School Is Not a Monopoly

The education system necessarily behaves as if knowledge fits inside a syllabus and ends on the last page of the textbook. A textbook does set a useful minimum route, but the subject almost always continues beyond it.

If the material is known only in the textbook’s phrasing, the knowledge stays fragile. An unfamiliar example, different terminology or a slightly altered problem can make the topic unrecognisable.

A little depth pays off out of all proportion: another textbook explains the same idea differently, a historical example shows where it came from, a practical problem reveals the limits of the formula, a dispute between specialists shows the question is less settled than it looked, and trying to explain the topic to another person exposes the blank spots.

Studying purely for the exam is not pointless. Sometimes the exam is a compulsory checkpoint and its format has to be taken into account. But preparation built only on predicting the questions produces knowledge with a very short shelf life.

It is better to distinguish two tasks:

understanding the subject;

passing the assessment procedure.

They overlap but are not the same. Good understanding usually makes the exam easier. Knowing exam technique helps you avoid losing marks to the format. Neither replaces the other.

The textbook and the syllabus give a route, but they do not exhaust the subject. Still less do they exhaust education itself.

School holds no exclusive right to education.

A syllabus inevitably chooses what counts as important. A textbook compresses complex events into a few pages. History is described from a particular point of view. A state system passes on not only knowledge but also a picture of the normal citizen, legitimate authority and the desirable arrangement of society.

This is not necessarily a secret conspiracy. Any institution reproduces its own premises, often without noticing them.

So it helps to read a textbook alongside some questions:

• who wrote it;
• for whom;
• which sources were used;
• what was left out;
• how the same events are described in another country;
• where the established fact ends and interpretation begins.

Teachers differ too. One can open up a subject for life. Another knows the discipline well but explains it badly. A third is tired. A fourth ended up in the profession by accident and now defends himself against the pupils with a register and a red pen.

There is no reason to assume in advance that every teacher is a sage. Nor to declare them all opportunists. A teacher is a source with a certain competence, certain limits and a human character.

A good teacher is valuable not for the number of facts conveyed. He shows you how to look at the subject, which questions to ask and where the pupil is deceiving himself.

If you meet such a person, take the opportunity. One good teacher sometimes does change more than the whole syllabus.

This can be checked cheaply: pick up a second textbook on the same subject. Usually it turns out that the definitions differ slightly, the order of topics is different, and what took a chapter in the first fits into a footnote in the second, and vice versa. A pupil who thought he did not understand the subject often did not understand one particular formulation. A textbook is not the subject itself but somebody’s route through it, chosen with an eye to length, teaching hours, the reader’s age and the format of the coming exam.

That does not make the textbook bad. It is simply that a route is not a map of the terrain, and a person who has walked one path for years starts sincerely mistaking it for the landscape.