Maximizing Discoveries

One question we are often asked is: “Will children at your school reach the academic level expected of an elementary school graduate?”

To answer this question, we wanted a way to compare, at a glance, the attainment goals of the national curriculum guidelines issued by Japan’s Ministry of Education (MEXT) with those of the Elementary we plan to establish, so we researched the guidelines. In doing so, we noticed something: the two curricula are designed in opposite directions. One could describe the gap as the difference between top-down and bottom-up, but since there is no up or down in the universe, it is better described as the difference between differentiation and integration. Put simply, it is “the direction of splitting apart” versus “the direction of joining together.”

A System That Starts from Differentiation

The current education system starts from differentiation. It treats intellectual ability as divided into “subjects”: Japanese language, arithmetic, science, social studies, arts and crafts, music, home economics, health, physical education, and so on. As the Japanese word for subject, kyōka (教科, literally “teaching divisions”), suggests, knowledge is split into divisions; in other words, the system moves in the direction of science, whose Japanese name, kagaku (科学), is built on the same character for “division.”

The current education system takes teaching as its premise. It is the culmination of a body of methods devised so that anyone can teach using a textbook. It rests on the notion that human children are incomplete as intelligent beings and must be made complete through teaching.

This system is upheld by centralized, uniform monoculture manuals¹. So it is not only MEXT’s curriculum guidelines: any system upheld by centralized, uniform monoculture manuals, even a new, alternative educational methodology, belongs to this same lineage². Even a methodology that markets itself on cosmic educational content is incomplete if the design of its system is differentiating.

Granted, it might be acceptable if everything that had been differentiated were eventually integrated again, but the academic world today shows no inclination toward that kind of polymathy. The prevailing current in academia is for amateurs to aim to become specialists, and for specialists to aim to become super-specialists.

A System That Starts from Integration

Our Elementary starts from integration. We begin from the most comprehensive place and strive to live supernaturally, strengthening the diversity of experiences and the diversity of relationships while losing as little comprehensiveness as possible. We understand intelligent life on the principle of preserving the polymathic potential that nature has given it. We therefore consider no human intervention acceptable if it impairs the workings of nature, and we hold dear the policy of not doing anything unnecessary out of human cleverness.

Because the directions we are fundamentally aiming for are opposite, the question at the beginning is hard to answer. With different starting points, the places children reach by age 12 are also very different. A comparison is simply not possible in the first place.

The attainment goal of the Elementary, for ages 6–12, is to have completed the preparation for the next, third stage of development: the “age of natural living³” from 12 to 18. That may mean re-experiencing the history of language and number phylogenetically, immersing oneself in research into the history of the universe, Earth and life, or exploring all fields of learning intuitively through Synergetics⁴, using the hands as tools for thinking. It means having had an abundance of this kind of Cosmic Study (cosmic exploration)⁵.

As a result, we expect that in most fields of the natural sciences, children will clear the level of a high school graduate by age 12, when they complete the Elementary. Some, we believe, will go on to the level of a master’s degree, or even to the level of creating new academic fields. This is no exaggeration at all. Here we would like to make clear how it can be achieved. If this logic is flawed, we deserve to be accused of false advertising.

Maximizing Discoveries

The mission of the Elementary is “maximizing discoveries.” In this respect, too, its design philosophy differs greatly from the mission of existing education, which is “to train and supply specialized human resources useful to society, in accordance with society’s demands.”

For example, research in geophysics, which even gifted students are not allowed to take up until university, is something children in the Elementary are guaranteed the freedom to pursue from age 6. If we define “doing scholarship” as “gaining discoveries and insights by specializing in a particular field,” then it is overwhelmingly more efficient to start with the universe, Earth and life, which can be called the embryonic disciplines⁶.

Children in the Elementary keep a comprehensiveness that extends in every direction while making all kinds of discoveries and insights in the opposite direction from existing academic disciplines. The discoveries and insights gained along the path from the flawless, complete universe toward our immature civilized society multiply emergently. By starting from the universe, discoveries are maximized.

Take the Long Way Around, and the Destination Is Far

Meanwhile, people regarded as once-in-a-generation geniuses in their fields have been made to start not from the principles of the universe but from the social common sense of human beings, and so they end up taking a long detour after all. Because of that detour, they produce their achievements only when they are already old. If you take the route from imperfect human society toward the flawless cosmic society, you are bound to take the long way around.

When you begin the journey of intellectual research with specialization, the further you push toward the cutting edge, the closer you come to the limits of that path. You can no longer ignore the contradictions between the findings of your own field and those of other fields. Some researchers choose to ignore these inconsistencies, but great researchers seek some kind of breakthrough by merging with other fields. Only then do they realize that merging multiple fields ultimately requires an understanding of how the universe works, that is, acquiring a cosmic perspective.

Lucky researchers who manage to touch part of the mystery of the universe pass it on to their colleagues through their research and bring progress to the whole field. Some receive awards, appear in textbooks, or leave their names in history. Recognized around the world as great researchers, they are applauded, and their long years of hard work are rewarded. And they all lived happily ever after.

Take the Long Way Around in Reverse, and the Destination Is Near

No, wait a moment. Start from specialization, reach its limits, be blessed with the chance to gain cosmic insight, systematically review your whole field on the basis of that insight, merge theories, and so produce academic progress: couldn’t this cycle be shortened a great deal if the order were reversed?

If the average age at which researchers make groundbreaking discoveries is 60, then by gaining cosmic insight first and then applying it to specialized fields and carrying out research, wouldn’t the average age of discovery fall by half, to around 30?

In a research life that starts from specialization, almost all the energy and time of the first half goes into coming to understand for oneself that the narrow, nearsighted view of specialization is mistaken. If true research life begins only with the reflection and cosmic insight that follow, then without the time spent noticing you have forgotten something and going back home to fetch it, you should reach your destination much sooner, and you could even set your destination much farther away. It would also become possible to take on larger, harder, more comprehensive problems.

Spending Life’s Finite Time Enjoying the Journey into the Unknown

As for how to use the finite time of a life, we want to minimize the time spent noticing something forgotten and going back for it, and maximize the time spent enjoying the journey into the unknown. To repeat, the mission of the Elementary is “maximizing discoveries,” so one could say that the mission’s success depends on maximizing the time spent enjoying the journey into the unknown.

So we cannot say whether children in our Elementary will acquire the academic ability of an elementary school graduate in the existing system. Conversely, though, we believe we can state with certainty that it is absolutely impossible for an existing elementary school to raise children to the intellectual level of someone who has completed the Elementary.

We are so used to measuring things against what already exists that it is no wonder we see everything as an extension of it. We humans are innately endowed by the universe with the ability to perceive intuitively “how things ought to be, cosmically,” and to work backward from there to find answers. Yet because we were raised in a differentiating education system that makes this ability atrophy, we have come to think in such a constrained way without even realizing it. This sad fact itself, we believe, is exactly what proves the need for a new model like our Elementary.

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Footnotes

1. A manual for raising things in single-crop cultivation. “Monoculture” refers to agriculture that grows a single crop. ↩

2. Educational methods modeled on organic farming may look Earth-friendly at first glance, but the structure “consumption of the environment’s productivity > recovery of the environment’s productivity” remains unchanged. If consumption exceeds recovery, the environment eventually becomes unsustainable. In the natural environment, for example, this leads to the destruction of ecosystems and the depopulation of life, as in desertification and isoyake (the barrenning of coastal seaweed beds). In the educational environment, we can expect the emergence of environments “as dull and boring as a desert,” where spiritual nourishment has run dry. Ultimately this leads to the depopulation of intelligent life, that is, the extinction of humankind as a collective of intelligent life. ↩

3. This corresponds to the adolescent period that Maria Montessori’s developmental theory calls the “Erdkinder” (children of the earth) period. Based on its own developmental theory research, and taking into account the history and natural environment of each region, Polymath Research broadens this into the “age of natural living.” (E.g., in regions with a nomadic culture, hunting and gathering centered on nomadic herding, without agriculture.) ↩

4. The discipline founded by Buckminster Fuller that deals with the structure of the universe. It treats the phenomena of the universe as the movements of cooperating polyhedral vertices, and explores physical laws from experience. ↩

5. “Cosmic Study (cosmic exploration)” is Polymath Research’s own development of “Cosmic Education” in Montessori education. It is continually updated to reflect the latest findings in physics and every other field of learning, so that children can explore and play with the universe more accurately. ↩

6. A concept original to Polymath Research: disciplines in an undifferentiated state, like an embryo. ↩