Philosophy

The New Education

Here at The Wayward Melody we have a pretty unique philosophy when it comes to education (and life in general).

All our experience, all the evidence we’ve seen, all the logic we can muster, points in one and the same direction. Our educational systems all around the world are heavily flawed at best and actively damaging at worst. Learning is awesome, learning is life, but the common views and policies around “education” make it ineffective and even inhumane.

Instead, we present a better way. People learn by doing, by simply being active and living. We’ve evolved to play and enjoy games because they are learning at its most natural and effective. Most likely, we had games before we had culture or civilization.

Learning should be both challenging and fun. Those can exist at the same time; in fact, they only exist at the same time. If something is too easy, we’re bored and not having fun. If something is just too hard, without the fun, we give up and go do something else.

In our ideal world, every kid would grow up playing a wide variety of games that challenge them and help them grow every day. We have written many articles about why this isn’t just a possibility—a curriculum of games—but far better than what we currently have. We will keep working to make this a reality for as long as we live.

Unfortunately, this is far removed from what many people consider “educational”. As such, this webshop provides a nice and smooth path towards trying this new style of education. A way to nudge people away from ineffective schemes and towards actual learning through games and activities.

The Nudging Spell

The different “Factions” (or “Categories”) all represent different steps on this path, and you can start with material from a category with which you’re comfortable. The Factions are sorted from the start of the educational journey to the end.

• Explorers: get inspired or curious by enjoying some new media or art, in the broadest sense of the word. (Everything in life starts here.)
• Sneakpeeks: found something interesting? Get access to all source files and assets behind that media. (Study it, explore it, see what’s possible.)
• Teachers: picked your favorite topic? Get access to fun exercises and worksheets to directly teach or practice it. (This aligns most closely to the curriculae in school systems around the world.)
• Quizmasters: want to test how far you’ve come? And perhaps share this learning experience? Do a fun quiz / trivia night about the topic!
• Puzzlepages: want a real and creative challenge that uses all aspects of the topic? Solve puzzles!
• Runaways: even better, do an “escape room” that combines multiple puzzles!
• Gamiverses: or want to fully test your knowledge and skill in a topic? Play an actual (board) game that uses and simulates it! (This is as close to real life, as close to a full and rich exploration of a topic, as you can possibly get.)

In a way, this implements the old adage of translatio, imitatio, aemulatio. Every learning path starts by merely “translating” something you find, observing it or studying it. Then you start to “imitate” it, which means actively doing the thing yourself, such as solving puzzles or exercises. And finally, to achieve real mastery, you start to “exceed” the original material by playing creative games that present new and ever diverse challenges.

If you are a teacher or firm believer in traditional education, for example, then you can start with the Teachers category. It provides simple worksheets to use in a classroom or give as homework exercises. All my experience teaching (and researching how humans learn) was used to make them. It aligns with guidelines and age-appropriate lessons used around the world.

But once your students have played around with a topic for a bit, maybe try a quiz. Once you’ve experienced that, maybe try giving them some puzzles. When you see how much they enjoy it, maybe organize an escape room around the topic.

Just go up the Factions and see how much more fun and effective education can be!

It is my sincere hope that providing the full path convinces more people to give it a try. And once they’ve tried some of our materials, they apply their skepticism to the utterly failed systems of education instead of to anyone who tries to change it.

Additionally, this provides easy scaling. If you find the resources in a certain topic just a little too easy, you can move to another faction (e.g. going from simple homework exercises to an actual puzzle or escape room). If you find things are too hard for your child, you can move back.

This allows the difficulty level of our teaching resources, in general, to be a bit higher than what many school curriculae use. We also did this because, based on our own findings, children can and do learn many skills much earlier than that.

Guardian & Apprentice

Many of our resources are meant to be experienced together. Especially the teaching resources require participation from whoever is doing the teaching, and they obviously have a different role than those learning.

We could’ve simply called it a Teacher-Student relationship, but this implies the wrong things (such as that these can only be used by teachers in classrooms). Another option was Instructor-Player, but this language was also too colored (as certainly not all our resources are “playable”).

Instead, we use the following terminology.

• Guardian: whoever is doing the teaching or overseeing the resource. Their job isn’t just to execute some activity or explain material, but to actively participate and make sure learning happens.
• Apprentice: whoever is playing the game or experiencing the activity. In most cases, a single parent/teacher is the Guardian, and one or more children are Apprentices. But such neutral terminology makes it easier to apply our resources in any configuration.

When resources are individual exercises (such as logic puzzles to solve), we’ll still call the one doing it the Apprentice.

Want a curriculum anyway?

As a big part of this “nudging spell”, we still provide a nice and linear curriculum. It tells you what topics are taught in each level and how these correspond to typical educational policies around the world. This is as “traditional” as possible, to give people a handhold and a clear starting point.

You can use the curriculum page as a loose guide. It is updated as more research surfaces, as we get more experience, and as the offerings of this store expand.

Notice, however, that every product says “comes before” and “comes after” on its page. These sections give handy links to the exact resource before/after this one within the curriculum! So when you’re done with a resource, simply click on the next one, and you can be certain you’re in the right place.

For example, the resource “My First Letters” comes before “My First Words”. It says so on the product page. Once you’re done exploring the letters of the alphabet, the next step on the learning path is to combine them into words.

You can follow these links on the product pages without ever looking at the curriculum as a whole. And yes, this is important to many, because it’s overwhelming to see the massive amount of things one could do at once. For both Guardian and Apprentice, taking things only one step at a time is much more manageable and effective.

It also prevents feeling like you have to finish resource X this week because you planned to do resource Y next week, and otherwise your whole planning goes wrong! Such thinking just causes stress. And it makes you overlook whether a child is even ready for resource Y when your planning says they should be.

Our Graceful Guarantees

When you try any product—but especially teaching resources—we strive to give the following guarantees.

• Minimalist: as little ink and paper required as possible. No fluff. We only put something in there if we think it’s absolutely valuable enough. Better for the climate, better for your wallet, better for your time.
• Self-Explanatory: wherever possible, our products are completely textless, using imagery and intuitive design to explain what to do. This makes them simpler, for basically all ages, and language-independent. Similarly, we employ textless (and fun!) tricks that allow anyone to check their own work/answers after using a product. (Example: if you connected all the dots correctly, the image of a flower clearly appears on the page.)
• Multi-Disciplinary: we mostly learn through association. The more different skills and topics that can be combined into a single activity, the better, and we try to leverage that. (Example: many level 1 activities start by cutting out the necessary components yourself, which means children get both that physical and mental exercise at once.)
• Unique: the reason this product exists is because it’s doing something that we think is fun, interesting, or very effective for learning … but we’re not seeing it done anywhere else. Similarly, we’re not interested in creating twelve almost-identical resources just to pad stats.
• Magical: as you probably noticed, this entire online store is branded as a cozy fantasy world. This kind of thinking, imagery and terminology is carried through all our offerings. (This is, again, different from most teaching resources that all use the exact same overly bright and aggressive colors and fonts.)
• Transparent: we don’t use shady tactics to trick you into thinking you need something, or hitting you with surprise fees, or misrepresenting a product. No amount of profit is worth the dangers of such dark magic … You get exactly what you see, for a price we believe is fairer than most, and you can often literally see the proof of how we made something by buying its Sneakpeek.

In general, we provide one product (per Faction) for every small step or topic on the learning path. That one product will have a number of materials and options inside, as opposed to just being a single page PDF. We do this to justify asking money per product (over, say, a subscription model), to prevent needlessly overwhelming people with hundreds of different materials, and, most of all, because one or two bundles are really all you need.

Also, check out our Printing & Usage Tips to see how serious we really are about being minimalist and good to the magical environment.

Skeptical Sorcerers

Does this really work?

I can’t speak for anyone else, of course. That’s the whole point. One uniform curriculum for everyone is guaranteed to be a terrible fit for everyone. Children should have a choice. Expose them to things, they pick what interests them, and this webshop tries to accomodate all your needs around exploring that topic.

I can only talk about my own experiences with certainty.

I have always loved learning, making, doing, following an interest. That should come as no surprise, given this webshop and the multitude of different projects I’ve made, scattered across dozens of creative pursuits.

I have hated school from the moment I was forced into it. It is no exaggeration to say that it ruined my physical and mental health, and sometimes it feels irrepairably so. I knew from a young age that it wasn’t just useless, but it was actively hurting the growth, intelligence and happiness of these children.

Everything I’ve accomplished is in spite of losing 20+ years to our educational system. It has done absolutely nothing for me.

For example, I played a lot of Japanese puzzles (such as Sudoku) as a young kid. I loved it. I obviously didn’t see it as educational. As a nice bonus, I was doing math exercises three grades above my own in primary school, and was one of the few who never struggled with high school maths. School did not teach me mathematics. Puzzles, games, and horsing around did.

Similarly, I played a lot of board games (such as Scrabble) as a kid. I read all the Harry Potter novels before I was “supposed” to be able to read. I loved it. I obviously didn’t see it as educational. As a nice bonus, I skipped grades entirely because I could already read and write well above my level. School did not teach me language. Books, games, and horsing around did.

When I was done with high school, I was forced to study (applied) mathematics. Because my parents, like most parents unfortunately, were absolutely certain that everyone had to go to university and you had to study something that was really tough and meaningful. I actually finished that degree with more than reasonable grades, while all my study books were left somewhere … in a dusty box … still inside their plastic wrapper. University did not teach me anything. I learned advanced mathematics from programming and designing video games.

I read books before I was supposed to be able to read, and now I’m a prolific writer in multiple languages. I taught myself how to code by simply trying it, failing, failing again, and that’s the fastest way to learn. I’ve never been specifically taught things like (managing) finances or planning (ahead), but never struggled with it (despite being severely hyperactive), because those are all skills you hone by playing board games.

Seriously. Monopoly is a terrible game, yes, but play it a few times with your kids, and they suddenly understand bargaining, monetary value, risk, and debt very very well ;)

Learning isn’t some extra thing that we tack on. It’s not something we must force kids to do, and once they get a degree, they’re done. Learning is ever present. Learning is life, every second of it. We evolved to enjoy games because they help us learn. Be stronger. Be prepared for future challenges, because we already saw them in a simpler game.

This webshop aims to provide this effective, play-based type of education. We merely provide more traditional materials to nudge people to give it a try and get them on board.