Learning is something that happens all the time. You’re learning every time you fight with a friend, make a pitch and are rejected, try a new skill, etc.It’s not just something that occurs in a classroom.

7Learning is a top-down activity, not a dynamic skill

School punishes failure. It gives kids bad marks if they get the wrong answer.This is intended to incentivize effort, but it also makes kids fear failure.Success in the real world requires lots of failure. <a href="https://amzn.to/3ZzSn6q">To get good at something,you have to fail first</a>.

4Failure is bad

Repeating what someone else told you is not thinking, and it’s not learning. It’s just parroting. Unfortunately, it’s also what most of school consists of — just memorizing answers.Most of us graduate thinking that’s what learning is.

3/Regurgitation = education

So much of school is centered around authorities’ opinions — everything from the right answer on a test, to your own “worth” as a student (whether you’re a “smart kid” or an “average kid”).That default deference is hard to shake, but it’s important to.

5Authorities are right.

In school (both academically and socially), success comes from fitting in. Most of us internalize chasing conformity as a metric for “doing well.”We forget that in the real world, the greatest rewards go to those who dare to be different.

2/Conformity = Success .

School rewards getting to a singular “right answer.”Thinking like everyone else is good.<a href="https://amzn.to/3W7lH1j">We never learn that the best ideas come from divergent thinking</a> — let alone that just because everyone thinks something doesn’t mean it’s true.

1/Convergent thinking 

School equates book smarts with potential.But you can be bad at school and brilliant in other ways.“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life thinking it’s stupid.” —

6/IQ = book smarts = life potential

School teaches us that it’s “cheating” to work together on a test.And yet, <a href="https://amzn.to/3iHgaki">the real world rewards efficiency.</a> Using resources means getting things done faster. Moving faster = moving farther.It’s a *good* thing to work smart.

8/Asking for help and sharing resources is bad

What school/college fails to teach about life. Twitter thread from rebeleducator(on twitter).