Modern Education is Broken
And there is only one way to fix it...
For the past sixteen years, I have been teaching English within the Japanese public school system, from kindergarten to high school.
Over that time, I have had a front-row seat to how modern education operates, not in theory, but in practice, day after day, across thousands of students.
And what has become increasingly clear to me is this:
Modern education does not teach students how to think.
It teaches them how to remember and repeat.
This is not a criticism of teachers. Most are doing the best they can within the system they have been given. It is a criticism of the structure itself, because the structure determines the outcome.
When you step into a classroom today, what you see is remarkably consistent.
Information is delivered, students are expected to memorize it, and then reproduce it under pressure. Once the test is over, the information is immediately forgotten, replaced by the next set of disconnected facts.
The deeper issue is not the memorization itself, because having the ability to memorize is valuable.
It is the compartmentalization of knowledge.
Every subject is isolated from every other subject. Mathematics is taught as if it has nothing to do with music. Language is treated as something entirely separate from math and music. The arts are often ignored, treated as ‘an activity that kids do’ rather than a foundational practice of what makes us human.
As a result, students never learn to see what actually matters.
They do not learn to perceive the underlying principles, patters and axioms that connect all knowledge.
And without that, there is no real understanding, only repeating.
Automatons repeat and cannot create.
The Fix
At one point in history, education was organized around a very different idea — The Trivium and Quadrivium.
The Trivium was comprised of: grammar, logic and rhetoric.
The Quadrivium was comprised of: geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy
* Let it be noted that I group all mathematics, including arithmetic, together — calculus, trigonometry etc. and just use the term mathematics as a general term.
The Trivium and Quadrivium were not simply a random collection of subjects. They were a coherent system designed to train the mind to recognize patterns, to think clearly, and to express that thinking logically and precisely.
What makes this system powerful are the way the different subjects echo on another.
Each discipline reinforced the others.
Each revealed the same principles from a different angle.
Modern education has lost that sense of unity.
Music once tied everything together.
Music is neglected in modern education, but music theory should be taken just as seriously as mathematics — because it is mathematics in space and time.
"I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music….music and physics are just different ways to understand the world.”
-Albert Einstein
Poetry, in turn, is mathematics and music applied to language.
And the same mathematical ratios, rhythms that create harmony in music and poetry were intentionally used by architects to construct buildings that have endured for centuries.
It is the same principles expressing themselves through different mediums.
If we are serious about restoring education, we do not need to invent something new. We need to recover what worked — and refine it.
One of the most important corrections we can make is to reunite mathematics and geometry.
These are not separate disciplines. They are two expressions of the same thing. In ancient times, geometry and math were inseparable.
Mathematics is difficult to visualize, but geometry is mathematics made visible.
When these are taught separately, students struggle. When they are taught together, understanding becomes intuitive. The student no longer memorizes formulas—they begin to see relationships.
A New Pillar for the Quadrivium
After arithmetic/mathematics and geometry are combined, that leaves the Quadrivium with only three subjects.
There is another subject which must take the place of the fourth pillar.
Academic drawing.
We all know drawing is the foundation of painting, sculpture and architecture.
But how does drawing help in mathematics, you ask?
When studying trigonometry in school, for example, did you ever get frustrated because you couldn’t visualize what you were doing?
Remember sine, cosine and tangent and the seemingly meaningless parabolas (those curved lines) your scientific calculators spit back at you? Those parabolas were describing ellipses.
Well, what IS trigonometry?
Trigonometry is basically a study of how angles generate proportion, motion, and form— beginning with triangles, extending through circles, and ultimately describing curved geometries such as the ellipses of spheres and cones.
When a student learns how to constructively draw a sphere or a cone and section it, for example— they are no longer dealing with abstract concepts. They are constructing a visualization of the abstract concepts they are studying and de-mystifying it.
Drawing trains the eye to see structure — and more importantly the mind.
And once a student can see structure, they can begin to understand it.
Academic Drawing is the shore where the abstract meets the concrete.
Here are some of my personal geometric constructive drawings I did while studying academic drawing.
Through Academic Drawing, the abstract concepts within mathematics stop being confusing symbols on a page and become observable realities.
This ties into one of the other pillars of the Quadrivium - Astronomy
How?
Planetary orbits are calculated using trigonometry because all planetary orbits are elliptical.
Additionally, trigonometry is one of the tools we use the calculate satellite trajectories.
What modern education lacks is not information.
We have more information available than at any point in history.
What it lacks is unity.
We need to return to a system where subjects are not taught in isolation, but as parts of a unified whole.
We need to teach students how to see the unifying principles which weave their golden threads through every subject.
We need children to see the world as a unified whole again instead of hyper focusing on its individual parts.
Modern education monumentally fails at this.
If we continue on the current path, we will produce students who can memorize and repeat many things but understand very little, who can pass tests but cannot use that knowledge to create anything.
If we restore these principles, we will begin to produce something else entirely.
Genius.
Thank you for reading.
If this resonates with you and you believe education should be about understanding rather than memorization — then I invite you to be part of what I am building.
Share this with someone who cares about their children’s education.
M.R. Post, Creator of Beyond the Cosmic Veil
I teach at a community college and I feel that the situation you describe is actually far worse than you recognize. Perhaps it’s because you have been teaching in a different country. In the United States, students do not learn to memorize or repeat anything. You mentioned that a couple of times as the outcome - students that can memorize. That may be true of the top few percent, but most diligent students these days only can be complimented for doing their best to follow directions and complete assignments on time.
I love this. I consider one of the saving graces of my life is the fact that I learned to read and play music at age 4, before I learned to read (via Superman comics, at age 5)
By age 11, in 6th grade I had developed a deep feeling that something was profoundly wrong with the way we were being taught, and somehow, I managed to avoid paying much attention to conventional schooling.
As to what to do, start the day (for everyone, not just kids) with music and movement (always with movement included). Do body rhythms (clapping hands, chest, legs, stepping, etc) to learn math, along with vocal rhythms - improvised to include poetry. Do a LOT of drawing for purely artistic aesthetic enjoyment- - and do all of this outside as much as possible. For younger children, do this in natural settings where they can draw and move around and intuitively pick up physics and biology that way.
They'll learn and love math as well. Learn the history of the place where they are (so it is meaningful and not just abstract dates and figures) and by extension, they'll be interested in the background history of the place, and learning about the people who came to live there they can learn about the history of all peoples on the planet.
As Dan Siegel does in his MindUp programs, intersperse 10-20 second (NOT forced mindfulness!!! ArghhhH!! kids hate that stuff) of joyful, creative, music/movement contemplative breathing moments, with a lot of self compassion, interpersonal play and improv, throughout the day.
Connect with people outside the school or whatever place of learning is used, so that learning is not seen as something you do in a certain place at a certain set time, but from the time one wakes up (aware of coming out of vast dream worlds that are connected with the waking "world") through eating, being "in school," playing, walking in parks, and yes, whatever one does on one's phone/tablet/whatever kind of computer/AI interface, right up to the moment of sleep when one enters again into the wondrous mysteries of dream and sleep.
Start that from birth and let's see a radically transformed world where we celebrate and cherish each other and our environment and no longer need "laws" to the extent we do now for the simple purpose of honoring and respecting all.