Connection Between School Assignments and Productivity

 In this section, I'd briefly like to discuss the connection between school assignments and productivity, and perhaps how the nature of school work fits in with, affects, and is affected by our psychology and mindset.

The first aspect of this discussion I'd like to discuss is that of variety. In school and college, we take multiple courses at once, with an objective to grow our understanding little-by-little on a range of topics, with varying depth, and varying topic. In addition, within these courses, we have the opportunity to set goals for ourselves, fulfill tasks, which vary in difficulty, as well as compare ourselves with other people. Unlike perhaps a work environment, where the number of tasks day-to-day is rather limited, school provides an opportunity to be faced in very different types of settings, some of which we enjoy, and others of which we find distasteful. Nevertheless, this aspect of switching increases the number of tasks we have to attend to, in the finite time we work, and increases the context swtiching we experience daily. I feel that such a degree of context switching is beneficial to the brain, as it inhibits burnout (it seems less likely to get extremely tired of many subjects at once altogether, as opposed to a single task, which may become monotonous quickly, or not provide room for variety or the opportunity of presenting ourselves with different types of tasks). In art class, we exercise a starkly different skillset than in math class, so with history class.

Another interesting aspect of the school environment is its rigidity. School schedules are fixed, so as to allow an entire classroom of students, as well as the instructor, to coordinate together, and to be placed together within a social learning environment. Homeworks have due dates, tests are taken at a certain time on a certain day, and projects have guidelines. This rigidity, by removing some of the groundwork we would otherwise have to do ourselves (such as the initiative we have to take when waking up at the same time every day), the main mental task is left to the fulfillment of the somewhat arbitrary task, such as filling out a worksheet on addition. There is nothing integral or profound of the worksheet whose completion or lack thereof would have a significant impact on our learning; nevertheless, the cumulative effects of such worksheets compound together to form our practice and increase the amount of exposure we have to fundamental topics.

So all in all, by removing some aspect of rigidity in our days' scheduling, and providing us with a variety of tasks, I feel that the current school system succeeds at making its students comfortable with the concept of work, in particular that which is primarily designed to enable the growth of the student's skillset and intellect, rather than to solve an important problem; there are very few unsolved or entirely unique homework problems that are assigned. For this reason, school is successful with acquainting students with the idea of work.