Experiential Opportunity Cost

The Reality Battery

Photo by Yves Alarie on Unsplash

I have a semi-serious suggestion for contemporary education policy.

Ban classrooms, computers, and textbooks—actually, just ban students—until individual kids can demonstrate mastery of a new non-standardized test called “The Reality Battery.”

The Reality Battery

It’s a simple test consisting of the following:

1. Name all the common trees and plants in your local environment.

2. Same for all the common wildlife.

3. Perform basic map-reading and terrain association.

4. Collect fuel and light a fire. Matches are fine.

5. That’s all.

I’m open to suggestions for improving The Battery. Perhaps some elements change based on your specific location. It’s pass or fail and can be administered by anyone who can pass it themselves. On second thought, there might not be enough qualified test proctors….I admit, there are some kinks to work out.

But.

It’s true that this test might delay or intrude on the invaluable time many students spend studying things like quarks, hadrons, and gluons…and without these, how will those students know anything about the world around them? It’s a risk we ought to take.

When we choose one thing, usually we deny another, and so it is with how we spend our time. This is a decision’s opportunity cost.

Why do we need The Reality Battery?

I would be glad to be proven wrong about this, but I suspect that a tiny minority of high school students currently studying quarks, hadrons, and gluons could pass the Reality Battery. I am embarrassed to say that I probably could not when I was that age. If I’m right, I wonder what terms like quark, and the abstractions they represent, mean to them?

As I write, a hopeful thought occurs to me about all of this. I have now probably spent more time wondering what those abstractions might mean to those students than those students are likely ever to spend wondering about it. Probably they consider it a diverting, or not—depending on their turn of mind—way to spend the hours they have to spend engaged in the activity we call education. This is fair enough and represents at least some reasonable engagement with reality such as it is.

And I hope you don’t mistake my cheeky proposal as a narrow critique of science curricula. All the subjects suffer from our contemporary alienation from reality. Education, after all, must include an acquaintance with reality. And since science deals with reality’s objective, measurable aspects, it is an obvious example of the larger problem.¹

But enough with boring-old-problems and semi-serious suggestions. Here’s a rock solid suggestion.

1. Get the kids outside and teach them the names and natures of plants

2. Same with animals.

3. Same with the land (use maps, and terrain association).

4. Teach them to collect fuel and build fires.

5. Start there and see what happens next.

   

1. https://brokenscience.org/modern-science/