In memory of Christopher Alexander Series 2: Three elements of the new educational paradigm

Original Chinese Version Life activity, life conversation, and living knowledge constitute the three pillars of this new educational paradigm as I understand it. Or, more simply: the PlayGround, Conversation, and Knowledge. Now I will explain each of these three elements

Life Activity

I often say that in a day, or throughout a lifetime, there are only three things to do: Play, Learn, and Create. I also say that Learning, Playing, and Creating are a trinity of life activities—they represent the past, the present, and the future of Life.

Although we say that “Playing, Learning, and Creating” are a trinity, we can still view Learning as a retrospective engagement with the past. In its essence, Learning is about the experiences of the past; it is the act of reflecting upon our past significant experiences. Similarly, although we say that “Playing” is inseparable from learning and creating, we can still view Playing as being primarily about the present moment—the now. When you are truly playing, you forget about learning; there is no “learning” in your mind. You forget the past, the present, and the future. Time disappears, time becomes eternity, and in that moment, you are simply playing. Likewise, although “Creating” is the highest form of playing and demands the highest capacity for learning, we can still view Creating as being primarily about imagining future space and predicting the transformations within that space. Just as the present is embraced by its parents—the past and the future—Playing is embraced by its parents: Learning and Creating. True playing always maintains a close relationship with learning and creating. Playing is the present, the only real existence; without the spark of playing, learning has no life to reflect upon. Therefore, without playing, there truly is no learning. Therefore, playing is not the problem; the lack of playing is the real problem. True playing is always inseparable from learning and creating. If there is nothing new to learn, then continuing to play loses its joy. Furthermore, playing always contains an element of creation. Naturally, then, playing, learning, and creating are not separate—not in the slightest. By engaging in the trinity of Playing, Learning, and Creating, learners gain a wealth of first-hand significant experiences. These significant experiences then serve as the very foundation upon which they construct their own knowledge. This is something that various Self-Directed Education communities are already doing, and it has reached a significant level of maturity. Examples include study tours, watching films, reading novels, writing, playing board games, learning culinary arts and meal preparation, personal financial management, and urban exploration. There are even organizations and institutions abroad dedicated specifically to providing these types of services. Why have I long dreamed of schools like Sudbury, and why do I hold such a deep conviction in the Sudbury model? I often say: let us stop talking about
“education” and talk only about “learning.” Let us first clarify what learning actually is. To do that, we must return to our own learning—looking at everything we have acquired and examining how we actually learned it. The greatest problem with modern educators, including the “experts” in colleges of education, is that they themselves do not learn. They are profoundly lacking in the “Significant Experiences” of learning. The most vital learning experiences of my life came from playing with a large group of children when I was young. Often, all the children would be playing the same thing together. After a while, something new would emerge, and everyone would shift their focus to that new pursuit. Because every child was unique and came from a different background, our collective play was incredibly rich and diverse. In that environment, I could feel myself learning an immense amount. In contrast, from the very first day I started school in the first grade, I began to doubt whether this place called “school” was truly meant for learning. I could sense, even then, that I wasn’t actually learning much at all in school. It is precisely because I carry these fundamental, vital experiences of learning and growth that I felt an immediate, profound resonance with Sudbury Valley School. It felt instantly familiar—as if I had found a place that finally matched the truth of my own life. Therefore, a large group of people playing together is the ultimate form of learning. For adults, society itself is the greatest “PlayGround.” But for children, due to safety concerns, we cannot simply release them into society to learn. They need a safe environment where they can play freely. This is why Self-Directed Education communities like Sudbury are so essential. I use the term “PlayGround” to describe a field of freedom—a place for freely sensing, interacting, choosing, and exploring. This environment can be a physical site or a virtual digital space. The true responsibility of the educator is to architect these PlayGrounds, ensuring they support the trinity of life activities: playing, learning, and creating. Within a rich PlayGround, there are abundant life activities to engage in, thus completing the two tasks of education, one is life discovery as an input to education, and the other is life expression as an output of education. We recognize that life is diverse, and every individual begins at a unique starting point. Rather than forcing children into the narrow boxes of modern education—such as standardized extracurricular classes—we must flip the paradigm. The mentor’s role is to observe where a child’s natural interests lie, or better yet, to provide a rich PlayGround where children can discover those interests for themselves. In a truly rich PlayGround, every child will find something that resonates with their soul. The growth of life is interconnected; it does not exist in isolated categories like the subjects of modern education. When we realize that knowledge is built upon significant experiences, and we observe from that perspective, we see that every life activity encompasses a multitude of experiences. When different children play together, it is a process of these diverse experiences colliding and merging. A mentor, as an educator, should be able to see what is happening at the level of significant experiences, guiding the continuous growth of each child’s life accordingly. I have encountered many such cases in my practice with youth programming education. Children who love building and animation often discover the importance of programming through their play, gradually developing a genuine interest in the field. Conversely, children who enjoy programming can also discover that building and animation can cultivate programming thinking and are a part of programming skills. Given the length of this article, I will not recount those stories here, though I have shared them in my previous writings. An essential task of education is to facilitate this process of “Life Discovery,” which serves as the input of education. Another vital task is to help learners achieve “Life Expression.” This expression can take the form of a “Life Work” or other manifestations, including the act of teaching other learners; this constitutes the output of education. “Life Works” hold a critical position in education: it is through the exceptional Life Works of others that learners absorb the essential elements and nourishment for their own lives.

Life Conversation

Secondly, after gaining significant experiences from these life activities, there must be equal and diverse opportunities to exchange them—what I call “Life Conversation.” Mimsy, one of the founders of Sudbury Valley School, often spoke of the ubiquitous conversations that define the school. This conversation can happen between two learners, among a group (Sudbury even has dedicated discussion rooms), between learners and staff, or even as a dialogue with oneself—for at Sudbury, “being with oneself” or “staring into space” is also recognized as vital learning time. In other SDE communities, Life Conversation manifests as sharing one’s work or giving presentations. These conversations are always egalitarian. For instance, an interaction between two learners is like two gamers talking; even if one is a veteran and the other a novice, they interact as equals. The veteran simply points out where the fun is or demonstrates a few “pro tips,” rather than maintaining the power imbalance of a traditional teacher-student relationship. Conversation acts as a “developer.” Significant experiences are often vague and subjective at their onset. Through “Life Conversation”—whether by presenting one’s work, engaging in debate, or teaching others—learners are compelled to “verbalize” or “logically structure” these nebulous experiences. It is precisely within this process of conversation that experiences solidify, transforming into communicable and expandable knowledge. This is, in essence, a “P2P” (Peer-to-Peer) protocol. Traditional schools follow a “Client-Server” architecture; if the “Server” (the teacher) crashes or suffers from insufficient bandwidth, the entire system becomes paralyzed. In contrast, a Self-Directed Education community is a “P2P” architecture where every learner is a node. The more frequent the exchange, the higher the “knowledge bandwidth” of the entire network. This egalitarian and “decentralized”—or rather, “multi-centered,” where anyone can become a center—exchange protocol, together with the content that is exchanged (the significant experiences, the true raw material for constructing knowledge), is exactly why SDE communities can generate “true knowledge” more efficiently than traditional schools. In China’s Self-Directed Education (SDE) community, I have also noticed that writing and art have been used to help students dig deeper into their personal experiences and have rich conversations around those experiences. Overall, psychology is playing an increasingly important role among young people in China, especially among young educators. If we look at the methodology of psychology, its core is to use various methods to explore a person’s experiences. Therefore, the writing or art classes in Self-Directed Education communities may be influenced by psychology. The same approach is used in parenting in these communities. Parent education is an important part of these communities. I’ve noticed how these parents struggle to dig deeper into their own experiences with writing and how this profoundly changes their old thinking patterns and improves their understanding and communication with their children. I think it helps a lot in their professional work as well.

Life Knowledge

The third element is the “Construction of Knowledge” built upon the previous two. Knowledge is alive. Our cognitive growth should be organic; we must construct our knowledge based on our “significant experiences,” allowing knowledge to form its own interconnections. Because this knowledge is grown from “significant experiences,” it is deeply rooted and far more resilient than the “stored information” found in traditional schooling. It becomes a part of the learner’s identity, not just something they “know,” but something they “are.” In many current Self-Directed Education (SDE) communities, there is a certain degree of neglect toward “knowledge.” On one hand, people strongly disagree with the categorized subject-based knowledge structures of the old educational paradigm. Since many are currently focused on “breaking the mold,” “knowledge” is often placed in an adversarial position by innovative educators. On the other hand, the diverse forms of knowledge found in the richness of life remain difficult for many to “grasp” or “handle.” After all, traditional paper-based formats—and even the digital documents that emerged after the rise of software and the internet, which remain limited by the concept of “paper”—struggle to represent knowledge that flows and connects everywhere. The Sudbury model is one that handles knowledge relatively well; almost every wall at Sudbury is a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, filled with books. The lack of focus on “knowledge,” or the inability to effectively express it, is the most common criticism of Self-Directed Education from those within the old educational paradigm. It is also a major reason why many parents still find it difficult to “embrace” SDE. The old paradigm uses “standardized testing” as its yardstick. When Self-Directed Education (SDE) communities fail to provide these easily quantifiable “report cards,” the outside world assumes that no knowledge is being produced. As previously mentioned, if we lack new media to express “interconnected and flowing knowledge,” the learner’s growth effectively becomes a “black box.” This neglect of “knowledge construction” is not limited to Self-Directed Education; it exists across the broader landscape of innovative education, including popular approaches like “Project-Based Learning” (PBL). Why does PBL also fall into the trap of “neglecting knowledge”?  The Trap of ” Doing for the Sake of Doing “: In many PBL cases, children may be busy with crafts, editing videos, or organizing events. While things look bustling and vibrant on the surface, the “knowledge architecture” supporting these actions remains thin. If a project is merely completed without the “developing process” of transforming “experience” into “knowledge” in the mind, the learning remains superficial. “Fragmentation”: PBL often revolves around a specific, narrow goal. If the element—”organic knowledge interconnections”—is missing, the knowledge points acquired are like scattered pearls without a string to hold them together. Once the project ends, this knowledge tends to dissipate over time. Lack of Conversion for “Significant Experiences”: As mentioned earlier, if PBL turns into a “prescribed task” assigned by a teacher, it loses the essence of “Life Discovery.” A project without internal drive is merely a complex, expensive “large assignment,” rather than a true “Life Work.” If we can recognize that knowledge is a “living entity” rooted in “significant experiences,” this understanding aligns perfectly with the practice of Self-Directed Education. Our life activities are dedicated to gaining a wealth of “significant experiences,” upon which we engage in “Life Conversation.” What we currently lack are effective “digital formats” to support these knowledge-based activities within SDE—tools that can construct “visualized knowledge” based on “significant experiences,” allowing it to be shared, discussed, and eventually transformed into traditional document formats. Beyond supporting offline “Life Activities” and “Life Conversations” within SDE, the digital expression of “Life Knowledge” allows Self-Directed Education to flourish online as well. In this way, outstanding professionals from across the country—and even the globe—who possess rich learning experiences can become mentors in their spare time. With the assistance of software, they can effectively teach or provide “Learning Guidance” based on SDE principles. Another benefit of the digital expression of “Life Knowledge” is that it solves the “exit problem” of Self-Directed Education. Because learning becomes visualized, stored online, dynamically constructed in real-time, and capable of being expressed, shared, and interacted with, it offers an “unparalleled advantage” over traditional test scores when employers are hiring. Students in the old educational paradigm simply cannot produce such a wealth of “significant experiences” and “abstract models.” In fact, teachers within the old paradigm often lack their own “significant experiences” and “abstract models” of learning themselves. Next, I will briefly explain what kind of “living entity” this “Life Knowledge” actually is. In today’s age of information explosion, there is a vast ocean of books to read. How do you absorb so much knowledge? Do you plan to read them one by one? You must have a way of exploration—a mechanism for filtering and absorption. To explore is to treat all knowledge as a “complex living system”; learning is “navigating” through it. You must rely heavily on your own sensing and courage to guide this navigation. Your filtering mechanism, to a large extent, depends on your “significant experiences.” Take study tours as an example: I often find that only after visiting a place and gaining “significant experiences” within that physical space do I suddenly find myself able to truly understand the books and films about it. Therefore, after traveling, I usually spend time exploring relevant high-quality books, movies, and even top-rated discussions on platforms like Quora. This is a method for the “rapid growth of knowledge.” The rapid growth of knowledge is actually an iterative process:

• Cruising: Broadly perceiving and sensing the world.
• Anchoring: Generating “significant experiences.”
• Absorbing: Engaging in targeted reading, viewing, and interaction (such as exploring top-rated discussions on Quora) fueled by those experiences.
• Constructing: Forming your own “Life Knowledge.”

In fact, in my own learning, I place great emphasis on growing my knowledge around my own “significant experiences.” Many learning methods can be derived from this approach, though due to space constraints, I will not elaborate on them here. “Significant experiences” are the basic units of knowledge; they are the “Life Centers” of knowledge that we have to capture in our learning. The world we face consists mostly of “complex living systems,” such as society or education. How are these systems structured? “Life Centers” form “abstract models,” and these models, in turn, become the “Life Centers” for the next level up. This iterative process continues, constructing the “complex living systems” we see. Therefore, our learning process must be based on abstract modeling on top of our significant experiences, continuously constructing complex living systems and creating our own knowledge. When we say a “significant experience” is a “Life Center,” we mean that it possesses “centripetal force.” It is not an isolated point, but a “core” that allows other scattered pieces of information—such as books, conversations, and observations—to coalesce and find their place. The essence of the “Life Center”: It creates a “centripetal force” that allows knowledge to coalesce.

• From Passive to Active: In the traditional educational paradigm, information is “fed” or “poured” into the student. In this new paradigm, information is “drawn in” by the centripetal force generated by the “Life Center.”
• A Magnetic Field of Meaning: This centripetal force stems from the authentic needs of a life. Because you have had that “significant experience,” when you read a certain book or hear a particular sentence, you experience an instantaneous “resonance”—a feeling of: “This is exactly the answer I have been searching for.”
• a process of “Crystallization”: scattered information is like the solute in a supersaturated solution. Without a “Crystal Nucleus” (a “Life Center”), it remains nothing more than a cloudy liquid. However, once this “Core” exists, knowledge rapidly crystallizes and grows around it, forming a stable structure. This explains why some people read extensively but still lack original thought—they lack sufficient “Life Centers” to integrate those scattered points.

According to Christopher Alexander, a “Life Center” is both objective and subjective. It can guide us away from the path of “human mechanization” caused by modernization, leading us back to our “fundamental humanity.” Everything we humans can perceive is life, composed of “Life Centers.” Larger “Life Centers” are built from smaller ones. When smaller “Life Centers” establish a larger “Life Center,” we can call this an “Abstract Model.” The various levels formed by many “Life Centers” constitute a “Complex Living System.” Therefore, a “Complex Living System” is a multi-layered structure of “Life Centers.”

If we look around us, we can see that we are surrounded by “Complex Living Systems” everywhere. In reality, “Complex Thinking Skills” are entirely about the cognitive ability to engage with and process these “Complex Living Systems.” For very “Complex Living Systems,” there are usually a vast number of similar “Life Centers” that recur as “basic units.” For example, in biological organisms, the “basic unit” is the cell. Knowledge is also a “Complex Living System.” For knowledge, these “basic units” are what I call “significant experiences.” Knowledge is an “abstract model” built upon these “significant experiences.” We humans share very similar “significant experiences.” These “significant experiences” can be shared, interconnected, and discussed. They are limited in number and are objective in nature. As human beings, although each of us is unique and lives in different cultures, we experience life in the same fundamental way. When we say we “know” something, it means we have a relevant “abstract model” within our consciousness. For example, a child knows the object in front of them is a “cat” because, after seeing cats multiple times—or as we might say, after cats have appeared and disappeared before them many times—the child has already constructed an “abstract model” of a cat in their consciousness. The model of a “cat” may be simple, yet there are all kinds of cats. Similarly, the model of a “stool” may be simple, but by adding other elements—other “Life Centers”—to that model, we can create a vast variety of stools. This introduces the concept of a “Minimal Model,” which we can enrich by adding extra “Life Centers.” This has profound implications for both our pedagogical methodology and our approach to handling “Complex Living Systems.”

Therefore, “Life Centers” give rise to everything. All the subjects we study in school are essentially about “Life Centers.” In particular, Computer Science is the science of studying “Life Centers.” Thus, Computer Science is, in reality, a “Life Science.” Much could be said about how Computer Science is a “Life Science”; however, for our purposes here, we shall keep it brief. The same holds true for Biology, Physics, and Mathematics. This is even more evident in the Humanities, Psychology, Sociology, and Management. They are all composed of “Life Centers.” Therefore, Art and Science are unified through “Life Centers” or a “sense of space,” just as the subjective and the objective are unified. An artistic perception of “Life Centers” exists in everything we do; it is omnipresent in our daily activities. Therefore, no matter what your profession is, everyone is an “artist.” Attributes of the “Life Center”:

• Independent, bounded, fully functional, and possessing strong perceptibility;
• Self-explanatory, with a friendly interface that is easy to interact with or play with;
• Larger “Life Centers” are composed of several smaller “Life Centers”;
• Different layers remain relatively independent;
• “Life Centers” are equal, mutually supportive, and serve the whole;
• Repetitive or recursive structures within “Complex Living Systems” (where a “Complex Living System” can itself be treated as a single “Life Center”).

We can apply these attributes to various fields to help identify their respective “Life Centers.” All disciplines are knowledge about “Life Centers,” and every subject is built upon “Life Centers” or their combinations—which we call “Abstract Models.” For example, language learning consists of layered “Life Centers.” When tackling a foreign language, most people pour their energy into memorizing isolated words. In reality, “lexical chunks”—natural, short phrases—are the true “Life Centers” of language; they are where our focus belongs. Above these chunks, the next level of “Life Center” is the “subject-matter context” or “thematic cluster.” When studying a foreign language, one should read several articles on the same topic at once to absorb the recurring phrases within that theme. By immersing yourself in ten or so articles on a single subject, you naturally internalize its core expressions, which translates directly into fluent writing and speaking. If individual words are treated as the “Life Center,” they fail to form the kind of fluid and interconnected center, resulting in a profound sense of fragmentation within language learning. Mathematics is fundamentally about “Life Centers.” Arithmetic is the act of counting these centers; addition is built upon counting, and subtraction is its inverse. Upon this “Minimal Model,” we construct higher-level mathematical structures, such as exponentiation and logarithms. In fact, nearly all mathematical models in primary and secondary education are layered atop this minimal model. In software engineering, the two most critical data structures—”Lists” and “Dictionaries”—are essentially tools for managing “Life Centers.” Roughly 80% of programming involves using these two structures to process various “Life Centers.” If we build our knowledge based on “significant experiences” and “abstract models,” we will discover that the richness of knowledge far exceeds the sum of all school subjects or university majors combined. The foundation of a “New Educational Theory” should be capable of serving as the foundation for all other fields of knowledge. Our current educational theories—such as most modern educational frameworks—largely consist of simply applying concepts borrowed from other disciplines. However, shouldn’t educational theory be rooted in the very concept of “knowledge” itself? And shouldn’t this concept of “knowledge” also serve as the foundation for all other disciplines? I believe this is what a new, sound educational theory must possess. The core of a “New Educational Theory” should serve as the foundational basis for all academic disciplines. This “New Educational Theory” based on “Life Centers” is indeed capable of connecting with all other fields; “Life Centers” can truly serve as the foundational basis for all knowledge. The preceding discussion focused on knowledge acquisition across various fields. Today, many innovative educational models emphasize the mastery of “complex cognitive skills”—such as problem-solving, diagnostics, design, learning, mentoring, and management—rather than the acquisition of “specific knowledge.” Therefore, let us now examine these “complex cognitive skills” through the lens of “Life Centers.” Complex cognitive skills are, in essence, the management of complex living systems; their fundamental capacity lies in the identification of “Life Centers.” If we examine these skills through the lens of “Life Centers” (or “significant experiences”) and “abstract models,” we gain a highly systematic and consistent methodology across all these cognitive skills. This allows us to understand these cognitive abilities much more effectively as a unified whole. The ability to perceive and recognize “Life Centers” is the foundational capability. This foundation gives rise to a set of basic higher-level skills, including “Synthesis/Understanding,” “Deconstruction/Analysis,” and the skill of “Expressing Abstract Models” through various media (text, sound, images, etc.). These higher-level basic skills, in turn, serve as the foundation for the “complex cognitive skills” commonly discussed in various professions—such as problem-solving, diagnostics, critical thinking, design, learning, mentoring, and management.

Once we discover that knowledge consists of “abstract models” built upon “significant experiences,” and that learning is itself a “process of abstract modeling,” a new set of relationships emerges among the various roles within this new educational paradigm. This serves as the foundation for a dialogue between “Self-Directed Education” and traditional education, illuminating how the familiar relationships of the old paradigm are transformed under the new one. The specifics are illustrated in the diagram below:

The three elements of the “New Educational Paradigm” discussed above—”PlayGround,” “Conversation,” and “Knowledge”—reflect the core of our existence: we play in “Life Activities,” we learn through “Life Conversation,” and we create “Life Knowledge.” From a more macroscopic perspective—one rooted in the understanding of human life—these three elements represent “Playing,” “Learning,” and “Creating,” forming a unified, triadic whole of the human life. In the next section, I will discuss how to master the implementation of “Self-Directed Education” from the educator’s perspective. Put simply, this requires a deep “trust in life” and an “intimacy with life.” In this series:

• Series 1: The importance of Life Center to Self-Directed Education
• Series 2: Three elements of the new educational paradigm
• Series 3: Trust in Life
• Series 4: Intimacy with Life
• Series 5: A New Science