specific skills lead to better outcomes. People who can read do better than those that don’t. Maths scores do correlate quite well to life success. But what about the rest of our ‘average’ curriculum-based education?

Once the US Airforce had redesigned cockpits for individuals, their fortunes changed. Their performance in the air became the best in the world. And it all came from the idea of questioning whether averages are helpful or not. Rather than fitting the individual to the system, the military began fitting the system to the individual.

At Cormirus, we believe in individualised learning. A radical individualisation. Education is intensely personal. Not just what you learn, but why. Individualisation means focusing on an individual’s unique motivations and abilities. It means we must help people discover their ‘why’.

Averages work for no-one.

Not the brightest. Not the least able. And, as it turns out, not the average.

Refitting our learning systems to individuals is the next evolution in how we engage learners for life.