&gt; our current factory style of education is a relatively recent development... Newer is not necessarily better.<p>That may well be, but the breadth and depth of what there is to learn, the sheer number of people being educated, and the communities, societies and professional lives that education is intended to prepare people for, have grown and evolved so much over the past few hundred years, particularly so as we look ever more recently, that I&#x27;m not sure there&#x27;s much meaning in comparing older styles with new and saying what&#x27;s a better or worse method, without taking it in context.<p>The current system may not seem better but perhaps it&#x27;s just that we&#x27;ve had to adjust things for the worse in order to scale, so that now children are learning 10x less effectively, but have access to let&#x27;s call it a &#x27;potential&#x27; education which is 1000x greater than what existed 100 years ago. I.e they&#x27;re getting a smaller slice of the potential pie, but the potential pie is massively bigger and growing all the time, so they&#x27;re all actually doing better on an absolute scale, even though it seems on the surface like the educational experience is worse.