Contra Hoel On Aristocratic Tutoring

Recently I was discussing with a friend the hypothesis that aristocratic tutoring (of the kind we don’t do anymore) is the only known consistent method to at least occasionally produce geniuses, to which he objected “What about Einstein?” A great point. Einstein’s reputation makes him seem one the most democratic of geniuses, a term he’s synonymous... See more

Now consider our current situation. Despite all the language professing otherwise, in general the education system of the United States is based entirely on genetic determinism. A child is born assumed to have innate traits, including, for example, a preference as to what they want to be when they grow up (somehow just waiting fully-formed inside o... See more

Aristocratic tutoring was not focused on measurables. Historically, it usually involved a paid adult tutor, who was an expert in the field, spending significant time with a young child or teenager, instructing them but also engaging them in discussions, often in a live-in capacity, fostering both knowledge but also engagement with intellectual subj... See more

The theory by Erik Hoel states that: We're not maximizing the potential of the world's most gifted individuals because we're not educating them the right way. In the past, geniuses did not go to school; they were tutored — getting most of their education at home, for a single person (or a small group of people).

If we go back in time tutoring had a much broader scope, acting as the main method of early education, at least for the elite. Let's call this past form aristocratic tutoring.

The traditional line for why essentially all intellectuals used to be aristocrats is that they were the only people with the leisure time to pursue the life of the mind. But what if it was never solely about leisure, but also a style of education that has fallen out of favor?