Learning Debt Compounds

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Learning debt. It starts when adults stop correcting all these workarounds, these hacks to get by.

Like, like you always use your forehand instead of your backhand, so you never develop your backhand. That’s a learning debt, and so is when you let a student keep on recalculating their multiplication tables instead of actually memorizing them.

Or you let them use a calculator instead of doing some simple mental arithmetic. I mean, I get it.

Adults don’t want to nag, right? They don’t want conflict, so they let these workarounds slide.

But that skill gap, it, it doesn’t disappear, it just hides. And it compounds.

And eventually it slows down progress. Students hit these ceilings that never even needed to exist.

But the skill gap grows so big and so ingrained that everyone just assumes that it reflects innate ability or lack thereof.

And if you scale that across millions of students, then eventually you get a system that leaves millions of students without the skills to succeed.

Further reading:

• How “Kicking the Can Down the Road” Happens in Education
• Common Failure Modes in Early Math Education

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