A12
Public Record
Excerpt From article.

On Remerica: The re-rebirth of a nation.

[…] The Board of ReEducation was established in order to find the best solution for massively overhauling the country’s education system. […] Several proposals were presented to the Board, but most of them involved a similar implementation of the existing system.

Pertrisha Brandish, then a professor at a small music college, presented a proposal called The Interest-Based Curriculum, in which she submitted only a short note and a piece of personal correspondence, which stated:

“This is a letter from my sister to my daughter. I think she describes something that has been overlooked by the education system, and its inclusion could have a dramatic effect on child development. I have been unable to think of a more succinct way to explain the development process she describes. I am currently developing a thorough investigation into what I call The Interest-Based Curriculum, but I was afraid of missing an important opportunity to create change so I’ll submit only her letter and hope it piques enough interest to investigate further:

To my niece, Dawry,

You are exceptionally smart. It’s easy to see just by the way you make your decisions (which isn’t to say you always make exceptionally smart decisions). I don’t give advice often, but I like you as a person and I feel like I should. It’s this: learning is easy. Learning is the most important thing you will do. All learning is, though — and here is the secret— is figuring out what you’re interested in, and then following your interest. The more you discover about a thing you’re interested in, the more you’ll end up knowing. That is one of the greatest things I have ever learned.

It also means, though, that you could end up learning a lot about something that doesn’t end up being useful. For example, I know some adults who know a lot about video games and not much about anything else. They all wish they knew how to do more things, but all that means is that they never found interest in anything else. This isn’t a letter about not playing video games, because I would be a hypocrite to write that letter. I love video games; I think you know that. Sometimes though, for some reason, I will continue to play a game even when I’m not enjoying it. That is the definition of a waste of time. So every once in a while, I’ve started to ask myself “Is this deserving of my interest?” I know the answer right away; it isn’t something I have to think about. If my answer is “No,” then I decide to stop playing that game, and as a result I play video games less often. Attention is the most valuable of your investments; never think otherwise. And like many investments, attention compounds with interest.

When I was your age, my favorite thing to do was to make movies. Most of them were awful. Some of them I am still proud of. Each of them I learned something from. Obviously I’m not suggesting you start making movies, but I do suggest that you seek out the things you are inherently interested in. To be “inherently interested” in something means that you are drawn to something despite any decision you’ve made about that thing. Discovering my love for storytelling was a lucky side-effect of my terrible filmmaking; who knows what tangents your hobbies will find? Once you find interest, it will begin to expand as other things become interesting, and continue to branch off, until you find the interest that only you could find, based on your experiences and your interests.

Those who don’t find their interests must defer to the alternative, which is to make decisions based on other people’s input. You could call this process learning through disinterest, and it has been the basis of the national education system for as long as it has existed. These systems teach by wrote—by mindless repetition of facts and formulas—which is all inevitably immediately forgotten for the next test. This teaching method creates students who are only good at repeating what they’ve learned through repetition. But if all of one’s actions are based on repeating and relearning the same thing as everyone else, how can anyone be expected to find something new—something undiscovered? That requires interest. Nobody who was uninterested in their field has ever (purposefully) done something remarkable in it (on purpose).

Learning works best when it closest resembles playing a game. That’s a scientific fact, probably. Once you understand the fundaments of something you’re learning, try to teach yourself the rest through experimentation. If you learn an entire skill through watching other people’s tutorials or guides, you will only be able to create like the people whose tutorials you’ve followed. But if you learn through your own messy experimentation, you will learn a skillset in an entirely different way from any person who has ever existed. I love that thought.

So if there is anything of value in this rambling mess it’s this: seek out your interests, and follow them unabashedly.

Love,
Your Aunt Magilda

“My sister’s letter made me realize that interest has been thoroughly overlooked in the school system. If anything, these systems are created to stifle its students’ inherent interests by guiding them by repetition. At the current moment, the only value that our country sees in interest is for the potential of ad-revenue. By using our capacity to track user interest, we can engage with students’ inherent interests and make them eager to learn about the things which bring them joy. Our interests are carefully tracked and studied, then immediately wasted on ad-revenue.” […]

Grilson Runnoweigh-Joles