experiential education – Polistra's Mill

More rambling on UATX

Most of our institutions are stuck in a Parkinsonian positive feedback loop, often without any real reason. Corporations and universities and media channels keep punching and torturing and strangling their customers, and then they wonder why their customers are running away.

Life is negative feedback. If the current path is leading to failure, try something different. This is the most basic fact of life, and the institutions can’t seem to figure it out.

Thinking about the Austin “free university” bait and switch again. Trying to be charitable this time, though I don’t really believe it.

Charitably: They’re stuck in the standard university path of accreditation and tenure. They don’t seem to realize that they CAN’T HAVE open discussion and standard university stuff at the same time. It’s just factually impossible and always has been factually impossible.

A university’s product is a credentialed student, and the credential is quality controlled by tyrants.

If the organizers really want an ‘academy’ that values free flow of ideas, they should set it up as a business with a real product. The students would be the makers, not the product.

I’m thinking of Bell Labs, but the same was true of every industrial research facility before the era of offshoring and Share Value. It’s probably still true in smaller companies.

Admittedly the ideas discussed in a glassware or wheat research facility are somewhat limited, but the process of productive discussion and the pleasure of creative discussion are the important learnings. The ideas are just the consumable lab equipment.

Above all, the students will get MORE EXPERIENCE and MORE MENTAL EXERCISE when working toward a physically achievable goal than they would get from the 136267th pointless rehashing of Plato or Nietzsche. Those “great ideas” were worn out a thousand years ago. A new variety of wheat, or a new way of refining oil, is GENUINELY NEW, and the students who help to create it will leave a GENUINE LEGACY.

Parallax

This author looks at the new allegedly planned Austin “freedom university” from a Catholic perspective. It’s mostly outside of my secular understanding, but her suspicions end up pretty much the same as mine. We’re marking the same target from different angles.

The Catholic viewpoint: UATX is strictly within the Enlightenment framework, with no centerpoint of the universe. Pre-1700 scholars were seeking to understand the universe as God’s will. My viewpoint was the same, except that I emphasized Islamic scholars more than Christian.

I peeked at the UATX website just now, and my major suspicion is verified. The website has a crime-tape banner across the top:

UATX is seeking authorization as a private postsecondary educational institution from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and pursuing accreditation eligibility from an accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Until it is accredited, UATX will not offer postsecondary degree programs.

My previous suspicions:

1. They’re seeking accreditation, which is a powerful force toward orthodoxy. The accrediting agencies expect maximum Wokitude. (New and perfect example.)

2. I don’t see a commitment to avoid tenure. After tenure gets up and running, there’s no escape from ever-narrowing orthodoxy.

3. I don’t see a Trinity House motivation loop. If they simply invite the right kind of students, the wrong kind of students WILL get in and ruin the setup. Stings and APs have plenty of Deepstate money, and know how to manipulate the system.

Maintaining an unorthodox purpose against the headwinds of Parkinson bureaucracy and accrediting agencies requires a more specific feedback loop of money for value. Trinity House, working for safe navigation, has been funded by ships safely reaching port, and it has maintained its purpose for 500 years. Funding for this university needs to depend on students safely reaching the port of independent thinking. How? I don’t know, but I’m sure the TWO-WAY OBLIGATION is necessary.

Interesting thought, uninteresting research

An interesting thought contained in a mostly uninteresting research paper.

The abstract:

Many economic decisions, such as whether to invest in developing new skills, change professions, or purchase a new technology, benefit from accurate estimation of skill acquisition. We examine the accuracy of such predictions by having experimental participants predict the speed at which they will master an unfamiliar task. The first experiment finds systematic underestimation of learning, even after multiple rounds of performance feedback. Replicating earlier findings by psychologists, we observe an abrupt drop in confidence, from overconfidence to underconfidence, following initial task experience. The second experiment shows that underpredicting learning leads decision makers to make choices that lower average payoffs.

It’s all Game Theory and online experiments, so the result is dubious. But the measurement itself is interesting. After 16 years of purely memorized learning, with very little exposure to real life, we don’t have an accurate feel for the difficulty of real life. We may tend to see it as easy because our teachers and textbooks have been telling us that real life is trivial and not worth learning. I’m not sure if the one-way bias is universal.

Thinking back on my first real job, picking up skills from coworkers, I’m sure that I underestimated some parts of the job and overestimated others.

In a culture where everything is picked up by experience from parents and employers, starting at age 7, prediction of a new task is likely to be accurate.

WPA 1/5, background

Time for another review/renew series. Five parts from top to bottom.

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The New Deal set up dozens of overlapping agencies at first, then gradually simplified the arrangement. In other words, FDR didn’t allow Parkinson; didn’t let agencies create problems to guarantee growth. Unneeded agencies were removed or merged. Bureaucrats were forced against their will to SOLVE PROBLEMS.

Most of these agencies ended up as part of the WPA in name or in reality, and all of their products are remembered generically as WPA, without trying to separate the funding and authority of the various names.

The National Youth Administration was one of the originals; later it blended with CCC. The 1941 final report of the NYA tells us why the New Deal was focused on WORK, not PAY, and why this focus was crucially needed at a time when REAL PROBLEMS were causing REAL REVOLUTIONS.

Providing young people with sound employment, representative of a cross-section of contemporary American commerce, industry, and agriculture, was in keeping with the best tradition of American life. From Benjamin Franklin on down, American young people had learned trades, unit skills, the banking business, store clerking, garage work, railroading or what have you, through actually going to work and learning through doing.

When such opportunities became limited in the process of economic development and subsequent depression years, the vast majority of citizen leaders found the NYA method desirable, and led in the organizing of such work for young people in their communities.

Why was a New Deal needed? The report runs a detailed comparison between Europe and US after WW1, with special attention to the form and style of youth movements in Germany and Russia.

How the youth problem in extremis became a concern of national governments was demonstrated by the regimented lengths to which the Nazi and Fascist governments went to control the mental and physical development of youth for nationalistic ambitions and in so doing usurped to a major degree the influences of the home, the school, and the church. These countries, particularly Germany, were so effective in their psychological, educational, and military methods with the younger generation that they were prepared to subdue the continent of Western Europe, and subsequently to challenge the power of democratic peoples throughout the world . In these Fascist countries, government controlled youth programs, as well as government controlled youth organizations, were designed instruments to inculcate and perpetuate the political ideology of the Nazi and Fascist Party Leaders.

What was special about Germany?

Hitler Youth were required to give complete obedience not only to Hitler, as supreme leader, but to other national leaders and to the leaders in the different grades in the entire hierarchy above the individual young person. The organization was strongly nationalistic, dominated by the Nazi doctrine of racial purity. Emphasis was placed on physical achievement and bodily fitness rather than on intellectual prowess. Young people were attracted by the uniform, marching, public display, hiking, and sports activities.

Of course Krauts are always marching together in perfect UNISON, precisely obeying the personal orders of the ruler down to the 7124th decimal place. Kraut genes are constant, Hitler was a variable. Hitler simply overlaid his ideologies on the goose-stepping Kraut genes.

Russians don’t have the mechanical synchromesh gene. As Henry Ford found, Russians are even less sync-able than Americans. So Lenin had to aim his youth movements in a different way, focusing on serving the country instead of obeying the god-like leader.

A strong youth movement has always been a part of the Soviet Union’s program. The Soviet Union believed that its future depended largely upon its youth. Great strides have been made in the educational system to reduce illiteracy. In the case of university students, large numbers have been enabled to take university courses through a system of special allowances paid either by the government or by the administrative bodies for which the students expected to work upon completing their courses. In 1935, it was estimated that approximately 80 percent of the university students were receiving allowances to enable them to live while studying.

All youth organizations in the Soviet Union are included in one organization — the Communist Union of Youth, which is open to young people 15 to 26 years of age who are loyal to the Soviet Government. The Communist Union of Youth was formed at an all-Russian congress of youth organizations in October 1918 and retained its organizational structure with a few modifications and additions until 1936, when it drew up an entirely new program and statutes. The period of reconstruction in Russia was considered as over, and the Communist Union of Youth now directed its effort toward the filling of the tremendous needs of industry and agriculture for trained and well-educated workers.

The Soviet focus on training was constant from 1936 to 1990. In those years we were steadily moving AWAY from training and into memorizing nonsensical theories and fake “facts”. Sputnik allegedly woke us up, but we responded by moving EVEN FASTER into bizarre and useless memorized theories.

The New Deal was closer to the Russian model, focusing on SKILL TRAINING at all levels, and aiming to help the country. The NYA/CCC trained youngsters while using and paying for their labor. WPA trained adults while using and paying for their labor. The agriculture programs trained farmers while subsidizing their products to protect them from the murderous futures markets.

The missing element, part 2

Continuing from here. Passive vs active, facts vs experience, in education. Here’s a sharp comparison from the early ’30s.

RCA was promoting the passive version in a sneaky way.

VITALIZED EDUCATION

Radio has added to the plan of teaching a third dimension through which it may project a living personality into the school room or allow the student to seemingly be present at the enactment of an historical event. It may instantly transport the student to any part of the world, where, as in a great laboratory, he may know and share the thrill of discovery and the satisfaction of achievement. It has made modern education a newly vitalized force, its instruction glowing with reality.

Through the radio, a course in music appreciation by a world famous musician may be brought to the children of a distant school where, perhaps, there was no music at all before. A prominent government official may tell of the function of his department in the affairs of state or discuss the problems of the day. The distinguished scientist may explain the advance made in the treatment of disease or in the utilization of natural resources. The famous explorer may describe his experiences from the far outposts of civilization. School today has become a place of communion with the greatest personalities of the age.

Vitalized? No, devitalized.

Glowing with reality? No, glowing with unreality. The Greatest Personalities are unreal and unachievable.

Music appreciation is the opposite of singing. There was plenty of music in the ordinary schoolroom.

A scientist explaining his “advances” is the opposite of learning a skill. Every skill involves experimentation, systematic or otherwise.

A famous explorer describing his experiences is the opposite of exploring your own territory.

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Here’s a well-written account of the active approach, as encouraged and funded by the WPA school lunch program. (From Marjorie Barton’s book ‘Leaning on a Legacy’ about WPA in Oklahoma, not online.)

Methods of food preparation varied by the size of the school. The one-room rural school was given commodities to make stew, cornbread and biscuits. At the West/East Cloudy School near Rattan, a former teacher said that the stew was put on the stove in the morning and by lunchtime was not only ready, but creating hunger pains. She said the students loved to help with the preparation. Everyone brought their own bowl and took turns washing dishes.

WPA recognized one basic fact: Humans are designed to be USEFUL. People want to make things. People need to be needed. Previous ‘relief’ programs were not satisfying this basic need. WPA gave every conceivable skill a chance to be useful and honest. Most of the work created long-lasting improvements in human life, work, nutrition, and recreation. The workers could look at their COMPLETED RESULT with satisfaction, and future generations continued to appreciate and USE the COMPLETED RESULT. Real work, real order, real value, and above all real beauty.

Now we’ve returned massively to the previous ‘relief’ programs. For 40 years we’ve been offshoring jobs. In 2020 we simply prohibited useful work. Universal Basic Income guarantees that people will be useless, which is a sneaky form of genocide.

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Calibrating: In fairness, RCA was selling a helper for active learning at the same time that it was promoting passive learning. The same booklet includes an ad for the Radiola 86, a radio and phonograph and RECORDER.

Students could record their own songs or narrate their own explorations, and preserve the result for posterity.

Still more Zenith musings

The Zenith memory pulled me back into those first few months after release from prison.

I was appreciating freedom, but I was starting out on the wrong track AGAIN.

What was the wrong track? COLLEGE, and especially college courses in physics and math. College drove me crazy, drove me into hopeless depression which led inevitably to jail.

What was the right track? Printing and typesetting, which would have led to editing. Or any career using language skills, not math skills.

I can forgive the wrong choice immediately after high school, because there was NO information or guidance available in the correct direction. Culture and parents and friends and mentors were all pushing toward a degree in physics. The wrong choice after prison was not forgivable. At that point I knew what had happened, and should have tried a different path.

Those first few months of Zenith-flavored freedom were spent in an apartment in Stillwater, attempting to resume a physics degree from OSU. I hated it AGAIN, couldn’t grasp the theories or the PURPOSES of physics. I dropped out after a couple months and returned home in disgrace and depression AGAIN. After a month of moping around, my father got pissed and ordered me to go out and get a job, any old job.

THIS WAS THE FIRST GOOD ADVICE I EVER RECEIVED. (Belated thanks.)

I got a job as delivery boy at Cromwells in Enid, and soon learned typesetting and then offset printing. None of these subjects had been covered in college, but I had a real talent for spelling and grammar and fonts.

The old pressure was still there, from parents and friends and culture and mentors. Get back in school! So I did AGAIN, and quit Cromwells in the middle of mastering THE PROPER CAREER.

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Here’s a reprint that appeared by chance in the blogstats today. A random reader was looking at this item for an unknown reason, probably geographical.

From 2009:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Every day in science-oriented news we hear of a new study showing that some tendency, from honesty to obesity to (of course) breast cancer is partly determined by heredity. These studies are not needed. Pure waste. We ALREADY KNOW DAMN WELL that every human tendency, taste and talent is roughly half innate and half learned.

Studying each tendency on its own is like carefully examining every dog in the world and saying “This one appears to have four legs. And this one appears to have four legs. And this spotted one seems to have four legs. Surprisingly, this small one with big eyes also appears to have four legs. Amazingly, this big brown one seems to have four legs. Wowie zowie! I think this scruffy one has four legs as well! Will wonders never cease?”

The only thing these “studies” prove is that scientists are still hopelessly ensnared and stupefied by Leninist egalitarianism.

Finally we have one study with a truly new, surprising and crucially useful finding about heredity.

In short:

Intelligence depends MORE on genes and LESS on training as you get older.

From the brief article in New Supersitionist:

Previous studies have shown that variations in intelligence are at least partly due to genetics. To find out whether this genetic contribution varies with age, Plomin’s team pooled data from six separate studies carried out in the US, the UK, Australia and the Netherlands, involving a total of 11,000 pairs of twins.

In these studies, the researchers tested twins on reasoning, logic and arithmetic to measure a quantity called general cognitive ability, or “g”. Each study also included both identical twins, who have the same genes, and fraternal twins, who share about half their genes, making it possible to disentangle the contributions of genes and environment to their g scores.

Plomin’s team calculated that in childhood, genes account for about 41 per cent of the variation in intelligence. In adolescence, this rose to 55 per cent; by young adulthood, it was 66 per cent.

This is certainly counter-intuitive. On Nature vs Nurture I’m hard-line Nature, but I also know a thing or two about neurons. Thus I’d always assumed that differing experiences shape your ability to learn in different ways. Use more language neurons, grow more language pathways. Use more number neurons, grow more number pathways. If identical twin Bob is doing more mental work than Bill, Bob should grow more pathways overall, and Bob’s intelligence should increase more than Bill’s, even though they started with the same brain.

Apparently the surprising result is still unexplained. Since the study pools information from several countries, you can’t implicate one cultural milieu or one educational system.

And then the researchers claw their way out of egalitarianism for a moment to reach some valid conclusions for education:

Plomin suggests that genetic differences may be more accentuated if all children share an identical curriculum instead of it being tailored to a child’s natural abilities. “My inclination would be to give everyone a good education, but put more effort into the lower end,” he says.

Yes! Yes! Tailor to natural abilities! Yes! Can we spell apprentice?

This finding also settles the “puzzling” question of why black students seem to do well enough until 4th grade, then fall farther behind in higher grades.

If we were really serious about serving our black population (and half of the Caucasians) we’d quit trying to educate everyone to compete with the Chinese, because THAT WILL NOT WORK. IT IS PHYSICALLY AND GENETICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. Abstract intelligence has NEVER been America’s strong point, as Polistra has discussed in detail.

Until we return to our previous accurate reckoning of our comparative strengths and weaknesses, we will continue to get weaker and weaker.

If we want to regain our power, we should put all of our resources into rebuilding American heavy industry and cut all ties with China and India. Call it the Second War of Independence. Yes, it would cost a lot to buy out China’s bonds, but we’re currently throwing trillions down the drain to stay enslaved to China!
= = = = = END REPRINT.

Including India with China was probably inaccurate, but the rest still holds water.

The missing element

After being relatively inactive for a couple months, American Radio Library is flooding their website with new and interesting materials. In previous post I was reading some Education in Radio journals from an arrogantly elitist group. Now a larger pile of more general discussions has appeared.

From 1922 to 1952 to 2022, one crucial element has NEVER been part of the distance education package, whether by radio or TV or Wi-Fi.

ENTERTAINMENT and PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE have been absent.

Educational radio and TV and computers have always tried to provide access to the “best” teachers and the “best” classical symphonies and the “best” classical science experiments. They do an excellent job of passive access, but they stop there.

Before radio, distance education by mail order was full of Kits and Packs and Sets for all subjects from meteorology to electricity to biology.. These Kits were still available from outfits like Gilbert and Edmund and Tinkertoy in the ’50s, but they were not included or used or mentioned in the radio and TV offerings. There was no opportunity or invitation to run your own experiments and have your own fun.

Commercial programs did a MUCH better job of providing and using low-cost interactive materials, most of which were genuinely educational AND entertaining.

Betty Boop said it best, in 1938 of course.

Returning OJT

Batya’s message about the failure of modern “journalism” is focused on Experiential Education. She tirelessly repeats that journalism was previously a TRADE, learned on the job. Since the Watergate Coup journalism has been a THEORETICAL ABSTRACTION learned in grad school.

I’ve been tirelessly repeating the same historical switch in the field of science. The change happened earlier in science. Before the switchover, scientists and inventors worked in real life, trying to solve real problems systematically. After the switch, scientists became competitive theorists, developing crazier and crazier GENOCIDAL abstractions to serve the purposes of lunatic imperialist GENOCIDAL governments.

The career of Alphia Hart illustrated the earlier style of journalism. He started work at 14 as a printers devil on a local paper, and soon moved up to editing the paper, then moved to bigger papers.

Damon Runyan, who I finally looked up last week, also fits the old model. He quit school after the 4th grade and started working at newspapers. His literary inventiveness was famous. He didn’t become inventive in grad school, he became inventive by WRITING.

This shouldn’t be a fucking mystery. It’s simple arithmetic. People who start work at 14 have a 10-year head start on people who start work at 24. The late starters aren’t learning anything useful in high school or college; often they’re DELEARNING even on the factual level. They’re just losing a decade of REAL learning.

One possible bright spot: Substack is trying to resume OJT in literature. Substack is explicitly a training site for writers. Most of their resources are aimed at the needs of new writers, not the needs of readers. Initially I was annoyed at the hidden ‘masthead’ and the difficulty of finding subjects. After reading the ‘masthead’ for a while, I can see the purpose so I’m less frustrated.

THEORY KILLS. EXPERIENCE SURVIVES.

Sort of halfway self-solving

Wolf’s latest item about credit includes some disheartening stats. Earlier it appeared that Americans were taking advantage of the Federal blood money to reduce their credit card debt. Now they’re doing the opposite.

Wolf also includes a simple chart of college debt. Unlike most graphs that go exponential under the demonic influence of the exponential government, this one just goes up smoothly in a straight line from 2005 to present. Wolf mentions that college enrollment has been going down, which is generally known.

Well, how much and when? Stats from the Fed Dept of Ed:

I have zero Excel skills, so my graphs are crappy. This runs from 1995 to present, and the peak is 2010. Since 2010 more people have been figuring out that college is a total waste. Not nearly enough yet, but an encouraging trend of sanity. But debt is going up linearly, which means the shrinking college population is borrowing more per capita.

How about tenure? This one is more complicated. Percent of all colleges with tenure went down beautifully from ’93 to 2010, then rebounded partway. Dept of Ed says this is related to growth of profit-making useful colleges in the first half. The Dept cracked down on useful training schools in 2010, so the rigidly theoretical universities became a larger part of the total again. Though the Dept website doesn’t say so, the enrollment graph might reflect the same change because it has the same switch in 2010. If the increase was mainly in the useful training schools, the total would decline as those schools were closed.

This graph is percent of all faculty with tenure. Here we finally see a steadily positive trend, as even the theoretical universities are trying to reduce costs by hiring adjuncts and part-timers.

Supply and demand will solve many problems if the government doesn’t step in to UNsolve the problem.

Turnaround in SKILLS

Matt Stoller gives a history of consolidation in defense contractors, which was actually ORDERED by Clinton. Stoller is tracking a fairly sharp turnaround. The FTC is now rejecting mergers that it would have approved before, and the Pentagon has joined the switch.

Amazingly, the Trump administration tried to turn the tide, and even more amazingly, the military is starting to OBEY the Trump order. This is definitely good news. The offshoring trend started in 1958, as Ike noted. American tech companies began to lose interest in the risks of real commerce. They gradually abandoned all consumer electronics to Japan and China, seeking only the GUARANTEED profit of cost-plus contracts.

Sane armies have always understood the need to build your own weapons and supply your own food and clothing to the troops. When all your stuff is made by the enemy, you can’t hope to win a war.

This 2020 report by the Pentagon includes several ground-breaking turnarounds.

Ultimately, the most important asset our defense industrial base possesses isn’t machines or facilities, but people. America needs an ambitious effort, like the Eisenhower National Defense Education Act, to support education and training for manufacturing skills required to meet DoD and wider U.S. requirements. As the Industrial Capabilities Report notes, while China has four times the U.S. population, it has eight times as many STEM grads, while Russia has almost four times more engineers than the United States.

AMEN, AMEN, AMEN. Note the return to Ike again. Amazingly, the report mentions the REAL problem. We don’t need more theoretical math grads or computer science grads. We need more SKILLS.

Virtually every U.S. president from Hamilton’s day until the dawn of the twentieth century understood that sensible and targeted trade measures – anti-dumping fees, countervailing duties, and even modest tariffs to level an unfair playing field – formed the principal tool by which America fostered its industrial base. The 1990ssaw an experiment in radical trade policies – dropping reciprocity – that made earlier presidents, such as FDR, Eisenhower, and JFK, all advocates of free trade, look, with their prudent tariffs, like protectionists.

Aside from the Woke salute to “President” Hamilton, this is a stern rebuke to the globalists. The ghost of Graybill is happy!

Sputnik again

Randomly wandering again through the old Computers and Automation mags at Bitsavers. In 1956, ran into a single statistic that activated my Sputnik gene.

Statistic:

Average number of students in class:
USSR 19 or 20 and decreasing.
USA 34 or 35 and increasing.

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I can verify that 35 was not just average, it was universal. I started elementary school in ’56, and all classes had 35 or 36 students. This was not a poor Appalachian village. This was Manhattan, a college town where professor parents strongly influenced the school board.

2020 finally caused most people to wake up to the EVIL POWER of the teachers union. The teachers union was the key to the 2020 holocaust. When Carter Mecher flipped the shutdown switch on March 11, he KNEW that the teachers union would instantly close schools EVERYWHERE AT THE SAME TIME. After that, most businesses had to follow whether they wanted to or not. Later, both Biden and the CDC tried to reopen more schools, but Weingarten refused.

It’s mighty hard to be MORE NAZI AND MORE TORTUROUS AND MORE HOLOCAUSTAL THAN CDC, but Weingarten is up to the job. She joyfully closes schools at the drop of a sniffle, and strangles and tortures and waterboards the kids who are stuck in the open schools.

We need a Nuremberg.

The 1956 number reminds me that the EVIL POWER has been running for a
LONG LONG LONG TIME.

The teachers union constantly demands more funding and constantly receives more funding. At the same time, the teachers union maintains a MAXIMALLY SHITTY QUALITY in its product. Fads come and go. Shitty “science” theories come and go. Shitty “history” theories come and go.

The one thing that NEVER NEVER NEVER comes is Soviet-quality education, ie SKILL TRAINING.

This year’s yak-shaving

I tend to do the same things and think the same thoughts at the same time each year, without trying. Keeping a daily journal or worklog helps to spot these patterns.

Right now I’m having fun shaving a yak. I started working on a 3d animatable waterfall spectrogram, extending the ‘live sine waves’ seen here. The graph itself is functional now, but the FFT input isn’t working yet.

I remembered that the Audin project, my first courseware and still my best, was meant to include a 2d waterfall spectrogram. Audin was on a grant contract, and the time ran out before I could properly include and test the waterfall.

I started converting the Audin C++ waterfall code into Python to run the 3d stuff, and then decided it would be even MORE fun to continue and expand Audin itself, finally reaching my intended goal.

So now I have to rebuild and expand Audin before I can get back to the 3d representation. (Well, I don’t really have to, but it’s more fun to think of it this way.)

Here’s the yak-shaving picture from January 2018, with a snowy landscape identical to today’s landscape. These annual verbatim repetitions give credence to real astrology.

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Sidenote: Since I was talking about natural selection yesterday, this process fits nicely into the theme of evolution by subtraction.

My original 2002 courseware was full of useful features. It invited the student to do real experiments, and had a wide variety of sound-handling and animation. The later versions in Windows started to drop the useful features because the NYC publisher didn’t like them. They wanted text and still pics in computer form, like PowerPoint. I had to fight hard to maintain SOME of the animations, but lost the interactivity and sound. When the Windows EXE was converted to online HTML/SVG stuff in 2015, ALL of the good features had to be eliminated. Global compatibility does not allow experimentation or interactivity. Genes and languages and inventions follow the same track, from complex and subtle down to simple and blunt.