Image courtesy of ADD Photography
Woohoo! I found it!
An education system that works! As you might know, I’m a big fan of rebuilding the education system. What we have now does a dozen things reasonably well… but helping students learn isn’t one of them. Thankfully, I recently came across a model of teaching that REALLY works!
My Jiu Jitsu club.
I joined up at the beginning of October. And now, after two months, I figured out what they do so well. And a lot of the things could be transferred to traditional education!
Peer-to-peer teaching
The sessions are formally taught by our sensei, a brown belt (grade 7). But sometimes we split into groups and several are taught by lower grades, like purple belts (grade 4). Also, when we split into pairs to practice new techniques, the grades might go around and help us white belts (grade 0) understand the technique. And when we practice the techniques, sometimes I understand it better than the white belt I’m training with, and sometimes my partner understands it better. So we correct each other, or explain things to each other.
From the moment you start, you will be taught by many different people. Also, as you progress through your grades, you will teach others increasingly often. There’s constantly lots of back-and-forth teaching going on between people. You get to see what kinds of explanations help you learn, and what kinds don’t. You also explain stuff to others, which helps you practice explaining better. And you understand the techniques better through teaching.
Which brings me to the next point.
You are REQUIRED to teach to progress through your grades
Ever since orange belt (grade 2), you are required to teach bits and pieces in the sessions to progress towards your next belt. This has two absolutely awesome effects:
1. Teachings others helps you understand things much better
Whenever I learn a new cool thing, I just HAVE TO teach it to others. Just ask my friend Rich. I will literally call him up in the middle of the night saying “Check this out! I just learned this really cool new thing…”. Whenever I learn something new, I just pick up my phone and start dialing whoever might be interested.
- David DeAngelo
I got to around 1900 rating, and then just leveled off. I didn’t make much progress for months. Then I decided to start teaching others. I taught dozens and dozens of people of different skill levels. And my own success went through the roof!
- Ben Seeley
The first guy above runs a twenty-million-dollars-a-year business (it’s probably more now. That statistic is a bit outdated.). The second guy became a world champion at the game he was talking about within only two years of starting to teach lots of other people.
If we could only make teaching others an integral part of the education system. Maybe we could stop splitting people into classrooms by years. Instead, we would have different skill levels (instead of different years), and we would always mix them together in a classroom. The more skilled ones would help teach the less skilled ones. That would help the higher year students so much more than just sitting quietly listening to some rambling professor.
2. Teaching others since your early years makes you a much better teacher
By the time you get to a blue belt (grade 6), you will have been taught by dozens of people, and you will have taught others hundreds of times. Your average Jiu Jitsu blue belt is much better at teaching Jitsu than most school teachers are at teaching their subject!
In fact, in Jiu Jitsu, a brown belt needs to run his own club for at least two years before even potentially being invited to grade for his black belt. By the time a Jitsuka gets to black belt, he’s guaranteed to be a fantastic teacher.
Sure, some martial arts masters believe a belt should only represent your skill at the martial art, not at teaching others. Let’s not get into a discussion of whether that’s right or wrong. The fact is, Jiu Jitsu masters believe teaching is inseparable from being a martial art master. And I agree. It runs both ways. Teaching helps you become much better. And to be a true master, you need to know how to teach your skills to others.
Some days, we all practice the basics
Sometimes we split into groups by skill level, and each group practices different techniques. But other times, we all train together. Because mastery of the basics is what separates a competent person from a grandmaster.
I was at a major go [a board game of skill] tournament. After the day’s games, I was walking around, and saw one of the grandmasters reading a simple book about go that I’ve read years ago. We strike up a conversation and I tell him I’ve already solved all the problems in that book. He looks at me, and says “So have I. Hundreds of times. And yet I solve them again, and each time, I try to solve them faster and better.”
- Some random go player [sorry, I can't remember where I read this story]
Similarly, in Jitsu, the black belts still practice some of the same techniques they teach to white belts. They just do them so much better!
Jiu Jitsu students WANT to learn
Learning is an active process. You can not make someone learn. Sure, you can convince students to want to learn by threatening them with bad grades and extra work. That’s pretty much like threatening a slave with beatings if he doesn’t do your work. You won’t get exceptional results and a positive environment that way.
Until you convince students to actually WANT to learn, you’re fighting a losing battle. And the quickest way to make someone NOT want to learn is to force them.
Yeah, I know. It’s hard to reconcile the idea of “education for everyone” with “not forcing anyone to learn”. But I just had to bring this point up anyway. If we managed to create schools where students would WANT to learn (I’ve got some ideas about that), that would be the single biggest step towards a great education system.
Possible objections
Here are a few objections you might have thought of by this point. I’ll try to explain why some of these objections aren’t really a problem.
1. Jitsu is a skill. Schools are about learning information.
This is a good point. Learning skills and learning information are two completely different things. You learn skills by doing. You can’t do information. You learn information by connecting it to other bits of information you already know.
But in this article, I focused on the universal things that are great about my Jitsu club. The things that can be applied to any learning/teaching environment. I skimmed over how the club makes great use of post-practice improvement. Or how the sensei quickly explains a new technique, gives us 30 seconds to try it, and THEN proceeds to explain it in detail. Or how they masterfully break down techniques into simple steps to help us learn faster. Those are all great for learning skills. But I focused mainly on the universal stuff – most of which I haven’t seen myself until two months ago.
Also, schools aren’t just about acquiring information. In fact, the better the school, the more it focuses on skills rather than information. Real maths is about solving problems you never encountered before, not about memorizing algorithms. Real english is about analysing great writers and using that to improve your own writing, not about learning dozens of names and buzzwords. It’s more important to know how to find information than to memorize it. And all of these are SKILLS.
2. You expect 7-year olds to teach 6-year olds?
I have no idea. I’d give it a try. In the current education system, you usually need to get to be a postgraduate student before teaching others. That’s way too late. And even though in some schools a few select students get teaching responsibilities around 15 or 16 years old, that’s still pretty late. There might be a lower limit to how young a child can be before teaching others. But I would try pushing it as low as possible.
3. With all the different people teaching, won’t the students get really confused?
I don’t think so. You have the sensei (the classroom teacher) who walks around and makes sure everybody is doing it right. Sure, a yellow belt’s explanations might not be as helpful as those of a black belt. But they’re still damn good stuff.
How to use all this in our education system
I have a few broad ideas on how to use this in an education system. I won’t go into much detail, because I haven’t figured that out yet.
1. Replace years with grades
Instead of being “second years”, “fifth years” and such, students would get coloured belts, like in Jitsu. That way, smarter students could progress faster, and slower ones could take more time. You would always be learning mostly with students of the same skill level. Everybody wins.
2. Peer-to-peer teaching
Instead of separating classes by skill level (i.e. all orange belts in the same class), each class would contain people from all skill levels. That way, we could get full back-and-forth teaching going on.
Sure, some classes would be specifically for certain grades. But that would be an exception rather than the rule.
3. Required teaching to progress through grades
In Jitsu, you need to be a brown belt (grade 7), before you can run your own club. By the time you get to that level, you have been teaching others for years, and have been taught by dozens of other people. You pretty much know what works for students and what doesn’t. Contrast that with the current education system, where many teachers have no clue on how to make learning fun and interesting for the students.
If we required school teachers to be brown belts at education, we would have a guarantee of awesome teaching.
4. Mandatory grade instead of mandatory time
Instead of forcing students to stay in school for 12 years, I would let them out after achieving a certain grade. Say, a purple belt (grade 4). Sure, they could stay, and for example continue chemistry until they become a black belt. That would be analogous to a student continuing to postgraduate studies instead of dropping out after high school.
Some final thoughts
Sure, there are some things left to figure out. Maybe different belts for different subjects? (I could be a blue belt at mathematics, yet a yellow belt at history). What skills are needed for different belts? What to do about hard-to-measure skills like creativity and critical thinking? (Maybe have the students publish in established periodicals? Like have them get their short story published in a magazine?). And dozens more.
If you have any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment. I’m always open to being told I’m a complete moron and this would never work. As long as your comment is specific 
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