Three Educational Paradigms: What PewDiePie Can Teach Us About Teaching

After giving it some (well, 40+ years) of thought, I’d like to suggest three paradigms of education, which I’m going to call:

While each has its merits, I’m going to argue for the more audacious third option. 

“Expanding upon what they love” is a child-centered approach, which sees students as innately both curious and wise; teachers are a guide (if that) on the side, helping students satiate their noble inner longings. Shaped in the early 20th century’s progressive era, and honed in the 1960s and 1970s, this approach works well for some students, albeit students who might have little need for much formal instruction anyway. But it makes some questionable assumptions about human nature, and if I experienced that sort of education, I’d be an unemployed expert on UFOs today, given what books I read as a 14-year-old. I’m rather happy that my school steered me in different directions. Any comparison of a college course selection guide from 2025 to one from, say, 1955, will show how this paradigm has seeped into higher education. 

 

“Sampling what they might love” (perhaps “like,” or even “endure” might be a better word) is a sort of cafeteria education, where teachers serve a potpourri of nibbles on a host of topics, aided and abetted by the modern textbook, which typically is a smorgasbord of stuff. In his article Education as the Fullness of Life, political scientist Jeffrey Polet writes that teachers should “…avoid the mind-numbing and soul-crushing prose of textbooks.” 

That is easier said than done. Skipping superficially over what are often superficial or inconsequential topics, the sampling paradigm does cater to modern, shorter attention spans, but the lack of depth or gravitas means students are woefully ignorant of most of those topics, and our national discussions today reflect this simple minded, surface-level analysis. Of course, you just might discover a life-changing skill or subject, which gives this approach its appeal. 

“Shaping what they should love” is an older approach that relies on the teacher—the “sage on stage”—to cultivate deep learning, and hopefully deep loves, of topics that students might never have even thought of considering. With this paradigm, education has a defined goal. In some iterations, it’s a progressive vision, aiming at a deep understanding of trendy topics; today, that tends to be race, class, or gender, revisionist accounts of history, with the goal of shaping students to tackle the causes of the day. 

I prefer a more traditional vision, grounded in both Judeo-Christian and logical truths: that we are both created in God’s image, and that we are deeply flawed. That duality has great significance for what and how we teach. We shape students to achieve good ends, acknowledging how our often selfish inclinations and our very partial knowledge place real limits on what people can achieve. Because of these two problems, some of our noble “wars” (on poverty, drug abuse, terrorism) have had exceptionally spotty results. 

The traditional approach grounds itself in time-tested thought. As an Upper School teacher, I taught economic truths. My favorite economist once said that the “curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they know about what they imagine they can design.” A basic truth involves the forces of supply and demand, which, like ocean tides, constrain our idealistic aspirations. There is no such thing as a free lunch, a free vaccine, or free college tuition. When we tax things, we get less of them, and when we subsidize them (housing, medical care, education) we get more of them, ironically, at higher prices—which University of Chicago economist Kevin Murphy reminded the upperclassmen when he visited BA.

Though many of the above truths appear a bit “ugly,” it’s important for students to see the beautiful as well. Juniors see the beauty of spontaneous order in the anarchy of profit—the pursuit of which propels innovation, but the resulting innovation also causes these profits to disappear as everyone rushes to get a piece of that pie. Pursuit of individual fame creates exceptional beauty: Renaissance masterpieces, Dante’s Inferno, Homer’s Odyssey, and Sam Walton’s Walmart.

Walmart, beautiful? 

Yes. The boxy store isn’t exactly a Greek temple, and its utilitarian offerings can be pedestrian, but think of it: you can go there, find what you are looking for, assume it’s about as inexpensive as it can be, and make your life better, all without some sort of Central Planner making sure you will get what he thinks you need. And if you want to upgrade, there’s always Target.

Along with acknowledging the true and the beautiful, we can also aspire towards achieving the good. We think deeply about how best to help our neighbor. We ask questions that poke through facile thinking about issues. We introduce students to dozens of deep thinkers, whose insights they might love as much as we love. Students might choose to critique them, of course–but that critique will be thoughtful and nuanced.

Out of this shaping, we want students in an independent school to be passionate. Of course, etymologically, passion is really all about suffering. There’s some seriously gritty hard work involved in understanding why the “labor theory of value” is false, how printing money causes only temporary prosperity, how German expressionism came out of the post WWI world, how to properly shade a drawing, or how to do calculus.

Watching inane videos might be a relaxing endeavor, but don’t we really want students to pursue the Good, the True, and the Beautiful? Does the idea of virtue come from time-tested truths that are both good and beautiful, or can it just be crowdsourced as a virtue of the day? 

Answering these questions is actually more relevant than PewDiePie’s clever videos, and certainly more edifying in shaping students to live constructive lives of purpose.