Learning Against the Grain

Refining the Material of Life

The Virtue of Struggle

Schools aim to create life-long learners, but then make the experience of learning feel like a chore. We were born to dream and explore, yet school often extinguishes our passion before it ignites. Too often, modern education works against the natural grain of students’ curiosity, individuality, and intrinsic motivation.

I value the stoic perspective; not taken to its extremes, but in the Bruce Lee sort of way, “Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”¹ One core tenet of stoicism is the idea of struggle: "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." (Marcus Aurelius)² This concept is supported by findings in recent neuroscience. Andrew Huberman summarises that “Engaging actively with the material (e.g., self-questioning, focused attention) enhances learning effectiveness. This engagement often feels challenging but is crucial for stimulating change in neural circuits. The "strain" felt during learning is an indication that the brain is adapting.”³

Struggle is important but this shouldn’t provide justification for creating obstacles, or for being forced to endure struggle that is detached from our motivations. We accept struggle when we choose to achieve something that matters to us. For example, ‘I want to learn how to play the guitar’; or, ‘I want to speak Polish’. The destination is a conscious choice so motivation can drive the process throughout the struggle. This is very different from ‘I have to write a 1000 word essay on the origin and cultural significance of marshmallows’ (and you hate marshmallows). Unfortunately, much of the learning that happens in school falls into the second category - objectives detached from the agency of the student.

Being a ‘hard worker’ is praised as a virtue throughout our childhoods. When we celebrate hard work we convey the message that work should feel hard. We communicate that the strain of learning should feel like drudgery. We teach students to power through the resistance of their bodies when those bodies are trying to escape something misaligned. Very often, this is an ‘immune reaction’ to an imposed obligation - somebody wants something from you that you don’t want to give.

Reclaiming Curiosity

Cognitive Load Theory⁴ reminds us that even joyful learning needs space to breathe; without pause, even passions can be smothered. Our appetite to learn is innate. Our bodies naturally crave the exploration of ideas if given time and space to become curious. In this way, boredom becomes a catalyst for curiosity. At any given time, most of us could easily compose a list of things that we would love to learn: a new language, an instrument, a creative skill.

Our bodies are hard-wired for exploration and self-expression. Unfortunately, we’ve crafted schools that work against this natural compulsion. We impose learning objectives on students that they have no desire to pursue. This naturally results in resistance that makes the learning more difficult.

When we pursue learning objectives for our own reasons, the process may be hard but we push through the friction because we desire the outcome. When a child decides to learn something on their own they endure this friction joyfully. Kids learning to play basketball or football will leap from the dinner table and run out the door the first moment they can. With furrowed brows and tongues hanging out, they run, dribble, and shoot countless repetitions in a joyful effort to improve at their game. They don’t suffer the idea of exercise; it’s still there but they don’t feel the friction of learning and their perception of time melts away. If joyful learning comes so naturally, what have we done to make school feel so hard to swallow?

Learning is a Digestive Process

We feed ourselves with information, which becomes the material for our acts of creation. The quality of the information and ideas we place into our minds determines the possibilities of our potential. As with food, once we place information into our bodies we need to give it time to digest. Schools force-feed our students information at an alarming pace. PowerPoint presentations further concentrate information, delivering more than is possible if those same ideas were carefully explained by a teacher.

As with over-eating, much of the potential of our mental food is wasted because we ingest more than our bodies can digest; it remains stored but unprocessed. Our classrooms treat children like fattened geese - chained and force-fed until they become obese - at the expense of the functions of their internal organs and their joy of dining. ‘Appetite is the best sauce’, but we only develop an appetite after our bodies have processed the food we’ve eaten. There must be periods of absence for hunger to develop. Schools force information down the minds of their students and wonder why they aren’t curious - why they’re not eager to learn. As in most domains of contemporary life, the pace of consumption is too great.

Schools are all-you-can-eat information buffets, where students are forced to consume the ‘sushi, omelettes, prawns, and pancakes’ until they feel like throwing up - and then schools give them more. This information dumping always brings to mind Mr. Creosote from Monty Python's, The Meaning of Life, where his gluttony causes him to explode after eating "Just one wafer-thin mint, sir." There’s already a great wealth of information inside of each of our students; school should spend more time transforming this information into knowledge - chewing their food - than piling more onto their plates. Education should nourish, not stuff; students need time to savour ideas, not just swallow them whole. Shouldn't dining on ideas be a pleasure?

Don’t Work Hard, Work Joyfully

Rather than telling our children to work hard we should tell them to work joyfully. When we work joyfully, we don’t feel the strain of resistance in the same way; it’s still there but we’re not fighting against our minds as well as our bodies to achieve our objectives. Whether playing a sport, an instrument, creating art or science, joy naturally elevates the performance of our bodies. When Michael Jordan flies through the air to dunk on his opponents, you can be sure he’s feeling joyful. Learning shouldn’t hurt to count. If we craft a mindset for joyful learning, rather than having our students brace for impact, they’ll ask themselves, ‘How can I make this task more fun?’ This is the core of the pedagogy of play⁵ that I employ in my classrooms. As expressed by one of my students, “There's always a comfortable atmosphere in class, the assignments are fun and creative and I really enjoy spending time here with everyone.”⁶ Almost all learning can be made into a joyful activity if you reframe it in your mind. Dancing to music while splashing in warm water and suds turns washing the dishes into a pleasure. The heart follows the mind; if the mind is suffering then that pain will become embodied and resisted through our emotions.

If the mind is joyful, that joy will be amplified throughout our body and ease will prevail. When we’re chasing after our own objectives then there’s a predisposition for joy. Video gamers will see their characters die and respawn endlessly; they’ll slam controllers onto the ground in frustration, then pick them up again - doubling down on their effort wilfully. The challenge is to leverage our ambitions to carry us through the strain. When tasks are obligations, we can often reframe our mindset to play our way through struggle. Sometimes, when forced to work against our will, the suffering is unavoidable. In such cases, the objective should be to design our lives in such a way as to avoid finding ourselves in those situations. More often than not, this isn’t an option for a K-12 student - it requires agency, and they have none.

School forces students into uninvited obligations. If a teacher is skilful and their curriculum inspired, then learning in school can be a pleasure. Unfortunately, our educational institutions most often rub against the natural grain of their students. Anyone who’s worked with wood knows that to shape it well, you must sand and chisel with the grain - to work contrary to the grain makes a mess of the material. Humans are no different.

Working with the Grain

I have two primary concerns with the approach to learning in schools:

Understanding the Student’s Grain

1. We do not take the time to study the natural grain of our students. Every student is unique with a fruit entirely of its own design - its grain and temper are dynamic. Education shapes the material of young lives; as teachers, if we don’t take time to understand our material then we are unworthy of our craft. We’ve designed a system that doesn’t allow teachers the time, tools, or processes to study the nature and character of our students. There are even those who distain their students. Twenty to thirty students in a classroom is madness if we really care about producing beautiful and inspired lives. If teachers are not trained to consider the grain of the young lives they develop before they begin sanding and chiselling then their efforts can easily damage the material. We might take inspiration from the approach of Michelangelo when he created the statue of David: ‘I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.’ The challenge for teachers is to possess the perception to see the angel that lays beneath the surface, and the skill to set it free.

Empowering Student Agency

2. Our students are not stone, but flesh and blood - mind, muscles, and emotions - each possessing wills of their own. To work with the grain of students means they should work willingly with teachers - not against them; not by coercion but by choice. This is very often not the case in our schools, where teachers are seen as authority figures with agendas of their own - often misaligned with the purposes of their students. The grain of a student moves and changes with the seasons - sometimes quickly, sometimes in unexpected ways. We need to give students agency to decide upon the destination of their learning before we facilitate the process. We must also allow them to change their minds, but only after arriving at certain waypoints in the process. Each time they choose a learning path there should be agreed waypoints - certain proficiencies that are earned that are meaningful. Once the path is agreed, students shouldn’t be allowed to pivot until they reach their next waypoint. This raises the stakes for the learner. They may get restless when the material becomes familiar and the novelty wears off, but it’s exactly in those moments when the teacher becomes essential to guide them through plateaus in the learning process. When objectives are self-directed then committing to the process develops grit, endurance, and determination. Once the waypoint is achieved, then they may be allowed to explore a new learning path. But to facilitate this kind of learning, schools must evolve.

Toward Individualised Education

Learning must become individual. The days of standardised education must come to an end. Schools need to become ateliers for working with the material of young lives - workshops for the development of potential - guided by teachers who partner and inspire. We live in a time when this is within our reach, but it will require a paradigm shift and systems change. We will need to train a different breed of teacher; one which is sensitive and perceptive, relational and inspirational - skilled at collaboration, not coercion. If we truly care about our young, our most valuable resource and the promise of our future, we must master the art of working with living, feeling, changing lives. There is no material on this planet with greater potential than a young human life - yet many treat this sacred material with clumsy hands and exhausted hearts. Our system lacks the vision, care, capacity, and consciousness required to shape young lives with the reverence they deserve. It's time we stop fixing children to fit a broken system and begin building one designed to unleash their potential.

Prototyping the Future

In my own practice, I try to model solutions to the problems I see in education. For example, in LALTech Lab, a high school class which creates a student-led EdTech business, students are responsible for deciding upon the objectives of our company and organising themselves to achieve their aims. I tried to create a platform that would accommodate the broadest possible range of activities so students of all dispositions and talents can find self-expression through their work. We have copywriters, graphic designers, web designers, content creators, engineers, an administrator, and a leader for strategy & relationships. Rather than placing students into specific roles, I ask them what they love to do and then build a role around them. At the moment, I have students modelling fluid dynamics with two amazing 3D printers from Sygnis, and a collaboration with a brain-computer interface start-up is just beginning. The students organise themselves, hold each other accountable, provide feedback, and problem-solve together. This is a core-curriculum English class.

In another one of my courses, The Dojo, the core tenet is 'The project is you!' I don't introduce outside information in this class; instead, I draw ideas, creativity, and knowledge out from within my students. The first half of every class (45 mins) we begin with movement, breathwork, meditation, and reflective discourse. This includes yoga, movement (E.g. Ido Portal), calisthenics, martial arts, and various other activities. For breath we work with pranayama, Qigong, and contemporary breath practices. A variety of meditation techniques are taught. In the second half of the class we write (45 mins). Writing includes layout and design, graphic design, creative writing, professional writing, and academic writing. Each assignment has a limit of one page, is self-expressive, and contributes to their student portfolios. The portfolios result in an individual publication by the end of the year. Our methodology is play and all work is done in classroom (no homework). This course is also an English class in our core curriculum.

These are just two of the ways that I try to model solutions for the problems I see in education; building within the existing system of our school. I know that every school is different and that some systems are resistant to change. This is when parents need to organise themselves to pressure schools to innovate within their structures. There should be a ‘sandbox for solutions’ in every school. To keep pace with change, we may first need to slow down - relaxing our systems to create the flexibility we need to evolve. What happens when we build schools that grow with us?

About the Author

Ryan Bromley is an educator, writer, and program designer exploring the future of learning in a ‘sandbox for solutions’ - a space in the core high school curriculum to innovate classrooms that inspire and engage students in different ways. Two such classrooms are The Dojo and LALTech Lab - living experiments in reimagining education from the inside out. Follow his writing by subscribing to his Substack.

1. Lee, B. (1975). Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1st ed.). Ohara Publications.

2. Aurelius, M. (2002). Meditations (G. Hays, Trans.). Modern Library. (Original work published ca. 180 CE)

3. Huberman Lab. (n.d.). I would like to understand the science behind struggle or effort in learning. Ask Huberman Lab. Retrieved April 3, 2025, from https://ai.hubermanlab.com/hubermanlab/s/Qt5N3KkE

4. Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257–285. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4

5. Project Zero. (n.d.). Pedagogy of Play. Harvard Graduate School of Education. Retrieved April 6, 2025, from https://pz.harvard.edu/projects/pedagogy-of-play

6. Direct feedback taken from a high school student of mine in The Dojo, my holistic writing class.