Civilization Mode

(Note: This is an AI-assisted teaser for my prior manual writing. If you like it and want to read more details about this topic/perspective, then check out my 100% manually-written blog and books!)

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Human progress works because each generation starts where the previous one left off.
We don’t reinvent the wheel.
We don’t rediscover electricity.
We accept guidance from the previous generation.
We learn about these discoveries, train ourselves to use them and understand how they work, then we extend them and pass them on to the next generation.

That’s how students should be taught too.
That’s what efficient learning looks like. Civilization mode.

Teach them the tools that people already discovered.
Give them enough practice to use them reliably.
Show them why they work.

The goal of education is not to make every student retrace thousands of years of dead ends that took geniuses to overcome.
The goal is to help students inherit these genius-level insights in a way that does not depend on the students themselves being geniuses.

Here's the 100% manually-written long-form that this teaser is distilled from, if you want to dive deeper: Efficient Lab Activities are About Demonstration, Not Discovery .

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