Studying epistemology, there is a pervasive question about the nature and structure of knowledge development and knowledge transferance. What, and when, is the right balance between experiential learning (learning by doing and conversing and seeing examples set) and didactic learning (learning by listening, memorizing, discussing and parroting). Both have value, but their effectiveness differs by individual, by circumstance and by timing. This study contributes a couple of nuggets, i.e. experiential education is more important (or additive to productivity) in stable environments and structured, school-based learning, is more important in dynamic environments.
In very stable environments, the returns to formal schooling are small.We live in very dynamic times. Does that disavow the value of education? Not all, but it does suggest a rethink of the balance between learning as it occurs in the family environment (usually mostly experiential) and learning at school (usually didactic), and the balance between didactic and experiential within school.
In these environments, experience appears more effective than schooling for improving productivity.
Schooling is more important in dynamic settings: educated farmers are more likely to seek out information, experiment with and adopt new technologies and adapt to changing market conditions.
There is a small body of evidence suggesting that diffusion of information through social networks is important:
Bandiera & Rasul (2006): adoption of new crops depends on decisions of family and friendsAs with the formal schooling, these social networks will be more important when the agricultural sector is more dynamic.
Conley & Udrey (2001): farmers learn from experimentation of members of their social network
Foster & Rosenzweig (1995): farmers learn how to successfully adopt new seed varieties from neighbors’ experimentation
Ryan & Gross (1943): hybrid seed corn diffusion in Iowa based largely on neighbors talking to each other
That would seem to make sense. When things are changing a lot, you have to adapt quickly and you need to acquire and incorporate new knowledge at a faster rate than can be acquired only through experience. Experiential learning is great for acquiring tried and tested knowledge and usefully true heuristics. Schools are better at rapidly assimilating, assessing and transmitting newly emerging knowledge that might be broadly useful but to which only a small group might be exposed on an experiential basis. Schools are the source of didactic learning – the near rote generation, aggregation, vetting, teaching, memorization and testing of new information. Sitting and listening versus doing.
Experiential knowledge has the advantage of being well vetted and appropriate to known conditions and circumstances. It has predictability. The disadvantage is that it takes time and large participation to truly vet knowledge for its usefulness and validity. For every adage (representing knowledge built from experience) of recent provenance (e.g. Trust but verify), there are many dozens of truly ancient adages still valid (a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush). As long as there is sufficient stability in the external environment, there is usually plenty of time to accumulate and assimilate new knowledge. A period of some two million years lapsed between Australopithecine’s developing very basic chipped hand axes and the development of crafted axes and spear heads (by Neanderthals). The challenge arises when the average time taken to assimilate new knowledge broadly on an experiential basis is greater than the mean time of innovation (Mean Time of Assimilation > Mean Time of Innovation). At that point you have a cognitive pile up. By the time you have experienced and trialed something new, it has already been superseded. It is, in those circumstances easier to learn didactically than to learn by experience. For example; you buy the current version of Adobe Photoshop. You don’t use it often. It takes two or three years of occasional experimentation to get comfortable with it and begin to use it at all effectively. By that point in time, there are at least two, if not three, significant upgrades. Far better to learn didactically (taking an online course) and shorten the assimilation time down to days, than to learn experientially over three years.
Our past century can be characterized as a period of accelerating change along multiple dimensions including technology, business, economic, manufacturing, transportation, communication, government, society, cultural, moral, etc. In the first fifty years, 1900-1950, we responded by seeking to get more children into primary and secondary education and for longer. And in that, we largely succeeded. In 1900 only about 5% of the population graduated from high school and that population would have been heavily skewed towards urban and wealthy demographics. By 2010, virtually everyone has the opportunity to obtain a secondary level of education – 100%. Regardless of opportunity, some 70% actually complete a secondary degree. We increased our stock of human capital simply by increasing the quantity. And it paid off in terms of strengthening national economy (increased productivity) as well as material improvements in the lives of virtually all citizens (income, length of life, health, education attainment, etc.)
After the 1950’s, the dynamic changed somewhat. The pace of change continued to accelerate and we met that acceleration with increased resources per capita in school with an increase of more than 300% in the share of GNP dedicated to education. We ran out of opportunity to increase the number of people being educated, and started focusing on increasing the volume and quality of that education. However, on most measurable counts such as graduation rates, test scores, etc. we seem to hit a plateau sometime around the 1970s. Results either flat-lined or began declining marginally. This began to show up in some of the national productivity and income numbers. Up until the 1980s, everyone was getting richer albeit some got richer at a greater rate than others. From the 1980s onwards we began to encounter situations where segments of the population were only holding their own in terms of productivity and income, while others were still increasing their productivity. Certainly some of the source of those changes would have to be changes in the global economic structure (freer trade, more competition, etc.). But some of that slowdown in productivity growth is also almost certainly attributable to changes in educational attainment and effectiveness.
It is almost as if schools, which are the more effective means of increasing productivity during periods of change, may have been outpaced. Even though they are the more effective means of increasing productivity in periods with a high rate of change, they haven’t been able to keep up. What might be going on to explain that?
I wonder if there isn’t an interdependency that is being overlooked. Two assumptions: 1) Families are more effective at generating and transmitting long term, experiential learning. Things like learning table manners, how to get along with difficult family members, how to hold a conversation, how to help those that don’t want help, how to express one’s views so that others can comprehend, how to reconcile people’s words with their actions – these are important lessons, usually learned best through experience and that experience is usually most available in a family structure. 2) Schools are structured to drive the transmission of formal knowledge via didactic means. Lessons in a classroom based on reading materials, memorizing, discussing and then repeating it back in terms of structured tests. This is not to say that families don’t occasionally teach didactically or that there aren’t opportunities for experiential learning in a school setting. Both things occur. However, the bulk of experiential learning likely occurs within a family setting and the bulk of didactic transmission of knowledge occurs in schools.
Accepting the premise that schools (didactic learning) are better are disseminating and transmitting new knowledge in times of high change which will in turn lead to greater productivity – why has there been a slowdown in productivity growth in the past few decades when we have been increasing the amount of resources dedicated to schools? This seems paradoxical. We are spending more on that mode of knowledge transmission that ought to be of the greatest assistance in productivity growth and we are not getting the results we seek.
Perhaps what we are seeing is both an interplay and a tipping point. In order for didactic learning to be effective, perhaps there is a dependency on effective experiential learning. Children bring to school a portfolio of knowledge about appropriate behaviors, self-discipline, implicit comprehension of hierarchies, etc. which they have learned experientially. What happens if they no longer bring that critical portfolio?
There are at least three candidates that might cause this; 1) Decline in the integrity of the nuclear family, 2) Decline in family size, and 3) Decline in family epistemological effectiveness.
The flattening out of didactic results (circa 1970-1980) matches with the time frame in which numerous measures of family capacity began to erode. The percentage of children born out of wedlock and the percentage in a single-parent home have skyrocketed with fully 34% of children now in a single-parent home (from ~20% in 1900). The capacity for a child to acquire a full portfolio of experiential learning in a single parent home is sharply constricted.
Also happening in the same time frame, though on a more gradual basis, was a decline in the makeup of a household. Household used to be larger and more likely to be multi-generational. In 1915, the average household size was 4.5 people. Today it is 2.6 . That is a very large decline in potential experiential learning. It is actually more than a change in numbers but also a change in type. If there were an average of three siblings way back then, there was plenty of opportunity to learn experientially. If there is on average an only child in the house, not only is there much less opportunity for experiential learning but also, the child essentially has two teachers that can focus their full attention, i.e. the interaction is more likely to take on the characteristics of didactic learning rather than experiential learning.
Achieving universal secondary education in the period 1900-1950 would have meant an increasing diversity of child capability and preparedness in any single classroom. As long as families were relatively stable and intact in this period when representation of the full normal distribution of capability in the classroom began to match that in the nation, there would have been an increasing return on effort. Average performance would have declined (because of a greater normal distribution) but average productivity would have increased because of more people benefitting from didactic education.
However, after the 1960s family structure began to decline at roughly the same time that representativeness in the classroom reached a plateau (everyone who could be educated was being educated). Statistical diversity in the classroom ceased to increase because education was now universal. (Ethnic diversity did continue to change though because of emigration changes). However, ceteris paribus, diversity of school preparedness continued to increase owing to more and more children coming from a family environment less and less supportive of experiential learning.
So perhaps the decline in overall productivity growth as well as the stagnation in productivity in the bottom quintiles is due to a decline in the volume of experiential learning to which children are exposed (because of family structure erosion), an increase in the sheer volume of didactic learning that needs to occur (society is more complex and requires more set knowledge than twenty years ago), and an increase in heterogeneity in the classroom (percentage foreign born in 1970 was 5% and the percentage in 2010 was 12%).
So the paradox of stable or declining measured educational performance from classrooms in recent years, even when resources have been tripled and when classroom education should be most pertinent and contributing to productivity increases (per Parman’s research) might be explained by the facts that:
• There is an increasing heterogeneity of classroom preparedness owing to declining experiential learning (decline in traditional family structures)What this suggests is that, contrary to the full bore condemnation to which schools are usually exposed, they ought to at least be recognized for having held the performance results in line while at the same time absorbing an ever increasing range of child capabilities (language and background for emigrants and declining family structure for native born). Parman’s research suggests that, as long as the external environment continues to change rapidly, we ought to continue investing in schools as the avenue with the greatest prospect for increasing productivity, that we ought to continue to explore how to customize didactic education to accommodate the increased diversity of child preparedness, and that we ought to explore means of making families more effective in performing their traditional role of experiential learning. The latter effort likely including strategies for restoring the overall capacity of citizens to form stable family structures.
• There is an increasing heterogeneity of student capability because of foreign born nationals (foreign born raised in agriculture communities and in a different language are going to have a harder transition which will show up as reduced scores)
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